Yeah, I was wrong too. I generally predicted that they would be a 'rout' for the majority party--though mainly because I am a cynical, sour human on the electorate, full of bitter experiences, and figured they would be unable to resist touching that hot stove of fascism for no good reason.
I am happy to have been proven wrong here. Mostly. (We'll have to see how the Congressional races throughout the mountain West turn out.)
But it is kind of relieving to find out that America, after feeling a wee bit of inflation, has not quite decided to turn its back on Biden in particular and global democracy in general. Yet.
An alternate take on the kooks and election deniers doing worse than expected could be that fears that democracy was on the ballot were overblown and that election denial is unpopular not because the democrats made it the centerpiece of their strategy but because voters aren’t stupid and fringe right wing stuff is mostly unpopular.
I think inflation was a near-death experience for Democrats. They really ought to do a little demagoguing about needing a hearty increase in taxes (on the rich) /Lowe deficits. being necessary to fight inflation. (The Fed really does not need any help, but its the thought that counts. :))
Lakshya Jain was right to stop and think about the abnormal polling blast from GOP firms down stretch, and then produce the nonpartisan generic ballot tracker that ended up with D+0.1. Doesn't seem like media coverage did as much stopping thinking before whiplashing to bear season for Dems in late October. Not enough caveating to some pretty strange patterns as to certain kinds of pollster saturating and dramatically changing the results, though Split Ticket's nonpartisan GB tracker did end up getting a little run out there after the closing narrative had kind of left the station. I'm more empathetic to the idea that this was something genuinely difficult for modelers to grapple with down the stretch. Should be interesting to see how they all account for that scenario going forward. It also just felt like squirrel + nut with pollsters like particularly Trafalgar and logically the sample size of elections was going to catch up. Nate Silver did emphasize on the final model talk that despite GOP being clear favorites, Dems winning the House would not be crazy. Whereas, some otherwise great data-driven analysts and forecasters did ascribe way too much certainty to a comfortable GOP House win, more so in the way they discussed the race than modeled it. I suspect that late GOP pollster flood probably had a unique appeal in confirming midterm priors to the point of having a major effect on CW. I try to say this without being overly critical, predicting the future is hard!
I was an election commissioner Tuesday in a deep red precinct in a red state. Turnout was unusually high. There was a constant stream of voters throughout the day. At times, the line was out the door. I went to bed thinking I had witnessed the day democracy died. A big turnout had to be a Republican wave; there weren't enough Democratic voters in the precinct to make a trickle.
Turns out I was right about my precinct (the Republication Senator won 91% of the vote) but thank-the-lord, I was wrong about the country. What I learned was the importance of getting out the vote. A voter would ask if his/her family members had voted, and if they hadn't, sure enough they were at the polls in an hour. Many voters carried a flyer that looked like ballot recommendations. Others came with notes. The vibe was of a united community on a mission to win. How many of these voters could have been persuaded to switch their votes? Not many. Dems can only outvote them with local networks as determined to win as the one I saw yesterday.
I'd like to comment on the GOP overperformance in NY as I suspect once all the votes are counted, the area of the country where GOP will have overperformed the most will be Long Island. As I live in Nassau County Long Island, I feel like I can give some "on the ground" observations that help explain why (Caveat. These are anecdotes and my own observations. I'm the first person to trash these New York Times trips to Trump country that talk to an old man in a diner in rural America who somehow is the "voice" of real America. Or worse, when they speak to an "average joe" citizen, and it turns out this "average joe" is leader of a political activist group. Nonetheless, given we now have solid election results, I think some of my observations may have value).
The number one thing to keep in mind about Long Island is that it's the original "white flight" suburb. Look up the history of Levittown (the first modern planned community). More than northern NJ, Westchester or Fairfield County, Long Island is the place where white residents have moved to in order to "get away" from big bad New York City. Yes, to a certain degree, this describes all NYC suburbs (heck all suburbs). But I've lived in CT and have family in NJ and can't begin to tell you how much that vibe is stronger in Long Island. When I moved to Nassau County in 2010, it wasn't just that it was striking that I met person after person who had never been to NYC outside of a school field trip but would say it with a point of pride. Typical answer would be "why would I ever go to NYC. Such a dirty gross place" (again this is at a time when crime was rapidly falling).
