So I wrote a social-based theory on why polls tend to oversample Democrats and lo and behold, it’s looking like many polls understated Dem strength on Tuesday. Lotta theories floating around on what happened and what it means, so I’m curious what my subscribers think: What are this election’s explanations and implications?
I think there could have been a conservative wave if the GOP had ran traditional republican candidates. I think this shows that Trumps influence within the GOP is waning.
So I work in a datay field, and I, no offense, didn't buy your theory on polling errors. Primary because it dismissed the primary incentive structure that most pollsters operate under, which is to predict elections as closely as possible, as a secondary incentive. More directly, I think your approach of pollsters being wary of political backlash on Twitter was just off. I think there's a couple reasons for this.
1) Individuals who go into data fields like polling generally love nothing more than the smug satisfaction of being right. Most of the people actually in the data mines aren't checking their Twitter mentions for approval. In fact, I think a lot of them probably enjoy the screams of the unwashed, innumerate masses. More to the point, they are pretty specifically trained to be aware of confirmation bias. I'm not arguing they're infallible, obviously, but they want to be right after the fact, more than they want to be liked before the fact. There's a selection bias to the people who take these roles, and this is the main filtering mechanism.
2) All pollsters are ultimately paid to be right. Public polls give us a skewed perspective on the polling industry. A lot of professional polls and surveys never see the light of day, because they're commissioned by political parties, companies, governments, etc to poll on smaller really specific issues. If the public good you give away for free starts to really stink, then there goes your private contracts.
I'll give you a brief example of the dynamic I'm trying to describe from earlier in my career. I worked with a guy, who was a really brilliant math mind, but he was personally insufferable. The execs clearly hated being in the same room with him. Early in my time working with him, he presented a model and result that showed a really unintuitive response and basically called a lot of highly paid people dumbies. He received predictable pushback from those people. And by pushback I mean a real violent response that included pretty thinly veiled shots at his job security. He was unphased. When I talked to him about it, he was pretty clear what his approach was. In short, he said, "I'm not paid to be likeable or promote conventional wisdom, our model shows a higher probability of x happening. If I said y would happen to keep them happy, they'll still hate me, and I'm more likely to be wrong. If I do that consistently, I'm fired. Telling people what they want to hear does not promote job security in this industry."
Lastly, here's my hot take on the state of the polling industry. First, the public via social media really have to high of expectations for polling accuracy. The sample size is really small, exogenous factors are innumerable, and the raw data requires a lot of massaging, which is basically equal parts art and science. It's a lot harder to predict elections than it is a basketball game. Second, 2016 and Trump created a structural break in American politics, and pollsters weren't really sure to respond and adjust their operating models. Sure, non-college white voters were under-sampled in 2016, but all the spillover effects from 2016 (e.g., suburbs turning blue, consistent resistance lib turnout) was hard to be certain of. After 2022, it seems as though we have a reasonable sense of what that structural break of 2016 means for modern politics. But 2022 and 2024, is likely to provide there own breaks to the operating model. Will Gen-Z keep turning out? Is ballot splitting, once a thing of the past, back? In other words, there's an ebb and flow to this, there's a an exogenous event that breaks your approach to polling elections, you slowly correct over a few cycles. Then, it probably breaks again.
tl;dr Pollsters have an economic incentive to be right. Political polling is really hard.
1. Trump is the Dems biggest asset, just about every GOPer the dems boosted in spending won their race. The GOP could have had more normal candidates but the Dems promoting of them (see MI-03) really helped swing things
2. If the GOP wants to win it m 24 they need to knee cap Trump and get Desantis in for the nomination. He’s normal enough to win back many of the more moderate voters. (See also Youngkin, Kemp, & Dewine)
3. Voters want Normie candidates, not wackos. See the gap in the PA governors race
Basically if the Dems want to keep Biden in, they need to make sure Trump runs and do everything in their power to make him the nominee, thus getting the Mos Eisly Cantina slate of candidates on the ballot and in front
GOP needs to be more normie, shut the fuck up about abortion and keep the focus there. Keep the weirdos out
Also, you're going to hear this refrain over the next week that this election shows how our country is still more divided than ever. If you just look at what happened, it couldn't be more incorrect. The results show that Americans, as a whole, are begging, pleading for a return to centrism. Trump's extreme candidates got shellacked. Major progressives like Hochul in NY barely scrapped by, despite being in a deep blue state. In large part, Americans are only being presented candidates who have extreme views, and when they are presented with this option they tend to just fall back into the party they traditionally vote for. Desantis is being presented as a GOP savior and it's largely because of his "let me get out of the way" style of politics. Some might say he has extreme views, but he's running on and promoting a type of politics that is really resonating with the public. Florida's pandemic lockdowns were over in TWO WEEKS. Even coming from a deep red state like I do in Tennessee, that's impossible to imagine. More than anything, people want to be left alone and to make their own decisions, regardless of policy. Look at Kansas. They have repudiated the GOP in the wake of the Dobbs decision. Just leave me alone, they said. Sadly, politicians have a near 100 percent track record of reading the tea leaves incorrectly. Democrats will see this as an acceptance of their progressivism and the GOP will be left in tatters by the Trump vs Desantis war that is coming, all while America is asking for the opposite.
Short answer, the Republicans put up too many wackos and a lot of right leaning people stayed home because of it, while the Dem leaning centrists turned out. I also think the pollsters over corrected in light of their errors in 2016, 2018, and 2020
My thoughts are that people are really getting tired of the election denialism crap. Republicans should just admit Biden won fair and square in 2020 and move on to other issues.
Trump endorsed terrible candidates like Oz, Walker, etc. Nobody wants to hear about election denial or being nasty with reporters. Just be normal! Trumps rhetoric and shtick has gotten old. Desantis is great on the culture war stuff but he also governs effectively. He has to be the future of the party or it’s going to continue to get crushed. And lastly, young people want to have sex without consequence. A significant portion of the electorate voted on that issue primarily, I think.
I think early polling correctly predicted this outcome. There seemed to be a red wave building in the last week before the election, but the predictions before that were more correct: at this point it looks like a mildly Rep house and a 50-50 Senate, which was probably the prediction in late Sep/early Oct. The better question in my mind is why were the polls from that timeframe more accurate. Not sure I have an answer there.
Trump, and Trumpian candidates, need to get out of the way. Trump, his picks, his ego, election denialism, everything about him is now a massive liability moving forward. Republicans made a Faustian bargain in 2016 for the White House, the bill continues to come due (I say this as a Republican leaning guy myself).
