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A Few Thoughts on the Election and Poll Interpretation

And, not surprisingly, about parties.

Steven L. Taylor
39

Comments

While I agree with James Joyner that this week’s elections should not be considered predictive of 2024 and that we shouldn’t draw broad conclusions, I have a thought or two.

First, having an actual choice on a ballot is different from having an opinion outside of the context of such a choice. In other words, it is relatively easy for individuals to have serious concerns about Biden’s age or about the state of the economy in an opinion poll. It is thoroughly another circumstance to have to make a choice, on a ballot, between Trump and Biden. As such, I think all polling needs to be understood in that context. I would add that especially when looking at approval numbers, that it is entirely possible to not approve of the job that a given president is doing and still find that voting for the president is your best option.

Second, along those lines, let’s not forget that most elections in recent years have had more good news for Democrats than Republicans, on balance.

I would point readers to Nate Silver’s Substack.

Consider all the elections since Donald Trump became president in 2016 when Trump wasn’t on the ballot himself:

Also, G. Elliot Morris notes the following on his Substack as it pertains to the predictability of polling this far out:

Research from political scientists Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien shows that, between 1952 and 2008, polls taken 300 days before the general election had no predictive value. In statistical terms, they found that polls have an R-squared value of roughly O in January of an election year. That’s basically the track record of an (untrained) monkey throwing darts at a dartboard. Plus, as of today, we’re currently 365 days out from the election – quite a bit further out than Erikson and Wlezien were
even willing to look, given the variability of their data.

Morris notes that while increased polarization has somewhat increased the predictive nature of polling, it is still too far out for people to have so much anxiety over the polls, let alone for the press to be trying to frame the 2023 elections in terms of those polls (let alone a specific one).

But look, I get it, if you are someone who finds a second Trump term to be a real threat to democratic governance in the United States then you find it really hard to see positive numbers in his column.

Still, I will return to the first point: the evidence to date has been that with a handful of exceptions, the GOP is proving itself to be less popular than the Democrats when actual ballots are involved. Indeed, the only reason there is a threat that Trump will win the presidency in 2024 is because of the Electoral College. Again, lest we forget, Trump lost the popular vote both in 2016 and 2020, and he lost worse in 2020 than he did in 2016.

Of course, I continue to think that our core problem is that the undemocratic elements of our system, especially at the national level (the EC, the unrepresentative Senate, and the too-small House with its largely uncompetitive elections) all make it such that the GOP can still have enough hope to win without having to adapt. Competition should lead to losing parties to adapt. But if that can eke out power (e.g., the EC and in the Senate in particular, but even in uncompetitive House districts, which is most of them) without adapting, we get stagnation at best and, at worst, we get MTG’s and Matt Gaetz’s and Donald Trumps.

Again, any sane electoral system would have handed Donald Trump a defeat in November of 2016. Had that happened, we would be much better off as a country. And I say that because, specifically, the GOP would have had to realize that it needed to adapt. Instead, Trump wins and then fuels the party’s evolution into where it currently is.

As I have noted elsewhere, competition is supposed to hone the competitors. If your football team loses, you expect them to play better, which often means new players, coaches, and playbooks. But if you can lose and still win, there is far less need to adapt.

Representative democracy without an adequate representation feedback loop is an unhealthy democracy flirting with crisis.

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39 responses to “A Few Thoughts on the Election and Poll Interpretation”

  1. Will Avatar
    Will

    I could do with a little explication on how you would differentiate adaptation (which the GOP apparently doesn’t do) from evolution (which Donal Trump has apparently fueled).

  2. Kylopod Avatar
    Kylopod

    Aside from the fact that polls taken a year before an election aren’t very predictive, another problem with election polls that has always been true–it isn’t something new or recent–is that it’s hard to predict who turns out. A lot of election polls fail for this reason alone. If you ask a group of voters which candidate they favor, the poll could be 100% accurate in terms of the opinions of registered voters in the country, and yet still be totally wrong about the election outcome due to incorrectly assessing which set of voters end up voting, and in what proportions.