What does this all have to do with GOP overperformance in Long Island? There is not a region or place in America more primed for a "crime is out of control" and specifically a "crime in NYC is out of control" then Long Island. It's a catnip political message. Almost every Zeldin add I saw was security cam footage of assaults and thefts...disproportionately in the NYC subway.
Given there will also likely be general overperformance of GOP in NY, I think it's worth pointing out that a big factor is not just focus on crime, but the disproportionate amount of coverage crime in NYC gets in media and cable news. A person voting in Oklahoma may watch and see all these reports of "NYC crime is out of control" and get shake they're in alarm. But that same person may also ultimately decide this shouldn't have any bearing on their vote for Governor (I'm using Oklahoma as my example because of that moment in the Oklahoma governor debate when the D candidate brought up that Oklahoma was actually wildly more dangerous than NYC and it seems as though Stitt genuinely didn't believe it). But if you live in NY, crime in NYC seems much more relevant. Even if you live in Buffalo, a voter will (correctly note) that the governor has at least some control or say in what crime is like in NYC.
Lastly on the crime question. I can't begin to tell you how terrible it is that Mayor Adams seems to be determined to boost the worst Fox News stereotypes of NYC crime is and how this likely factored into the results. Two things can be true, crime (And perhaps more perinatally visible homelessness) are up and crime is still much lower than it was in the 90s. When Mayor Adams says crime is worse than it's ever been even when he was a beat cop, it's just such a wildly irresponsible thing for him to say. Especially as his city is relies on tourism and people coming for the leisure options for tax revenue (something that will be more important with WFH).
Again, definitely anecdote and observations of just one person. Happy to amend once real voting data comes out and someone like David Shorr can give us more expert data analysis. But thought it worth sharing.
I am from Georgia. My dad is racist to the point of owning a prized “Run Jessie Run” T-shirt depicting white men chasing Jessie Jackson in an old timey pickup truck.
I have never lived anywhere more racist than the south shore of Long Island.
Unfortunately tracks. This chart (https://twitter.com/ScottHech/status/1553024034362626048) was so instructive and why I've pushed back on the large number of posters on this forum who post about crime and specifically about crime in NYC.
Have a sneaking suspicion that news stories about crime will start fall precipitously over the coming weeks.
I’ll preface this comment by saying I’m glad there is more police presence on the subway and some actual attempts to deal with a very real rise in “disorder” on the subway. But saying that, there is a lot reason to be skeptical of the crime stats we’re seeing.
To be fair to the Long Island contingent, while "The Adams administration is a clown show" is an understatement, sometimes it feels like exit really *is* the only option from NYC because beyond the close quarters exposure to crime and disorder itself, there's also a large and vocal contingent seemingly intent on making things actively worse rather than merely incompetently mismanaged -- and that's saying something when the scale of mismanagement includes things like "De Blasio's Wife whom nobody voted for manages to put eight-hundred fifty million dollars down the drain with no accountability."
ETA: Also, NYC actually is, objectively, a filthy place.
I can't emphasize enough that the Long Island contingent I speak of not only don't go to NYC but had parents who didn't either. The "fleeing" from NYC that happened is the same story as everywhere in the country; people moving to areas where they can rent or own more space due to WFH and general feeling "cooped up" during the pandemic. Look at rents in NYC. As Matt has noted over and over again, people "fleeing NYC" are doing so overwhelmingly because "the rent's too damn high" (as an aside, one of the few SCOTUS decisions I might agree with will be to do away with rent stabilization and rent control. Although I worry that someone like Alito will write an opinion that will go well beyond rent control/stabilization seeing as how his goal seems clear to me to reinstate the Lochner ere jurisprudence).
As far as NYC being objectively filthy...if you want to have a discussion about the ridiculousness of how trash pick up is done (including leaving trash on the curbs), happy to have that conversation. Because it's objectively ridiculous and a huge part of the reason NYC is filthier than it needs to be.
Just wanted to say that as someone born and raised on the South Shore (very recently left) this comment is spot on from my experience, so that at least makes two anecdotes!
Florida becoming deep red also tracks with what I've witnessed. I strangely know a lot of people from back home who have moved down there in the past few years, and they are almost exclusively people who would post conservative Facebook/Instagram posts.
Suspect you live (or lived) very close to where I currently live in Lynbrook (though I've lived all over Nassau County). I think you may agree with me that in Long Island, non-Jewish white men over the age 40 are some of the most Trumpy people in the entire country. I go back to a comment I once heard (and have repeated on this forum) that the best way to think of anything Trump says is to preface everything he says with "Donny from Queens, you're on the air". Years and years of listening to too much WFAN actually gave me some decent insight that Long Island suburbs would have more Trump fans than someone who doesn't live here might expect.
