Only thing good from this is that Casey is running far enough ahead of the top of the ticket that even if an unfriendly 2016 or 2020-style electorate shows up on November 5, he seems well-positioned to withstand it.
Really interested to see if these Pres/Sen divergences hold up. As we know in 2020 they basically all collapsed to a few points at most, with a couple of notable exceptions. In NH Shaheen got several points ahead of Biden, but even senators like Warner (VA), Durbin (IL), and Merkley (OR) found themselves having very Biden-like coalitions. To say nothing of Gary Peters, Tina Smith, Ben Ray Lujan, and all of the GOP seats we were contesting. But this year, basically every Dem senator, and even candidates in open Dem seats, are running several points ahead of Harris. I highly doubt Casey loses but I'd be shocked if he does win by ~10 in the end.
The unusually high (of recent cycles anyway) degree of poll divergence between the Presidential race and the Senate contests has been one of the most fascinating trends this year, especially as it continues to endure post-Labor Day. I keep waiting for the races to settle but they haven't yet.
The two most intriguing examples are Arizona and Nevada. As I said yesterday, it's hard to reconcile that there are tens of thousands of Arizona voters who think Trump is acceptable but draw the line with Kari Lake, although another poster sagely pointed out that Hispanic men could account for a good share of the ticket-splitters. The Nevada situation is stranger as Jacky Rosen strikes me as being about as Generic D as they come so her continually running far ahead of Harris is confusing. I'd be surprised if the two races didn't converge substantially by November. Recall that Mark Kelly appeared to be running far ahead of Biden in 2020 polling but by election night the divergence was less than 2 points.
Another 2020 Senate race with a pretty big spread was Mississippi where Mike Espy ran 6 points closer to his challenger than Biden did.
One of the interesting things that's often missed about our narrow statewide wins in the 2022 election in AZ relates to the simple story that we won those races with a GOP leaning electorate because each of the 4 GOP losers (Kari Lake, Mark Finchem, Blake Masters, and Abe Hamadeh) was so toxic that sane Republicans couldn't support them and split their tickets. The piece that's misunderstood is that for the most part the same ticket splitters didn't vote Dem for all 4 races. Instead different Republican voters typically defected on only one or two races. The relatively narrow results hide the fact that quite a few AZ GOP voters actually split their tickets in high profile races. When considering just those 4 races, 18.7% of Maricopa County voters split their tickets. When considering all partisan races, 37.4% of Maricopa County voters split their ballots.
Interesting; thanks. Are you suggesting that AZ ticket-splitting this cycle is highly possible? And how does one of the four toxins you mentioned running again in the highest-profile downballot race figure in?
I think the pool of available split ticket voters in AZ is bigger than generally understood, and I do think Lake will underperform Trump and Trump will underperform generic GOP legislator. I'm hopeful we'll see 2022 ticket splitters consolidate more for us downballot, rather than simply increasing the number of ticket splitters who vote for both Harris and Gallego but GOP downballot. At this point Lake is damaged goods and I expect her to do relatively worse than in 2022 (thank the GOP primary voters for saving the AZ Dem Party from kicking away a U.S. Senate seat). I also expect 2024 to be bluer than 2022 in AZ simply due to demographic trend, and improved turnout due to being a presidential year.
How much of this was GOP voters pulling the lever for Trump and bailing on the rest of the ballot? Perhaps there are more low information GOP voters that bail than Dems?
I'm interested in two races in particular - the Pennsylvania state senate elections in SD-37 and SD-49. If we win both of these, along with SD-15 (which should be an easy Dem flip), and keep control of the state House, then Dems would win a trifecta in Pennsylvania. (There are no other realistic Dem flips in the PA Senate this year, and none of the Dem seats are in any particular danger.)
Does anyone have any knowledge about how those two races are going?
In short, before the campaign began, Democrats were poised to pickup the easy one, were fighting for one and not so much in the other. That said, the Democratic primary in PA where these Democrats were chosen was held on April 23rd, so that’s hardly enough time for any candidate to do much of anything, let alone start raising some cash. So in essence, we know exactly what we did before looking at these reports. Have I mentioned how dumb this financial reporting schedule is? I should probably mention that.