    I think it’s one of the main reasons the 2020 polls underestimated Republicans. Due to Dems being likelier to follow pandemic restrictions than Republicans, there was a big drop-off in traditional canvassing and GOTV operations on the Dem side, while the Republican campaigns ignored a lot of these restrictions and campaigned like nothing had changed, which may have been foolish from a public health perspective but was politically beneficial to them. That type of on-the-ground campaign activity is very hard for polls to detect. In normal presidential elections, both parties run relatively professional and high-quality campaigns, which usually cancels out any advantage either party might gain. In 2020, the Republicans acquired that advantage, which is at least one reason why the polls were off.

    By 2022, the country had largely come out of the pandemic, and the Dobbs decision energized the Democrats in a way they traditionally weren’t during midterm years under a Democratic president, which is something that, again, is hard for polls to detect.

    As I’ve said before, the polls aren’t the entire story, and they aren’t as bad as some people make them out to be. In some cases pundits just make assumptions without any evidence. For example, polling for the Virginia legislative elections this year was sparse, though there was at least one poll from October showing Dems with the advantage. Media coverage of the race largely ignored polling data, and simply assumed Youngkin’s personal popularity would be the determining factor, with various news stories implying the momentum was on the GOP side. It was never based on anything more than vibes.

  3. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    I think it’s always important to consider and compare the total number of voters.

    In Ohio, for example, there were ~3.8 million voters in this latest election. In the last major election (2020), there were ~6 million.

    Low-turnout off-year elections tend to be won by the side that gets their base out, because most people simply aren’t interested in voting. Turnout for a major election isn’t nearly as big of a problem, it’s more about getting the marginal, cross-pressured and other voters who don’t care enough to vote in off-year contests to vote for you candidate.

    In short, I think major elections are different enough in terms of turnout (meaning the total composition of voters) that it’s very difficult to draw any lines from what happened in an off-off-year election, especially when the people want to extrapolate from different contests and issues in three different states to a national contest.

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  4. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    I’ve had this vague notion that presidential polls are getting answers that come from very different interpretations by the polled. Do you approve of Biden is not the same question in effect as, do you approve of Trump. Biden is not a performer, he’s a grind. Trump is an entertainer. It’s like asking your opinion of your school’s principal vs. your feels about Nickelback. Think about Biden and you’re thinking gas prices and Gaza and general malaise; think about Trump and it’s rock and roll for the dimwitted. Apples and Orange.

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  5. Sleeping Dog Avatar
    Sleeping Dog

    Of course, by the time we know that the trump beats Biden polling is accurate or not, it will be too late to change horses, thus the apprehension. Frank Bruni has a good column this AM that posits that the most accurate comparison for presidential polling a year out, isn’t Obama, but George HW Bush.

    Among Democrats justly nervous about Biden’s poll numbers and rightly angry about the dearth of respect he gets, it has recently been popular — and consoling — to compare him to a different commander in chief, the one for whom he served as vice president, Barack Obama. At this point in Obama’s first term, surveys strongly suggested that he would lose his re-election effort.

    Voters in late 2011 shortchanged Obama on credit for steering the nation out of the 2008 housing bust and recession, just as voters in late 2023 are shortchanging Biden for steering the nation out of the pandemic. They didn’t wrestle seriously with whether Obama merited a renewal on his White House lease until much closer to Election Day, and they won’t give Biden an accurate report card any sooner, or so the thinking goes. It also holds that once Obama focused on his campaign, he was able to cast his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, as an unacceptable choice. When Biden buckles down, he’ll do the same to his likely Republican rival, Donald Trump. Heck, he already did it in 2020.

    I’d buy that forecast — I want nothing more than for it to be true — but for a few pesky details. Obama was 50 then. Biden is 80 now. Obama, our first Black president, still had the perfume of history around him. Biden has no such bouquet. And the Tea Party of Obama’s era may have been a precursor to our MAGA moment, but it was a firecracker beside this dynamite, as the wreckage at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, showed. We live, and quiver, in more explosive times.

    The Bush-Biden parallels come easier. George H.W. Biden has a plausibility that Barack Biden doesn’t.