I grew up in Staten Island, which is very very similar to Nassau County, and I very quickly grokked that Trump was basically one of those guys but with a multimillion-dollar inheritance and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Basically, take your average preternaturally angry blue-collar, 50-something-year-old white guy in the NYC suburbs, give him no reason to ever tone it down and a compulsive need to always be the center of attention and, voila, Trump.
Is there anything where Fetterman being 51 gets the Democrats something that couldn't pass at the moment? Some issue where Fetterman is with the majority and only 1 of Manchin/Sinema wasn't (or perhaps some other Senator)?
I am not sure if you can confirm a judge with a tie-breaker vote? At least I don’t know that’s happened? I may be wrong of course but as I recall at least for scotus Dems had a couple of GOP joining them? So if that’s potentially a constitutional issue having a solid 51 majority would be good.
There are likely several planks where one of them would be an aye and the other one would be a nay, and depending on the final product it gives Dems a bit of flexibility to allow one of them to vote no on something for electoral (or whatever) purposes.
There have been a lot of takes recently about how Democrats have been losing Latino voters. Back in the day, I remember that there was a lot of hand wringing among Democrats about how Latinos backed Democrats but also had awful turnout; turnout among white voters (especially college-educated ones) was much higher and more consistent. More recently, I also remember hand wringing among some Republicans that after the 2020 election (and 1/6 in particular), the Republican party had really alienated college-educated voters, and those were the voters who really show up (especially in midterms).
If those takes hold up, and Democrats really are losing Latinos and gaining college-educated voters, then maybe that's a good trade, at least in the short term (and especially for midterm elections).
Of course, it's too soon to know the demographics of who voted and for which party. I'm curious what we learn.
MY: "With a normal poll, you survey a random but demographically unrepresentative group of people."
This is right on "normal poll" but just wrong on fundamentals. The research is showing the "declines" are increasing so much so that the "accepts" on polls are in the tails and the conventional wisdom that the "accepts" are correlated with the "declines" turns out to be wrong. They're correlated but not as strongly as they once were.
Shorter: You don't have enough polling to Monte-Carlo today's polls into a normal distribution.
I am thrilled with the outcome of the election. It was a repudiation of the Trump wing of the Republican Party and a win for regular Republicans. Seeing DeSantis, Rubio, Kemp and Abbot win with ease while the wackos -- Masters, Oz, Lake, Mastriano, et al -- lost badly is an encouraging sign. Trump's recent comments about DeSantis had either no effect or a positive effect -- DeSantis won by 20 points and improved on his performance 4 years ago.
It also reduces the chance of a Trump comeback. The GOP doesn't have to be as afraid of him as they have been. I've long held that he only won because the Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton in 2016. She is the only candidate he could be beaten.
Matt sort of sidled up to this point, but I think the narrative that the Democratic Party of Florida is a huge disaster isn’t really the correct lens to view the political situation through; instead, it’s more a case of the GOP is in charge, they’re running the state well, why would the voters kick them out?
I’m more DeSantis-curious after seeing this result, because obviously with those margins he’s succeeding at least partially by persuasion. Still will vote Dem in 2024 and don’t love the gratuitous triggering of libs, but it’s encouraging he is ok with winning soft Dems and doesn’t hate 50% of the country (just 30% or so? Not ideal but better than Trump and probably no worse than the Warren wing of the Democratic Party)
Yeah, I wouldn't vote for him (I might consider it if Dems lose their shit and nominate someone like Bernie or Warren or AOC in '24, but I don't think that will happen), but DeSantis seems like a relatively normal Republican with very strong political instincts (though he's lacking in charisma). I'm sure he'd do lots of things I don't like, but I don't think a DeSantis White House would be the end of the world, and I am often irritated by progressives who act like it would be.
It can both be true that the Republicans underperformed *and* that they will capture both the House and the Senate. I'd like to think that they would be chastened by their relatively poor performance and not overreach but that seems to go against their ethos and, sad to say as a loyal Democrat, it would be counter to what my party did after such a "chastening" underperformance. You know, way way back in 2020 when they expected to do much better though still squeaked to control of both houses only to then decide that Biden should be FDR and their party had a mandate to pass huge, transformative legislation.