However, this data only goes to May. Apparently PA campaign fundraising reports has a 5 month gap of no reports being required lol. The next report is on October 25th, which imo this entire schedule from top to bottom is freaking ridiculous. There’s no plausible explanation to have a 5 month gap in an election year for any state. Let alone for the preeminent swing state that determines the presidency and whether Democrats get a trifecta or not.
If Democrats win a trifecta or Treasurer or whoever the heck it is that’s in charge and came up with this very terrible reporting schedule, that needs to change, like, the day after being seated.
On Thursday the LDP of Japan had its leadership elections to replace Fumio Kishida. Despite a huge number of candidates, the race more or less went as expected, going down to a huge two-way showdown between Shigeru Ishiba and Sanae Takaichi. Takaichi would have been the first woman to occupy the post but don't let that fool you; she's a close protege of the late Abe Shinzo who was the leading backer of her career and she manages to be even more conservative than him. She also lacks all of the pragmatism that defined Abe, leaving just the pure ideologue. What's more, she was, ironically, the most socially conservative of the bunch, with a history of inflammatory anti-LGBT commentary and was the only LDP candidate in the running who has been staunchly on the record opposing letting married women (or men, sometimes) keep their original surnames (in Japan, upon marriage, you create a household and it has to be registered under one name, so both parties must take on the same last name).
Happy she lost (even if only very narrowly). But it's not like Shigeru Ishiba is much better. It was just a predictable result. Ishiba comes from the "centrist" wing of the party, but he's long been extremely friendly with Abe and Abe's faction. He has good relations with the conservative, is himself (like almost every ambitious member of the LDP), a member of the ultraconservative nationalist Nippon Kaigi, and has a reputation for being a military otaku (he loves tank miniatures and models and is a geek for military weapons and history). He's another Suga style insipid party insider, having occupied the position of President of the party. He's been a member of the Diet since 1986 (his father was a popular politician and he won office at age 29). He's neither old nor young, conservative nor moderate, which helped him consolidate most of the mainstream field.
Interestingly enough, Ishiba comes from Tottori Prefecture, which is one of the physically smallest prefectures (fourth or fifth smallest), and also the least populous of all Japan's prefectures, with less than 450,000 residents. In Japan, Tottori is famous for having very little going for it; I mean it just has no famous landmarks (like Izumo Taisha in neighboring Shimane), no really famous cultural traditions or landmarks, and just in general because of it's odd location, not a lot of historically important events have ever occurred there. The only thing its really known for is the Tottori Sand Dunes which are Japan's only sand dunes and maybe Mt. Daisen, one of Japan's 100 famous mountains and also a very popular skiing area for people in the Kansai region around Osaka to go to during the winter.
Sanae Takaichi comes from Nara Prefecture. In fact, I believe Abe was murdered while stumping for her when he changed his schedule last minute following an adultery scandal for the LDP politician he was originally set to stump for that weekend (and leaving Nara police almost no time to prepare a security plan).
Speaking of Abe, I've never seen anything like it, 2 years after his assassination. I've never heard of an assassination ruining the reputation of the person assassinated while the perpetrator is widely sympathized. Abe had already left office with multiple scandals (several involving his wife) and approval ratings in the teens, but he was still something of the power behind the scenes in the LDP. Since his assassination, the extensive network his family helped the Unification Church cult (strangely enough a radical Korean cult with an anti-Japan bent of all things), gain influence over all most of the LDP in exchange for using their cult members for GOTV and campaigning (for free), led to his own brother having to resign from the diet. Then his own faction got caught up in the fundraising scandal were LDP politicians in multiple factions were hosting fundraising parties and then skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars off the top to distribute to members (of the Diet) without reporting it either, and his faction was also dissolved and it also came back that this practice went back years and years, all the way to when he was PM. Abe redefined modern Japanese politics, was the longest serving PM in post-war history, and was the most successful politician of the democratic era, and yet being assassinated just turned into a series of events and brought widespread media and public attention, to the rot behind his political machine and definitively discredited him.