    Bruni goes on to list and examine that reasons why Biden = Bush is wrong, but then goes to the crux of his argument.

    Bush struggled to please a fractious Republican Party, its divisions clear in the primary challenge mounted by Pat Buchanan. Biden struggles to please a fractious Democratic Party, its divisions clear in the fact that 22 Democrats just joined House Republicans in voting to censure Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, for her remarks about Israel.

    And those divisions matter more in the context of something else that Biden shares with Bush: “Biden is the first person elected president since George H.W. Bush without a political base,” Doug Sosnik, a political strategist who worked in the Clinton administration, told me. “Bush got elected basically as a Reagan third term, and Biden got elected as a vote against Trump.”

    By a “base,” Sosnik means a large core group of passionate supporters who see the candidate as more than just the best option available, who will stick with the candidate through thick and thin. Reagan and Obama had that. Trump has that, which is why the other Republican candidates for president can’t muscle him out of the frame.

    “A base is critical, because it becomes the foundation from which they’re able to persuade the remaining voters,” Sosnik added. “It’s critical because of the inevitable ebbs and flows when you’re in office — when things aren’t going well. It’s critical because it creates a higher floor for your support.”

    Bush hoped that his experience on the world stage and proven stewardship of tricky international relations — his elder statesman bona fides — might counteract voters’ dissatisfaction with the economy. There’s a similar wish in Biden’s camp, and it makes Bush’s experience in 1992 not just an interesting point of reference but also an instructive one, with an important lesson: Fail to project extreme attentiveness to Americans’ financial anxieties at your electoral peril. They want their pain felt.

    And it’s tough for a longtime Washington insider who lives in the bubble of the presidency to project that he’s sufficiently in touch. That required more intense and sustained effort than Bush managed in his day, and Biden will have to do better than “Bidenomics,” a nifty but nebulous portmanteau.

    Emphasis added.

    Regardless of the weakness of forward casting polling, Dems should be worried that polling that shows that the populace does feel that the economy isn’t going well.

    3
  6. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    Competition should lead to losing parties to adapt. But if that can eke out power (e.g., the EC and in the Senate in particular, but even in uncompetitive House districts, which is most of them) without adapting, we get stagnation at best and, at worst, we get MTG’s and Matt Gaetz’s and Donald Trumps.

    This actually works in the other direction.

    Everyone knows the EC determines the Presidential contest. Democrats losing that contest – as you say – ought to lead to adaptation. They are losing because Democrats are failing to adapt. Instead, what I see is a lot of wishing the rules were different. But they aren’t different. One has to compete on the field with the rules that are in place – rules that have been in place for a very, very long time and are not going to change anytime soon. Why should the GoP adapt if they can win with rules as they stand on the current field of play?

    And in the Senate, it is the same thing. Democrats had the structural advantage in the Senate for most of the 20th century, and now they don’t. It’s not like the GoP advantage in the Senate appeared out of nowhere, or that that Senate imbalance in terms of proportional representation by population is new – it’s not new at all. It’s not like Democrats were helpless bystanders in the realignments that resulted in the this advantage changing from Democrats to Republicans. This is another area where Democrats have failed to adapt, with many – again – wishing the rules were different.

    Look, I’m almost universally opposed to the GoP and what it has become, but one must be realistic and not engage in wishful thinking. If one wants the Democrats to win and the GoP to loose – especially for the Presidency next year, then one needs to advocate for the actions and concentrate on the things that are necessary to actually win and not waste time daydreaming about a world that doesn’t exist.

    6
  7. Kylopod Avatar
    Kylopod

    @Michael Reynolds: @Sleeping Dog: One thing I’ve noticed from looking at past examples of presidential approval polls (and Gallup’s site has a very detailed record going back to Truman) is that, when it comes to incumbent presidents running for reelection, there does appear to be a strong correlation with how well they do and what their approval ratings were very close to Election Day. However, there doesn’t appear to be any relationship with what their ratings were a year before the election, and there are several historical examples of presidents with poor or mediocre ratings during that prior year who went on to be reelected, sometimes in landslides. Still, there are caveats.