If they do squeak through, I expect the Republicans to do no less.
Those things can be both true, but they won't actually notice the underperformance unless the Dems keep the Senate, because people use results oriented thinking and learn the wrong lessons a lot.
It's why the Republican party came away from 2016 thinking that Trumpism was a good thing. To this day it still amazes me that the GOP went into 2015 or so thinking that they had extremely good chances to win in 2016, and the Dems probably cleared the field for Hilary despite her flaws because they frankly didn't think they were going to win anyway.
Then a year later everyone is convinced that Hilary will win in a landslide, and when Trump wins he is celebrated as some political genius who found a way to an unlikely victory. Ignoring the fact that the whole reason the victory was unlikely in the first place was because he is a moronic nutjob!
So instead of "This Trump fiasco robbed us of a landslide victory and a mandate", the GOP learned "Trumpism is the key to the future because he won!"
Great post. I think the media over-reports Trump and MAGA for ratings. Distracts us from the obvious. Kari Lake is a prime example. She may still win, but we were led to believe it was going to be a blowout and the press hounded here with questions about running for president.
Same for good Democrats in strong red states. Beto and Ryan got a lot of press but didn’t really have a chance from the beginning.
Yeah, I was wrong too. I generally predicted that they would be a 'rout' for the majority party--though mainly because I am a cynical, sour human on the electorate, full of bitter experiences, and figured they would be unable to resist touching that hot stove of fascism for no good reason.
I am happy to have been proven wrong here. Mostly. (We'll have to see how the Congressional races throughout the mountain West turn out.)
But it is kind of relieving to find out that America, after feeling a wee bit of inflation, has not quite decided to turn its back on Biden in particular and global democracy in general. Yet.
An alternate take on the kooks and election deniers doing worse than expected could be that fears that democracy was on the ballot were overblown and that election denial is unpopular not because the democrats made it the centerpiece of their strategy but because voters aren’t stupid and fringe right wing stuff is mostly unpopular.
I think inflation was a near-death experience for Democrats. They really ought to do a little demagoguing about needing a hearty increase in taxes (on the rich) /Lowe deficits. being necessary to fight inflation. (The Fed really does not need any help, but its the thought that counts. :))
Lakshya Jain was right to stop and think about the abnormal polling blast from GOP firms down stretch, and then produce the nonpartisan generic ballot tracker that ended up with D+0.1. Doesn't seem like media coverage did as much stopping thinking before whiplashing to bear season for Dems in late October. Not enough caveating to some pretty strange patterns as to certain kinds of pollster saturating and dramatically changing the results, though Split Ticket's nonpartisan GB tracker did end up getting a little run out there after the closing narrative had kind of left the station. I'm more empathetic to the idea that this was something genuinely difficult for modelers to grapple with down the stretch. Should be interesting to see how they all account for that scenario going forward. It also just felt like squirrel + nut with pollsters like particularly Trafalgar and logically the sample size of elections was going to catch up. Nate Silver did emphasize on the final model talk that despite GOP being clear favorites, Dems winning the House would not be crazy. Whereas, some otherwise great data-driven analysts and forecasters did ascribe way too much certainty to a comfortable GOP House win, more so in the way they discussed the race than modeled it. I suspect that late GOP pollster flood probably had a unique appeal in confirming midterm priors to the point of having a major effect on CW. I try to say this without being overly critical, predicting the future is hard!
That's a general media critique and not specifically a critique of Matt's predictions piece, which I enjoyed and hope he does next time as well.
By the way, here's a headline to an opinion column I'd like to read from MY or anyone at the NYT:
"Maybe Nothing's the Matter with Kansas. Democrat Laura Kelly Likely Wins a Second Term."
"Trump recruits selected for no reason other than personal loyalty to him did worse than average"
The only good thing about this election.
Who is going to sign up to be the next DCCC chair? That's two in row who have gone down.
I was an election commissioner Tuesday in a deep red precinct in a red state. Turnout was unusually high. There was a constant stream of voters throughout the day. At times, the line was out the door. I went to bed thinking I had witnessed the day democracy died. A big turnout had to be a Republican wave; there weren't enough Democratic voters in the precinct to make a trickle.