The Unification Church scandal led to Kishida, (another moderate, centrist candidate who also united other factions to defeating the Abe faction's chosen candidate, Takaichi) or at least enabled him, to largely purge his cabinet of Abe loyalists, and now Abe's favored protege has lost two elections to the leadership (she may or may not have a chance for a third run; the LDP is worse than the Tories, its a den of self-serving vipers cynically after power and with little loyalty; it wouldn't surprise me to see another ambitious conservative politician upstage Takaichi in the next leadership elections, which probably won't be that far in the future).
Now if only the opposition party situation wasn't a rampant mess, if only the Left wasn't completely fragmented, unprofessional, poorly organized, and incompetent, and if only there was actually a well-funded political movement like Hatoyama's coalition in 2009 to take advantage of years and years of LDP scandals and increasing voter dissatisfaction. Abe built an LDP that was too successful, but for most of the interior of the country, workers and common people haven't seen benefits from his policies and even in the cities, many are disenchanted with the arrogance and corruption of the LDP (a result of it being too successful). The increasingly conservative and less pragmatic bend of much of its membership also creates, I think, more opportunities for other parties. The next elections should bring them back down to earth more, but the different opposition parties need to have a plan, especially the Democratic Constitutional Party of Japan or whatever it's calling itself these days (it has fallen apart, dissolved, fused with other parties and renamed itself 3 times since losing power a little over a decade ago to Abe).
Less folks will vote early than in 2020, particularly Dems (b/c GOP use it less).
Comparing the splits to 2020 will be near useless. I think the better comparison eould be 2022. The volume will be much lower, obviously but in terms of the split.
Plus, is actually, sometimes, encouraging his side to do it.
Modeled party ID, in a no party reg state, comparing partial early voting from today to four years ago, in the midst of a pandemic (and Trump worries) causing historically abnormal early voting from Dems...hard to think of a data point less useful for 2024 analysis!
So, I get that Harris is trying to outflank Trump on undocumented immigration, but are the Democrats going to join the Republicans in being demagogic about immigration from now on, becoming part of the problem and keeping undocumented immigrants an underclass whose rights as workers can be violated with impunity while employers use them to undercut legal labor and the U.S. shuts itself off to refugees running for their lives because their arrival, like that of refugees from the Nazis in their day, is inconvenient, or will she pander amorally only for the duration of the campaign and then disappoint those many or few people who were sold on her expediently momentary hard line? Is immigration reform now a completely dead idea because the Democrats have concluded that it's politically inconvenient and they can successfully appeal to people who hate immigrants and immigration? And just how many people who would have otherwise voted against them are really going to be sold on this new-found hard line by the Democrats against the huddled masses yearning to breathe free?
Yeah, that certainly is reasonable, but I didn't like the bill Trump killed, and considering that economists figured out that it was only due to immigration, including illegal immigration, that the U.S. economy bounced back from the Covid doldrums, shutting ourselves off from asylum-seekers is definitely not a wise policy.
However, there should be an ongoing effort to ensure countries where asylum-seekers are coming from can get better economies. The U.S. doesn’t always have to be the only place where employment opportunities should be.
Of course, there would have to be trade-offs with certain countries depending on what their economies are like. This would be more of an ongoing foreign policy affair.
Last time I checked only about 10% of those who’ve left Venezuela ended up in the U.S. a far smaller percentage of refugees from Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan are here. It’s not close to being the case that the US is the only country taking refugees/asylees, despite being a leading cause of why folks are leaving their homes.
Also Cuba although I don’t see migrants to represent a substantial portion of those coming in the US.
That said, if there’s an opportunity to build strong relations with a country where migrants are coming from it’s Cuba. President Miguel Diaz-Canel has expressed openness for continuing relations with the US although during the Trump and Biden Administration they have taken a back burner.
