332 Comments

With appropriate rage, Nina Simone sang it so articulately: "Mississippi Goddam!" Now, can we please have a national recall referendum for justices Alito, Thomas, Roberts, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett?

Oh, snap!

Expand full comment

Roberts would probably win, since he has stronger political instincts. The other five, though, I suspect would lose.

Expand full comment

I think the past couple years prove Roberts does NOT in fact have any political instincts. He's arguably one of the worst Chief Justices in history, given the current reputation of the court, the partisanship, scandals, divisive decisions, ignoring precedent, and on and on. He has no control over this court and doesn't even pretend or try to. I think the myth that Roberts has any clue what he is doing may have come from his ONE decisive vote to save the Affordable Care Act, but he voted against gay marriage that same term (I believe?), so I don't think it proves anything. He himself admitted he was surprised by Dobbs and has basically been hiding from the public ever since. An intellectual lightweight who lives in an alternate reality, with ZERO ability to read the room. I think he'd get trounced worse than the rest.

Expand full comment

Roberts is actually very cunning in his evil "death by 1000 cuts" approach to rolling back the Constitution, but his careful planning/execution (since the 80's) has been upended by the McConnell/Trump appointments empowering the court wildmen.

Expand full comment

EARLY VOTE – KEY STATES (Updated)

(UPDATE, 9:30pm) All in all, over 47.5 million people have already voted. Over 24.2 million Mail Ballots have been returned, while almost 23.4 million people have voted Early In-Person. This morning, North Carolina joined Georgia in exceeding 50% of its 2020 turnout. With its massive voting, Texas is likely to join them within a few days – and Florida is not far behind!

Here are the vote totals so far, plus the 2024 Early Vote as a percentage of the Total 2020 Vote, for eight swing states:

GA 60.7% 3,050,666

NC 50.8% 2,820,002*

FL 46.1% 5,135,201*

NV 45.8% 644,053

AZ 41% 1,400,797

MI 34% 1,896,105

WI 25.9% 858,166

PA 20.3% 1,414,839

Expand full comment

Other key states, four included because of vital Senate races:

TX 47.3% 5,365,110

MT 41.3% 252,638

VA 32.2% 1,457,884

OH 27.4% 1,637,003

NE 21.2% 205,324

Other states with strong Early Vote: SD 55.1%, TN 47.3%,

(Vote totals and percentages are from Prof. Michael McDonald’s Election Project, which in turn are based on official reports from the various Secretaries of State. When I update, I’ll change my time-stamp.)

https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/

Expand full comment

For comparison, Friday's update was 34.3 million votes, and Thursday's was 31.4 million. So the pace of voting is still strong, and maybe even increasing.

Expand full comment

In Texas, too, the pace is very strong.

Expand full comment

DFW suburbs seem to be exceptionally high. If a lot of ticket splitters there (like Warnock won many affluent suburbs in mid to high teens where Abrams lost narrowly), Allred could have an outside chance.

Expand full comment

While we're not yet at the point where higher turnout in greater DFW is necessarily a good thing, it's at least not necessarily a bad thing. Harris's margin in Dallas County will be the decisive factor, but she should also carry Collin and Tarrant while breaking even in Denton. Whether or not she can continue the momentum in Rockwall, Ellis, and Kaufman is one of the things I'm most looking forward to seeing, along with an answer as to whether or not she begin a trend in Johnson and Parker, as Biden did in the aforementioned trio four years ago.

Expand full comment

As those over RRH Elections keep gloating that the early vote numbers signifies raging GOP enthusiasm and Dems being unmotivated/demoralised, how true is this assertion?

Expand full comment

It's basically BS. High-propensity Republicans are voting early, as are high-propensity Dems. The sequencing isn't exactly the same as 2020 - Republicans are earlier - which is why they're gloating, but you wouldn't expect it to be the same given the pandemic effects.

Both parties still have a lot of work to do to turn out low-propensity voters. We need to work on minority and youth turnout. Republicans need to work on turnout among their surge voters from 2020 (rural whites, mostly). What gives me hope is that I know we're working hard. I did a shift in Milwaukee this weekend, and we're knocking on every targeted door, not just once but *every weekend*. I don't know that the Republicans are working hard at all.

Expand full comment

As my posts below indicate, I also think the ground game is strong. And I have not seen any Republicans canvassing in my neighborhood so far, whereas I saw 3-4 Trump canvassers back in 2020. (They wore MAGA hats and carry clipboards, which made them easy to spot back then. Maybe they are more discrete now.)

Expand full comment
Oct 28Liked by Jeff Singer

As the years go by we'll more easily see 2020's vote method polarization for the massive outlier that it was. Simply no way to recreate the dynamic where paranoid liberals, many of whom had voted election day their whole lives, all rushed to mail in their ballots ASAP because of covid and fears over post-office delays...while at the same time the GOP president was telling everyone mail voting was fraud and that true patriots needed to wait to vote in person on election day, since covid wasn't a big deal. The amount of reversion that was bound to happen this year was inevitable. Republicans like voting early now. Democrats are fine with waiting longer to vote, or just showing up in person next week Tuesday. Any comparison to 2020 is absolutely useless.

Expand full comment

Agreed for the most part, but wouldn't you say at this point that things are looking pretty hairy in Nevada?

Expand full comment

Hairy is probably on the pessimistic side, but at the same time it doesn’t look great. Ralston made a comment yesterday that the way the numbers look now, Dems need to win Independents by 5 points. Biden won them by 6 points in 2020. It’s also been commented on here that due to change in registration procedures, more younger / new voters will be registered as Independent than in previous years, which implies that winning them by at least 5 is certainly possible.

Essentially, it looks pretty much like what was expected. NV is a toss up.

