Idea for a PAC-financed ad to further damage the Republican brand and top R candidates in North Carolina: Brief video clips of the most vile, racist utterances from Robinson and Trump, underscored by the quote texts on screen. Concludes with large punchline written in font used by Alt-Reich groups:
"Vote for the Nazis – both Black and White."
.
Recent sample quote:
"[Crime would end] if you had one really violent day. One rough hour. And I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately.”
– Donald Trump, rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, 29 Sept 2024
The lead story reminds me of what happened with the Massachusetts State House map in the 2000s redistricting cycle. The leaders of the State House designed the map to minimize minority representation, especially in the City of Boston. After local advocacy groups sued, they were found to have said all sorts of racist things in the closed door meetings where the maps were drawn. Needless to say, the Federal court agreed with the plaintiffs and ordered several districts redrawn.
"Major NC USPS alert. All retail and delivery mail services are suspended in zip codes beginning in 286, 287, 288, 289, and also 39 other listed post offices. Besides the human tragedy, for election officials who could not place 190,000 absentee ballots in the mail until Sept 24 because of an 18-day delay ordered by a vote of the State Supreme Court, this is also a major potential threat to voting, especially since the 2023 legislative session ended the 3-day grace period."
Transportation is really a mess out there right now.
With the exception of Boone and Asheville, this is all pretty red territory where the GOP has been discouraging absentee voting for years. Or maybe sorta kinda half saying it's a little ok this year.
It would be interesting to know if there were more absentee ballots requested from Dem friendly Boone/Asheville vs the rest of the area.
But the bigger picture is that gasoline, water, power, etc is still in short supply up there, so very few locals care if their ballots arrive 2 weeks later. There's still time. Give the area a couple weeks to get back to a modicum of function. (Not a criticism of you, Arctic Stones, just a general comment.)
If played properly by Cooper, this could be a political plus(I contend that Andy Beshear won re-election due to his response to tornado damage in Kentucky)
He seems to be doing a good job. And he's had practice from other hurricanes. Florence flooded much of eastern NC a few years ago, for example. Though I'm in SC we have a split NC/SC news market, and I have lots of ties to W. Carolina Univ.
Yup and no; luckily big bend is sparsely populated(I am on the Atlantic; near Daytona Beach); interesting though that you mention Western Carolina; my father was a Catamount football player in the '50s(played line, in those days, they played both ways); that part of the state is beautiful(and Kerwin Bell was my classmate at UF)
Somewhat off topic, but I just realized that today is the last day of the end-of-quarter fundraising cycle; I expect my inbox to be inundated with desperate pleas from politicians of all stripes(Hoping that your inbox is heavily spam proof like mine)
It’s a pity ActBlue does not allow you to donate while withholding email and phone. I don’t see any good reason for requiring that information – other than enabling campaigns to contact you again and again to ask for additional donations. Not all of us are eager to do that.
On a side note, this morning I received a scam call telling me I had paid a bill twice and was eligible for a refund. I informed them: "Ok, I am recording this call for documentation and voice identification. Please proceed." They very quickly hung up.
I actually have a script that I use; one time I was watching a football game and during the first quarter received a scam call and held the idiot on the line until the 4th quarter when I couldn't hold my laughter any longer and just burst out laughing at that moron(wished afterwards that I had taped the whole thing)
That's a very typical scam, called the refund scam. If you look on YouTube for scambaiters, you'll see loads of examples. The ones in English are mostly done out of India, especially Kolkata. The same scam is done in French out of Tunisia, etc.
If you do that, please don't give someone else's info! I've been getting political spam for some Jacqueline Vargas for years, and I don't know her but I'm fucking pissed at her!
Someone else has the firstname.lastname@gmail address for me and, petty as it is, I hate them for it. I use it all the time whenever I need a throw away address to sign up for something. Mostly for free airport WiFi when I’m out of the country and don’t feel like paying for roaming charges. Sucks for them, but I will hold that grudge forever. I promise my name isn’t Jacqueline Vargas though.
The reason is that candidates must file disclose all reportable donations in their FEC filings. Any Act Blue fundraising page can let the contributors opt out of letting the recipients "keep you informed." Few pages I have seen allow this, however. Thus, I create my own page and almost always just contribute there. The spam does not stop but one gets a lot less of it.
I am well aware of the requirement for FEC filings. As far as I know, my full name and physical address is sufficient for that purpose.
I don’t want to opt out of "keep me informed", I want the ability to deprive recipients of ANY possibility whatsoever of contacting me by phone or email – without having to enter false information. For all I know, there might be some FEC or other regulation against the latter.
I totally agree with you and would love to do the same. (1) I think a lot of people/groups raising money would do a public service by letting contributors at least opt out of sharing their information. On your page you can choose to give them the choice. Admittedly, giving the choice and the contributor then being able to say "no" does not stop the campaigns getting our contact info. (2) Do we really know that ActBlue shares the email and phone number? Campaigns and scams can get it all sorts of places.
Slotkin is saying she is worried about the state of the race and Harris is "underwater" in Michigan according to her internals.
Normally this could just be panic-speak for the purpose of juicing fundraising but Democrats are outstanding 2-1 in Michigan so this statement stands out. Public polling could be wrong?
Which is more plausible: the entirety of public polling in Michigan, including big national pollsters as well as longstanding Michigan-based pollsters, is getting it wrong but somehow for some reason Elissa Slotkin's internal pollster is the only one getting it right. Or: this is the equivalent of those "we're in trouble, donate now!" emails?