    For example, in Jan. 1983 Reagan had a 35% approval rating. It was up to 49% by October, however. Obama’s ratings hovered in the low 40s for most of the latter half of 2011. But Obama’s ratings were still better than Biden’s are now, on average. Biden’s latest from Gallup (albeit from over a month ago) is 37% approve, 59% disapprove. Obama’s ratings never went that low.

    I’ve used the historical examples before to reassure Dems who are panicky over Biden’s chances, but I have to admit time is running out for Biden to turn these numbers around. If by April of next year he’s still stuck in the low 40s or high 30s or worse, you could go on about how these numbers don’t matter, how voters will see it as a choice against someone worse, how the polls are underestimating the Dems and how Dobbs will save the day–but speaking for myself, my confidence will shatter and I’ll be forced to conclude Biden is a clear underdog.

    I’m still going to make the cautious prediction that his numbers will rise in the next year. But I’m not going to flippantly dismiss these polls as irrelevant, either.

    1
  8. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Andy: Indeed. For example, as I noted in 2021.

    1
  9. DK Avatar
    DK

    @Andy:

    Democrats losing that contest – as you say – ought to lead to adaptation. They are losing because Democrats are failing to adapt.

    Losing? Democrats have won the Electoral College in three of the last four presidential contests.

    This is another area where Democrats have failed to adapt, with many – again – wishing the rules were different.

    Democrats, not Republicans, currently control the Senate. You don’t flip senate seats in Arizona and Georgia (and Nevada and Colorado and Pennsylvania) from red to blue by not adapting.

    11
  10. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Andy:

    , but one must be realistic and not engage in wishful thinking.

    Look, I take your point but acurately analyzing a problem is not wishful thinking just because the actual solution is hard.

    I would note further that the structural conditions that I note make adapations by the Dems almost moot (it not entirely moot in many cases).

    I would also state that the Dems engaging in coordination in 2020 to nominate the old white guy was an example of the party adapting to its circumstances.

    12
  11. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @DK: Also this.

    3
  12. DK Avatar
    DK

    @Kylopod:

    But I’m not going to flippantly dismiss these polls as irrelevant, either.

    The polls right now are irrelevant in the sense that they change nothing besides blood pressure levels. Barring some black swan like death or serious illness, the 2024 US presidential contest will be Biden v. Trump. Polling isn’t going to change that. Biden being an underdog or not won’t change that, neither will panic.

    The time for choosing is rapidly approaching, and Americans will choose one or the other or neither — and reap the consequences accordingly. People can and will speculate with varying degrees of credibility, but nobody knows the future. Pollsters included.

    3
  13. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    I just think it’s strange that you only talk about the GoP needing to adapt when the consternation about the unfairness of the EC and Senate comes entirely from the Democratic side based on the idea that the rules are unfair to them now that Democrats have lost the structural advantages they once had.

    My point is merely that everyone needs to understand and play the game with the rules as they are and not as one might wish them to be, and that is exactly what the GoP is doing.

    1
  14. Alex K Avatar
    Alex K

    @Sleeping Dog: You can’t make any real comparisons of Biden to Bush because the 2024 election is not going to feature a third-party candidate who gets nearly 20% of the vote. It’s a huge outlier election.

    2024 is an outlier election, too, in its own way and I’m not sure what historical comparisons are meaningful.

    I will say, however, that since 2016 the Democrats have become the party that dominates in off-year elections, which is a change from the norm that’s existed for most of my life. That’s also something different.

    I’m not sure if historical comparisons are meaningful at all in this election. Things are dramatically in flux.

    2
  15. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Andy:

    My point is merely that everyone needs to understand and play the game with the rules as they are and not as one might wish them to be, and that is exactly what the GoP is doing.

    Without any doubt.

    My point is that the rules are causing many of our problems and instead of treating reform like an impossible wish, I am trying to educate about how many of our problems are, in fact, due to the system.

    And, moreover, if we are a society value representative democracy (and perhaps we don’t) then this should concern us.

