"In retrospect, I built a lot of my worldview around the opinion that the 2018 midterm result was sneakily bad for Democrats. After all, they lost Senate seats. These losses happened in deep red states, so at the time a disappointing performance was chalked up to a “bad map.” But the 2026 map is also bad and the 2028 map will also be bad. Basically all the Senate maps are bad, so you can’t grade Democratic electoral performance in any given cycle on a curve. They either win (as I hope they will tonight) or they lose (as they did in 2018)."
No I don't agree. The three states of North Dakota, Indiana, and Missouri were considerably worse than most of the states we are talking about tonight. Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, Texas are considerably less red than those three states were in 2018. Sherrod Brown won Ohio by 7 in 2018 for comparison. Joe Manchin barely held on to WV, which was a little worse than ND. The only other state the Dems won that was as bad as IN/MO that year was MT, which was held by Jon Tester. And ironically Tester is the closest example IMO to the New Moderates that we are seeing today.
The one Senate race where the Dems did really blow it in 2018 was Florida. If Gwen Graham had been nominated instead of Andrew Gillum, and especially if the left didn't back a huge loser like him, we are talking about a different FL today.
Democrats are more likely to vote early and vote by mail, so whether early and mail ballots are counted first or last, you’ll get misleading initial results. If early votes are counted first, there will be a blue mirage and the race will start to move red as in-person ballots are counted. If Election Day votes are counted first, there will be a red mirage that will shift blue later as early votes are reported.
What’s really annoying is the order ballots are counted in varies by state and (in some states) even by county. Listen to what election nerds say about each race, but if a particular state looks shockingly redder or bluer than polls have shown, double check to make sure it’s not a red/blue mirage.
*National Turnout*
For the same reason you can’t know the national popular vote on election night, you also won’t know if turnout was higher or lower than expected nationally. I remember a narrative back in 2016 that it was unexpectedly a low turnout election, but actually once all the California ballots were counted turnout was more in line with pre-election expectations.
Not certain why anyone would read this entire article as it says precisely nothing. The real question is what does it matter if Democrats win the Senate and the House? Are they going to put on the anti-Trump reality show in the absence of any accountability or ability to protect us from the Trump's domestic militarism? Will they move to abolish ICE as they promised? Start the push for Medicare for All as many "progressive" candidates as promised? Stop the genocide in Gaza and slash military spending? No, they will just talk about their bullet point "affordability" and how if they just had a Democratic president things would be soooo different. We already saw what that was like under Obama and then Biden. From Obama we got privatization of the health care system, more regime change wars and an expansion of drone wars, a bailout of banks that left homeowners in the dust and a record number of unconstitutional "expedited" deportations (and kids sleeping in cages that his administration built). Under Biden we got a nominal infrastructure bill packed with corporate giveaways, the Inflation Reduction Act that belied its own name, a proxy war with Russia that was easily preventable and a GENOCIDE. So all this wrangling means that the oligarchical fascism will continue just at a slower pace. What a waste of time and energy on our two dueling political mafias. For a dose of reality Matt you should read this. It's non-monetized, truthful and actually considers moral integrity as an important human condition. https://barryjkaufmando.substack.com/p/will-the-real-progressive-please
I bought tickets to a hockey game for tonight specifically to avoid an evening of election coverage. I'll probably check electionbettingodds.com every 10 minutes though.
As I noted in a standalone post; putting on a movie at 7:30PM and turning off our phones. Don't want to be tempted by every "breaking news" alert on my phone that's not actually anything substantive.
Also doesn't help the number of states where Dem strongholds are the places where vote counting takes the longest to finish; Georgia, Virginia and Michigan are three off the top of my head where this is the case. I genuinely feel like every election, I get fooled into thinking Virginia has swung way to the right (in 2021 clearly actually the case) because like 80-85% of the vote is in and the Republican candidate is up by a meaningful margin and have to remind myself the 15-20% of the vote left is almost all in NoVa and is going to be super Democratic.