It can be true, and a fundraising ploy. It's possible Slotkin has a poll or two that has Harris narrowly behind. With how narrow the margins are in other polls, it's not farfetched at all that Slotkin has had some polls showing Harris behind by a point or two. Statistically, one would expect that.
This. I have no doubt that Slotkin has a poll showing bad numbers for Harris. If her team is worth their salt they’re running numbers through all sorts of turnout models. The language is also worth paying attention to. “Underwater” doesn’t necessarily mean Harris is losing. It could also mean that she is under 50%.
It’s entirely possible that the Slotkin campaign is picking up on something no one else is, but is seems far more likely that this is a cherry picked result to drive fund raising.
Michigan's public polling hasn't been very impressive of late so I won't discount her anxiety. Just like the rest of the Midwest, it's important to remember that the Democrats still have a long way to fall before they bottom out in rural areas and may be doing just that. For all of the apprehension about Democrats losing support in Dearborn, they might have more to worry about in Bay City....and hundreds of places like it outside of metro Detroit.
This argument would be a lot more convincing if Democrats hadn't crushed it in Michigan in 2022. And that was with terrible inner-city and African-American turnout.
The polling in MI in 2022 showed a political environment much closer to 2020 than the actual 2022 results. 538 had it at Whitmer +4.8 and the other aggregators had it even closer
Frankly, I don't think polling has any greater predictive power than past election results. It's why I haven't jumped on the Osborn bandwagon - I still think he'll lose by 10, just because Nebraska is solidly Republican.
Agree on Osborn. The race is likely to track similar to Kansas in 2014. I'm fully prepared for a double-digit Fischer win. And there's been so little polling in Nebraska in recent cycles that I don't trust that have any idea how to weight polls for the contemporary electorate.
Sure, they may still have a long way to fall in the rurals. But don’t they also have a long way to go in increasing margins in the suburbs? A drop in the sparsely populated counties may be counteracted with gains in more populous places.
Maybe. Consider how heavily Palestinian and white working-class Detroit's suburbs are though, I'm inclined to think Republican growth outstate outpaces Democratic growth in the suburbs. I'm certainly not prepared to make bold predictions on whether the 2020 or 2022 electorate shows up though, at least not yet.
We talked about this a little in the weekend thread. What she said is nebulous enough that its unclear what she was actually saying. Her internal polling has probably modeled several different electorates and she very well could be losing in some of them, doesn't necessarily mean she's losing in most of them or the most likely of them, Her approval rating could be 1-2 points underwater, which while not optimal, is probably 10 points better than Trump in the state.
"But there are some signs the Senate race could be tightening — Republican internal polling shows the candidates are statistically tied, according to a source familiar with the matter."
Right, "tightening." All this means is that voters are being more in tuned with the race than they were months ago. When is this not common in Senate races?
The substantial muslim electorate in SE Michigan would seem to be in a spot to reconsider their alligiences...or to sit out. Maybe how they are modeled is the polling difference.
What exactly is the impact of the Muslim electorate? I’ve heard claims from they will decide the race to they are so small they won’t matter. A quick search shows they are 1% of the state population. If they’re geographically concentrated then I could see them making the difference in local races. But for a statewide race they seem less impactful than most other minority populations,
Arab Americans are over 2% of the Michigan population and there were 100,000 votes against Biden in the Michigan primary (uncommitted). He won Arab/Muslim cities by roughly 3 to 1 in 2020 general but lost them to uncommitted in 2024 primary. I haven't heard if Rashida Tlaib has endorsed Harris but she was for uncommitted before. Biden took Michigan by ~155,000 votes or 2.8% in 2020. Trump won by ~10,700 in 2016. If 75,000 Arab/Muslim voters leave Harris for Trump, then the 2020 margin disappears. If they just don't vote, that's a pretty big pool to lose in a close election.
If you are an Arab American, what's the option? Vote for a guy you know hates and demonizes you, or vote for the VP of the guy who can't stop Israel from killing your innocent relatives. Or vote for Cornell West if he's on the ballot in Michigan as a protest?
Thanks for the numbers, that’s good data, and the numbers show it could be a more significant voting bloc than I initially thought. One caveat though, I think Harris may have a little more room to offset any loss of votes by increases from women, minorities and youth. Of course there is the argument that she will bleed WWC voters as well. But I think the opportunity is there for her to have a winning coalition even with massive losses in the Arab American community.
I have to believe the youth vote will turn out more for Harris than they did for Biden last time, both in raw vote and in %. All your caveats seem fair to me. Better political minds than me might be able to handicap the various turnouts and supports. My conclusion is <shrug emoji> and a prayer.
This is awful. While I'm not a fan of Rep. Anna Paulina Luna's agenda, the fact that a GOP Challenger in the FL-13 primary went so far as to plot a plan to assassinate her is just madness.
The fact that the Department of Justice investigated this illustrates how serious this threat really went.
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — A former Republican candidate for Congress in Florida has been charged with threatening to send a hit squad to kill an opponent in the race, federal authorities said Friday.
William Braddock claimed in a recorded call with a local activist that he would send a Russian and Ukrainian hit squad to kill Anna Paulina Luna during the 2022 primary for a seat in the Clearwater area, the Department of Justice said. Luna went on to win the seat in the general election.
Braddock, 41, was extradited from the Philippines, where he moved after the primary, on a charge of interstate transmission of a true threat to injure another person. He made an initial appearance Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles.