    And I focus on the GOP because they are flirting with authoritarianism because the current rules favor minority rule. This is bad in my personal and professional opinion.

    11
  16. Daryl Avatar
    Daryl

    Gen Z is turning out in huge numbers for Dems…but none of them is going to answer an un-identified number on their cell phone. So the polling is flawed at it’s very root.

    7
  17. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Andy: And I know that reform is hard, if not impossible.

    But the only way to forward the cause of reform, apart from crisis or violence, is education.

    Cancer kills people; that’s reality. So we should stop trying to find a cure or advance treatments?

    5
  18. Kylopod Avatar
    Kylopod

    Sorry, disregard this post. I misunderstood what you said.

  19. Jen Avatar
    Jen

    @Daryl: I’ve been wondering about this. My phone flags a whole bunch of calls and texts as “possible spam” and sequesters that content elsewhere. I’m not sure what the mechanism is for calls…if it’s an automated dialing system*, then there’s a fair chance that even legitimate polling organizations are having their calls effectively cordoned off and ignored.

    * I do know that at least one call that was flagged as “possible spam” was the Red Cross, so there’s definitely something to consider here.

    1
  20. Jen Avatar
    Jen

    I just think it’s strange that you only talk about the GoP needing to adapt when the consternation about the unfairness of the EC and Senate comes entirely from the Democratic side based on the idea that the rules are unfair to them now that Democrats have lost the structural advantages they once had.

    My point is merely that everyone needs to understand and play the game with the rules as they are and not as one might wish them to be, and that is exactly what the GoP is doing.

    It’s probably worth noting that back in 2011/2012 Republicans were squawking about eliminating the Electoral College because they didn’t like the lock Democrats have on California.

    Still, these two things are not the same. Democrats are upset with the EC because it’s tilting results in favor of empty places where there are no people. Republicans were upset because they felt the state with the largest population was a lock for a single party.

    Democrats have the more representative argument here–they want every vote to matter. Republicans are having none of that. Even if this is what current conditions are, and we play the game with the hand we’re dealt, Democrats have the more moral and ethical stance here.

    9
  21. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    This is the old back-and-forth we have. I agree with the need for reform, but perhaps not the scope, scale, and sequencing.

    And yes, lots of things are difficult, but not equally so.

    – The most difficult is any attempt to amend the constitution, especially when there’s a perception it’s being promoted for partisan reasons.

    – Less difficult, but still very difficult, are options that don’t require amending the Constitution, such as expanding the House and working to implement some of these ideas (like PR) at the state level. It’s easier to get a state to try PR (or the many other ideas) than try to convince the entire country to run that experiment live. We’ve seen some of this with different experiments at the state and local level (RCV, jungle primaries, etc.) that are both necessary and useful. Ideas coming from the ivory tower are best tried on a smaller scale to see how they actually work in practice.

    – Somewhat less difficult than that – but still extremely difficult – are reforms to make parties and party leadership matter again, and to reinstate the ability for parties to better control and manage their brands. That means primary reform and campaign finance reform, for starters.

    Personally, these last two are where efforts should be focused, not only because they are more achievable, but also because there is no hope for the kind of grand reforms you envision without laying that groundwork.

    1
  22. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Andy:

    I just think it’s strange that you only talk about the GoP needing to adapt when the consternation about the unfairness of the EC and Senate comes entirely from the Democratic side based on the idea that the rules are unfair to them now that Democrats have lost the structural advantages they once had.

    More thoughts:

    1. My objection is not that the system is anti-Democratic. My objection is that it is anti-democratic. The fact that the anti-democratic elements hurt the Democrats is not the basis of my concern.

    2. I would dispute your assertion that the “Democrats have lost the structural advantages they once had” insofar as the main advantage that the Dem had in much of the 20th century was not structural as much as it was about the behavior of voters in the former CSA states voting exclusively for Democrats over Republicans, thus making the Democratic Party (because of Reconstruction, largely).

    To that point:

    US Party System Evolution

    Partisan Control in the Congress

    More on the Evolution of US Party Politics

    I think that those circumstances (and causes) are different, although I will readily allow that primary system for nominations (for Congress and other offices) made the Democratic South easier to accomplish and definitely, in my view, stopped the formation of second regional party to supplant the Reps.