But my point is because of phenomenon I just described, putting on cable news from like 7:30 to 9:30 is a recipe for driving myself crazy and I'm just too old for that nowadays.
I had the same dream last night as six years ago: I rode a beam of light to the top of a high mountain from which I could see all of the United States, when A Majestic Eagle landed in front of me, whispered “America,” and flew off into the sunrise.
Dembo is ahead in the polls, which is a better indicator that gut feel. So on what basis can you write "Dembo will probably lose"? This is exactly the kind of "deep wisdom" punditry that I expected you'd be guiding against!
Take a look at the sponsor for all those polls showing Dembo up. The reality is there hasn't been really any independent polling of this district so I would take "Dembo is ahead in the polls" with a heaping grain of salt.
Having said all that, even if Dem polling is exaggerating Dembo's strength by around 5-10 points, that would actually still make this district competitive. Which is where Matt's point comes in. If at like 7 or 8PM Wolf Blitzer is still barking out "Kentucky 6th. Too close to call!!" it actually could still be a canary in the coal mine even if the GOP candidate does actually end up pulling it out. This is a district based on 2024 election results that MSNBC/CNN/Fox should be calling literally the second polls close.
But yeah upshot is, based on fundamentals, likely bias in polls Dems are releasing to the public etc. you'd still ultimately expect the GOP candidate to win even if more narrowly than you'd expect.
Because Trump carried the district by 15 points in 2024, while the Republican won the Congressional seat by 27 points. The Democrats will probably pick up a few seats like KY 6 across the country, but probably not any specific one like that.
I get the historical fact, obviously. But I'm data-driven, and I'd assert that current data beats old data. If you say "this district is permanently red", you need to provide better justification than "it was red two years ago, and that's that".
> The problem here is California. California accepts mail ballots that are sent by Election Day, which means that many ballots will not arrive until days after post-election takes have been written.
The problem here is post-election takes writers, surely! When designing an electorial system and weighing the interests of voters versus post-election takes writers, we should prioritize interests of voters.
I said in a standalone post, that we underrate how much exit polls end up skewing post election narratives. It's the only data anyone has to go on until all the votes are cast and there's a real "first mover advantage" to setting the narrative. And given how off exit polling can be, there's some real "wrong" takeaways from various elections that get imbedded as conventional wisdom.
I noted in 2020, how almost immediately there was recriminations in the Democratic party that "Defund the Police" was hugely costly to Democrats. The thing is, it probably was costly but just not nearly as costly as exit polls would have you believe because election day voters were so wildly skewed towards Republicans (almost certainly more so than will occur in 2026). The real story of course is that polling was wildly overestimating Dem chances from April through October likely due to COVID related non-response bias (Dem voters were way way more likely to be adhering to COVID restrictions including just literally staying home).
aligned to 2 of the points made here - and learned from 2016 - the last thing/ result/ trend you see as you go to bed (9-10PM ET for us olds) isn't the same as what you'll see the next morning.
so - dont watch anything and wait till CA is done counting (and expect lawsuits akimbo this time around that stretch into weeks).
Can I suggest something to everyone. If you’re not going to watch the election night party, then here’s what you should watch from 7 PM to 10PM…a movie.
My wife and I went to the movies at 7:30 in 2024 and turned our phone off and we’re doing the same this year. Reason is election coverage on cable from 7:30 to 9:30 is kind of useless. Lots of “breaking news” blasts with all sorts of races no one expected to be competitive called immediately and all the races everyone knows will be close with “too close to call!!!” announcements followed by 17 different panel members going on about what they’re looking for and whether “Voter type X” actually came to vote. But nothing of substance is actually being announced. Heck as Matt alluded to, the one state where maybe you are learning something substantive (Florida) is nowadays possibly not even that representative of national trends going on.