Expand full comment

No, because of exactly what Skaje said. Plus Clark is slower at going through absentee ballots than the Cow Counties. And, like we've discussed before, the undeclared voters skew young thanks to the way AVR works in NV, and therefore will go to Harris.

I'm expecting pretty much a repeat of 2020 in Nevada.

Expand full comment
Oct 28Liked by Jeff Singer

The only time I can say things definitively looked hairy in Nevada was leading up to 2014 when it became clear Dem turnout in Clark was going to be like half of what it was in 2010 (also a very bad election!) In all the elections after, with most statewide races in single digits, I've never had the sense that early vote analysis (even from the vaunted Jon Ralston) could conclusively tell us who was going to end up on the right side of a low to mid single digit win. The early vote stats in Nevada look just as "bad" as they do in Colorado this year and I don't think anyone expects Trump to gain ground in the latter when election results and trends in recent years are horrendous for the CO GOP. Republicans are voting earlier, Democrats are voting later, I just don't know what conclusions can be drawn from that besides "2020 was weird". I say this not with confidence/optimism (Democrats might not show up on election day and we do badly), but also not with pessimism (Dems very well might show up in force and also we get a good split with independents and swing voters). Ask me in 8 days for better analysis! ;)

Expand full comment

My read on Nevada is that Trump is probably up about 1 in the votes already banked *if* indies break 57-43 Dem and partisans break 95-5. Those are the imputed numbers from the 2022 Senate race when Masto outran the party split by 36k votes. That was a big change from 2020 when Biden ran 6k votes behind the party split. The number of indies in NV has absolutely exploded since 2020 as 'indie' is now the default for people who automatically register. Dems probably have some ground to make up, but it really depends on the indie split and/or crossover voting.

Expand full comment

About those 95-5 partisan splits I think its very possible, in fact I might even say its likely, that there's still some residual anti-EV bias among Republicans and also that whatever tiny percentage of pro-Harris Republicans exist that they are more likely than the median Republican to vote early.

Expand full comment

I don't put a lot of weight on either the partisan split or the indie split in isolation, because there's no way to disentangle them. If you have a more favorable partisan split you can get away with a less favorable indie split, etc.

That said, it wouldn't surprise me if you're right that registered Rs crossing over to vote Harris would be more likely than other Rs to vote early, at least by mail. Rs seemed ok with voting early in person even in 2020.

Expand full comment

It's really appalling how bad so much of the early voting analysis is because it ignores this obvious factor.

Expand full comment

It's a Republican fan boy site

Expand full comment

Early voting numbers are peanut butter attached to a suspicious piece of wood topped with a spring.

Expand full comment

It's a nutritious snack serendipitously proffered to us by the benevolence of Nature's God.

No, it's a TRAP!

I don't get why you're always so unwilling to accept His Bounties with a more positive spirit...

<snap>.

Expand full comment

Florida Early Vote not looking great for Democrats.

– Republican ballot edge: 508,722

– Republicans lead in 60 counties.

– Republicans hold an 10.9% overall turnout lead.

The Democratic ground game and GOTV operations clearly need to up the game. However, there are two potentially very-significant wild cards:

– Almost one million Independent voters

– Unknown female/male voter split

https://www.freshtake.vote/2024G/

Expand full comment

Of note, Harris holds a lead among those who already cast their votes. Among the half of voters whose decision was made, more than 49% support the Democrat, while 48% back Trump.

Expand full comment

If Harris is ahead by 1% amongst those who have already voted, despite an 11% Republican edge in the Early Vote, this is earthquake-level news for Florida!

Please tell me if I am misreading this.

PS. There seem to be some really contradictory numbers in that article and poll between Floridian women’s preferences and the self-reported early vote.

Expand full comment

Yeah that figure seems absolutely insane. I’m skeptical, personally, but we’ll see.

Expand full comment

Independents.

Expand full comment

Isn’t this the third or fourth report of polls finding Harris outperforming party breakdowns in the early vote? I’m skeptical as well, but maybe it really is true.

Expand full comment

There’s starting to be multiple polls suggesting that. Here’s hoping that’s correct!

Expand full comment

Every single poll I've seen that asked that question has shown Harris running well ahead of the party split among early voters. Marist found that in NC, GA, and AZ and Siena and I think ABC found that in their national samples. I'm extremely skeptical of the margins they're finding (which suggest a blowout on the national level that would not remotely match the spending patterns in either the presidential or lower level races) but it this point I'm also skeptical of the idea that it's pure noise with no signal. My prior is that it's about 80% noise, 20% signal but even that would be enough to tip the election to Harris with room to spare.

Expand full comment
Oct 28·edited Oct 28

I believe it was something like this:

Marist (AZ): H 55-44

Marist (NC): H 55-43

Marist (GA): H 54-45

ABC/IPSOS (National): H 62-33 (8% of sample)

CNN (National): H 61-36 (20% of sample)

NYT/Sienna (National): H 59-40 (9% of sample)

Expand full comment

Thanks. Those margins aren't plausible but when every single serious poll finds the same result there has to be some explanation for it, even if it's an explanation for why it's all noise.

Expand full comment

Florida has always had high GOP early votes if memory serves.

Expand full comment

That is also my recollection, at least pre-2020.

Expand full comment

Exactly the opposite. We start to rewrite history now

Expand full comment
Oct 28·edited Oct 28

For Florida I think it used to be that the GOP had an advantage in mail in votes, Dems would get an edge in the in person early vote and then the Rs would erase it on election day. This time around it looks like Dems have a modest advantage in the mail in ballots but the GOP has a large edge in the in person early vote so far.

Expand full comment

Of course it wouldn’t look good. Who expects anything out of FL?

Expand full comment
Oct 28·edited Oct 28

Doesn't help the GOP that Trump's Nazi rally also targeted the Puerto Rican communities. Wonder if that might serve as a motivator to any on the fence in Florida.