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  23. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Andy:

    Personally, these last two are where efforts should be focused,

    That’s totally cool.

    But on a human level, perhaps you can understand why I might find it annoying to constantly be told that I am engaging in wishful thinking as if I am unaware of the complexities of the situation.

    Side note: I don’t think we get things like the RCV experiments without people like me asking for more comprehensive reform.

    5
  24. Lounsbury Avatar
    Lounsbury

    @Sleeping Dog: the comparison with Bush the Elder would seem to have real validity as a stronger comparable, although the ironic saving grace may indeed be the Orange person, as Biden against a normal – say Christie or Haley – could very well lose. The Orange person however represents such a profound horror that this seems very likely indeed to motivate not only broadly the Democrats but push away (or push into) non-party partisan float vote at the margins. A narrow thing, too narrow to count on but likely it seems.

    @Steven L. Taylor: I might suggest the broad range from which you get this could perhaps suggest that it is not as if you are unaware of a complexity but remaining Academic and academic about it, manipulating abstractions has quite diminishing returns to the particular audience.

  25. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Lounsbury:

    but remaining Academic and academic about it, manipulating abstractions has quite diminishing returns to the particular audience

    Perhaps. But then again, I do not think that I am writing just to the commenters. And I will also note that I have seen some of the commenters shift their views over the years, which rather reinforces, rather than discourages, my approach.

    But, ultimately my choices are: be true to myself or cease writing.

    5
  26. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    Well, I would return to this again:

    Of course, I continue to think that our core problem is that the undemocratic elements of our system, especially at the national level (the EC, the unrepresentative Senate, and the too-small House with its largely uncompetitive elections) all make it such that the GOP can still have enough hope to win without having to adapt. Competition should lead to losing parties to adapt. But if that can eke out power (e.g., the EC and in the Senate in particular, but even in uncompetitive House districts, which is most of them) without adapting, we get stagnation at best and, at worst, we get MTG’s and Matt Gaetz’s and Donald Trumps.

    And here is where I think your framing/analysis is incorrect, and is the basis of my disagreement.

    If we had the representational system you envision, then yes, you’d be correct that the GoP would lose and be forced to adapt. But we don’t live in that world. For better or worse, the GoP doesn’t need to adapt in the way you think is necessary, or to a great extent, under the actual rules of the game. The EC gives the GoP an advantage currently. It’s the party that is at a disadvantage that needs to adapt to overcome that disadvantage to win.

    The present GoP advantage wasn’t destiny and isn’t some iron law. A party that desires a strong or enduring majority when it has a disadvantage needs to take the steps necessary to achieve that strong and enduring majority. In the present circumstances, that is the Democrats more than the Republicans.

    I would dispute your assertion that the “Democrats have lost the structural advantages they once had”

    I’ve posted the numbers here before. In terms of representation, the Democrats through most of the 20th century had many more seats in the House and Senate than votes received. Sure, lots of other things were different, but the incongruence of representation by vote totals has been with us for a very long time.

    But on a human level, perhaps you can understand why I might find it annoying to constantly be told that I am engaging in wishful thinking as if I am unaware of the complexities of the situation.

    That’s fine, but it’s also a consequence of what I see as your desire to remain in the ivory tower and historic reluctance to get into the details of how to get where you want to go.

    I think this is a fundamental difference between us. You’re more of an ideas man, where I tend to look at things from the perspective of how a goal can be achieved and how to operationalize an idea.

    2
  27. Sleeping Dog Avatar
    Sleeping Dog

    @Alex K:

    Given that Perot drew, pretty much equally from Bush and Clinton, it isn’t germane to the results and is irrelevant to Bruni’s point that a major factor in he struggles of both Bush and Biden is that neither had a natural base of support. Dems coalesced around Biden, because they believed that he was the better candidate to face trump, not because he excited them.

    Which makes @Lounsbury: point valid, that Biden should benefit to the voters abhorrence of trump. Though that raises the question as to why in a poll where there are only two choices, why is trump beating Biden?