One other thing Matt leaves ours as to why CA taking forever to count leads to bad analysis of national vote environment. It also leads to bad “hot takes” as to “what happened”. Remember like the day after Election Day Democrats were in full “Dems in disarray” mode about what went wrong…despite ultimately winning a trifecta. Also, if I’m not mistaken, exit polls were a huge part of the meta narrative that Gen Z men were all super right wing white supremicist “what’s your body count?” voters. I’m being tongue in cheek of course but I can’t begin to tell you how much sentiments kind of close to this were out the ether from people I think should know better (including Matt!).
I remember rewatching Home Alone 2 when I was older but before Trump became a political figure (probably height of his Apprentice days but genuinely can't remember exact time) and realizing how much of the movie is really just one advertisement for the Plaza Hotel. Like almost infomercial level.
Of course it was sort of classic Trump. The Plaza Hotel's prominence (and his cameo) in one of the biggest sequels of the time, all serve to present the hotel and Trump in the most grandiose (and successful) way possible. But of course the real story was he was losing money left and right, he was wildly overleveraged with the Plaza hotel and the gambit was actually one borne of desperation to make things seem way rosier than they really were.
Haha, my strategy from Election night 2020! My wife and I had some champagne ready...and of course around like 8:30PM when it became clear there was a polling miss in Trump's favor, the champagne was put away and the hard liquor came out. I think Lindsey Graham laughing maniacally on TV after being declared the winner might have been my "low" point mentally. Of course people like Carville going on TV and basically saying "calm down, Biden will pull this out" helped a decent amount (he's become a bit of a caricature, but he's clearly then and now very tied in to insiders to the Democratic party so him saying something like that mattered. Should note in 2016, my wife and I were supposed to be at the Javits center for Hilary's election night "victory". We were at a bar beforehand and Carville sounding the alarm about Wisconsin early in the night was basically our clue to high tail it home and skip the party).
2024 was of course terrible coming back from the movie and turning on MSNBC. Like the first headline I saw was Miami went for the GOP candidate for President for the first time in like decades and I knew immediately it was over; the possible Hispanic shift rightward in voting that everyone was worried about was clearly coming to fruition. Also, there was enough votes in places like Georgia that I exclaimed "I know a lot of the votes left are in Atlanta and should be pretty Democratic, but there's like 90% of the vote counted, there's no way there's enough votes in Atlanta to make up the difference now". Point being, it was sort of a "rip the band aid off" relief that we knew immediately what was going to happen and could go to bed.
I’m going to index heavily on the KY-6 and FL-22, which Silver says leans D. If both of these go R, the House is pretty close to parity, though Dems might grind it out in places like the MI-10 and MI-4.
It’s pretty clear right now how every single west coast race will go, those districts are so lobsided I doubt I would get more than one wrong if I predicted them right now. Anyone who thinks the CA-22 is close should look at the primary vote, where Rs totaled 18% fewer votes.
One early indicator that is probably worth watching is Loudon County in Virginia. VA counts votes quickly, and Loudon is swingy enough that you can get a good look at which party is beating or underperforming their numbers.
Loudon is rich af and much more diverse than midwestern burbs. It’s probably a decent proxy for long island, I’m not sure it’s a good proxy for midwestern burbs.
Midwestern burbs were like the one bright spot for Dems in 2024–I remember the first county that came out was an Indianapolis suburban county where Harris slightly improved over Biden 2020 and I was like “by God she might actually win” until London reported…
If Ds come close statewide in FL it’s pretty clear there will be a blowout. If that doesn’t happen, you basically have to wait for Macomb and Oakland counties in MI to report. If ElSayed is within 40k votes before the Detroit sane dat vote reports in the small hours, his race is in the bag- and Dems will need Alaska or Michigan to win the senate. But if he’s down 40-65k before the Detroit election day vote, you really have to wait. Detroit election day turnout is not so predictable, they didn’t show up for Harris, though she would have lost MI even with average Detroit turnout.