The charges stem from the contentious Republican primary that was heating up after then Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) announced he was not going to run for reelection for his Pinellas County congressional seat.
POLITICO previously reported that a conservative activist recorded Braddock telling her to not support Luna — who had lost to Crist to 2020 — because he had access to assassins.
“I really don’t want to have to end anybody’s life for the good of the people of the United States of America,” he said, according to the recording obtained at the time by POLITICO. “That will break my heart. But if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. Luna is a fucking speed bump in the road. She’s a dead squirrel you run over every day when you leave the neighborhood.”
I hope Luna loses as well, especially considering she's representing a Lean GOP district compared to what FL-13 used to be when Charlie Crist represented it in the House.
However, Luna can lose the election without a Democratic Candidate having to stoop down to the level that William Braddock did. She just got elected to the House back in 2022 and there's no assurances she'll remain in the House in the near future.
Money quote: "From its front-page endorsement in the month before the Democratic primary in 2021 until the end of the election that year, the Post printed ten covers either boosting Adams or trashing his rivals. During that same time period, according to Nexis research results, the Post ran more than 300 items mentioning Adams."
This is something that brings me some comfort when I feel extra anxious about this election. Back in 2020 Republicans had a relatively sophisticated ground game and Democrats' was very limited due to Covid. It's clear that Republicans won't have that advantage this year.
I believe several hundreds of thousands of people unnecessarily died due to Trump's incompetent handling of covid.
In my family, we didn't lose anyone, and I had my mother, an aunt and an uncle in their upper 90s. The reasons we had success was we didn't have them in nursing homes and me and my cousins followed health protocols and got vaccinations as soon as possible. By the time my uncle and aunt got covid, they had 4 vaccines, my mom and I, 5. All cases were mild.
I fully support the Democrats being careful, but suspect the next pandemic will go worse than covid due to this attitude.
Hindsight is 20/20. Could the Dems have been more aggressive in their ground game back in 2020 with minimal impact to public health? Probably. Was erring on the side of caution to save lives the correct call at the time? Absolutely.
You should probably stop doing this if you want to be a part of this community for long. We heard you the first 8 times and know your feelings on this topic.
It doesn’t. You’re free to believe whatever you want on any issue. But people who repeat themselves over and over on subjects not actually having anything to do with that discussion topic often get labeled as trolls and are quickly kicked out. I’m telling you this as a favor, in trying to keep you here. What you do with that information is completely up to you though.
In hindsight, probably. But, we had to have crap rules bc of crap people. George Floyd protests erupted and people were wearing masks standing in crowds by the thousands. Nothing.
Trump has a stadium rally two months later and Herman Cain dies.
The Trump Campaign and RNC has outsourced their groundgame to Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, and to Elon Musk’s PAC. What could possibly go wrong? /s
"...Kamala Harris returning early from a campaign visit to Las Vegas to attend briefings and Donald Trump heading to Georgia to see the storm’s impact."
“Pollsters caution against assuming that the polls this cycle are susceptible to the same errors as previous ones..."
A propos, there's a useful chart in the New York Times that was posted by Dan Pfeiffer and showed up in my Substack feed, showing the results in the presidential race if polls are off the way they were in 2022 (looked like a substantial win for Harris) or 2022 (even bigger win for Trump). I'll try to link it.
Today marks the end of Q3 fundraising, and the end of the monthly Presidential fundraising periods that will be reported before election day. Any guesses as to what Harris and Trump brought in in September? Harris made a big move through California raising money, and Trump made a big move through Texas raising money over the weekend.
My guess is Harris raises about 385 million, which would be a 6-7% increase over August
Trump, I am less sure on. He’s raised less month over month the last few months after peaking in May, and I don’t see a reason for that pattern to change, as weird as that pattern is historically speaking. So I’ll go with 129 million, a 1 million dollar drop from his August numbers. For reference he raised 7 million less in August in July.
I wouldn't be surprised if its over 400 for Harris. As someone who lives in a safe blue state, I'm not only seeing way more Harris ads than Trump ads, I'm seeing way more Harris ads than I saw Biden or Trump ads in 2020. And its because I'm watching high viewership events like football games and she's putting out non-targeted ads to reach as many people as possible, efficiency be damned. I'll go slightly lower on Trump at 125.
Well, I don’t watch much American carry-ball. (Ducks to avoid tomatoes.)
A typical Superbowl game has an absurd amount of commercials for the preposterously-few 11–13 minutes that the ball is actually in play. Nah, give me real football (what’s called "soccer" here) – with a proper 90 (!) minutes of action.
On another note, I do think it would be amusing to hear golf or baseball commentators commenting American football games, and vice versa.
When you're running ads during Baltimore vs Buffalo or Kansas City vs Los Angeles, which was the case yesterday, you're trying to reach as many people as possible
Sunday Night Football is usually the most watched thing on TV in a given week, which is what Baltimore-Buffalo was yesterday, and it will probably be the most watched thing on TV last week. And so the campaign is just trying to reach as many people as possible
And they have plenty of cash on hand to do it; this weekend I watched a ton of sports(golf, college football, NFL, and MLB) Harris ads were everywhere, very few Trump(yes,I know it's anecdotal)
400 would be great. But that's such a large increase over August, I'm not sure it's very likely. Harris in August 2024 narrowly trailed Biden's haul from August 2020, and $400 million would put her well above what Biden got in Septemeber 2020.