There were signs of hope for the GOP, as the red wave did arrive in Florida. DeSantis and Rubio absolutely steamrolled their opponents. More moderate Republicans also did very well (in my state Mike DeWine also steamrolled). A more moderate GOP, coupled with shades of the populism that Trump brought in without going full Trump, seems to be a winning formula. If DeSantis runs and gets the GOP nomination, I think he would be unstoppable in '24, barring any truly great Democratic candidate emerging.
RvW fallout is hard to gauge but seems to be a major factor. Exit polls suggested that abortion was the #2 issue behind the economy, and those people are likely voting straight blue. Outside of GOP candidate weakness this probably was the major reason the red wave fizzled out.
It's super simple to everyone who doesn't have an R or D plastered by their name. The GOP saw the favorable forecasting over the last year and got complacent. They ran garbage candidates and thought Biden's disapproval would carry them to victory and were terribly wrong. Dems will double down on how they've operated recently and Repubs will continue to think they'll win by doing the bare minimum. Also, 11/8/2022 is officially the date that Trumpism died. The Trump endorsement/association is a scarlet letter.
1. Kinda feel like this was the --to borrow from Derek Thompson-- "Everything is terrible, but I'm fine" election. The national mood seems kinda negative but no real major flips despite what polling suggested.
2. As someone living in a red-state city that's seen tremendous influx from the northeast in recent years there's long been the worry that it's turning the populace blue, but it didn't seem to be the case last night. Looking at Florida I can't help but wonder if a lot of people that are transplants from blue to red states tend to be right-leaning. Are we going to continue to see similar internal migration trends and what are their impact? Or do things slow down post-Covid?
I think polling error may be understated. It would also be a lot less compelling for the media to push a narrative that the incumbent will maintain control, rather than a "wave" from the other party.
Incredible mix of righties and lefties in the comments, by the way. This is where America comes together!
Wrong question! The real issue is why did one Democrat get a vote. For the last two tears every democrat policy and vote has hurt this country. Why would anyone vote for them?
Pollsters didn't like being wrong two elections in a row, so they changed their procedures to try to get more accurate results. This seems to have at least partially worked.
No one likes Nate Silver anymore, but he was right about this election and has just generally mostly been right about how people think that what happened last time will happen again, and that explicitly modeling one's uncertainty is the right way to proceed.
You can vote RED for Big Military, Big Finance, Big Pharma, more tax cuts for the rich and self-hating government; or you can vote BLUE for Big Military, Big Finance, Big Pharma and social causes you don't care about unless you're affected by them.
Isn't the flaming douche vs shit sandwich binary choice the real problem? Two party systems are much easier to corrupt because you only have to pay off two parties. Breaking the two party system is the solution.
I think a lot of talking heads live in cosmopolitan areas and are exhausted by far left culture/politicians. But a lot of us live in purple places where the democrats are moderate and republican affiliation, whether explicit or implicit, to Trump, election denialism, maga politics, etc are a huge problem outside of a primary.
Also, I don’t see any way the Republican Party isn’t completely fucked in the short term. Trump is either gonna win the nomination or take a metaphorical suicide vest to the whole party. Yeah, sounds good in theory that it’s DeSantis party now, but Trump has cult like devotion from at least 30% of the Republican Party, he’s not going down easy. Republicans already have no margin for error given they’ve lost the popular vote over and over. There’s no clean path, at all. They made a deal with the devil and they’re seeing how that turns out.
I think the pool of undecided voters is smaller than ever. The small number who are open to persuasion looked at candidate quality and on balance were more likely to reject election legitimacy deniers or anyone too extreme. Add that to young people turning out and white women listening to their daughters about abortion and this balanced out those always vote against the party in the white House.
As a young and uninformed non-voter I thought that the Rep. candidates in my area spent the entire cycle tearing down Dem. candidates and proposals. Didn't hear/see much from Dem. candidates.
Democrats swept my state and all left-leaning proposals passed.
Any merit to the possibility that the vote went to who was least annoying?
Explanation: Mostly Dobbs. People can have all sorts of reasonable differences of opinion on economic and foreign policy that get them to vote for either party, but in America in 2022, you're not going to get a majority of the voting electorate to support taking women's right to choose away from them. You'll mobilize them to vote.
Implications: Parties are coalitions. Old-line Republicans embraced Trump because he had a movement of crazies and dumbasses big enough to to win and get them what they wanted -- tax cuts, conservative judges, etc. That coalition has fractured, which is going to create real turnout issues in '24. The power struggle inside the GOP should create a real Democratic electoral advantage. However, Democrats traditionally have a way of figuring out how to screw stuff like this up.
If Only: The country would be so much better off if both parties split in two -- the Magas and The Romneys from the GOP, and the Bidens and the Bernies from the Dems. It makes no sense for Bernie and Joe Manchin to be in the same political coalition. With smaller parties, you'd have the centrists coalescing to get stuff done to keep the basic functions of government moving and you'd neutralize MAGA freaks and people who don't believe in policing.
Reading a lot of the comments on this thread, I'm definitely one of the few liberal dem at the House of Strauss, but I will take a stab at it from my side's perspective:
1) There are now "shy liberal" voters just like there used to be shy Trump voters. Especially in purple states, extreme Rs have been much louder the last few years, we see them yelling and screaming every school board meeting or local town hall and rally and these things all go viral and make it seem like they're everywhere. I volunteered for a Katie Porter door knocking event this past Saturday, and the Dem HQ had about 100 lunatics screaming at the building! It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon in LA right by the beach, and these losers werent even door knocking for Scott Baugh, they were just standing around in their military cosplay clothes yelling "Open Border Porter Go back to Iowa" for hours. That shit's scary, some of them were armed. This is how you get shy liberal voters who nod along politely when their loud obnoxious coworker celebrates the Red wave the weeks before.
2) Young people apparently voted for once, and overwhelmingly Dem, and maybe actually appreciated some of the things the administration did for them (and aren't thrilled with RVW flipping). If Ds don't alienate them the next 2 years, they could actually vote in even higher numbers in 2024. I'm shocked to be typing this but it seems to be legit. And young people will never respond to a phone pole, and if they did, would probably just give troll answers. I know I would at 22! And also at 32.
3) Florida is its own thing and I'm not sure any of these "DeSantis Domination" lessons really would carry over to PA and CO and MI and WI. Frankly PA is the least purple purple-State I can think of. One R president vote (by a sliver) since George Bush, and the only reason Toomey got a senate seat is because the moronic far Left wing of the party primaried Arlen Specter for Joe Sestak back in the day. Specter would have destroyed Toomey. Anyway - I just don't the entire country is obsessed with DeSantis the way Floridians are. And by 2024 we'll be far removed from the pandemic (hopefully!). He can't just run on the pandemic forever, I don't think. Plus, Trump is going to call him a zombie groomer or something in a speech, and DeSantis won't have a counter, and that'll be that... :)
I am guessing the turnout of young people was the main factor in the polls being so wrong. Which demographic is the hardest to poll? And many of them used same-day registration, so anywhere that tracked registrants was going to be off. They're also hard to find because they're a diffused population outside of colleges. Their issues are not the issues that we were hearing about all cycle, either, so some of the signs that the things they care about were resonating were going unheard.