Turns out I was right about my precinct (the Republication Senator won 91% of the vote) but thank-the-lord, I was wrong about the country. What I learned was the importance of getting out the vote. A voter would ask if his/her family members had voted, and if they hadn't, sure enough they were at the polls in an hour. Many voters carried a flyer that looked like ballot recommendations. Others came with notes. The vibe was of a united community on a mission to win. How many of these voters could have been persuaded to switch their votes? Not many. Dems can only outvote them with local networks as determined to win as the one I saw yesterday.
I'd like to comment on the GOP overperformance in NY as I suspect once all the votes are counted, the area of the country where GOP will have overperformed the most will be Long Island. As I live in Nassau County Long Island, I feel like I can give some "on the ground" observations that help explain why (Caveat. These are anecdotes and my own observations. I'm the first person to trash these New York Times trips to Trump country that talk to an old man in a diner in rural America who somehow is the "voice" of real America. Or worse, when they speak to an "average joe" citizen, and it turns out this "average joe" is leader of a political activist group. Nonetheless, given we now have solid election results, I think some of my observations may have value).
The number one thing to keep in mind about Long Island is that it's the original "white flight" suburb. Look up the history of Levittown (the first modern planned community). More than northern NJ, Westchester or Fairfield County, Long Island is the place where white residents have moved to in order to "get away" from big bad New York City. Yes, to a certain degree, this describes all NYC suburbs (heck all suburbs). But I've lived in CT and have family in NJ and can't begin to tell you how much that vibe is stronger in Long Island. When I moved to Nassau County in 2010, it wasn't just that it was striking that I met person after person who had never been to NYC outside of a school field trip but would say it with a point of pride. Typical answer would be "why would I ever go to NYC. Such a dirty gross place" (again this is at a time when crime was rapidly falling).
What does this all have to do with GOP overperformance in Long Island? There is not a region or place in America more primed for a "crime is out of control" and specifically a "crime in NYC is out of control" then Long Island. It's a catnip political message. Almost every Zeldin add I saw was security cam footage of assaults and thefts...disproportionately in the NYC subway.
Given there will also likely be general overperformance of GOP in NY, I think it's worth pointing out that a big factor is not just focus on crime, but the disproportionate amount of coverage crime in NYC gets in media and cable news. A person voting in Oklahoma may watch and see all these reports of "NYC crime is out of control" and get shake they're in alarm. But that same person may also ultimately decide this shouldn't have any bearing on their vote for Governor (I'm using Oklahoma as my example because of that moment in the Oklahoma governor debate when the D candidate brought up that Oklahoma was actually wildly more dangerous than NYC and it seems as though Stitt genuinely didn't believe it). But if you live in NY, crime in NYC seems much more relevant. Even if you live in Buffalo, a voter will (correctly note) that the governor has at least some control or say in what crime is like in NYC.
Lastly on the crime question. I can't begin to tell you how terrible it is that Mayor Adams seems to be determined to boost the worst Fox News stereotypes of NYC crime is and how this likely factored into the results. Two things can be true, crime (And perhaps more perinatally visible homelessness) are up and crime is still much lower than it was in the 90s. When Mayor Adams says crime is worse than it's ever been even when he was a beat cop, it's just such a wildly irresponsible thing for him to say. Especially as his city is relies on tourism and people coming for the leisure options for tax revenue (something that will be more important with WFH).
Again, definitely anecdote and observations of just one person. Happy to amend once real voting data comes out and someone like David Shorr can give us more expert data analysis. But thought it worth sharing.
I am from Georgia. My dad is racist to the point of owning a prized “Run Jessie Run” T-shirt depicting white men chasing Jessie Jackson in an old timey pickup truck.
I have never lived anywhere more racist than the south shore of Long Island.
i remember reading this fun story back in the summer lol
https://www.thecity.nyc/economy/2022/7/6/23197456/tourists-back-nyc-fear-crime-day-trippers-hotels-restaurants?_amp=true
Unfortunately tracks. This chart (https://twitter.com/ScottHech/status/1553024034362626048) was so instructive and why I've pushed back on the large number of posters on this forum who post about crime and specifically about crime in NYC.
Have a sneaking suspicion that news stories about crime will start fall precipitously over the coming weeks.
Per this Nov. 4th Bloomberg article, felonies in the subway are at about 2019 prepandemic levels in total while ridership is only about 65%. That’s a roughly 50% per-capita increase in crime on top of the already dehumanizing experience of riding the subway. The crime issues definitely aren’t wholly illusory. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-04/is-it-safe-to-ride-the-new-york-city-subway-after-a-surge-of-more-police
I’ll preface this comment by saying I’m glad there is more police presence on the subway and some actual attempts to deal with a very real rise in “disorder” on the subway. But saying that, there is a lot reason to be skeptical of the crime stats we’re seeing.
https://jabberwocking.com/violent-crime-is-under-control-in-big-cities-with-one-big-exception/
Huh. Well that’s a headscratcher.
