U.S. Politics: That's too bad for Carrots

[Ser Reptitious]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

It didn't seem to matter much in the General. 

Was a massive spotlight put on this in the general by the Democrats? I'm genuinely asking, since I don't live in the US. 

[Guy Kilmore]

I am kind of curious to see what happens with the election when we will have had our Thanksgiving Surge and probably our Christmas Surge will be starting by January.

[Maithanet]

So we're getting towards finalized 2020 results in every state except NY, who are criminally incompetent in counting their votes.  The current popular vote margin is Biden +4, and it is expected to increase to ~ Biden +4.5 once NY counts their remaining votes, which are overwhelmingly democratic.  Since Biden won the "tipping point" state of Wisconsin by 0.6%, that means that the EC gave Republicans an advantage of 3.9%!  That is a huge number, well outside historical averages.  You can see why by digging into the state level results, Trump isn't banking a lot of "wasted" votes in any state.  His largest margin of victory in votes is TN with 700k.  In contrast, Biden won 5 states by more than that margin, and he won CA by more than 5 million! 

The good news for Democrats is that this isn't necessarily permanent, historically there is no correlation between an EC advantage in one year to the next. But the huge margins in CA and NY aren't going away, so I wanted to look at the shifts in the swing states:

Dem control (no longer swing states):  CO, VA

Moving left:  GA, AZ, NH, MN, TX

Staying put:  MI, PA, NC

Moving right:  WI, FL, NV

Republican Control (no longer swing states):  OH, IA

 

Based on this (very rudimentary) analysis, there's reason to think that the EC will still be very bad for Democrats in 2024, but probably not as bad as 2020 was.  GA and AZ should theoretically be ~1-2 points more Democratic.  Of the states moving right, WI is definitely worrisome, and increasingly runs the risk of suffering the same fate as Iowa.  NV is hard to say (it might be a weak state for Biden in particular).  TX is moving left, but not nearly as quickly as Democrats wish it were, since it was R+12 in 2016 and now looks to be R+10.  It's definitely a possible future picking in a wave year for Democrats, but in an actually tight race, I think it'll be many cycles before it would come through.  Florida sucks. 

TLDR, I expect that the Democrat will need to win the popular vote by ~2-3 points to win the EC in 2024. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

54 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

The previous US politics thread was titled "And now it begins" how you don't follow up with this one being "No now it ends" is beyond me.

Eh, tomorrow’s Thanksgiving and that hilarious video from 2018 is making the rounds and is extremely timely.

[DMC]

22 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

NV is hard to say (it might be a weak state for Biden in particular).

I really wouldn't characterize Nevada as "moving right," especially when taking into account recent non-presidential statewide elections.  I guess you could say it's a weak state for Biden since he didn't improve upon Hillary's margin in 2016, but it should be noted the margin is virtually identical.

[Maithanet]

Just now, DMC said:

I really wouldn't characterize Nevada as "moving right," especially when taking into account non-presidential statewide elections.  I guess you could say it's a weak state for Biden since he didn't improve upon Hillary's margin in 2016, but it should be noted the margin is virtually identical.

But the margin being virtually identical when the national vote moved 2.4% towards the Democrats is moving right. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

I think a lot of the demographic trends that people thought foretold the GoP demise in the future are somewhat mitigated by the 'bootstrapping' that occurs when immigrant groups start resembling the majority population more and more (this is a well known phenomena for smaller immigrant groups for sure). So I fully expect Asian Americans (just to give an example) to start trending from heavily democratic to being more balanced in the future (and the same for Cuban Americans in the opposite direction). There are nuances in this theory of course, but also some truth I think.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Maithanet said:

But the margin being virtually identical when the national vote moved 2.4% towards the Democrats is moving right. 

I understand, I just think you have to take more factors into account than that one calculation.  Like winning all statewide elections except for SoS in 2018.

 

[argonak]

4 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I hope those of you with mortgages have all re-financed at a lower rate. Apparently there are 19 M people out there who have not yet done so. Go for it!

We looked it, but didn't owe enough for it to be worthwhile.  it was going to end up adding six months (10 year note) to ours. 

Note this doesn't stop banks from constantly spamming me with suggestions that I refinance.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

41 minutes ago, Ser Reptitious said:

Was a massive spotlight put on this in the general by the Democrats? I'm genuinely asking, since I don't live in the US. 

It was certainly a talking point, but you can only expect so much from casual followers of the news. Being either for or against Trump sucked up so much of the media oxygen.

[DMC]

To add to the state trend analysis, I really wouldn't put Wisconsin as "moving right" either.  Maybe "tilting right," but I definitely don't share the fear that it could trend as drastically as Iowa.  The black population is significantly larger and not going anywhere.  It's also considerably more educated and less rural. 

On the other side, I don't think I'd characterize Texas as "moving left" at this point either - again, maybe "tilting left."  I don't think going from (by my calculations, if we're assuming Biden +4.5 nationally) R+11.1 in 2016 to R+10.1 in 2020 is anything to write home about.  Plus Cornyn won by nearly ten points.  Considering Beto's performance I'd say Texas was thoroughly disappointing in 2020.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

9 minutes ago, DMC said:

Considering Beto's performance I'd say Texas was thoroughly disappointing in 2020.