Specifically in Michigan, where Democrats made the most surprising gains, Voting Access (Props 1 and 2) and Abortion (Prop 3), were ballot initiatives that outperformed the statewide races.* They're the ones who've been targeted by a lot of the voter suppression rules. They're also the ones most at risk of getting pregnant and not having the means to support a child. As for inflation, they're more likely to have $40k in debt than in investments!
My precinct (I was an election worker) had very high turnout, and the difference was mostly the young people, whom we almost never see. I don't want to claim this was the ONLY thing that caused the polls to be off. But you've got this group that normally has low turnout suddenly highly motivated, and they're not in the polls at all?
Misjudging absentee performance might be another avenue. I know one thing both sides were looking at were the return on absentee ballots. They were hearing only 50% of absentees were in by late October, and thought that meant Democratic votes were still sitting in mail piles. Absentees are not an 80-20 demographic however--more like 60-40, and again, not something we have much data on. This is a guess, but what if the portion of absentees that were not returned skewed heavily Republican? Certainly they were treated as partisan in conservative media. Democrats were funneling money into efforts to tell people to get their ballots returned on time, but Republican absentee voters were getting very different messaging. Polling wasn't attuned to this either.
*Michigan also had a glut of independent women this election and that affected a lot of down-ticket races. I'm wondering if other states with abortion initiatives had a similar effect?
My biggest takeaway in that piece, and now is - Both political parties are mortally wounded, yet too big to fail ( I didn't say too big to fail in my piece, but it's true).
Political wire is an awesome news aggregator. And for those not familiar with "The National Review", they are a center-right news publication, that uses reason and logic in their conservative arguments, two things that the GOP under Trump is allergic to.
In terms of the issues with polls, there are a few things going on. One is that the mainstream media, in fear of being wrong and looking like they’re stuck in the liberal echo chamber, let themselves get tricked by bad GOP numbers. Some folks I know who work in Dem politics explained that before the elections in basically every cycle two things happen: 1. Polls tighten, because undecided voters start to vote and actually have to make a choice and 2. GOP polling outfits start pushing bad data that makes their position seem stronger than it actually is. This second piece is an important one, and something that I think a lot of liberals/moderates forget about when trying to be more objective. The GOP has basically poisoned their own well when it comes to objective information, whether it’s their economic analysis, policy ideas, or polling. Sometimes this is just good old fashioned politics, i.e., trying to work the media and selling a better picture of things to voters, but increasingly Republicans are simply unable to accept reality. Just look at the degree to which GOP voters and elected officials support Trump’s stolen election claims.
(I’ll out myself now as a lefty and someone who works in progressive media, but I also can’t stand the Democratic party and hate all the fear mongering about Trump, the peril of our democracy, etc. That being said, anyone with a brain should be able to recognize that GOP voters who buy the stolen election and voter fraud story, along with all the other inane conspiracy theories, are complete rubes.)
In terms of what actually happened with voters, this should have been a massive red wave in any other comparable year. The only other midterms to see no losses for the incumbent party in modern times were 1998, when Clinton’s approval rating was in the high 60s, and in 2002, when Bush was sitting at similar numbers. Biden this year was in the 40s, comparable to Trump in 2018 and Obama in 2010. It’s a confluence of factors, but I think that two main ones stand out. The first is obviously the Dobbs decision, which was truly cataclysmic and had the added bonus of putting abortion ballot measures directly on the ballot in many states, which helps drive turnout of liberal non-Democrats. The second is that high intensity elections may just be the new norm since the rise of social media and Trump, which have helped accelerate polarization and made caring about politics much more mainstream. A big takeaway that I think everyone should have, given Biden’s approval rating, is that this was only a win for Democrats in spite of Biden and his administration’s policies, not because of them. It was not an endorsement of his agenda or of moderate Democratic politics or any of that stuff (as Rachel Maddow and Jen Psaki literally tried to pitch on MSNBC right after citing Biden’s low approval ratings) it’s almost entirely a backlash to Republican fuck ups.
One last thing I want to comment on because I’ve seen a lot of others in the thread bring it up, and I think it’s related: In terms of what the GOP needs to do differently to win in 2024, I think they might be hosed either way. For people saying they would have won this year had they run traditional Republican candidates, I would point out that Republicans have rarely succeeded in recent years by running that way. Romney and McCain were both handily defeated, while the GOP’s biggest wins in recent years came in 2010 and 2016, when the party’s most extreme elements were clearly in the driver’s seat. I think part of the reason for that is Republicans need really strong base turnout to win, because they’re such a minoritarian party. But Republicans are facing a catch-22: if DeSantis and Trump duke it out in the primary and DeSantis wins, Trump voters could very well sit out in protest, or at the very least the GOP could see serious dropoff in turnout because conservative politics without Trump’s charisma and populism is brutally unpopular at a national level, whether it’s McConnell style austerity or DeSantis’s culture war of the week strategy. However, if Trump wins, he’ll also drive turnout for Democrats, and might continue alienating the few nonpartisan voters left.
That being said, Democrats are in a similarly tough spot, as their incumbent is facing two years of congressional investigations, fiscal brinkmanship, and a Fed-induced recession (if not more inflation). He’s also a doddering old man with zero appeal to young people or progressives in the Democratic base. But replacing Biden would show an insane amount of weakness, and trying to match someone like Trump with a zero like Kamala Harris or someone like Buttigieg who totally lacks in name recognition is political suicide. So 2024 may very well be a total tossup for either side.
People are sick of Trump and his goons and democrats are so scared of their own shadow that they let decent polling be positioned as them losing for months. Hopefully this wakes up the democrats to the fact that there’s no super secret republican silent majority and it’s time to start playing offense more.
I'm a 26 year old Democrat, and neither I nor pretty much anyone I know has been surveyed for one of these polls. Thus, I'm always skeptical of them, because I never know WHO these pollsters are actually interviewing. Honestly, if they're getting their info from random solicitous phone calls, it's a miracle that their data is even remotely close to the truth.
Pollsters undercounted Republicans in 2020, so they overcompensated with their methodology changes and undercounted Democrats this time around.
As usual, people are scapegoating Nate Silver for polling errors, even though he always maintained the Senate was a toss-up with Republicans just slightly favored (and they may still win it, if Laxalt hangs on and Walker wins the runoff). Now, if the *House* doesn't flip to the GOP, that's a legitimate shocker.
Your theory was correct, but it doesn't account for old school, Chicago style, ballot box stuffing.