To be fair to the Long Island contingent, while "The Adams administration is a clown show" is an understatement, sometimes it feels like exit really *is* the only option from NYC because beyond the close quarters exposure to crime and disorder itself, there's also a large and vocal contingent seemingly intent on making things actively worse rather than merely incompetently mismanaged -- and that's saying something when the scale of mismanagement includes things like "De Blasio's Wife whom nobody voted for manages to put eight-hundred fifty million dollars down the drain with no accountability."
ETA: Also, NYC actually is, objectively, a filthy place.
long island is just as mismanaged and corrupt as nyc
Can’t begin to tell you how true this is.
I can't emphasize enough that the Long Island contingent I speak of not only don't go to NYC but had parents who didn't either. The "fleeing" from NYC that happened is the same story as everywhere in the country; people moving to areas where they can rent or own more space due to WFH and general feeling "cooped up" during the pandemic. Look at rents in NYC. As Matt has noted over and over again, people "fleeing NYC" are doing so overwhelmingly because "the rent's too damn high" (as an aside, one of the few SCOTUS decisions I might agree with will be to do away with rent stabilization and rent control. Although I worry that someone like Alito will write an opinion that will go well beyond rent control/stabilization seeing as how his goal seems clear to me to reinstate the Lochner ere jurisprudence).
As far as NYC being objectively filthy...if you want to have a discussion about the ridiculousness of how trash pick up is done (including leaving trash on the curbs), happy to have that conversation. Because it's objectively ridiculous and a huge part of the reason NYC is filthier than it needs to be.
Just wanted to say that as someone born and raised on the South Shore (very recently left) this comment is spot on from my experience, so that at least makes two anecdotes!
Florida becoming deep red also tracks with what I've witnessed. I strangely know a lot of people from back home who have moved down there in the past few years, and they are almost exclusively people who would post conservative Facebook/Instagram posts.
Suspect you live (or lived) very close to where I currently live in Lynbrook (though I've lived all over Nassau County). I think you may agree with me that in Long Island, non-Jewish white men over the age 40 are some of the most Trumpy people in the entire country. I go back to a comment I once heard (and have repeated on this forum) that the best way to think of anything Trump says is to preface everything he says with "Donny from Queens, you're on the air". Years and years of listening to too much WFAN actually gave me some decent insight that Long Island suburbs would have more Trump fans than someone who doesn't live here might expect.
I grew up in Staten Island, which is very very similar to Nassau County, and I very quickly grokked that Trump was basically one of those guys but with a multimillion-dollar inheritance and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Basically, take your average preternaturally angry blue-collar, 50-something-year-old white guy in the NYC suburbs, give him no reason to ever tone it down and a compulsive need to always be the center of attention and, voila, Trump.
Is there anything where Fetterman being 51 gets the Democrats something that couldn't pass at the moment? Some issue where Fetterman is with the majority and only 1 of Manchin/Sinema wasn't (or perhaps some other Senator)?
I am not sure if you can confirm a judge with a tie-breaker vote? At least I don’t know that’s happened? I may be wrong of course but as I recall at least for scotus Dems had a couple of GOP joining them? So if that’s potentially a constitutional issue having a solid 51 majority would be good.
There are likely several planks where one of them would be an aye and the other one would be a nay, and depending on the final product it gives Dems a bit of flexibility to allow one of them to vote no on something for electoral (or whatever) purposes.
Y'all libs could have saved yourselves a lot of angst and listed to Michael Moore. I include myself in the y'all libs. He called it just like 2016.
Random thought:
There have been a lot of takes recently about how Democrats have been losing Latino voters. Back in the day, I remember that there was a lot of hand wringing among Democrats about how Latinos backed Democrats but also had awful turnout; turnout among white voters (especially college-educated ones) was much higher and more consistent. More recently, I also remember hand wringing among some Republicans that after the 2020 election (and 1/6 in particular), the Republican party had really alienated college-educated voters, and those were the voters who really show up (especially in midterms).
If those takes hold up, and Democrats really are losing Latinos and gaining college-educated voters, then maybe that's a good trade, at least in the short term (and especially for midterm elections).