It was most of the vote in Hamilton County, Indiana. Harris ended up beating Biden’s margin there by 0.2% (though earlier in the night it was more like a 1% beat).
As much as I would like to consume the election night coverage here, I am taking Matt's advice to be less online and going to an election night party instead. Heres to hoping I'm not jinxing anything.
Wag's take: I want the midterms to be over faster so we can get started on Mailbag already. Rarely are the questions asked!
More seriously: is it weird for this to be the first midterm I've felt meaningful gravitas about? It's not just due to SB playing carnival barker (I remember the whelming wave of 2022), and I was alive for two of Matt's other notable picks for The Seven Deadly Midterms list, but this one...I dunno man. Maybe it's just all the other Big Sports Energy(tm) in the air right now, at least locally in CA. (This is gonna be my excuse for slow ballot counting. Go Valkyries or whatever.) Actually had a coworker filling out their ballot at lunch today, which is unprecedented for my 8.5 years in grocery so far. If even us low-information retail grunts are making an effort to vote, well, it must be important!
Another one of those cases where the simple answer is the correct one; Orange Man bad.
You don’t have to be a dye in the wool “resist lib” to notice that our President is astonishingly corrupt, authoritarian (and unlike 2016-2020 surrounded by cronies as authoritarian or corrupt as himself) and increasingly losing his mind.
If the stakes feel higher it’s because the stakes really are higher, it’s not just vibes or imagination
"In retrospect, I built a lot of my worldview around the opinion that the 2018 midterm result was sneakily bad for Democrats. After all, they lost Senate seats. These losses happened in deep red states, so at the time a disappointing performance was chalked up to a “bad map.” But the 2026 map is also bad and the 2028 map will also be bad. Basically all the Senate maps are bad, so you can’t grade Democratic electoral performance in any given cycle on a curve. They either win (as I hope they will tonight) or they lose (as they did in 2018)."
No I don't agree. The three states of North Dakota, Indiana, and Missouri were considerably worse than most of the states we are talking about tonight. Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, Texas are considerably less red than those three states were in 2018. Sherrod Brown won Ohio by 7 in 2018 for comparison. Joe Manchin barely held on to WV, which was a little worse than ND. The only other state the Dems won that was as bad as IN/MO that year was MT, which was held by Jon Tester. And ironically Tester is the closest example IMO to the New Moderates that we are seeing today.
The one Senate race where the Dems did really blow it in 2018 was Florida. If Gwen Graham had been nominated instead of Andrew Gillum, and especially if the left didn't back a huge loser like him, we are talking about a different FL today.
A few other common errors I’ve seen:
*Red/Blue Mirages*
Democrats are more likely to vote early and vote by mail, so whether early and mail ballots are counted first or last, you’ll get misleading initial results. If early votes are counted first, there will be a blue mirage and the race will start to move red as in-person ballots are counted. If Election Day votes are counted first, there will be a red mirage that will shift blue later as early votes are reported.
What’s really annoying is the order ballots are counted in varies by state and (in some states) even by county. Listen to what election nerds say about each race, but if a particular state looks shockingly redder or bluer than polls have shown, double check to make sure it’s not a red/blue mirage.
*National Turnout*
For the same reason you can’t know the national popular vote on election night, you also won’t know if turnout was higher or lower than expected nationally. I remember a narrative back in 2016 that it was unexpectedly a low turnout election, but actually once all the California ballots were counted turnout was more in line with pre-election expectations.