Early voting hours a few days before the election and other "access" measures were nice improvements: but this mass mail plus harvest is a ballot stuffers dream.
Mass mailing unsolicited ballots without the need for ID or dropping them anywhere in specific leads to harvesting on steroids. It works best in the cities where there are many invalid addresses bounced back to the post office. There, the traditional harvesters, knocking on doors collecting the votes can augment the haul with "live ballots". People (not the state legislatures) used covid powers to rescind restrictions that required an absentee ballot to be requested.
It is technically possible to track one man one vote and host elections everyone trusts.
I think women really want to be able to make their own medical/reproductive decisions without federal oversight. I think turnout was solidified in June with the Supreme Court leak.
The republicans had no policies to decrease inflation. It is a world wide problem. I am in a business that moved to globalism and just in time inventory and production that cost US jobs and moved manufacturing overseas. Then with Covid all the supply chains were broken and the cost of delivering goods rose. Oil prices spiked due to increased demand after Covid and oil companies (
I was in the business for a short time many years ago) , rode that for excess profits and now prices are going to go lower as demand shrinks in the next few months. Due to weather issues and other problems food prices rose. Democrats had no real answers and any legislation was blocked the GOP to keep things as poor as possible until the midterms. Interesting after the election it comes out inflation is headed downward- at the cost of jobs is what I foresee. I agree with the comments of above commentators of let us just make things work, roads, policing , government institutions being efficient, decreasing homeless , etc will gain favor with voters for whoever is in charge.
The GOP will have to grapple with the likely probability that Trump owns the base and the base is large enough to win GOP primaries, but not large enough to win general elections/ actively alienates political moderates and independents.
The Republicans better watch out: In Trump vs. DeSantiis, they have a 1912-style Taft vs. Teddy Roosevelt split looming. It handed the election to Woodrow Wilson. Just sayin'.
HEATHEN - A growing number in our American community. Almost no politician (including Trump) thanks or beseeches the Lord in times of trouble. Even NFL players thank the Lord for touchdowns more than our politicians for His blessings. And we know that the Lord turns His backs on those who disregard Him.
CHILD WORSHIPPERS - They do the bidding of their Millennials in all things including voting. Plus they will not support law enforcement in cracking down on their kids' pastimes, including drug abuse and violent crime.
INCOMPETENT REPUBS - Incoherent platforms was a major problem. Adkins of KS was hammered for supporting anti-abortion bills that denied the option even in cases of rape or the life of the mother at risk. Such extremism justifies the Communist theory that all Christians are looney extremists.
GREEN NEW DEAL - This should have been a focal point tied in with the Recession. Instead it was turned into a localized campaign issue in coal-mining States. Inflation is directly a result of the rise in energy costs as any distribution chain can attest to.
Bottom line: in most cases all we have to do in finding those responsible for the defeat is look in the mirror.
I think it's literally just Trump. If he's on the ballot in 24, we'll likely see another set of errors, as long as he isn't actually running, polls will work normally.
His magic is a combination of extreme fame, reputational toxicity, and popularity with low trust voters who have low poll response rates and don't normally turn out to vote.
That last fact is underrated- democrats like to say that high turnout is bad for republicans, but it didn't work out that way in 2016 and 2020.
Likely 60% or more of regular voters always vote straight Democratic or Republican. Of the remaining 40% perhaps half are true independents and the balance are voters who may cross party lines based on an informed, nuanced perspective of prevailing issues. Unless polls only involve the “40%” their results are often poor predictors. The anti Trump energy sent too many of the “40%” to the Democratic side of the ballot for real Republican success.
From a far, it is very shocking that a man without the capacity to think lucidly was elected over a practicing doctor skilled in public speaking.
I don’t know if I could vote for someone in Fetterman’s condition in good conscience — even if his platform aligned with my ideological beliefs. Is it a statement on the deep partisanship of politics in the US? Perhaps Oz was that terrible? Either way it’s not a great reflection of the democratic system in the US (primaries included).
I have little hope. China is developing huge natural gas and oil in the China Ocean while the US is cutting. Biden and the democrates are all part of the green agenda. Paying restitution to the UN for climate change. Most of the people in the US are brain washed. Stupid fools listing to the talking heads and believing all the crap from the media. You can see it in the leftist crap. When it is time government in the US will start rounding up the fools under another government emergency. It won't be long before you will see enemies of the Amrican people taking your homes and your freedom. Time to face the facts this country is being destroyed from within by the government. All this democracy shit will be the end of the US.
Mitch McConnell pulled funds from all of the Senate candidates who were unlikely to support him. Money talks.
What makes everyone think the Dems didn't do what they did in 2020 all over again? They have been cheating successfully for the seven decades I've been on this planet. And their propaganda that 2020 was perfectly fair along with the Gestapo like tactics against Jan 6 participants and others seems to have stifled decent very effectively.
Roe v. Wade, and the whole "Vote for me because I'm not the other guy" usually doesn't get people to vote for you, people will just skip the election entirely.
Polling is good. It's kind of that simple. I think people are terrified of looking like rubes and 2016 made people feel like rubes. In response to this everyone decided to en masse abandon the conventional wisdom for their new smart-person theory of skewed polls. There was never really a reason to do this, but people were so terrified of looking like rubes again for following conventional wisdom that they needed some other way to think about polls and the election. The problem is that EVERYONE is terrified of looking like a rube, so this new smart-person theory rapidly became the conventional wisdom but it lacked an actual theory behind it other than "the old conventional wisdom was wrong and the smart people think this". In the end it turns out the old conventional wisdom was right and all the people terrified of looking like rubes just looked like rubes anyways.
For years conventional wisdom was that a blue wave was imminent because of minority coalition. That appears to be incorrect, but it does appear a youth/under-40 coalition strongly favors the Dems
Based on exit polling (so grain of salt) it does appear abortion was more of a turnout driver than expected. Total unforced error by GOP/SCOTUS
And lastly, while Trump remains a popular cult of personality, that doesn't extend to his terrible hand-picked candidates downballot. GOP usually figures these things out, but there does appear to be a schism between Trump and DeSantis fans (spoiler alert: Trump will likely come out on top, but its not a foregone conclusion as it was 48 hours ago)
I think there could have been a conservative wave if the GOP had ran traditional republican candidates. I think this shows that Trumps influence within the GOP is waning.
So I work in a datay field, and I, no offense, didn't buy your theory on polling errors. Primary because it dismissed the primary incentive structure that most pollsters operate under, which is to predict elections as closely as possible, as a secondary incentive. More directly, I think your approach of pollsters being wary of political backlash on Twitter was just off. I think there's a couple reasons for this.