Expand full comment

If it's properly publicized, it can only help; there are 1.1 million Puerto Ricans in Florida

Expand full comment

Run, Romanism and Rebellion redux?

Expand full comment

Rum(and yes)

Expand full comment

Indeed. Except instead of costing Republicans New York as the Three R's did in 1884, it costs them Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and maybe Florida.

Expand full comment

Those "jokes" about Puerto Rico and Latinos seem to have really broken through, at least from what I've seen online. I share an office with a guy from Mexico and he even brought it up to me this morning. We've never discussed anything political and we live in Canada!

Expand full comment

Suggested topic of further conversation, Donald J. Trump’s own comment when he refused to approve reimbursing the family of murdered soldier Vanessa Guillén's for their funeral costs: "It doesn't cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican."

Expand full comment

That one didn’t seem to get quite as much play as the PR “joke” did. I don’t recall the rush to disavow that statement like happened last night. I wonder if it’s because it was Trump himself making that comment and people are just immune to him spewing hatred.

Expand full comment

And it was reported in a newspaper that he said it, several years ago. This was a well-known comic saying it on national tv at a major political rally

Expand full comment

This really makes me wonder about "Trumpism without Trump" going forward. If Trump had said this, almost no one would care because he's said 100 worse things. Makes me skeptical that someone like Vance or DeSantis can take up the torch.

Expand full comment

Yeah, it's a perverse irony that the statement has more potential for damage coming from some "comedian's" mouth than it would have coming from Trump.

Expand full comment

Trumpism doesn't work without Trump, because his hypothetical successors are all politicians who can never replicate the authenticity that Trump has (because Trump is a typical Fox News viewer in truth).

DeSantis tried it and collapsed, because he's a politician and not your racist uncle who watches 20 hours of Hannity every day and screams at the TV.

Expand full comment

Yeah that’s the one thing that really seemed to catch fire out of that rally, but it only takes one thing

Expand full comment

He's got relatives in the states; hoping he spreads the word to contacts(social media or whatever)

Expand full comment

That's part of what struck me as being so odd. He has no connection to the US (at least no close family) and he doesn't consume any English-language media!

Expand full comment

They're talking about it in a very international community in Norway (to my great distress, there is an unending BBC News stream, which is just god-awfully unwatchable).

Expand full comment

I hope it's spread far and wide

Expand full comment

Caspian, are you in Norway? I was shocked by this report indicating that 47% of Norwegian young men surveyed prefer Trump.

https://www.nrk.no/norge/47-prosent-av-unge-norske-menn-ville-stemt-pa-trump-1.17097282

Expand full comment

Theres no reason to expect that the right wing turn among young men would be limited to the US.

Expand full comment

The realignment of Western politics onto lines of gender and education rather than class is indeed a Western phenomenon

Expand full comment

If there is one in the U.S. What actual voting so far has shown one?

Expand full comment

I'm just here for work, but that a bunch of young white men (particularly when they live in a fairly conservative, ethnically homogenous, and highly insular country) would support a racist isn't a shock in any way to me.

Expand full comment

Scandinavia is culturally conservative in a way it’s hard for non-Scandis to grasp. Left wing economically, sure, and socially tolerant due to very low religiosity even by European standards, but the idea of the Nordics as a cold hippie paradise is woefully outdated

Expand full comment

"There is literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it's called Puerto Rico?"

– Tony Hinchcliffe

DAMNING: The Trump campaign itself tried to distance itself from the “floating island of garbage” quotation, only to be met with comments pointing out that Hinchcliffe’s set had been vetted and uploaded to the teleprompters.

Expand full comment

Closing strong lol.

Expand full comment

It's one thing if political nerds like us talk about this. It is another when celebrities like Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lopez talk about this.

Expand full comment

Cue every Spanish language radio host and Latin music DJ, please.

Expand full comment

Apparently the Spanish radio stations in the Lehigh Valley and Reading have been going ballistic

Expand full comment

To be honest, I checked this polls weighting, (too many Democrats, too high SE FL weighting, all on the margin) and compare it with the half of electorate already voted, I guess

I could be quite wrong on my initial 7-9 pt loss guess. Even Marks 11pt might be undershooting.

Expand full comment

Ground Game Post 1:

I did my third straight week of 3-hour canvassing yesterday. Our turf was by far the toughest - lots of independents or ancestral Dems in VERY rural parts of Northumberland County, PA. I had to drive miles on dirt roads to get to some of these places. We only ended up talking to 4 people, 1 positive, 3 not interested in talking or not voting. In comparison, my turf 2 weeks ago featured a set of exurban houses in Union County with lots of retirees, several who had been Republicans or Independents who were voting Harris because they were sick of Trump and mad about Dobbs. My turf last week was a rural enclave in rural Snyder County with lots of Dems who had received mail ballots and were about to turn them in (or in some cases had just done so).

When I talked to the staff at the Union County Dem office after my round yesterday to discuss the tough turf, they said that they had already canvassed all the turfs in Union County and were focusing on voters in other counties that were bigger reaches. In effect, they are far ahead of where they were in 2016, when we were still canvassing the Democratic borough of Lewisburg, and even ahead of 2008, when the toughest turfs we were getting were in downtown Selinsgrove (Snyder County), which was then majority Republican but had several Democratic houses.

In my opinion, the Democratic ground game is the best I have ever seen - better than 2008. There are tons of volunteers and we are getting further and further out of our comfort zone to engage voters we would not have even tried to before.