The fact that Harris went to the border on a late September campaign stop tells me she continues to feel highly vulnerable on this issue. If it was really only the "fifth most important issue to voters" as some around here have said, she wouldn't be making a point of drawing attention to it in a swing state this late in the campaign.
Could Biden have put a lid on the gaming of the asylum process earlier than the fourth year of his Presidency? That's the underlying question here that shapes this debate and why the border issue is such a profound vulnerability. Democrats raised their hands in support of decriminalizing border crossings in 2019 and 2020, and because the "asylum" loophole was allowed to be manipulated for millions of border crossings for so long before Biden finally dropped a executive order with some teeth in the months before the election, voters can be forgiven if they believe that decriminalized border crossings are exactly what we got. A more perfect road map to tap the vein of MAGA fury could not possibly have been paved.
But one thing is absolutely for sure......any political will for good-faith comprehensive immigration reform legislation that significantly expands the number of legal immigrants granted visas has been crushed for the foreseeable future in the deference to accommodating so many people allowed to cross the border illegally. Those who've defended the manipulation of the asylum process for so long have only succeeded in setting back the political clock on the immigration reform debate decades.
There's a middle ground between being "anti-immigration" and signalling stronger enforcement of border crossings. I'm pretty confident that a sizable share of immigration-senstitive voters would reward a political leader who could clearly articulate that they recognize the difference.
The other thing is that there is a segment of progressives who wants no immigration enforcement at all or complete open borders. If you don’t agree with that 100%, you’re automatically a “racist”.
Must like many other right-wing straw men, I'm sure these kinds of people exist and are incredibly obnoxious and also incredibly online, but this is not a large or even viable constituency in the party. To put it in context, literal Nazi sympathizers and self-identified Nazis are a larger and more influential constituency in the Republican party than these far-left college activists are in Democratic politics.
I know people who are in the zero enforcement camp, and not just online. (Some of my acquaintances regularly go to rallies and vigils outside a Boston jail where migrants are detained.) But I agree that outside of the progressive / leftist bubble they carry very little weight.
She and Biden had me convinced they, like Obama and Hillary, were more than willing to throw human rights out with the bathwater when it comes to pandering to xenophobia on border issues. Better than Trump, but no wonder so many Latinos are disillusioned with Dems and registering independent.
If you support 3 year olds representing themselves in immigration proceedings, as was official policy defended in court by the Obama administration, you’ll be the first Hispanic Democrat I’ve talked to who did.
I do think Harris made the conscious decision to spend this week addressing her "less popular" issues - economy and immigration. She's tackling perceived weaknesses directly rather than ignoring them, figuring the benefit outweighs the danger of making those issues more salient.
Am I sure it's the right choice? No, I'm not sure. If I had to guess, I'd say it's wise, but I don't know.
So that “someone” who claimed it was the 5th most important issue was me, and I provided polling to back up that assertion in response to your claim that a plurality of voters considered it the key issue. I’m still waiting for you to provide a link to the poll where that result was obtained.
What the evidence seems to show, is that Republicans care far more about immigration than anyone else does. It consistently ranks as the #2 issue for Republicans. Could it rank higher for potential voters in some swing states (AZ, NV) and TX where the Senate seat seems to be in play? Sure, and if you have any polling on that (or again, any polling that supports your position at all) I’d be happy to see it and take it into consideration. I’m starting to think you don’t actually have any though.
None have come up in a cursory scan of polls. Most polls seem to be asking "is this issue important to you?" and then ticking off a bunch of issues with responses to "very important" to "not very important". Not many polls are outright asking voters what their #1 issue is. The exit polls will and I'll stand by my prediction from late last year that "immigration and the border" will top the list. I could be wrong and either the economy or reproductive rights rank higher, but I can predict with high confidence that immigration and the border will rank higher than 11% on voters' top issues.
Considering most elections in Europe in the last few years has turned on immigration, it's pretty tone-deaf to think the laws of gravity won't apply here, especially now that the unwritten "I won't talk about immigration if you won't" truce ended among Presidential nominees after the Obama years. The yawning class divide over this issue makes it easy for the college boys in the media and in election analysis community to fail to notice how salient the issue is outside their upscale suburban cul-de-sacs. We'll know in a little over a month who was right I guess.