Not certain why anyone would read this entire article as it says precisely nothing. The real question is what does it matter if Democrats win the Senate and the House? Are they going to put on the anti-Trump reality show in the absence of any accountability or ability to protect us from the Trump's domestic militarism? Will they move to abolish ICE as they promised? Start the push for Medicare for All as many "progressive" candidates as promised? Stop the genocide in Gaza and slash military spending? No, they will just talk about their bullet point "affordability" and how if they just had a Democratic president things would be soooo different. We already saw what that was like under Obama and then Biden. From Obama we got privatization of the health care system, more regime change wars and an expansion of drone wars, a bailout of banks that left homeowners in the dust and a record number of unconstitutional "expedited" deportations (and kids sleeping in cages that his administration built). Under Biden we got a nominal infrastructure bill packed with corporate giveaways, the Inflation Reduction Act that belied its own name, a proxy war with Russia that was easily preventable and a GENOCIDE. So all this wrangling means that the oligarchical fascism will continue just at a slower pace. What a waste of time and energy on our two dueling political mafias. For a dose of reality Matt you should read this. It's non-monetized, truthful and actually considers moral integrity as an important human condition. https://barryjkaufmando.substack.com/p/will-the-real-progressive-please
Ooo, a *manifesto*!!
I bought tickets to a hockey game for tonight specifically to avoid an evening of election coverage. I'll probably check electionbettingodds.com every 10 minutes though.
As I noted in a standalone post; putting on a movie at 7:30PM and turning off our phones. Don't want to be tempted by every "breaking news" alert on my phone that's not actually anything substantive.
Also doesn't help the number of states where Dem strongholds are the places where vote counting takes the longest to finish; Georgia, Virginia and Michigan are three off the top of my head where this is the case. I genuinely feel like every election, I get fooled into thinking Virginia has swung way to the right (in 2021 clearly actually the case) because like 80-85% of the vote is in and the Republican candidate is up by a meaningful margin and have to remind myself the 15-20% of the vote left is almost all in NoVa and is going to be super Democratic.
But my point is because of phenomenon I just described, putting on cable news from like 7:30 to 9:30 is a recipe for driving myself crazy and I'm just too old for that nowadays.
I had the same dream last night as six years ago: I rode a beam of light to the top of a high mountain from which I could see all of the United States, when A Majestic Eagle landed in front of me, whispered “America,” and flew off into the sunrise.
Maybe today will be a good day.
Dembo is ahead in the polls, which is a better indicator that gut feel. So on what basis can you write "Dembo will probably lose"? This is exactly the kind of "deep wisdom" punditry that I expected you'd be guiding against!
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/polls/kentucky-us-house-6-polls-2026.html
Take a look at the sponsor for all those polls showing Dembo up. The reality is there hasn't been really any independent polling of this district so I would take "Dembo is ahead in the polls" with a heaping grain of salt.
Having said all that, even if Dem polling is exaggerating Dembo's strength by around 5-10 points, that would actually still make this district competitive. Which is where Matt's point comes in. If at like 7 or 8PM Wolf Blitzer is still barking out "Kentucky 6th. Too close to call!!" it actually could still be a canary in the coal mine even if the GOP candidate does actually end up pulling it out. This is a district based on 2024 election results that MSNBC/CNN/Fox should be calling literally the second polls close.
But yeah upshot is, based on fundamentals, likely bias in polls Dems are releasing to the public etc. you'd still ultimately expect the GOP candidate to win even if more narrowly than you'd expect.
Because Trump carried the district by 15 points in 2024, while the Republican won the Congressional seat by 27 points. The Democrats will probably pick up a few seats like KY 6 across the country, but probably not any specific one like that.
I get the historical fact, obviously. But I'm data-driven, and I'd assert that current data beats old data. If you say "this district is permanently red", you need to provide better justification than "it was red two years ago, and that's that".
It’s a bell weather race to compare relative over or under performance of the type of candidates Dems need to contest the GOP geographically.
> The problem here is California. California accepts mail ballots that are sent by Election Day, which means that many ballots will not arrive until days after post-election takes have been written.
The problem here is post-election takes writers, surely! When designing an electorial system and weighing the interests of voters versus post-election takes writers, we should prioritize interests of voters.