Expand full comment

Allow me to tell a story about both sides, but the most illuminating part being the other side:

My friend's mom and dad live in PA, Pittsburgh-area, and they're both strong Harris supporters and have a Harris lawn sign in their yard. And several days ago someone from the Harris campaign called his mom and tried to get her to vote early but she said she likes voting in person and after some friendly attempted cajoling to change her mind they realized that she wasn't moving on this and gave her a number to call if she needs help getting to the polls on election day. This past weekend someone from the Trump campaign (or it may have been Elon's group) went to her door and tried to give her some Trump literature. She declined but the kid, who according to her was probably not of legal drinking age, was very nice and polite to her and she asked him why he would waste his time talking to her given that she had a Harris lawn sign and he said "I don't get paid until I fill my daily quota"

Expand full comment

Wow!

On a related note, I am getting so many fundraising texts from (1) Trump and (2) Ted Cruz!

Expand full comment

If the fundraising involves a one-way ticket to Cancun for Ted, I’m all in!

Expand full comment

Not if it means going to Cancun with Cruz.

Expand full comment

Both DJT and "Ted" are sending out many texts indiscriminately. My ladyfriend, who lives in CA, is low-income, and votes Democratic, has been getting texts from them. She asked me "Who's Ted Cruz?" which reminds me that most people don't follow politics as closely as we do. Cruz isn't getting any donations from her! She already knows that she hates Tr*mp...

Expand full comment

If someone tried to give me Trump literature, I'd quickly read it and then point out to them each and every lie and inaccuracy contained on it. This would probably take some time since I'm sure that almost everything on Trump literature is lies. But, like I've said before, while I'm talking with a canvasser, they aren't persuading other people to vote for Trump.

Expand full comment

That probably wouldn't even be necessary in this case because it seems like once this kid hit his quota he was going to be done even if it was still the middle of the day

Expand full comment

Love it.

"Yeah, sorry, I gotta do this. I need the money."

Real believer there.

Also, the PA Dem voter determined to vote on E-Day matches a LOT of what I'm hearing.

Expand full comment

Ground Game Post 2:

My wife has been phone banking in Spanish into Reading PA. Yesterday was her 3rd day of doing so, and about 100 volunteers were at work on a Sunday. For her group, the main goal was motivating infrequent Democratic voters to turn out. The responses were generally very positive, but especially from the women voters, who were off the charts motivated. My wife's experience provides some on the ground corroboration for polling that shows a big gender gap among Hispanic voters, with Latinas being supercharged about the election.

Expand full comment

TEXAS GE: NYT/@SienaResearch

2-WAY

🟥 Trump: 52% (+10)

🟦 Harris: 42%

FULL FIELD

🟥 Trump: 51% (+11)

🟦 Harris: 40%

🟪 Oliver: 1%

🟩 Stein: 1%

——

TX Senate

🟥 Cruz (inc): 50% (+4)

🟦 Allred: 46%

——

#1 (3.0/3.0) | 1,180 LV | October 23-26

Expand full comment

If Allred is running 6-7 points ahead of Kamala, I like his chances

Expand full comment

Yes, but not if Trump wins by 11. That would be out of keeping with usual results there, though.

Expand full comment

That goes without saying I think

Expand full comment

Trump will likely win TX by a margin similar to back in 2020. Very doubtful in this environment he wins TX by double digits.

Expand full comment

I figured there would be a cross-current of a further Democratic-trending managerial class and a shift to Trump with Hispanics in Texas this year. Siena's sample was far redder than everybody else's in Florida and now they're seeing the same in Texas. Makes me wonder if their modeling is more rooted in the 2024 electorate while everybody else's is still lost in 2020.

Expand full comment

We don’t as yet know what the 2024 electorate will be though, so if their sample is redder that would be a projection not something rooted in fact.

Expand full comment

How can you possibly model the 2024 electorate ahead of time except by chance?

Expand full comment
Oct 28·edited Oct 28

You also rather conveniently forgot to include another equal possibility: that every other poll is right and NYT/Siena are the only ones wrong in misreading the 2024 election. Either take all of the data and average it or take none of the data and make it your opinion. Latching on only to the polls that fit your opinion and ignoring all the other polls that don’t fit your view is completely biased, just as much as say believing BigVillage Harris+7 polls and ignoring all the others.

Expand full comment

That certain is a possibility. I never said it wasn't. Hence my final sentence began with "makes me wonder if their modeling...." as opposed to declaratively assigning any supremacy to the Siena poll.

Expand full comment

something to keep in mind - NYT/Siena has had trouble polling Texas and the SW in the past. Not sure how many people remember, but their polls of CA, AZ, NV, and TX were inaccurate and too favorable to the GOP in 2018 when they polled lots of House and Senate races in that region. I wonder if something similar might be happening this year.

Because their AZ polls have produced fairly strong pro-GOP outliers too, not just this TX poll.

Expand full comment

The New York Times polls this year are a joke. Are they saying that Trump will pick up 5 1/2 percent in Texas in 4 years when all the demographic information says that Texas has been trending blue?

Expand full comment

think that is too strong. They still are a very good pollster, especially with how transparently Nate Cohn discusses what is going on and what they are trying to do.

That said, they have had a number of important misses in the past, so we absolutely shouldn't take their polls as gospel. But they themselves would say that I think.

Expand full comment

They can be a good pollster, and their polls this year could still be a joke. Only the election results will show whether they were close to being on target or wildly off.

Expand full comment

Also Texas hasn't elected a Democrat statewide in 30 years. There's much less of an incentive to poll it accurately than you would have with a more competitive state.

Expand full comment

Or a more obviously competitive one.

Expand full comment

Hard to credibly claim that Allred–Cruz isn’t obviously competitive.

Expand full comment

Depends a lot on the salience of the border issue and the stability of the Hispanic vote for Democrats, which even the Harris campaign expressed doubt about over the weekend. My predictions factored in a net GOP advantage as I suspect the vulnerable Democratic demographics will outnumber the managerial class voters abandoning the GOP, but only by a couple of points. It wouldn't surprise me if it was a wash entirely as most polling has indicated, and it wouldn't surprise me if the coalition switcheroo was even more lopsided in favor of Trump as the Siena poll indicates.