1) Individuals who go into data fields like polling generally love nothing more than the smug satisfaction of being right. Most of the people actually in the data mines aren't checking their Twitter mentions for approval. In fact, I think a lot of them probably enjoy the screams of the unwashed, innumerate masses. More to the point, they are pretty specifically trained to be aware of confirmation bias. I'm not arguing they're infallible, obviously, but they want to be right after the fact, more than they want to be liked before the fact. There's a selection bias to the people who take these roles, and this is the main filtering mechanism.
2) All pollsters are ultimately paid to be right. Public polls give us a skewed perspective on the polling industry. A lot of professional polls and surveys never see the light of day, because they're commissioned by political parties, companies, governments, etc to poll on smaller really specific issues. If the public good you give away for free starts to really stink, then there goes your private contracts.
I'll give you a brief example of the dynamic I'm trying to describe from earlier in my career. I worked with a guy, who was a really brilliant math mind, but he was personally insufferable. The execs clearly hated being in the same room with him. Early in my time working with him, he presented a model and result that showed a really unintuitive response and basically called a lot of highly paid people dumbies. He received predictable pushback from those people. And by pushback I mean a real violent response that included pretty thinly veiled shots at his job security. He was unphased. When I talked to him about it, he was pretty clear what his approach was. In short, he said, "I'm not paid to be likeable or promote conventional wisdom, our model shows a higher probability of x happening. If I said y would happen to keep them happy, they'll still hate me, and I'm more likely to be wrong. If I do that consistently, I'm fired. Telling people what they want to hear does not promote job security in this industry."
Lastly, here's my hot take on the state of the polling industry. First, the public via social media really have to high of expectations for polling accuracy. The sample size is really small, exogenous factors are innumerable, and the raw data requires a lot of massaging, which is basically equal parts art and science. It's a lot harder to predict elections than it is a basketball game. Second, 2016 and Trump created a structural break in American politics, and pollsters weren't really sure to respond and adjust their operating models. Sure, non-college white voters were under-sampled in 2016, but all the spillover effects from 2016 (e.g., suburbs turning blue, consistent resistance lib turnout) was hard to be certain of. After 2022, it seems as though we have a reasonable sense of what that structural break of 2016 means for modern politics. But 2022 and 2024, is likely to provide there own breaks to the operating model. Will Gen-Z keep turning out? Is ballot splitting, once a thing of the past, back? In other words, there's an ebb and flow to this, there's a an exogenous event that breaks your approach to polling elections, you slowly correct over a few cycles. Then, it probably breaks again.
tl;dr Pollsters have an economic incentive to be right. Political polling is really hard.
I’m in the 18-35 demo.
We don’t answer our phone from random numbers anymore. Do with that what you will.
1. Trump is the Dems biggest asset, just about every GOPer the dems boosted in spending won their race. The GOP could have had more normal candidates but the Dems promoting of them (see MI-03) really helped swing things
2. If the GOP wants to win it m 24 they need to knee cap Trump and get Desantis in for the nomination. He’s normal enough to win back many of the more moderate voters. (See also Youngkin, Kemp, & Dewine)
3. Voters want Normie candidates, not wackos. See the gap in the PA governors race
Basically if the Dems want to keep Biden in, they need to make sure Trump runs and do everything in their power to make him the nominee, thus getting the Mos Eisly Cantina slate of candidates on the ballot and in front
GOP needs to be more normie, shut the fuck up about abortion and keep the focus there. Keep the weirdos out
Also, you're going to hear this refrain over the next week that this election shows how our country is still more divided than ever. If you just look at what happened, it couldn't be more incorrect. The results show that Americans, as a whole, are begging, pleading for a return to centrism. Trump's extreme candidates got shellacked. Major progressives like Hochul in NY barely scrapped by, despite being in a deep blue state. In large part, Americans are only being presented candidates who have extreme views, and when they are presented with this option they tend to just fall back into the party they traditionally vote for. Desantis is being presented as a GOP savior and it's largely because of his "let me get out of the way" style of politics. Some might say he has extreme views, but he's running on and promoting a type of politics that is really resonating with the public. Florida's pandemic lockdowns were over in TWO WEEKS. Even coming from a deep red state like I do in Tennessee, that's impossible to imagine. More than anything, people want to be left alone and to make their own decisions, regardless of policy. Look at Kansas. They have repudiated the GOP in the wake of the Dobbs decision. Just leave me alone, they said. Sadly, politicians have a near 100 percent track record of reading the tea leaves incorrectly. Democrats will see this as an acceptance of their progressivism and the GOP will be left in tatters by the Trump vs Desantis war that is coming, all while America is asking for the opposite.
Short answer, the Republicans put up too many wackos and a lot of right leaning people stayed home because of it, while the Dem leaning centrists turned out. I also think the pollsters over corrected in light of their errors in 2016, 2018, and 2020
My thoughts are that people are really getting tired of the election denialism crap. Republicans should just admit Biden won fair and square in 2020 and move on to other issues.
Lots of non-liberals are pro-choice
Trump endorsed terrible candidates like Oz, Walker, etc. Nobody wants to hear about election denial or being nasty with reporters. Just be normal! Trumps rhetoric and shtick has gotten old. Desantis is great on the culture war stuff but he also governs effectively. He has to be the future of the party or it’s going to continue to get crushed. And lastly, young people want to have sex without consequence. A significant portion of the electorate voted on that issue primarily, I think.
The elevator pitch is this: voters hate Democrats, but they sent a message to Republicans that that fact alone doesn't entitle them to votes.
A humbling lesson partisans of all stripes usually forget.
In no particular order:
I think early polling correctly predicted this outcome. There seemed to be a red wave building in the last week before the election, but the predictions before that were more correct: at this point it looks like a mildly Rep house and a 50-50 Senate, which was probably the prediction in late Sep/early Oct. The better question in my mind is why were the polls from that timeframe more accurate. Not sure I have an answer there.
Trump, and Trumpian candidates, need to get out of the way. Trump, his picks, his ego, election denialism, everything about him is now a massive liability moving forward. Republicans made a Faustian bargain in 2016 for the White House, the bill continues to come due (I say this as a Republican leaning guy myself).
There were signs of hope for the GOP, as the red wave did arrive in Florida. DeSantis and Rubio absolutely steamrolled their opponents. More moderate Republicans also did very well (in my state Mike DeWine also steamrolled). A more moderate GOP, coupled with shades of the populism that Trump brought in without going full Trump, seems to be a winning formula. If DeSantis runs and gets the GOP nomination, I think he would be unstoppable in '24, barring any truly great Democratic candidate emerging.
RvW fallout is hard to gauge but seems to be a major factor. Exit polls suggested that abortion was the #2 issue behind the economy, and those people are likely voting straight blue. Outside of GOP candidate weakness this probably was the major reason the red wave fizzled out.