I said in a standalone post, that we underrate how much exit polls end up skewing post election narratives. It's the only data anyone has to go on until all the votes are cast and there's a real "first mover advantage" to setting the narrative. And given how off exit polling can be, there's some real "wrong" takeaways from various elections that get imbedded as conventional wisdom.
I noted in 2020, how almost immediately there was recriminations in the Democratic party that "Defund the Police" was hugely costly to Democrats. The thing is, it probably was costly but just not nearly as costly as exit polls would have you believe because election day voters were so wildly skewed towards Republicans (almost certainly more so than will occur in 2026). The real story of course is that polling was wildly overestimating Dem chances from April through October likely due to COVID related non-response bias (Dem voters were way way more likely to be adhering to COVID restrictions including just literally staying home).
aligned to 2 of the points made here - and learned from 2016 - the last thing/ result/ trend you see as you go to bed (9-10PM ET for us olds) isn't the same as what you'll see the next morning.
so - dont watch anything and wait till CA is done counting (and expect lawsuits akimbo this time around that stretch into weeks).
Can I suggest something to everyone. If you’re not going to watch the election night party, then here’s what you should watch from 7 PM to 10PM…a movie.
My wife and I went to the movies at 7:30 in 2024 and turned our phone off and we’re doing the same this year. Reason is election coverage on cable from 7:30 to 9:30 is kind of useless. Lots of “breaking news” blasts with all sorts of races no one expected to be competitive called immediately and all the races everyone knows will be close with “too close to call!!!” announcements followed by 17 different panel members going on about what they’re looking for and whether “Voter type X” actually came to vote. But nothing of substance is actually being announced. Heck as Matt alluded to, the one state where maybe you are learning something substantive (Florida) is nowadays possibly not even that representative of national trends going on.
One other thing Matt leaves ours as to why CA taking forever to count leads to bad analysis of national vote environment. It also leads to bad “hot takes” as to “what happened”. Remember like the day after Election Day Democrats were in full “Dems in disarray” mode about what went wrong…despite ultimately winning a trifecta. Also, if I’m not mistaken, exit polls were a huge part of the meta narrative that Gen Z men were all super right wing white supremicist “what’s your body count?” voters. I’m being tongue in cheek of course but I can’t begin to tell you how much sentiments kind of close to this were out the ether from people I think should know better (including Matt!).
If you stay home and watch a movie on TV, don't pick Home Alone 2.
I remember rewatching Home Alone 2 when I was older but before Trump became a political figure (probably height of his Apprentice days but genuinely can't remember exact time) and realizing how much of the movie is really just one advertisement for the Plaza Hotel. Like almost infomercial level.
Of course it was sort of classic Trump. The Plaza Hotel's prominence (and his cameo) in one of the biggest sequels of the time, all serve to present the hotel and Trump in the most grandiose (and successful) way possible. But of course the real story was he was losing money left and right, he was wildly overleveraged with the Plaza hotel and the gambit was actually one borne of desperation to make things seem way rosier than they really were.
If one hasn't seen "You can see Everything" tonight would be a good night. An early evening start time puts you in great position.
This is great advice. I'm going to ignore it, stress out, and get really drunk instead.
Haha, my strategy from Election night 2020! My wife and I had some champagne ready...and of course around like 8:30PM when it became clear there was a polling miss in Trump's favor, the champagne was put away and the hard liquor came out. I think Lindsey Graham laughing maniacally on TV after being declared the winner might have been my "low" point mentally. Of course people like Carville going on TV and basically saying "calm down, Biden will pull this out" helped a decent amount (he's become a bit of a caricature, but he's clearly then and now very tied in to insiders to the Democratic party so him saying something like that mattered. Should note in 2016, my wife and I were supposed to be at the Javits center for Hilary's election night "victory". We were at a bar beforehand and Carville sounding the alarm about Wisconsin early in the night was basically our clue to high tail it home and skip the party).