Expand full comment

What assumptions do NYT/Siena make about the gender gaps? Anyone know off-hand?

Expand full comment

Former Charlotte NC mayor Harvey Gantt says "I think we've got a problem." Regarding black vote in NC. He is talking about early vote numbers for AAs being under 10% compared to 2020. Of course its an uneven comparison. Regardless he says he hoped it would be higher.

https://x.com/BowTiePolitics/status/1850869393187573890?t=crKLIyaRsLVA5pcAtsuPig&s=19

Expand full comment

Maybe.

I dont know that it is though. From my personal observations, black people (at least where I live) tended to take COVID more seriously. I'm still far more likely to see a black person wearing a mask in public than a white person.

So it would make sense that they were also more likely to mail vote or vote early (when its presumably less crowded) in 2020, but not necessarily in 2024.

Or maybe low propensity dem voters just are less motivated this year and our chances of winning rely mostly on high propensity moderates switching sides.

Expand full comment

How many times do people have to read Skaje's comment above before they *stop trying to compare the 2024 early voting dynamics to 2020*?

Expand full comment

More times that one would think! Many people have been making Skaje's point elsewhere. Most Democratic strategists were expecting a sharp drop in Democratic early voting relative to Republican.

Expand full comment

To explain what's going on in PA this year has been EXHAUSTING! And it's both sides too. Depressed Democrats & Gloating Republicans.

Expand full comment

No amount of data or reasoning can change their minds, because they don’t actually want to learn more. I for one can’t wait for the same people to mysteriously disappear once the election is over after they succeeded in doing what they wanted to accomplish at TDB. I’ve seen this movie before.

Anyone who doesn’t understand the impacts of the pandemic on vote method choice and how much that’s going to change in this election at this point is being willfully obtuse. Whether it be someone here or a useful idiot in the party for the media to use as yet another Dems in disarray hit piece (which they can’t ever get enough of).

In case people have forgotten this over the last 7 years: EVERY SINGLE ELECTION since after 2016 has had similar articles written about Democrats. Being worried, being in chaos, being in confusion, with thousands of wasted words after Democrats end up winning the elections yet again when lo and behold it ends up that the party does mostly know what it’s doing.

FWIW any western party who has won as much as Democrats have in elections with a near unending win streak would kill for that level of success. Could that change in 2024? 1000%! Will it? Press “x” to doubt.

Expand full comment

Remember, Harris doesn't have to win NC to win the election.

Expand full comment

But winning North Carolina would place the election beyond the "Margin of Steal".

Expand full comment

I take your point, and I didn't say it was unimportant, but we do have to keep things in perspective.

Expand full comment

NORTH CAROLINA: "Registered Republicans surged out of the gate for North Carolina in-person early voting. Meanwhile, Democrats started off at a deficit but have been outpacing 2020 over the past week."

– Michael McDonald

(Graph at link) https://nitter.poast.org/ElectProject/status/1850712511798198516#m

Expand full comment

"The early vote in Mecklenburg County is 7% higher than this same time in 2020, even though the overall NC early vote is down 12% from 2020. I view this as good news that Mecklenburg is up while the rest of the state is down. Mecklenburg is 10%-12% of the total vote in NC, so if we can outperform here, we will win NC!"

– Tim Wegener (in NC to do weeks of canvassing)

Expand full comment

This is inaccurate. Always double check your source before put out the numbers.

NC SBE has detailed day by day turnout records. Mecklenburg is lower in total, as well as a share of the state, comparing to 2020. It is not hitting 10%, even with the last Sunday voting.

Expand full comment

Fair enough. I was quoting a canvasser on the ground – and, indeed, it did not occur to me check his numbers.

Expand full comment

GENDER GAP: "11.1 million have voted early in the 7 swing states. 1,141,620 more women have voted than men, 55.2-44.8%. The gender gap grew by 138,188 from Saturday. Gender turnout gap is F+14%-points in MI, F+13 in PA, F+12 in GA, F+11 in NC, F+8 in WI, F+4 in AZ, F-2 in NV. Good for Harris."

https://nitter.poast.org/ThirdWayKessler/status/1850654033985343976#m

Expand full comment

Ever since her Day One, I have expected Harris to significantly outperform party breakdowns. The only question is, by how much? And how strongly will Independents break in her favor? In Pennsylvania, early-voting Independents are said to be breaking 70/30 for Harris. Dobbs changed everything!

The gender gaps are massive, with women voters creating a Pink Tsunami. I think this is creating an unseen Blue Wave election that will sweep Kamala Harris into office, and hopefully impact a surprising number of downballot results.

Expand full comment

"In Pennsylvania, early-voting Independents are said to be breaking 70/30 for Harris. "

Where are you getting this information from?

Expand full comment

Joshua Smithley But note that Smithley is referring to Independents who submit Mail Ballots, and not the overall Independent vote. I’ve also seen this split mentioned elsewhere.

https://nitter.poast.org/blockedfreq/status/1847349041509589121#m

Expand full comment

Where is he getting it from?

Expand full comment

Absolutely crazy result in yesterday's Japanese election, which yielded the maximum-chaos scenario. The LDP and coalition partner Komeito lost their lower house majority, while the main opposition CDP picked up 50 seats. However, no single party or grouping of parties has an obvious path to power. Nippon Ishin no Kai and the DPFP, the next two largest opposition parties, have ruled out a coalition with the LDP but are also not natural partners for the CDP. Even if Ishin, CDP, and DPFP were to somehow reach a coalition agreement, they would need to cooperate with the Japan Communist Party and other fringe parties to secure a majority, which is extremely unlikely.

It's possible that Ishin or DPFP could do an about-face and link up with LDP, given their relative ideological overlap. However, doing so would be political suicide given their aggressive posturing

against the LDP and the party's extreme unpopularity.