It's super simple to everyone who doesn't have an R or D plastered by their name. The GOP saw the favorable forecasting over the last year and got complacent. They ran garbage candidates and thought Biden's disapproval would carry them to victory and were terribly wrong. Dems will double down on how they've operated recently and Repubs will continue to think they'll win by doing the bare minimum. Also, 11/8/2022 is officially the date that Trumpism died. The Trump endorsement/association is a scarlet letter.
1. Kinda feel like this was the --to borrow from Derek Thompson-- "Everything is terrible, but I'm fine" election. The national mood seems kinda negative but no real major flips despite what polling suggested.
2. As someone living in a red-state city that's seen tremendous influx from the northeast in recent years there's long been the worry that it's turning the populace blue, but it didn't seem to be the case last night. Looking at Florida I can't help but wonder if a lot of people that are transplants from blue to red states tend to be right-leaning. Are we going to continue to see similar internal migration trends and what are their impact? Or do things slow down post-Covid?
I think polling error may be understated. It would also be a lot less compelling for the media to push a narrative that the incumbent will maintain control, rather than a "wave" from the other party.
Incredible mix of righties and lefties in the comments, by the way. This is where America comes together!
Dobbs, Denial, and the Donald....
There are eight zillion things going on in an election and pretending you understand the balance of them is a fool’s errand.
Americans prefer abortion more than they hate inflation?
Wrong question! The real issue is why did one Democrat get a vote. For the last two tears every democrat policy and vote has hurt this country. Why would anyone vote for them?
Pollsters didn't like being wrong two elections in a row, so they changed their procedures to try to get more accurate results. This seems to have at least partially worked.
No one likes Nate Silver anymore, but he was right about this election and has just generally mostly been right about how people think that what happened last time will happen again, and that explicitly modeling one's uncertainty is the right way to proceed.
I wonder if the fear mongering about threats to democracy actually worked.
You can vote RED for Big Military, Big Finance, Big Pharma, more tax cuts for the rich and self-hating government; or you can vote BLUE for Big Military, Big Finance, Big Pharma and social causes you don't care about unless you're affected by them.
Isn't the flaming douche vs shit sandwich binary choice the real problem? Two party systems are much easier to corrupt because you only have to pay off two parties. Breaking the two party system is the solution.
I think a lot of talking heads live in cosmopolitan areas and are exhausted by far left culture/politicians. But a lot of us live in purple places where the democrats are moderate and republican affiliation, whether explicit or implicit, to Trump, election denialism, maga politics, etc are a huge problem outside of a primary.
Also, I don’t see any way the Republican Party isn’t completely fucked in the short term. Trump is either gonna win the nomination or take a metaphorical suicide vest to the whole party. Yeah, sounds good in theory that it’s DeSantis party now, but Trump has cult like devotion from at least 30% of the Republican Party, he’s not going down easy. Republicans already have no margin for error given they’ve lost the popular vote over and over. There’s no clean path, at all. They made a deal with the devil and they’re seeing how that turns out.
As annoying and obnoxious as the left can be at times, they still aren’t nearly as committed as the GOP is to nominate complete and total psychos.
I think the pool of undecided voters is smaller than ever. The small number who are open to persuasion looked at candidate quality and on balance were more likely to reject election legitimacy deniers or anyone too extreme. Add that to young people turning out and white women listening to their daughters about abortion and this balanced out those always vote against the party in the white House.
As a young and uninformed non-voter I thought that the Rep. candidates in my area spent the entire cycle tearing down Dem. candidates and proposals. Didn't hear/see much from Dem. candidates.
Democrats swept my state and all left-leaning proposals passed.
Any merit to the possibility that the vote went to who was least annoying?
Explanation: Mostly Dobbs. People can have all sorts of reasonable differences of opinion on economic and foreign policy that get them to vote for either party, but in America in 2022, you're not going to get a majority of the voting electorate to support taking women's right to choose away from them. You'll mobilize them to vote.
Implications: Parties are coalitions. Old-line Republicans embraced Trump because he had a movement of crazies and dumbasses big enough to to win and get them what they wanted -- tax cuts, conservative judges, etc. That coalition has fractured, which is going to create real turnout issues in '24. The power struggle inside the GOP should create a real Democratic electoral advantage. However, Democrats traditionally have a way of figuring out how to screw stuff like this up.
If Only: The country would be so much better off if both parties split in two -- the Magas and The Romneys from the GOP, and the Bidens and the Bernies from the Dems. It makes no sense for Bernie and Joe Manchin to be in the same political coalition. With smaller parties, you'd have the centrists coalescing to get stuff done to keep the basic functions of government moving and you'd neutralize MAGA freaks and people who don't believe in policing.
Reading a lot of the comments on this thread, I'm definitely one of the few liberal dem at the House of Strauss, but I will take a stab at it from my side's perspective:
1) There are now "shy liberal" voters just like there used to be shy Trump voters. Especially in purple states, extreme Rs have been much louder the last few years, we see them yelling and screaming every school board meeting or local town hall and rally and these things all go viral and make it seem like they're everywhere. I volunteered for a Katie Porter door knocking event this past Saturday, and the Dem HQ had about 100 lunatics screaming at the building! It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon in LA right by the beach, and these losers werent even door knocking for Scott Baugh, they were just standing around in their military cosplay clothes yelling "Open Border Porter Go back to Iowa" for hours. That shit's scary, some of them were armed. This is how you get shy liberal voters who nod along politely when their loud obnoxious coworker celebrates the Red wave the weeks before.
2) Young people apparently voted for once, and overwhelmingly Dem, and maybe actually appreciated some of the things the administration did for them (and aren't thrilled with RVW flipping). If Ds don't alienate them the next 2 years, they could actually vote in even higher numbers in 2024. I'm shocked to be typing this but it seems to be legit. And young people will never respond to a phone pole, and if they did, would probably just give troll answers. I know I would at 22! And also at 32.
3) Florida is its own thing and I'm not sure any of these "DeSantis Domination" lessons really would carry over to PA and CO and MI and WI. Frankly PA is the least purple purple-State I can think of. One R president vote (by a sliver) since George Bush, and the only reason Toomey got a senate seat is because the moronic far Left wing of the party primaried Arlen Specter for Joe Sestak back in the day. Specter would have destroyed Toomey. Anyway - I just don't the entire country is obsessed with DeSantis the way Floridians are. And by 2024 we'll be far removed from the pandemic (hopefully!). He can't just run on the pandemic forever, I don't think. Plus, Trump is going to call him a zombie groomer or something in a speech, and DeSantis won't have a counter, and that'll be that... :)
I am guessing the turnout of young people was the main factor in the polls being so wrong. Which demographic is the hardest to poll? And many of them used same-day registration, so anywhere that tracked registrants was going to be off. They're also hard to find because they're a diffused population outside of colleges. Their issues are not the issues that we were hearing about all cycle, either, so some of the signs that the things they care about were resonating were going unheard.