2024 was of course terrible coming back from the movie and turning on MSNBC. Like the first headline I saw was Miami went for the GOP candidate for President for the first time in like decades and I knew immediately it was over; the possible Hispanic shift rightward in voting that everyone was worried about was clearly coming to fruition. Also, there was enough votes in places like Georgia that I exclaimed "I know a lot of the votes left are in Atlanta and should be pretty Democratic, but there's like 90% of the vote counted, there's no way there's enough votes in Atlanta to make up the difference now". Point being, it was sort of a "rip the band aid off" relief that we knew immediately what was going to happen and could go to bed.
I'll probably watch old Agatha Christie mysteries. I can't stand to watch the results come in. Just wake me up when it's over.
I’m going to index heavily on the KY-6 and FL-22, which Silver says leans D. If both of these go R, the House is pretty close to parity, though Dems might grind it out in places like the MI-10 and MI-4.
It’s pretty clear right now how every single west coast race will go, those districts are so lobsided I doubt I would get more than one wrong if I predicted them right now. Anyone who thinks the CA-22 is close should look at the primary vote, where Rs totaled 18% fewer votes.
TIL! Lobsided: archaic form of lopsided
One early indicator that is probably worth watching is Loudon County in Virginia. VA counts votes quickly, and Loudon is swingy enough that you can get a good look at which party is beating or underperforming their numbers.
Loudon is rich af and much more diverse than midwestern burbs. It’s probably a decent proxy for long island, I’m not sure it’s a good proxy for midwestern burbs.
Midwestern burbs were like the one bright spot for Dems in 2024–I remember the first county that came out was an Indianapolis suburban county where Harris slightly improved over Biden 2020 and I was like “by God she might actually win” until London reported…
If Ds come close statewide in FL it’s pretty clear there will be a blowout. If that doesn’t happen, you basically have to wait for Macomb and Oakland counties in MI to report. If ElSayed is within 40k votes before the Detroit sane dat vote reports in the small hours, his race is in the bag- and Dems will need Alaska or Michigan to win the senate. But if he’s down 40-65k before the Detroit election day vote, you really have to wait. Detroit election day turnout is not so predictable, they didn’t show up for Harris, though she would have lost MI even with average Detroit turnout.
Was that the early vote in that county or the entire vote? Index on the early vote and you’ll see a blue tidal wave that will bring Ds 280 house seats
It was most of the vote in Hamilton County, Indiana. Harris ended up beating Biden’s margin there by 0.2% (though earlier in the night it was more like a 1% beat).
As much as I would like to consume the election night coverage here, I am taking Matt's advice to be less online and going to an election night party instead. Heres to hoping I'm not jinxing anything.
You better be wearing a funny hat tonight on the livestream. We are counting on you MattY.
I vote for the Agamemnon helmet.
Zach Dembo - not the ideal political candidate name imo.
It’s a great name!
Wag's take: I want the midterms to be over faster so we can get started on Mailbag already. Rarely are the questions asked!
More seriously: is it weird for this to be the first midterm I've felt meaningful gravitas about? It's not just due to SB playing carnival barker (I remember the whelming wave of 2022), and I was alive for two of Matt's other notable picks for The Seven Deadly Midterms list, but this one...I dunno man. Maybe it's just all the other Big Sports Energy(tm) in the air right now, at least locally in CA. (This is gonna be my excuse for slow ballot counting. Go Valkyries or whatever.) Actually had a coworker filling out their ballot at lunch today, which is unprecedented for my 8.5 years in grocery so far. If even us low-information retail grunts are making an effort to vote, well, it must be important!
Another one of those cases where the simple answer is the correct one; Orange Man bad.
You don’t have to be a dye in the wool “resist lib” to notice that our President is astonishingly corrupt, authoritarian (and unlike 2016-2020 surrounded by cronies as authoritarian or corrupt as himself) and increasingly losing his mind.
If the stakes feel higher it’s because the stakes really are higher, it’s not just vibes or imagination