So what's the most likely outcome? Honestly, I have no idea. A couple wild scenarios:

1) The lower house is obligated to hold a special session within 30 days of an election, during which it must select a prime minister. A vote will be held regardless of whether a formal coalition agreement has been reached. In this event, each party will likely nominate its leader to be PM, with the top two candidates advancing to a runoff. It is all but certain that the leaders of the LDP and CDP would finish in the top two. In this scenario with a gun to their heads, I think Ishin, DPFP, and most other parties back CDP leader Yoshihiko Noda because the LDP is radioactive. The government would likely collapse very quickly given the lack of a formal coalition framework and little prospect of passing legislation, including a budget, but Noda would serve as PM for the time being.

2) Yuichiro Tamaki, the leader of DPFP, has emerged as a potential kingmaker after his party quadrupled the number of seats it holds. Even though the LDP won roughly seven times as many seats, Tamaki could demand to be named prime minister as a condition for any coalition. Unlikely? Absolutely. But Tamaki has a history of collaborating with the LDP and an insane amount of leverage; acquiescing to his demands could be the LDP's best path to retaining some level of influence.

Regardless of who emerges as prime minister, the next government is unlikely to have a happy ending. The messy distribution of seats could lead to the worst gridlock in decades. Will be very curious to see how this all resolves.

Expand full comment

Absolutely wild result, couldn’t happen to more deserving old dinosaurs

Am I mixing up my right wing splinter parties, or is Ishin different at all from Shintario Ishikawa’s old ultra-nationalist Sunrise Party?

Expand full comment

They're two different parties, though they share similar right-wing populist origins. Ishin arose from an Osaka-based regional party whose initial purpose was to reorganize Osaka Prefecture into a metropolis (I don't fully understand the logic for this, but it relates to management of tax revenue). After branching into national politics, Ishin's founder, former Osaka Gov. and nationalist scumbag Toru Hashimoto, rooted the party in right-wing ideology. Hashimoto has thankfully moved on from politics, and the party's posturing has softened as it seeks to build support beyond the Kansai region. It still straddles the right extreme of mainstream politics, though, more so than the LDP.

Expand full comment

I guess the other obvious question is, when can new elections be called?

Expand full comment

As soon as the PM wants to call one, I think. Elections have to be held at least once every four years, but I'm not aware of a "cooling off" period or lower bound. Would most likely be called as soon as there's an inevitable crisis (e.g. inability to pass a budget).

Expand full comment

Start the clock: “Can Shigeru Ishiba outlast this daikon?”

Ishiba needs to resign within the next 27 days to go down as the shortest-serving Prime Minister in Japanese history.

https://nitter.poast.org/IrishPatri0t/status/1850863065153097997#m

Expand full comment

It seems like both parties are considered center-right, but the baseline of Japanese politics also seems far to the left of the US. I was reading up on Komeito and their positions seem very left-leaning by American standards, yet they've been LDP partners more often than not.

Expand full comment

Left leaning on economic management but right leaning culturally, such as immigration and gender?

Expand full comment

Many, including myself, loosely use expressions like left-leaning and center-right, but the baseline for Japanese politics lies on a separate plane of existence. For example, there is essentially no ideological debate on the role of government in society (i.e. whether limited or proactive government is preferable), which is one of the core wedge themes in US politics. The ostensibly right-leaning LDP has never met a fiscal stimulus bill it doesn't like. Debate over defense policy used to be more philosophical but is now driven more by practical considerations, like the extent of the threat posed by China. There are divisions over certain social issues, like immigration and Japan's horribly outdated requirement that wives adopt their husbands' surnames, but topics that dominate American discourse like abortion and LGBT rights are rarely if ever discussed (though LGBT issues are somewhat gaining traction). Policy that originates from ministries, which heavily influence the LDP's agenda, is brutally pragmatic and rarely tinted by ideology.

Describing the LDP as center-right is not necessarily inaccurate, but party is more of a big tent like the Hawaii Democratic Party (which perhaps not by coincidence used to be dominated by Japanese Americans). Basically, anyone who wants to influence Japanese politics joins the LDP, regardless of their ideology. The result: a party with bigoted bullies like Mio Sugita and progressive adjacents like Arfiya Eri, an ethnic Uighur and former UN operative vocal on gender equality and human rights.

Expand full comment

The Nazis were not against social welfare, for Aryans in good standing. "Right-wing" outside the U.S. is often associated with nationalism, militarism, xenophobia, racism, social conservatism and support for historical or current-day war crimes, not opposition to social welfare for the "right people."

Expand full comment

Yep. As I've stated many times, one of the first countries to have genuine social welfare programs was South Africa. The then governing National Party - which was anti black, anti British, and pro Afrikaner - just wanted it to be limited to poor Afrikaners.

Expand full comment

I didn't know that. I do know that the noted socialist (not!) Otto von Bismarck made Germany the first country to guarantee health care coverage to industrial laborers, through the Sickness Insurance Law of 1883; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck.

Expand full comment

Bismarck was a corporatist; healthy workers are productive

Expand full comment

He also very explicitly wanted to kneecap the Social Democrats by cribbing their most popular policies

Expand full comment

It's dangerous to compare policy positions between countries when trying to establish ideology. Ideology is not about an absolute policy state but instead about direction.

In countries like France or the UK, they already have universal healthcare managed largely by the government. Keeping that universal healthcare would thus align with the classical conservative view, that is to say, it's the act of conserving the status quo. Expanding on that healthcare would be a progressive ideological stance, while contracting that system would be the reactionary ideological position (most parties identified as "conservative" in the modern era would more properly be defined as reactionaries).

In the US, we do not yet have that, so movement towards universal healthcare managed largely by the government is a progressive stance.