You have to remember after she cleaned Trump's clock in the debate, that day\night was her biggest single day of the cycle(I am not speculating here;other than I will guess she is $1 more than the last cycle)
Well, here are the weekly #s, in millions, from ActBlue. Not all Harris, but largely. And WOW
9/1-7: 88.7
9/8-14: 167 (debate week)
9/15-21: 114.7
9/22-28: 127.2
9/29-30: 28.5
by my math thats 528 million - again, all ActBlue, not just Harris. But also not other sources (like, e.g., her private big-donor fundraising, such as 55m this weekend)
It's being reported on kos that Harris has raised $519Million in September(someone extrapolated that out to $530 million by midnight); not sure if this is verified
Check this; now it's being pointed out that the actual Harris number is between $350-400 million (the other number was total act blue including other democratic candidates; sorry)
I haven't commented much here but you are forcing me to write something after featuring a picture of Kevin De Leon and his Amazing Latino Kennedy Hair (tm) at the top of today's page. There are two local ballot measures to establish independent redistricting commissions, one for L.A. City Council districts and another for the LAUSD school board elections. These are important but the biggest local proposition is one to expand the county Board of Supervisors from five to nine members and have an elected County Executive. That one, Measure G, was just endorsed by the Times today. Not the NYT, but the Los Angeles Times, which is the main paper out here. I haven't seen much campaigning for or against any of these ballot measures yet, but expect things to develop after the ballots arrive (around 10/7, only a week away.)
Kevin De Leon is in one of only two city council races that have gone to a runoff this year (out of seven contests in 2024). I believe that he will likely be defeated by Ysabel Jurado, but it isn't over until the votes are counted. Kevin will have more money and name recognition as the longtime incumbent, and is part of the largest ethnic community in the district (He is of Mexican ancestry.) One thing that gives Ysabel more of a chance is that L.A. has a strong public matching fund for campaign contributions from city residents, including people from outside the district. If I give her $20 she gets $120 for her campaign. She is a tenants' rights attorney and Filipina. Her campaign is doing a lot of direct voter contact rather than just mailers or media ads. Jurado is one of the new generation of outsider activist people running in our city, like Nithya Raman, Eunisses Hernandez, and Hugo Soto Martinez who have all been elected to the city council.
The other runoff is in my district, CD-02. I will get to that later today or tomorrow. I am supposed to be in the west SFV at 11:15 to see my girlfriend for lunch. I will get back to y'all...
The decision found that the right to "liberty of privacy" in the Georgia constitution includes a right to abortion before viability. But I think this will be the most quoted passage:
“It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could – or should – force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.”
does it seem like far and away most polls these days are RW jobs like trafalgar who today shows t ahead in PA? and the atlasintel junk yesterday? whatever happened to those PPP polls that came out yesterday?
Idea for a PAC-financed ad to further damage the Republican brand and top R candidates in North Carolina: Brief video clips of the most vile, racist utterances from Robinson and Trump, underscored by the quote texts on screen. Concludes with large punchline written in font used by Alt-Reich groups:
"Vote for the Nazis – both Black and White."
.
Recent sample quote:
"[Crime would end] if you had one really violent day. One rough hour. And I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately.”
– Donald Trump, rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, 29 Sept 2024
I see someone has seen "The Purge."
Little Donald probably also watched some really exciting documentaries on Kristallnacht.
I loved the “Purge” movies!!
The lead story reminds me of what happened with the Massachusetts State House map in the 2000s redistricting cycle. The leaders of the State House designed the map to minimize minority representation, especially in the City of Boston. After local advocacy groups sued, they were found to have said all sorts of racist things in the closed door meetings where the maps were drawn. Needless to say, the Federal court agreed with the plaintiffs and ordered several districts redrawn.
"Major NC USPS alert. All retail and delivery mail services are suspended in zip codes beginning in 286, 287, 288, 289, and also 39 other listed post offices. Besides the human tragedy, for election officials who could not place 190,000 absentee ballots in the mail until Sept 24 because of an 18-day delay ordered by a vote of the State Supreme Court, this is also a major potential threat to voting, especially since the 2023 legislative session ended the 3-day grace period."
– Gerry Cohen, Wake County Board of Elections
Transportation is really a mess out there right now.
With the exception of Boone and Asheville, this is all pretty red territory where the GOP has been discouraging absentee voting for years. Or maybe sorta kinda half saying it's a little ok this year.
It would be interesting to know if there were more absentee ballots requested from Dem friendly Boone/Asheville vs the rest of the area.
But the bigger picture is that gasoline, water, power, etc is still in short supply up there, so very few locals care if their ballots arrive 2 weeks later. There's still time. Give the area a couple weeks to get back to a modicum of function. (Not a criticism of you, Arctic Stones, just a general comment.)
If played properly by Cooper, this could be a political plus(I contend that Andy Beshear won re-election due to his response to tornado damage in Kentucky)
He seems to be doing a good job. And he's had practice from other hurricanes. Florence flooded much of eastern NC a few years ago, for example. Though I'm in SC we have a split NC/SC news market, and I have lots of ties to W. Carolina Univ.
You're a Florida guy, right? Ties to Big Bend?
Yup and no; luckily big bend is sparsely populated(I am on the Atlantic; near Daytona Beach); interesting though that you mention Western Carolina; my father was a Catamount football player in the '50s(played line, in those days, they played both ways); that part of the state is beautiful(and Kerwin Bell was my classmate at UF)
like I said the other day....there is no way the hurricane does not impact the election!