I think you'd have to call that mostly Cruz's under performance.

It's kind of nice to know that there is some cost to being one of the most viscerally loathsome human beings in contemporary politics. Even in the alternate reality Trump-dimension we're all living in, you still can't be that repellent. Or, I guess you can, but you have to win by far less than you're supposed to in a safe seat, and we can be pretty sure the Presidency is totally out of reach for him. 

[Martell Spy]

9 minutes ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

I think you'd have to call that mostly Cruz's under performance.

It's kind of nice to know that there is some cost to being one of the most viscerally loathsome human beings in contemporary politics. Even in the alternate reality Trump-dimension we're all living in, you still can't be that repellent. Or, I guess you can, but you have to win by far less than you're supposed to in a safe seat, and we can be pretty sure the Presidency is totally out of reach for him. 

I wouldn't count on that. Republicans have a tendency to select the person that was 2nd in the primary the last time around. Also, Cruz is willing to say or do anything to achieve power.

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

I think you'd have to call that mostly Cruz's under performance.

Cruz's unlikeability definitely helped, but Dems' performance in 2018 was encouraging pretty much across the board in Texas - from most statewide contests to the state House to picking up two US House seats.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

9 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

I wouldn't count on that. Republicans have a tendency to select the person that was 2nd in the primary the last time around. Also, Cruz is willing to say or do anything to achieve power.

I can see him getting the nomination, maybe, but I can't see him winning the general. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Meanwhile the Trump campaign will likely have to face the music for its conduct. I posted a article about this suit being brought on behalf of Michigan's urban voters last week, here's an update on that effort.

Would be nice if a jury handed out some hefty fines or even better, some jail time for these election theives for violating the voter rights acts and whatever else is proven.

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-campaign-sued-for-attempting-to-disenfranchise-black-voters-100000739.html

[Maithanet]

46 minutes ago, DMC said:

To add to the state trend analysis, I really wouldn't put Wisconsin as "moving right" either.  Maybe "tilting right," but I definitely don't share the fear that it could trend as drastically as Iowa.  The black population is significantly larger and not going anywhere.  It's also considerably more educated and less rural. 

On the other side, I don't think I'd characterize Texas as "moving left" at this point either - again, maybe "tilting left."  I don't think going from (by my calculations, if we're assuming Biden +4.5 nationally) R+11.1 in 2016 to R+10.1 in 2020 is anything to write home about.  Plus Cornyn won by nearly ten points.  Considering Beto's performance I'd say Texas was thoroughly disappointing in 2020.

This is a rough metric.  I'm not sure why you're quibbling over the semantic difference between moving and tilting.

I understand why Wisconsin is not Iowa - 2020 was actually a great example of the difference.  But nonetheless, if Democrats are going to win in Wisconsin in the 2020s, they are going to need to hold on to their current margins with noncollege white voters.  If they are unable to do that and noncollege white voters in Wisconsin vote more like those voters in Ohio or (god forbid) Georgia, then they aren't going to be able to make up that shortfall with other groups. 

2020 made clear just how much work remains for Democrats in Texas. In 2000, Texas was R+22.  In 2012, it was R+19.  In 2020, it was down to just R+10.  That's still a long way away from a swing state, but it's still moving closer and closer to being truly competitive (at least in Dem favoring years) which is a huge improvement over where Democrats have been the past two decades in Texas.  You are welcome to say that 2020 was a disappointment for Texas Democrats, and I'd agree.  But it was still clearly a better showing than 2016.  Those can both be true. 

[Maltaran]

Do juries actually set sentences in the US? In this country they just decide the verdict and the judge then sets the sentence.

[Fragile Bird]

Judges sentence. Juries might suggest leniency. I can't think of any suggesting harsher sentences.

eta: often you’ll hear, “the jury has convicted the defendant on all charges, and the judge has set x date for the sentencing hearing”. Prosecutor and defense lawyers will give arguments about the length of sentence. In a complicated or serious case. Otherwise the judge may hand out the sentence immediately.

Also, many jurisdictions allow victim impact statements.

eta 2: in a civil trial involving monetary damages, the jury hears arguments about the amount of damages, and awards those.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

This is a rough metric.  I'm not sure why you're quibbling over the semantic difference between moving and tilting.

Because if I was going by just a dichotomous moving right/left or staying put, I'd place both Wisconsin and Texas in the staying put category.  The differences between 2016 and 2020 are roughly a point in each, I personally don't view that as substantial enough - especially when taking other factors into account.

I think it's premature to say the Dems have to maintain their margins with uneducated whites in Wisconsin.  First, trends in the electorate should increase the share of black and educated white voters over the next four years.  Second, education as one of the two (IMO) key mechanisms of polarization means any loss in margin among uneducated whites could very well be made up with an increase in margin among educated whites.