Of course, it's too soon to know the demographics of who voted and for which party. I'm curious what we learn.
I think Latinos are the new, key swing voting cohort.
Less than 40% of the population has a college degree. Getting a majority of them is not a strategy for winning elections.
That's still a larger group than Latinos (altho there is some overlap, and Latinos is arguably an artificial construct with limited utility...)
It can be if turnout falls back to its old, more depressed levels. College-educated people have much higher propensity to vote.
Though I agree that obviously you shouldn't rely on winning with them alone.
The other thing we have to watch out for is how many descendants of Latinos eventually assimilate and just identify as plain old White.
I believe the majority of Latinos *already* identify as white.
MY: "With a normal poll, you survey a random but demographically unrepresentative group of people."
This is right on "normal poll" but just wrong on fundamentals. The research is showing the "declines" are increasing so much so that the "accepts" on polls are in the tails and the conventional wisdom that the "accepts" are correlated with the "declines" turns out to be wrong. They're correlated but not as strongly as they once were.
Shorter: You don't have enough polling to Monte-Carlo today's polls into a normal distribution.
I am thrilled with the outcome of the election. It was a repudiation of the Trump wing of the Republican Party and a win for regular Republicans. Seeing DeSantis, Rubio, Kemp and Abbot win with ease while the wackos -- Masters, Oz, Lake, Mastriano, et al -- lost badly is an encouraging sign. Trump's recent comments about DeSantis had either no effect or a positive effect -- DeSantis won by 20 points and improved on his performance 4 years ago.
It also reduces the chance of a Trump comeback. The GOP doesn't have to be as afraid of him as they have been. I've long held that he only won because the Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton in 2016. She is the only candidate he could be beaten.
Matt sort of sidled up to this point, but I think the narrative that the Democratic Party of Florida is a huge disaster isn’t really the correct lens to view the political situation through; instead, it’s more a case of the GOP is in charge, they’re running the state well, why would the voters kick them out?
I’m more DeSantis-curious after seeing this result, because obviously with those margins he’s succeeding at least partially by persuasion. Still will vote Dem in 2024 and don’t love the gratuitous triggering of libs, but it’s encouraging he is ok with winning soft Dems and doesn’t hate 50% of the country (just 30% or so? Not ideal but better than Trump and probably no worse than the Warren wing of the Democratic Party)
Yeah, I wouldn't vote for him (I might consider it if Dems lose their shit and nominate someone like Bernie or Warren or AOC in '24, but I don't think that will happen), but DeSantis seems like a relatively normal Republican with very strong political instincts (though he's lacking in charisma). I'm sure he'd do lots of things I don't like, but I don't think a DeSantis White House would be the end of the world, and I am often irritated by progressives who act like it would be.
It can both be true that the Republicans underperformed *and* that they will capture both the House and the Senate. I'd like to think that they would be chastened by their relatively poor performance and not overreach but that seems to go against their ethos and, sad to say as a loyal Democrat, it would be counter to what my party did after such a "chastening" underperformance. You know, way way back in 2020 when they expected to do much better though still squeaked to control of both houses only to then decide that Biden should be FDR and their party had a mandate to pass huge, transformative legislation.
If they do squeak through, I expect the Republicans to do no less.
Those things can be both true, but they won't actually notice the underperformance unless the Dems keep the Senate, because people use results oriented thinking and learn the wrong lessons a lot.
It's why the Republican party came away from 2016 thinking that Trumpism was a good thing. To this day it still amazes me that the GOP went into 2015 or so thinking that they had extremely good chances to win in 2016, and the Dems probably cleared the field for Hilary despite her flaws because they frankly didn't think they were going to win anyway.
Then a year later everyone is convinced that Hilary will win in a landslide, and when Trump wins he is celebrated as some political genius who found a way to an unlikely victory. Ignoring the fact that the whole reason the victory was unlikely in the first place was because he is a moronic nutjob!
So instead of "This Trump fiasco robbed us of a landslide victory and a mandate", the GOP learned "Trumpism is the key to the future because he won!"
Great post. I think the media over-reports Trump and MAGA for ratings. Distracts us from the obvious. Kari Lake is a prime example. She may still win, but we were led to believe it was going to be a blowout and the press hounded here with questions about running for president.
Same for good Democrats in strong red states. Beto and Ryan got a lot of press but didn’t really have a chance from the beginning.