    1
  28. Paul L. Avatar
    Paul L.

    If Kermit Gosnell had been tried in Ohio, ballot measure Issue 1 would set him free.

    Section in the Ohio state constitution entitled, “The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety.” The amendment guarantees the right to abortion, though the state would be allowed to prohibit it after fetal viability, except in cases of the life or health of the mother.

  29. Just nutha ignint cracker Avatar
    Just nutha ignint cracker

    From a sidebar article in today’s Atlantic newsletter

    In Kentucky, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear carried the counties centered on Louisville and Lexington by about 40 percentage points each over Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron.

    Not intending to diminish Beshar’s accomplishment; simply an observation that the Republicans aren’t the only ones who have >+3o election imbalances. Both where I live and where Luddite lives, for example, if enough voters in Pugetropolis and the Willamette River valley want some particular statewide election outcome, it pretty much doesn’t matter what the rest of the state wants. Sometimes where people actually live matters more than who controls more real estate. Not often enough, but still enough this year, for example.

    For my money, while I’m here, the lesson from this may well be that if Democrats want to win, the most important thing is for them to show up–even for boring, meaningless mid-term, off-year, and primary elections. You may want to consider revising your slogan to include “every time” to “Vote blue, no matter who.” I realize this will spoil the scansion and rhyme scheme. Decide what’s important.

    1
  30. Joe Avatar
    Joe

    Apples and Orange.

    I see what you did there, Michael.

    1
  31. Lounsbury Avatar
    Lounsbury

    @Steven L. Taylor: of course it is your blog. But you should not be puzzled by certain reactions do your thing and that’s that. Or you can require complaints at least have some panache, there is always that.

    @Andy:

    I think this is a fundamental difference between us. You’re more of an ideas man, where I tend to look at things from the perspective of how a goal can be achieved and how to operationalize an idea.

    I do also find it rather sterile to engage in just abstract manipulation rather than operationalisation, mais voilà, he is an Academic and academic.

    @Sleeping Dog: The why may very simply be an expression of typical discontent with the sitting President and your pseudo-monarchical symbol status of the President. I believe Drum has outlined the actual approval rating on comparative basis re Biden is not truly (for like time into mandate) materially worse.

    This in addition that, despite the Lefty poo-pooing of inflation out of party-political motivated reasoning, it is really a universal political effect that general population hate inflation in a borderline innumerate way (one can point in behavioual economics to various effects driving this of which human bias to Loss-Aversion where recent losses are overweighted in unconscious counting, and gains are underweighted as well as value anchoring). So no matter what, the President who presides over a burst of inflation is going to pay a penalty [even if the bet was a reasonable one – that is the various stimuli programs were reasonable bets, the overshoot penalty is being continously under-estimated by a Democratic BoBo Left overweight to uni educated professionals, aka Progressives]

    Expressing discontent one year away from an actual choice and making an actual choice are materially different actions in the end.

    So whereas if Biden were faced with an opponent that was less overtly a disaster (by various metrics including metrics of say a normal centre-right person not fallen into radicalisation) I think the risk of Biden having a Bush the Elder result would be indeed very high, with the Orange person… the risk is attenuated. And probably in full campaign if Biden is clever again – I think he will be – he will be able to provoke Trump into scary unhinged discourse while playing Mr Cool.

    No sure thing, so it is good for Democrats to get some scares in polls to scare away any complacency and mitigate over-reach tendencies

    1
  32. Jen Avatar
    Jen

    As long as we’re talking about authoritarianism and ignoring democratic processes, let’s all take a moment to absorb that 37 of Ohio’s General Assembly members have stated they are going to do everything they can to negate the passage of the Constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights that *literally* just passed.

    Anyone want to guess which party?

    Tell me you DNGAF about your voters without telling me that you DNGAF about your voters.

    The GOP deserves to fade into oblivion, the sooner the better. Seriously, eff all of those Reps.