Specifically in Michigan, where Democrats made the most surprising gains, Voting Access (Props 1 and 2) and Abortion (Prop 3), were ballot initiatives that outperformed the statewide races.* They're the ones who've been targeted by a lot of the voter suppression rules. They're also the ones most at risk of getting pregnant and not having the means to support a child. As for inflation, they're more likely to have $40k in debt than in investments!
My precinct (I was an election worker) had very high turnout, and the difference was mostly the young people, whom we almost never see. I don't want to claim this was the ONLY thing that caused the polls to be off. But you've got this group that normally has low turnout suddenly highly motivated, and they're not in the polls at all?
Misjudging absentee performance might be another avenue. I know one thing both sides were looking at were the return on absentee ballots. They were hearing only 50% of absentees were in by late October, and thought that meant Democratic votes were still sitting in mail piles. Absentees are not an 80-20 demographic however--more like 60-40, and again, not something we have much data on. This is a guess, but what if the portion of absentees that were not returned skewed heavily Republican? Certainly they were treated as partisan in conservative media. Democrats were funneling money into efforts to tell people to get their ballots returned on time, but Republican absentee voters were getting very different messaging. Polling wasn't attuned to this either.
*Michigan also had a glut of independent women this election and that affected a lot of down-ticket races. I'm wondering if other states with abortion initiatives had a similar effect?
I actually wrote about this on Monday 11/07, in anticipation of the Midterm Election yesterday (Tuesday 11/08) https://joshpressjakes.substack.com/p/midterm-elections-2022
My biggest takeaway in that piece, and now is - Both political parties are mortally wounded, yet too big to fail ( I didn't say too big to fail in my piece, but it's true).
Also, I plugged a website as my go to site for news. Here is a link to them now, where they posted part of the National Review's "immediate day after election autopsy". https://politicalwire.com/2022/11/09/the-red-splish-splash/
Political wire is an awesome news aggregator. And for those not familiar with "The National Review", they are a center-right news publication, that uses reason and logic in their conservative arguments, two things that the GOP under Trump is allergic to.
In terms of the issues with polls, there are a few things going on. One is that the mainstream media, in fear of being wrong and looking like they’re stuck in the liberal echo chamber, let themselves get tricked by bad GOP numbers. Some folks I know who work in Dem politics explained that before the elections in basically every cycle two things happen: 1. Polls tighten, because undecided voters start to vote and actually have to make a choice and 2. GOP polling outfits start pushing bad data that makes their position seem stronger than it actually is. This second piece is an important one, and something that I think a lot of liberals/moderates forget about when trying to be more objective. The GOP has basically poisoned their own well when it comes to objective information, whether it’s their economic analysis, policy ideas, or polling. Sometimes this is just good old fashioned politics, i.e., trying to work the media and selling a better picture of things to voters, but increasingly Republicans are simply unable to accept reality. Just look at the degree to which GOP voters and elected officials support Trump’s stolen election claims.
(I’ll out myself now as a lefty and someone who works in progressive media, but I also can’t stand the Democratic party and hate all the fear mongering about Trump, the peril of our democracy, etc. That being said, anyone with a brain should be able to recognize that GOP voters who buy the stolen election and voter fraud story, along with all the other inane conspiracy theories, are complete rubes.)
In terms of what actually happened with voters, this should have been a massive red wave in any other comparable year. The only other midterms to see no losses for the incumbent party in modern times were 1998, when Clinton’s approval rating was in the high 60s, and in 2002, when Bush was sitting at similar numbers. Biden this year was in the 40s, comparable to Trump in 2018 and Obama in 2010. It’s a confluence of factors, but I think that two main ones stand out. The first is obviously the Dobbs decision, which was truly cataclysmic and had the added bonus of putting abortion ballot measures directly on the ballot in many states, which helps drive turnout of liberal non-Democrats. The second is that high intensity elections may just be the new norm since the rise of social media and Trump, which have helped accelerate polarization and made caring about politics much more mainstream. A big takeaway that I think everyone should have, given Biden’s approval rating, is that this was only a win for Democrats in spite of Biden and his administration’s policies, not because of them. It was not an endorsement of his agenda or of moderate Democratic politics or any of that stuff (as Rachel Maddow and Jen Psaki literally tried to pitch on MSNBC right after citing Biden’s low approval ratings) it’s almost entirely a backlash to Republican fuck ups.
One last thing I want to comment on because I’ve seen a lot of others in the thread bring it up, and I think it’s related: In terms of what the GOP needs to do differently to win in 2024, I think they might be hosed either way. For people saying they would have won this year had they run traditional Republican candidates, I would point out that Republicans have rarely succeeded in recent years by running that way. Romney and McCain were both handily defeated, while the GOP’s biggest wins in recent years came in 2010 and 2016, when the party’s most extreme elements were clearly in the driver’s seat. I think part of the reason for that is Republicans need really strong base turnout to win, because they’re such a minoritarian party. But Republicans are facing a catch-22: if DeSantis and Trump duke it out in the primary and DeSantis wins, Trump voters could very well sit out in protest, or at the very least the GOP could see serious dropoff in turnout because conservative politics without Trump’s charisma and populism is brutally unpopular at a national level, whether it’s McConnell style austerity or DeSantis’s culture war of the week strategy. However, if Trump wins, he’ll also drive turnout for Democrats, and might continue alienating the few nonpartisan voters left.
That being said, Democrats are in a similarly tough spot, as their incumbent is facing two years of congressional investigations, fiscal brinkmanship, and a Fed-induced recession (if not more inflation). He’s also a doddering old man with zero appeal to young people or progressives in the Democratic base. But replacing Biden would show an insane amount of weakness, and trying to match someone like Trump with a zero like Kamala Harris or someone like Buttigieg who totally lacks in name recognition is political suicide. So 2024 may very well be a total tossup for either side.
People are sick of Trump and his goons and democrats are so scared of their own shadow that they let decent polling be positioned as them losing for months. Hopefully this wakes up the democrats to the fact that there’s no super secret republican silent majority and it’s time to start playing offense more.
Has polling evolved since the invention of the telephone? I think it's wild that's how we still conduct it.
I'm a 26 year old Democrat, and neither I nor pretty much anyone I know has been surveyed for one of these polls. Thus, I'm always skeptical of them, because I never know WHO these pollsters are actually interviewing. Honestly, if they're getting their info from random solicitous phone calls, it's a miracle that their data is even remotely close to the truth.