If you're right that that's the #1 issue, it's not going to be by people who want fewer hassles at the border, and Trump will win by a considerable margin. I think it's extremely unlikely to be the #1 issue.
There are literally two polls in my comment above that ask “what is the most important issue to you” so they’re not that hard to find. No idea on how good the pollsters are but they’re out there. I think the polls that ask about relative importance would actually support your theory better since it would allow someone to say both the economy and immigration are important to them.
Regarding Europe, I’m not sure it’s an apples to apples comparison. You’ve got the Scandis, where yes, from what I’ve read immigration is a big issue. But those are very white countries. I would expect the fear of people of color to be greater than that in heterogeneous societies. And LePen keeps getting closer and closer in France. But, well, France… Additionally, the aftereffects of colonization are much more recent there, so the dynamic is probably different. Issue polls for the EU are even harder to find than for the US though, so if you have any links to them would be happy to review them.
I am going to agree with you on one thing though, and this goes against my assumptions, but immigration probably will rank higher than health care / abortion in the exit polls. I do think though, that how many people base their vote on each issue is still up for debate.
Look mate, I’m really not trying to be a dick here. But one of the main reasons I started posting on DKE was because people were just throwing out random opinions and stating them as fact. While I disagree with it, I have no problem with your theory that immigration is the key issue, it’s a legitimate hypothesis. The reason I keep pushing back is because you have constantly claimed that you have facts to back your opinion up but those facts have never materialized. I try to be very clear in what I conclude from evidence vs what is my gut instinct, if you did the same I wouldn’t be nearly so argumentative.
And to clarify, there were actually polls showing immigration as the #1 issue, but they were from before the Democratic nominee swap and thus obsolete.
Thanks for that. If you dig into the actual poll responses https://news.gallup.com/file/poll/611138/240226MIPEcon.pdf economic issues still top Immigration 30-28. It’s just that only 12% of folks said Economy in General while the other 18% cited something more specific. When you break it down by party, the percentage responses for Economic Issues, Economy In General, Immigration are:
Rep: 29-11-57
Ind: 34-13-22
Dem: 27-12-10
So as with all the other polls I’ve seen, it’s largely something Republicans care about. Less than 1 in 4 Independents cite it as their primary concern. As mentioned above, I’m surprised to see health care / abortion listed so low.
It seems Gallup used some selective data points in order to claim that Immigration is the #1 issue.
Since it’s a monthly poll we have more recent data to look at as well, https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx. From Feb to Sep, the economy in general has gone from 12% to 24%, economic issues as a whole from 30 to 44% and Immigration from 28 to 22%.
My theory, which the data seems to support, is that except for the hardcore Republicans, most people don’t care that much about immigration, except when they’re told to. Was there anything going on in February 2024 which may have caused increase interest in immigration? I had to look up the timing of it but yup, that’s when the Immigration Bill was in the news. If you look at the trend lines in the first link the number of people who named immigration as their #1 issue tripled between Aug 2023 and Feb 2024. I suspect there was a corresponding increase in news coverage about it as well.
Similarly, since the breakdown of the Immigration bill, there has been a mostly steady decrease, with a recent uptick in September, which I would guess is due to the latest racist crap being pushed by the Republican Party.
Which leads me to my final conclusion as to why immigration is not going to be the deciding factor of this election: the lack of news about the caravan. I actually expected to be inundated with news about it by now, yet there has been next to nothing. If it really was that much of a weakness for Harris, Trump’s allies would be ratcheting up the hysteria about it, and probably causing additional instability in Latin America to make it happen.
Here’s my thoughts on this. Politics vs policy imo.