Somewhat off topic, but I just realized that today is the last day of the end-of-quarter fundraising cycle; I expect my inbox to be inundated with desperate pleas from politicians of all stripes(Hoping that your inbox is heavily spam proof like mine)
It’s a pity ActBlue does not allow you to donate while withholding email and phone. I don’t see any good reason for requiring that information – other than enabling campaigns to contact you again and again to ask for additional donations. Not all of us are eager to do that.
Maybe try giving them bad e-mail\phone info??; just a thought(I do that to scammers here in Florida all the time just to f with them)
On a side note, this morning I received a scam call telling me I had paid a bill twice and was eligible for a refund. I informed them: "Ok, I am recording this call for documentation and voice identification. Please proceed." They very quickly hung up.
I actually have a script that I use; one time I was watching a football game and during the first quarter received a scam call and held the idiot on the line until the 4th quarter when I couldn't hold my laughter any longer and just burst out laughing at that moron(wished afterwards that I had taped the whole thing)
That's a very typical scam, called the refund scam. If you look on YouTube for scambaiters, you'll see loads of examples. The ones in English are mostly done out of India, especially Kolkata. The same scam is done in French out of Tunisia, etc.
I've done just that and it worked
If you do that, please don't give someone else's info! I've been getting political spam for some Jacqueline Vargas for years, and I don't know her but I'm fucking pissed at her!
I get them from Trump, his family, Ted Cruz, the RNC, etc. They will not stop. And I have NEVER donated to a Republican in my life.
I make up the info
Someone else has the firstname.lastname@gmail address for me and, petty as it is, I hate them for it. I use it all the time whenever I need a throw away address to sign up for something. Mostly for free airport WiFi when I’m out of the country and don’t feel like paying for roaming charges. Sucks for them, but I will hold that grudge forever. I promise my name isn’t Jacqueline Vargas though.
Lmao😂
You know a@a.com works for free airport WiFi....
The reason is that candidates must file disclose all reportable donations in their FEC filings. Any Act Blue fundraising page can let the contributors opt out of letting the recipients "keep you informed." Few pages I have seen allow this, however. Thus, I create my own page and almost always just contribute there. The spam does not stop but one gets a lot less of it.
I am well aware of the requirement for FEC filings. As far as I know, my full name and physical address is sufficient for that purpose.
I don’t want to opt out of "keep me informed", I want the ability to deprive recipients of ANY possibility whatsoever of contacting me by phone or email – without having to enter false information. For all I know, there might be some FEC or other regulation against the latter.
I totally agree with you and would love to do the same. (1) I think a lot of people/groups raising money would do a public service by letting contributors at least opt out of sharing their information. On your page you can choose to give them the choice. Admittedly, giving the choice and the contributor then being able to say "no" does not stop the campaigns getting our contact info. (2) Do we really know that ActBlue shares the email and phone number? Campaigns and scams can get it all sorts of places.
Also a good time to unsubscribe to any list you don’t want to receive anymore.
https://www.axios.com/2024/09/29/michigan-senate-race-slotkin-harris
Slotkin is saying she is worried about the state of the race and Harris is "underwater" in Michigan according to her internals.
Normally this could just be panic-speak for the purpose of juicing fundraising but Democrats are outstanding 2-1 in Michigan so this statement stands out. Public polling could be wrong?
Which is more plausible: the entirety of public polling in Michigan, including big national pollsters as well as longstanding Michigan-based pollsters, is getting it wrong but somehow for some reason Elissa Slotkin's internal pollster is the only one getting it right. Or: this is the equivalent of those "we're in trouble, donate now!" emails?
It's not improbable that private polling could diverge from public polling.
It can be true, and a fundraising ploy. It's possible Slotkin has a poll or two that has Harris narrowly behind. With how narrow the margins are in other polls, it's not farfetched at all that Slotkin has had some polls showing Harris behind by a point or two. Statistically, one would expect that.
This. I have no doubt that Slotkin has a poll showing bad numbers for Harris. If her team is worth their salt they’re running numbers through all sorts of turnout models. The language is also worth paying attention to. “Underwater” doesn’t necessarily mean Harris is losing. It could also mean that she is under 50%.
It’s entirely possible that the Slotkin campaign is picking up on something no one else is, but is seems far more likely that this is a cherry picked result to drive fund raising.
My guess is that she is basing her comment on the AtlasIntel poll and thinks such a comment will stop people from getting complacent.
Imo it's totally about fundraising and complacency
That's what I am betting on(with real money by the way)
Michigan's public polling hasn't been very impressive of late so I won't discount her anxiety. Just like the rest of the Midwest, it's important to remember that the Democrats still have a long way to fall before they bottom out in rural areas and may be doing just that. For all of the apprehension about Democrats losing support in Dearborn, they might have more to worry about in Bay City....and hundreds of places like it outside of metro Detroit.
This argument would be a lot more convincing if Democrats hadn't crushed it in Michigan in 2022. And that was with terrible inner-city and African-American turnout.
Polling has thus far reflected a political climate in Michigan closer to 2020 than 2022, but my faith in polling is declining.
The polling in MI in 2022 showed a political environment much closer to 2020 than the actual 2022 results. 538 had it at Whitmer +4.8 and the other aggregators had it even closer
Frankly, I don't think polling has any greater predictive power than past election results. It's why I haven't jumped on the Osborn bandwagon - I still think he'll lose by 10, just because Nebraska is solidly Republican.