Pollsters undercounted Republicans in 2020, so they overcompensated with their methodology changes and undercounted Democrats this time around.
As usual, people are scapegoating Nate Silver for polling errors, even though he always maintained the Senate was a toss-up with Republicans just slightly favored (and they may still win it, if Laxalt hangs on and Walker wins the runoff). Now, if the *House* doesn't flip to the GOP, that's a legitimate shocker.
Your theory was correct, but it doesn't account for old school, Chicago style, ballot box stuffing.
Early voting hours a few days before the election and other "access" measures were nice improvements: but this mass mail plus harvest is a ballot stuffers dream.
Mass mailing unsolicited ballots without the need for ID or dropping them anywhere in specific leads to harvesting on steroids. It works best in the cities where there are many invalid addresses bounced back to the post office. There, the traditional harvesters, knocking on doors collecting the votes can augment the haul with "live ballots". People (not the state legislatures) used covid powers to rescind restrictions that required an absentee ballot to be requested.
It is technically possible to track one man one vote and host elections everyone trusts.
I think women really want to be able to make their own medical/reproductive decisions without federal oversight. I think turnout was solidified in June with the Supreme Court leak.
The republicans had no policies to decrease inflation. It is a world wide problem. I am in a business that moved to globalism and just in time inventory and production that cost US jobs and moved manufacturing overseas. Then with Covid all the supply chains were broken and the cost of delivering goods rose. Oil prices spiked due to increased demand after Covid and oil companies (
I was in the business for a short time many years ago) , rode that for excess profits and now prices are going to go lower as demand shrinks in the next few months. Due to weather issues and other problems food prices rose. Democrats had no real answers and any legislation was blocked the GOP to keep things as poor as possible until the midterms. Interesting after the election it comes out inflation is headed downward- at the cost of jobs is what I foresee. I agree with the comments of above commentators of let us just make things work, roads, policing , government institutions being efficient, decreasing homeless , etc will gain favor with voters for whoever is in charge.
The GOP will have to grapple with the likely probability that Trump owns the base and the base is large enough to win GOP primaries, but not large enough to win general elections/ actively alienates political moderates and independents.
The Republicans better watch out: In Trump vs. DeSantiis, they have a 1912-style Taft vs. Teddy Roosevelt split looming. It handed the election to Woodrow Wilson. Just sayin'.
HEATHEN - A growing number in our American community. Almost no politician (including Trump) thanks or beseeches the Lord in times of trouble. Even NFL players thank the Lord for touchdowns more than our politicians for His blessings. And we know that the Lord turns His backs on those who disregard Him.
CHILD WORSHIPPERS - They do the bidding of their Millennials in all things including voting. Plus they will not support law enforcement in cracking down on their kids' pastimes, including drug abuse and violent crime.
INCOMPETENT REPUBS - Incoherent platforms was a major problem. Adkins of KS was hammered for supporting anti-abortion bills that denied the option even in cases of rape or the life of the mother at risk. Such extremism justifies the Communist theory that all Christians are looney extremists.
GREEN NEW DEAL - This should have been a focal point tied in with the Recession. Instead it was turned into a localized campaign issue in coal-mining States. Inflation is directly a result of the rise in energy costs as any distribution chain can attest to.
Bottom line: in most cases all we have to do in finding those responsible for the defeat is look in the mirror.
I think it's literally just Trump. If he's on the ballot in 24, we'll likely see another set of errors, as long as he isn't actually running, polls will work normally.
His magic is a combination of extreme fame, reputational toxicity, and popularity with low trust voters who have low poll response rates and don't normally turn out to vote.
That last fact is underrated- democrats like to say that high turnout is bad for republicans, but it didn't work out that way in 2016 and 2020.
Likely 60% or more of regular voters always vote straight Democratic or Republican. Of the remaining 40% perhaps half are true independents and the balance are voters who may cross party lines based on an informed, nuanced perspective of prevailing issues. Unless polls only involve the “40%” their results are often poor predictors. The anti Trump energy sent too many of the “40%” to the Democratic side of the ballot for real Republican success.
From a far, it is very shocking that a man without the capacity to think lucidly was elected over a practicing doctor skilled in public speaking.
I don’t know if I could vote for someone in Fetterman’s condition in good conscience — even if his platform aligned with my ideological beliefs. Is it a statement on the deep partisanship of politics in the US? Perhaps Oz was that terrible? Either way it’s not a great reflection of the democratic system in the US (primaries included).
I have little hope. China is developing huge natural gas and oil in the China Ocean while the US is cutting. Biden and the democrates are all part of the green agenda. Paying restitution to the UN for climate change. Most of the people in the US are brain washed. Stupid fools listing to the talking heads and believing all the crap from the media. You can see it in the leftist crap. When it is time government in the US will start rounding up the fools under another government emergency. It won't be long before you will see enemies of the Amrican people taking your homes and your freedom. Time to face the facts this country is being destroyed from within by the government. All this democracy shit will be the end of the US.
Mitch McConnell pulled funds from all of the Senate candidates who were unlikely to support him. Money talks.
What makes everyone think the Dems didn't do what they did in 2020 all over again? They have been cheating successfully for the seven decades I've been on this planet. And their propaganda that 2020 was perfectly fair along with the Gestapo like tactics against Jan 6 participants and others seems to have stifled decent very effectively.
The Dems are great harvesting ballots in blue states. That's it. Mail-in makes it easy.
Roe v. Wade, and the whole "Vote for me because I'm not the other guy" usually doesn't get people to vote for you, people will just skip the election entirely.
Polling is good. It's kind of that simple. I think people are terrified of looking like rubes and 2016 made people feel like rubes. In response to this everyone decided to en masse abandon the conventional wisdom for their new smart-person theory of skewed polls. There was never really a reason to do this, but people were so terrified of looking like rubes again for following conventional wisdom that they needed some other way to think about polls and the election. The problem is that EVERYONE is terrified of looking like a rube, so this new smart-person theory rapidly became the conventional wisdom but it lacked an actual theory behind it other than "the old conventional wisdom was wrong and the smart people think this". In the end it turns out the old conventional wisdom was right and all the people terrified of looking like rubes just looked like rubes anyways.
For years conventional wisdom was that a blue wave was imminent because of minority coalition. That appears to be incorrect, but it does appear a youth/under-40 coalition strongly favors the Dems
Based on exit polling (so grain of salt) it does appear abortion was more of a turnout driver than expected. Total unforced error by GOP/SCOTUS
And lastly, while Trump remains a popular cult of personality, that doesn't extend to his terrible hand-picked candidates downballot. GOP usually figures these things out, but there does appear to be a schism between Trump and DeSantis fans (spoiler alert: Trump will likely come out on top, but its not a foregone conclusion as it was 48 hours ago)