Politically, this is a very shrewd and smart move for Harris to embrace the tough border deal and move the Democratic Party further right on the issue. If she can start eating away Trump’s advantage on the economy and immigration, she’s far more likely to win. I’ve often felt that Democrats should pick 1 issue to break from our base on to help win more elections. Like Hassan’s last minute announcement of not allowing refugees relocating to her state. Or Peltola’s oil/gas support. Just 1 thing where you fit your constituents better, not your party, giving credibility to the voters who decide which party candidate wins every election.
Policy wise though, I despise it. But I also recognize, this bill is where a majority of Americans are, who want tougher border laws. Either center or center-right depending on your own political ideology policy in exchange for fixing the broken immigration system and Democrats hopefully winning the presidency is a trade I make every day of the week. Do I have compassion for those who will be negatively impacted like those showing up at the border? Yes. Do I wish they would be welcomed? Yes. Am I willing to risk a Trump’s presidency or Republicans in government on this 1 policy when I like 90% of the rest of Harris platform? No. I’ll swallow it and become a full throated supporter of the border deal bill.
Those voters stuck in the middle get two entirely different version of reality bombarded by both parties and I think you’re far more likely to get them moving to the center or right on a key policy issue then if you just went with the progressive mindset on everything.
Governing means compromise, so overall it’s her best move politically, but her worst move on policy.
Yup and this border deal bill support could open the door to undecided or Trump leaning voters to at least opening their ears to the rest of the Harris campaign on other topics. They may not end up liking it, but at least they could hear her out whereas maybe before they didn’t.
We don’t know exactly why, but at least in GOP swing voter focus groups, this is what has happened. Undecided voters moved to Lean Kamala and Lean Trump voters moved to Undecided.
I’ll also add, this intuitively and evidence wise makes a lot of sense. Trump had been tied with Harris for some time, but now it’s considered tilting her direction. 2-3% doesn’t seem like much of a difference, but there aren’t a whole lot of undecided voters in the first place. So a 2-3% shift showing up in swing voter focus groups almost uniformly? Yeah, I can buy that being the case nationally.
On July 29th Harris was up 44.4-44.0% or +0.4 points up in the 538 average. Today she’s up 48.5-45.7% or +2.8 points up.
Well stated. I don't think I have to embrace everything a candidate does to support her, though. I will continue to oppose steps against people needing asylum as immoral and unacceptable.
That’s fair enough! For me, it’s a great way to show how extreme and out of touch Republicans are with average Americans so I’m going to continue promoting it even if I don’t agree with it. It’s pretty much the big issue I disagree with her on and it’s one where the Democratic base is out of touch with what the majority want, which is important to those few swing voters who hate both parties and always decide every election winner.
Joe Biden in 2020 had the different from Democrats, “old white guy moderate” to entice these voters esthetically to help win their votes in the middle or centre-right. Yes, people hated Trump, but against other Democrats who ran in the primary to the left? Maybe they don’t vote for them, stay home, write-in/3rd party or vote for Trump and he’s still president right now.
Kamala doesn’t have that esthetic to win crossover votes, so she needed 1 issue to break from the party base and moved her party closer to where the country is, to signal her independence as a “different Democrat” to try to win those crucial voters again. They were closed off to Biden due to feeling he wasn’t up to being president another 4 years, but now they’re open to hearing her pitch.
Also, I think we’re closer on policy then we think because verified claims of refugees should be and is accepted by Harris as the right thing to do. But it’s the lead up to those claims being proven where the disagreement comes from on the process. We agree on the end result though.
Native American voter registration (just as of today) has surged following Kamala Harris' entry into the race vs this point in the last two cycles in the state of Montana. It's a difference of about 1,500 but significant for the state if the Senate race is close and not already a runaway for Sheehy. Also -perhaps- a sign that Harris may have energized this voter base across board.
Also note that the surge happened largely BEFORE Sheehy called Natives drunks.
The chart averages out to about 200 per week in the last 14weeks. Assume 95% of native voters pull for Tester. So this probably matters if he is within 0.5pt.
Would help to know if there are other voter registration metrics in MT besides just Native American voter registrations that are going in the Democratic Party's favor.