Putting on my math nerd hat, if we imagine politics as a 2D Cartesian plane, ideology is not absolute positions with X and Y coordinates. Ideology would instead be expressed as a vector: a magnitude and a direction from a starting coordinate.

Expand full comment

Well explained!! Fantastic math analogy.

Expand full comment

Does Japan do snap elections if they fail repeatedly to make coalitions?

Expand full comment

Not really, because the winning party (usually the LDP) has almost always been able to form a government with ease. There was a period in the mid-1990s where the lower house lacked a clear majority party, but that lasted three years before an election was called.

Expand full comment
Oct 28·edited Oct 28

In terms of history, this is a very significant election. It's only the second time since the 2009 General election that the ruling LDP Party and it's allies failed to win an outright majority. In 2009, the now defunct Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was the first party since WW2 to defeat the ruling LDP government and it's allies. This time, there isn't a clear cut opposition winner that can form a majority, so it will be interesting to see how a new coalition government is formed.

Expand full comment

Burning ballots were pulled from inside a smoking ballot box in Vancouver, Washington, this morning, hours after police responded to an arson at a Portland ballot box.

https://x.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1850899800356536739

Expand full comment
deletedOct 28
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

The ballot box was in a Dem-leaning area of the district. A ballot box in Portland also caught on fire. I bet they're related.

Expand full comment

They better contact all they can about that.

Expand full comment

MAGAism has gotten to the point where I halfway expect Republican politicians to soon demand schools stop teaching those woke Arabic numerals, and that we change the names of months and days-of-the-week that are currently named after heathen gods!

Expand full comment

Jonah Ryan 2028! Keep Islamic math out of our schools!

Expand full comment

As I watch Veep and realize how much of what I used to consider implausible (season 4 on, basically) is now tame, it's amazing. Jonah would be a much better President than Trump!

Expand full comment

I got a chance to listen to Selina's book "A Woman First: First Woman" a couple weeks ago it was a fun throwback to Veep.

Expand full comment

You mean Jonah Ryan MMXXVIII!

Expand full comment

They may just ban biology outright. Too much discussion of evolution and anatomy. Plus talk of dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures may contradict and question their beloved Old Testament.

Expand full comment

And with your thought in mind, I bring you the artwork "The Gospel According to the Texas Board of Education", by Shelah Horvitz.

https://dark-mountain.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/babyjesusblessesthedinosaurs_600px1-1.jpg

Expand full comment

ust released: national estimates from CES pre-election interviews with over 70k american adults

National LVs (Oct. 1 - 25):

Harris: 51%

Trump: 47%

Dynamic crosstabs: https://cooperativeelectionstudy.shinyapps.io/prez2024pre/

Release: https://sites.tufts.edu/cooperativeelectionstudy/2024/10/28/ces-estimates-on-the-2024-presidential-election/

https://x.com/b_schaffner/status/1850919058775941605

Expand full comment

70K!?

Expand full comment

If polling averages were weighted by sample size, this poll alone would be enough to compensate for the flood of polls recently released from bad-faith R-leaning pollsters.

Expand full comment

Are surveys of that size common?!

Expand full comment

Not really. Post-election I've seen. Such as Pew Research.

Expand full comment

it’s Yougov that did the survey and they have panels this large.

Expand full comment

That's a fascinatingly large polling size.

Mathematically we should not give that much extra weight to a 70k sample vs a 1k sample. But I wonder if having a sample size this large might help to counterbalance some of the fundamental issues polling faces today. Or, if instead it just magnifies those problems over the larger group.

Skimming the crosstabs I do not see anything truly egregious, but parts of it look decently off from what I'd expect too. The gender gap is small: men are Harris +1, women Harris +8. It has Trump with 22% of the black vote but only 51% of the white vote. Trump wins independents by 3 while losing nationally by 4.

I'll give them credit for doing something different, at the very minimum.

Expand full comment

Monday's PA Mail-In Ballot Update is in.

109,609 new requests, R+4,401. Overall request advantage now down to D+500,199

118,165 ballot returns, D+8,901. Overall ballot advantage now D+381,095. 9k short of the (once) popular firewall, 59k below my firewall

Total Requests:

D - 1,164,662 (55.59%)

R - 664,463 (31.72%)

O - 265,813 (12.29%)

Total - 2,094,938

Total Returns:

D - 819,112 (70.33% return rate)

R - 438,017 (65.92%)

O - 145,778 (54.84%)

Total - 1,402,907

Expand full comment

Large but not as large as expected update. GOP has gotten the request advantage down to 500k with two days left. The ballot advantage increases for Dems continue increase but slowly. A little over 2/3 of all requested ballots have been received with only two counties below 50%: Huntingdon (only 1,149 requests) & Luzerne (29k of 48.3k outstanding, D+4k). PA is now at 53.63% of 2020 mail-in ballots & at 20.29% of the total 2020 turnout.

Expand full comment

Outstanding Ballots:

D - 345,550 (49.93%)

R - 226,446 (32.72%)

O - 120,035 (17.35%)

Total - 692,031

9% of all outstanding ballots are held by Philadelphia Democrats

Expand full comment

Is that good or bad?

Expand full comment

Bad because if you got a mail ballot in order to vote in person instead in PA you need to turn in the blank vote with the envelope. A potentially confusing obstacle.

Expand full comment

If the rumored backlog in Philadelphia exists, it's fine. If not, not good.

Expand full comment

Any thoughts on county breakdown, varying return rates? Turnout by Mail Ballot in Philly and other heavily-Blue counties?

Expand full comment

Democrats have returned

more ballots in heavily red Carbon and Lancaster counties

Expand full comment

I'm not panicking. Philadelphia is always a pain in the a$$ when it comes to reporting mail ballots. They're at 62.48% & have been consistent in the # processed daily so there could be a backlog of ballots.