    7
  33. Just nutha ignint cracker Avatar
    Just nutha ignint cracker

    Deliberately avoiding (ETA:) calling attention to the principals in this conversation (partially because I prefer my comment to stand as a sidebar rather than a counter) I’m finding some difficulty distinguishing between plans that are

    – Somewhat less difficult than that – but still extremely difficult – and

    –Less difficult, but still very difficult,

    given that all of the options are pretty much equally unlikely to happen on a wide scale anytime in the next generation or so. And this is not a comment suggesting that continuing to seek change is a fool’s errand. “If not to let one’s reach exceed their grasp, what’s a world for?” to butcher an oft-used adage. They all seem equally unlikely to me, so the gradation by degree of difficulty seems redundant. But that’s probably just me.

  34. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Lounsbury:

    But you should not be puzzled by certain reactions do your thing and that’s that.

    Well, I would counter that the readers shouldn’t be puzzled by my approach.

    It is likely reading a blog run by an attorney and complaining that they focus too much on legal approaches to problems.

    5
  35. Just nutha ignint cracker Avatar
    Just nutha ignint cracker

    @Sleeping Dog:

    that raises the question as to why in a poll where there are only two choices, why is trump beating Biden?

    Is it possible that while “we” (whoever that is) believe trump to be abhorrent, America in aggregate (and particularly 5 or 6 swing states) either do not or are ignoring the question for the moment?

    2
  36. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @Just nutha ignint cracker: I remain convinced that the solution to the House gerrymandering problem is a Democratic Party friendly gerrymander so egregious that the conservative Supreme Court finds the need to step in and set standards.

    My preference would be for Illinois to create a starburst pattern centered on Chicago to get a 17-0 Democrat map. They did a decent gerrymander to get 14-3, but it’s not in-your-face enough.

    2
  37. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:

    Deliberately avoiding (ETA:) calling attention to the principals in this conversation (partially because I prefer my comment to stand as a sidebar rather than a counter) I’m finding some difficulty distinguishing between plans that are

    – Somewhat less difficult than that – but still extremely difficult – and

    –Less difficult, but still very difficult,

    On a political level, doing anything – including passing a basic budget and appropriations bills is difficult in the current climate.

    But if you look at the mechanics and the politics for various, there are significant differences.

    For example, increasing the size of the House only requires normal legislation. From a process viewpoint, it is easy, so the main obstacle is political. The politics are extremely difficult for a host of reasons. There isn’t exactly a huge base of donors willing to pour money into lobbyists on this issue.

    By contrast, change that requires a Constitutional amendment is both functionally and politically much, much more difficult. Functionally, it’s more difficult because it requires a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, or a constitutional convention called by two-thirds of the State legislatures (the latter, it should be noted, has never happened). Then it’s got to pass 3/4 of the state legislatures.

    Obviously that is much more difficult from a process standpoint. But it’s also politically much more difficult because of the supermajority requirement in both chambers and ratification among state legislatures. It – very intentionally – has many more veto points and requires a higher degree of national unity to achieve.

    So my view is it would be better to try the easier path first and spend political capital there. But also, the key to my argument, is that I think those smaller reforms are prerequisites to any attempt at achieving the bigger reforms.

  38. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    It is likely reading a blog run by an attorney and complaining that they focus too much on legal approaches to problems.

    From my own perspective, I’m not complaining about your focus, which I actually find quite valuable in contrast to my own. But I do want to point out, to use your analogy, that legal approaches aren’t the only approaches or the best approaches, and to offer alternatives.

    2
  39. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Andy:

    But I do want to point out, to use your analogy, that legal approaches aren’t the only approaches or the best approaches, and to offer alternatives.

    This is, of course, true.

    But that’s not my point.

    To be more direct: it is foolish to go to the lemon tree and criticize it for not producing apples since the recipe in your hand is for apple pie and not lemon squares.

    And I was specifically reacting to his bit about me being and Academic and too academic (although it fits, in my mind, with your assertions of wishful thinking, et al.).

    To shift my analogy, I understand that the cancer needs to be treated, but that shouldn’t preclude me from discussing what advanced techniques we can utilize to cure it if we were willing to invest in those pathways.

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