Agree on Osborn. The race is likely to track similar to Kansas in 2014. I'm fully prepared for a double-digit Fischer win. And there's been so little polling in Nebraska in recent cycles that I don't trust that have any idea how to weight polls for the contemporary electorate.
Sure, they may still have a long way to fall in the rurals. But don’t they also have a long way to go in increasing margins in the suburbs? A drop in the sparsely populated counties may be counteracted with gains in more populous places.
Maybe. Consider how heavily Palestinian and white working-class Detroit's suburbs are though, I'm inclined to think Republican growth outstate outpaces Democratic growth in the suburbs. I'm certainly not prepared to make bold predictions on whether the 2020 or 2022 electorate shows up though, at least not yet.
LOL, they're not "heavily Palestinian". Muslims of all groups are only 2.4% of Michigan's population.
We talked about this a little in the weekend thread. What she said is nebulous enough that its unclear what she was actually saying. Her internal polling has probably modeled several different electorates and she very well could be losing in some of them, doesn't necessarily mean she's losing in most of them or the most likely of them, Her approval rating could be 1-2 points underwater, which while not optimal, is probably 10 points better than Trump in the state.
I posted about this yesterday and there was discussion about it in the weekend open thread, if you want to see it.
Also:
"But there are some signs the Senate race could be tightening — Republican internal polling shows the candidates are statistically tied, according to a source familiar with the matter."
Right, "tightening." All this means is that voters are being more in tuned with the race than they were months ago. When is this not common in Senate races?
The substantial muslim electorate in SE Michigan would seem to be in a spot to reconsider their alligiences...or to sit out. Maybe how they are modeled is the polling difference.
What exactly is the impact of the Muslim electorate? I’ve heard claims from they will decide the race to they are so small they won’t matter. A quick search shows they are 1% of the state population. If they’re geographically concentrated then I could see them making the difference in local races. But for a statewide race they seem less impactful than most other minority populations,
Arab Americans are over 2% of the Michigan population and there were 100,000 votes against Biden in the Michigan primary (uncommitted). He won Arab/Muslim cities by roughly 3 to 1 in 2020 general but lost them to uncommitted in 2024 primary. I haven't heard if Rashida Tlaib has endorsed Harris but she was for uncommitted before. Biden took Michigan by ~155,000 votes or 2.8% in 2020. Trump won by ~10,700 in 2016. If 75,000 Arab/Muslim voters leave Harris for Trump, then the 2020 margin disappears. If they just don't vote, that's a pretty big pool to lose in a close election.
If you are an Arab American, what's the option? Vote for a guy you know hates and demonizes you, or vote for the VP of the guy who can't stop Israel from killing your innocent relatives. Or vote for Cornell West if he's on the ballot in Michigan as a protest?
Thanks for the numbers, that’s good data, and the numbers show it could be a more significant voting bloc than I initially thought. One caveat though, I think Harris may have a little more room to offset any loss of votes by increases from women, minorities and youth. Of course there is the argument that she will bleed WWC voters as well. But I think the opportunity is there for her to have a winning coalition even with massive losses in the Arab American community.
I have to believe the youth vote will turn out more for Harris than they did for Biden last time, both in raw vote and in %. All your caveats seem fair to me. Better political minds than me might be able to handicap the various turnouts and supports. My conclusion is <shrug emoji> and a prayer.
This is awful. While I'm not a fan of Rep. Anna Paulina Luna's agenda, the fact that a GOP Challenger in the FL-13 primary went so far as to plot a plan to assassinate her is just madness.
The fact that the Department of Justice investigated this illustrates how serious this threat really went.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/27/opponent-anna-paulina-luna-threatening-00181523
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TALLAHASSEE, Florida — A former Republican candidate for Congress in Florida has been charged with threatening to send a hit squad to kill an opponent in the race, federal authorities said Friday.
William Braddock claimed in a recorded call with a local activist that he would send a Russian and Ukrainian hit squad to kill Anna Paulina Luna during the 2022 primary for a seat in the Clearwater area, the Department of Justice said. Luna went on to win the seat in the general election.
Braddock, 41, was extradited from the Philippines, where he moved after the primary, on a charge of interstate transmission of a true threat to injure another person. He made an initial appearance Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles.
The charges stem from the contentious Republican primary that was heating up after then Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) announced he was not going to run for reelection for his Pinellas County congressional seat.
POLITICO previously reported that a conservative activist recorded Braddock telling her to not support Luna — who had lost to Crist to 2020 — because he had access to assassins.
“I really don’t want to have to end anybody’s life for the good of the people of the United States of America,” he said, according to the recording obtained at the time by POLITICO. “That will break my heart. But if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. Luna is a fucking speed bump in the road. She’s a dead squirrel you run over every day when you leave the neighborhood.”
He should get life in prison plus 50 years(and I still hope Luna loses as well)
Honestly, he should probably be in a rubber room.
Ok.. Lol
I hope Luna loses as well, especially considering she's representing a Lean GOP district compared to what FL-13 used to be when Charlie Crist represented it in the House.
However, Luna can lose the election without a Democratic Candidate having to stoop down to the level that William Braddock did. She just got elected to the House back in 2022 and there's no assurances she'll remain in the House in the near future.
More evidence that he's a closet Republican: https://politicalwire.com/2024/09/30/eric-adams-has-secretive-alliance-with-the-new-york-post/
Money quote: "From its front-page endorsement in the month before the Democratic primary in 2021 until the end of the election that year, the Post printed ten covers either boosting Adams or trashing his rivals. During that same time period, according to Nexis research results, the Post ran more than 300 items mentioning Adams."
https://politicalwire.com/2024/09/30/ted-cruz-suddenly-insists-hes-bipartisan/
"What is new is we’re finally getting the press to report on it.”