As far as everything else, it gets too complicated for an outlet like this comment section. Most (42 of 68) counties are over 70% returned but none are the Big Six. Allegheny will get there tomorrow with Bucks & Montgomery getting there Wednesday. There is still A LOT of room in the six big counties for the firewall to grow.

Expand full comment

Many thanks!

Expand full comment

Does anyone else think that the MSG Rally will really hurt the Trump campaign? We had racist jokes that have really offended Latinos and several high profile celebrities of Puerto Rican descent have endorsed Harris such as Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin. Even Geraldo attacked the joke and he has endorsed Kamala. There were other speakers who called Kamala Harris the antichrist and the devil. A speaker referred to her political advisers as her "pimps". The same comic that made the horrible joke about Puerto Rico made a watermelon joke about black people. Several speakers screamed obscenities from the stage and one man repeatedly screamed the "F" word over and over. Another speaker repeatedly attacked Muslims and Palestinians. These clips will be everywhere this week all over the news, social media and in adds, and remember that Kamala Harris has hundreds of millions to spend this week while Trump is broke. Finally, as icing on the cake of this shit show of a rally, Elon Musk's Pac called Kamala the "C" word on their adds. This should dominate all media coverage all week. We have only heard the tip of the iceberg of the offensiveness of that rally.

Expand full comment

I think the Latino remarks have real potential for damage.

Expand full comment

Yeah, they changed gears from "haha, lighten up, it's just a joke!" to "that was an accident, we swear!" pretty sharply.

Expand full comment

It'll be impossible to quantify, but if it turns out she does similarly to Biden among Latino voters or even slightly improves, I think this will be an after-the-fact explanation saying that this erased whatever gains he made.

Expand full comment
Oct 29·edited Oct 29

Which is going to make me very angry because Harris was already doing much better than Biden was among that demographic.

The narrative shouldn’t be “last minute gaffe propels Harris to big win” should that happen. It should and is more accurate to say this as the narrative: “Harris worked hard throughout the campaign in both English and Spanish to reach out to Hispanic/Latino voters” which paid off.

But I just know this useless fascist enabling cowards of a free press won’t give her any dues and will instead boil it down to “Trump lost at MSG” which is going to be attributed to her victory should she win *sigh*

Expand full comment

You nailed it; Rick Scott and the entire Florida Republican party machine are currently in full damage mode (and of course Fox is in full denial mode); they are showing us their hand; our side should act like sharks with blood in the water

Expand full comment

Unfortunately, they usually tend to act like porpoises.

Expand full comment

Lmao; can't argue with you there

Expand full comment

I'm hoping Harris does a rally in Florida with Mucarsel Powell. If she does, we'll know that polling is showing FL as at least a possible reach state.

Expand full comment

Scott’s tweet mid-rally was the first thing that made me think it did real damage

Expand full comment

Yup

Expand full comment

I don't know. Roughly every other day Trump says or does something egregious that is forgotten within 24 hours. However, as you point out, she has a ton of cash and can keep some of this alive in the media.

Expand full comment

Actually we may get lots of free media keeping this alive

Expand full comment

You can be sure footage will be in ads, if it isn't already.

Expand full comment

The headlines on this have been unusually brutal in most of the sources I've read. The instant response from Scott & the FL GOP shows they are taking this as a serious threat to their chances. You can't wave this off as griping by jilted former employees or old quotes taken out of context...this was all deliberate. Yet Trump has crossed line after line since 2015 and hasn't seen any appreciable slip in support from his base, so I will believe it when I see it.

Expand full comment

I think a big part of why this has more oomph is, ironically (and sadly) that Trump didn’t say it

Expand full comment

I hate that you're probably right.

Expand full comment

Which the more I think about it makes sense. The sane-washing of Trump makes it easy for folks to hand-wave away his racist comments any saying “oh, well he didn’t really mean that”, or “he won’t really follow through on that”, or even “that’s not really what he said”. But something about the combination of the location, timing, and who was saying what last night may finally break through.

I wouldn’t put money on it because there have been so many previous disasters that he came out from unscathed. But if it does end up mattering, it’s not too difficult to see why.

Expand full comment

I don't think it makes sense that someone else's comments at a rally should hurt him more than his own remarks. Why do they mean it and he doesn't?

Expand full comment

I’m not sure how many people ever actually hear the exact words he says, it’s either interpreted / summarized in reporting, or it’s written off as just Trump being Trump. If he were the one who said it the “it’s just a joke” defense would be working. But it doesn’t seem to be.

In a way it could be like a reverse seeing the man behind the curtain. Maybe some of the folks who are indifferent to the culture wars but yearn for the economy of 2019 finally saw who they’re associating with and it was enough. Sure, they’ve heard comments about Trump supporters being racist, but always downplayed it, or assumed it was the “liberal media bias”

Again, I’m doubtful it will matter. But at the same time I don’t think Scott would have been so quick to disavow that “joke” if Trump had said it. So if it’s not the message itself, there must be something about the messenger or the timing that worries them.

Expand full comment

I think it will matter. I remember a Comptroller race in New York in which the Republican incumbent was set to cruise for reelection until he made a remark that singled out bodegas in a negative light, prompting his heavy defeat. It's one thing for Trump and his people to say disgusting things about people coming across the border, but attacking Puerto Ricans, who are all American citizens, is going to hurt.

Expand full comment

And also gives him a degree of separation that will probably keep it from sticking. Heads Trump wins, tails you lose.

Expand full comment

He’s never needed a degree of separation before though. That’s what’s actually different about this one. It may open people’s eyes not to Trump, but his supporters. But like I said above, I ain’t holding my breath.

Expand full comment

Rick Scott’s tweet is here:

https://x.com/ScottforFlorida/status/1850671024204882016

Expand full comment

Rick Scott can go for a long walk on a short pier that juts out into shark-infested waters!

Expand full comment