Hahahah
Ted Cruz is absolutely bipartisan. He seeks to build a bridge between the MAGA Party and the Libertarian Party.
I think the hatred of him is pretty evenly distributed between Dems and Reps, so yeah.
The John Boehner quote about Cruz is a classic
Yet another report about this on Politicalwire: https://politicalwire.com/2024/09/30/republicans-raise-alarms-about-trumps-ground-game/
This was not the case back in 2020 when the GOP and Trump 2020 campaign had by contrast a better ground game.
This is something that brings me some comfort when I feel extra anxious about this election. Back in 2020 Republicans had a relatively sophisticated ground game and Democrats' was very limited due to Covid. It's clear that Republicans won't have that advantage this year.
Democrats were wrong to have been that obsessed with COVID because a better ground game might’ve won a couple closer races.
I believe several hundreds of thousands of people unnecessarily died due to Trump's incompetent handling of covid.
In my family, we didn't lose anyone, and I had my mother, an aunt and an uncle in their upper 90s. The reasons we had success was we didn't have them in nursing homes and me and my cousins followed health protocols and got vaccinations as soon as possible. By the time my uncle and aunt got covid, they had 4 vaccines, my mom and I, 5. All cases were mild.
I fully support the Democrats being careful, but suspect the next pandemic will go worse than covid due to this attitude.
Good job to you and your family(that's literally a miracle that they all survived)
Thank you.
Mom's still going in a very healthy condition but for Alzheimer's.. Although she recently did a trip to Chicago by herself (to bros).
My uncle and aunt have passed, but of the normal old age diseases, not a pandemic.
Hindsight is 20/20. Could the Dems have been more aggressive in their ground game back in 2020 with minimal impact to public health? Probably. Was erring on the side of caution to save lives the correct call at the time? Absolutely.
You should probably stop doing this if you want to be a part of this community for long. We heard you the first 8 times and know your feelings on this topic.
Why does it bother you so much that I have such a view of that issue?
It doesn’t. You’re free to believe whatever you want on any issue. But people who repeat themselves over and over on subjects not actually having anything to do with that discussion topic often get labeled as trolls and are quickly kicked out. I’m telling you this as a favor, in trying to keep you here. What you do with that information is completely up to you though.
In hindsight, probably. But, we had to have crap rules bc of crap people. George Floyd protests erupted and people were wearing masks standing in crowds by the thousands. Nothing.
Trump has a stadium rally two months later and Herman Cain dies.
I’ll admit I only masked when people forced me to. I’ve got severe sinus problems, so I couldn’t breathe with the mask on.
Oh please.
I mean, I have asthma and I masked up fine.
People like you killed people like my wife, a PA who worked in urgent care, during the Pandemic.
The Trump Campaign and RNC has outsourced their groundgame to Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, and to Elon Musk’s PAC. What could possibly go wrong? /s
Grifters gonna grift
https://politicalwire.com/2024/09/30/hurricane-scrambles-campaign-schedules/
"...Kamala Harris returning early from a campaign visit to Las Vegas to attend briefings and Donald Trump heading to Georgia to see the storm’s impact."
Will Trump be handing out paper-towel rolls, like he did in Puerto Rico?
https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/171003141618-02-trump-paper-towels-puerto-rico-10-03-2017-super-tease.jpg
more like soiled tp
Well, here is the famous footage of toilet paper with that big Orange Turd stuck to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwXcZa3LfYY
https://politicalwire.com/2024/09/30/dont-assume-trump-will-underperform-the-polls/
“Pollsters caution against assuming that the polls this cycle are susceptible to the same errors as previous ones..."
A propos, there's a useful chart in the New York Times that was posted by Dan Pfeiffer and showed up in my Substack feed, showing the results in the presidential race if polls are off the way they were in 2022 (looked like a substantial win for Harris) or 2022 (even bigger win for Trump). I'll try to link it.
Let's see if this link works: https://substack.com/@messagebox/note/c-70838704?r=17bef&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
It did.
Sorry, that was supposed to read 2022 or 2020.
Today marks the end of Q3 fundraising, and the end of the monthly Presidential fundraising periods that will be reported before election day. Any guesses as to what Harris and Trump brought in in September? Harris made a big move through California raising money, and Trump made a big move through Texas raising money over the weekend.
My guess is Harris raises about 385 million, which would be a 6-7% increase over August
Trump, I am less sure on. He’s raised less month over month the last few months after peaking in May, and I don’t see a reason for that pattern to change, as weird as that pattern is historically speaking. So I’ll go with 129 million, a 1 million dollar drop from his August numbers. For reference he raised 7 million less in August in July.
I wouldn't be surprised if its over 400 for Harris. As someone who lives in a safe blue state, I'm not only seeing way more Harris ads than Trump ads, I'm seeing way more Harris ads than I saw Biden or Trump ads in 2020. And its because I'm watching high viewership events like football games and she's putting out non-targeted ads to reach as many people as possible, efficiency be damned. I'll go slightly lower on Trump at 125.
I am not seeing any political ads on the livestreaming of the chess grandmaster tournaments that I favor.
Pretty sure that would be THE definition of microtargeting. 😄
Well, I don’t watch much American carry-ball. (Ducks to avoid tomatoes.)
A typical Superbowl game has an absurd amount of commercials for the preposterously-few 11–13 minutes that the ball is actually in play. Nah, give me real football (what’s called "soccer" here) – with a proper 90 (!) minutes of action.
On another note, I do think it would be amusing to hear golf or baseball commentators commenting American football games, and vice versa.
Or rugby which has 80 minutes of action. Both of which are better games IMHO than football. Not to mention MUCH fewer commercials!
Sometimes for things like sporting events it’s cheaper to just do a national buy than do multiple market specific buys.
When you're running ads during Baltimore vs Buffalo or Kansas City vs Los Angeles, which was the case yesterday, you're trying to reach as many people as possible
Chiefs games are perhaps the single best weekly football game to reach as many people as possible. Super bowl champions plus Swfties' favorite team.
Baltimore vs Buffalo is pretty niche though.
That being said, as a college football fan, watching Big Ten games are absolutely packed with political ads.
Sunday Night Football is usually the most watched thing on TV in a given week, which is what Baltimore-Buffalo was yesterday, and it will probably be the most watched thing on TV last week. And so the campaign is just trying to reach as many people as possible
And they have plenty of cash on hand to do it; this weekend I watched a ton of sports(golf, college football, NFL, and MLB) Harris ads were everywhere, very few Trump(yes,I know it's anecdotal)
How does that tend to work out in terms of numbers, roughly?
I saw a Harris ad during a WNBA game between Indiana and Connecticut.
400 would be great. But that's such a large increase over August, I'm not sure it's very likely. Harris in August 2024 narrowly trailed Biden's haul from August 2020, and $400 million would put her well above what Biden got in Septemeber 2020.
You have to remember after she cleaned Trump's clock in the debate, that day\night was her biggest single day of the cycle(I am not speculating here;other than I will guess she is $1 more than the last cycle)
Well, here are the weekly #s, in millions, from ActBlue. Not all Harris, but largely. And WOW
9/1-7: 88.7
9/8-14: 167 (debate week)
9/15-21: 114.7
9/22-28: 127.2
9/29-30: 28.5
by my math thats 528 million - again, all ActBlue, not just Harris. But also not other sources (like, e.g., her private big-donor fundraising, such as 55m this weekend)
It's being reported on kos that Harris has raised $519Million in September(someone extrapolated that out to $530 million by midnight); not sure if this is verified
Check this; now it's being pointed out that the actual Harris number is between $350-400 million (the other number was total act blue including other democratic candidates; sorry)
Oops, posted that above before I saw your comment. But the ActBlue $$ don't count other sources (such as 55m this weekend at 2 events)
Yup; we may have to do some back of the envelope math to get the real Harris numbers; but, needless to say, she's kicking it in fundraising
I haven't commented much here but you are forcing me to write something after featuring a picture of Kevin De Leon and his Amazing Latino Kennedy Hair (tm) at the top of today's page. There are two local ballot measures to establish independent redistricting commissions, one for L.A. City Council districts and another for the LAUSD school board elections. These are important but the biggest local proposition is one to expand the county Board of Supervisors from five to nine members and have an elected County Executive. That one, Measure G, was just endorsed by the Times today. Not the NYT, but the Los Angeles Times, which is the main paper out here. I haven't seen much campaigning for or against any of these ballot measures yet, but expect things to develop after the ballots arrive (around 10/7, only a week away.)
Kevin De Leon is in one of only two city council races that have gone to a runoff this year (out of seven contests in 2024). I believe that he will likely be defeated by Ysabel Jurado, but it isn't over until the votes are counted. Kevin will have more money and name recognition as the longtime incumbent, and is part of the largest ethnic community in the district (He is of Mexican ancestry.) One thing that gives Ysabel more of a chance is that L.A. has a strong public matching fund for campaign contributions from city residents, including people from outside the district. If I give her $20 she gets $120 for her campaign. She is a tenants' rights attorney and Filipina. Her campaign is doing a lot of direct voter contact rather than just mailers or media ads. Jurado is one of the new generation of outsider activist people running in our city, like Nithya Raman, Eunisses Hernandez, and Hugo Soto Martinez who have all been elected to the city council.
The other runoff is in my district, CD-02. I will get to that later today or tomorrow. I am supposed to be in the west SFV at 11:15 to see my girlfriend for lunch. I will get back to y'all...
I look forward to local ground takes like yours; thank you
I just got a text from Nazarian's campaign. Happy to say I supported Jillian instead.
Judge again strikes down Georgia abortion law, allowing abortions to resume
https://ajc.com/politics/judge-again-strikes-down-georgia-abortion-law-allowing-abortions-to-resume/4PWIUSQDMNAPRNRQ6HEA7LPQC4/
All but the first two paragraphs of the article are grayed out for me. Was the ruling based on the state constitution?
Yes
There's a diary on Daily Kos with quotes and a link to the full decision: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/30/2273881/-GA-Judge-Invokes-the-Handmaid-s-Tale-in-Striking-Down-Abortion-law?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
The decision found that the right to "liberty of privacy" in the Georgia constitution includes a right to abortion before viability. But I think this will be the most quoted passage:
“It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could – or should – force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.”
does it seem like far and away most polls these days are RW jobs like trafalgar who today shows t ahead in PA? and the atlasintel junk yesterday? whatever happened to those PPP polls that came out yesterday?
They are mentioned in the digest
https://politicalwire.com/2024/09/30/nebraska-house-seat-moves-to-lean-democratic/
Per Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball. He must be seeing really good numbers for Vargas!