Not sure how I feel about this but Cory Booker had, at the last minute, blocked a bipartisan bill from Ted Cruz that went after deepfake/AI generated porn. It was wrapped up in a series of uncontroversial bills planned for passage but Booker came out in the moments before voting to block it.
He gave little reason why but he is a very close friend of Colin Allred and didn't want to give Cruz a victory.
Part of me is disgusted our politics is this cutthroat but the partisan in me also wants zero wins for Cruz and an Allred victory. :/
He should have at least given a reason. "Because it would be a victory for Cruz" is not a good reason to oppose legislation if you think it's good legislation.
If that's the case, I think Booker is overreacting. My impression is that Texans wouldn't prioritize this issue as much as they would with bread & butter issues (especially the Hispanic voters).
I doubt very much that Cruz would get traction in his Senate campaign with this issue. One bipartisan bill he proposed doesn't make up for his more than 6+ years of being an actor in the Senate (in other words, he's never really tried being a Senator).
That said, I think the bipartisan bill while certainly to be effective is too narrow of a legislation. I would hope there would be a broader legislation that does more than simply going after the deepfake/AI generated porn.
I don't think persuadable voters pay attention to policy or legislation anyway. The people who do pay attention to policy and legislation are already decided.
I as well. The death toll announcement choked me up. And there's more on the way unless the repeated victims get rid of fascists and fascist-enablers like DeSantis and Trump so that we can do what Democrats always do: address problems while the "loyal opposition" oex everything possible to block us.
Only speaking of Florida; we usually do a pretty good job of making sure any voter that wants to, will get their vote in(even if it is online); however, lots of folks probably have other priorities after the storms have passed
If this were October 28th not Septemebr 28th I'd agree. But even with something as close to the election as Hurricane Sandy, the impact on the election turnout was pretty small even then. I can't imagine a significant number of undertones 5 weeks out, especially inland in the Carolinas
Probably not Florida. The direct impact zone is sparsely populated, which doesn’t even include Tallahassee. The city gets lucky as being right on the left or the safer side of the path, the damage seems to be relatively light.
Same for ATL metro. It only passed about 80 miles to the east of the city, but most of the sprawl sit on the left side of the storm center. Some moderate rains and wind, nothing serious. But the right side had suffered a hit. NC bears the blunt of the hit, mostly from flooding, and many places as far as to Charlotte suburbs are still out of power.
My elderly (late 70's) widowed aunt's house and car both got totaled. She's on the water in Pasco County, and had retreated inland to a friend's house to ride out the storm. She passed out and had to be transported to the hospital after seeing the condition of the house. She'll probably end up staying in WV for a few months (2 of her 5 kids and all of her grandkids are back there now).
Is it that they let it lapse, or that they are simply uninsurable? Even if insurance is possible it may be beyond the means of many. Just not sure how many people actually made a decision vs were forced into it.
I mean that’s fair to new buyers, but I suspect there are folks who had insurance but no longer are able to obtain / afford it. It’s all fine and good to say well they should sell and move but that may not always be realistic.
Don’t know, hope so too, but my (late 40’s) retired firefighter cousin and his wife drove down Friday from WV and yesterday he and a volunteer crew of 15 from her faith community gutted the bottom 4 feet of the house, removed all the damaged items, laundered all of the clothes at a laundromat one of them owns, and sprayed the house with an anti microbial. She’s being taken care of.
My friends in the Clemson area note lots of downed trees and no power, but things that mostly will be at least temporarily repaired in a month.
Western NC and Eastern TN seem to be in far worse shape. I'd guess basic transportation will be functional in a couple weeks, though with lots of circuitous detours. Mountains roads are hard to fix.
And a fascist. And a despicable individual. He cares nothing for the people he allegedly represents; he just craves power and actually thinks he has a political future.
I'm sure the president and vice president - soon to be the president in my belief - are highly reluctant to politicize this tragedy (the GOP would, of course), but I'm wondering about some sort of ads or other voter reachout pointing out DeSantis's vile actions and tying them and him to Trump and Scott.
NE-SenA: When the outside group money starts flowing on BOTH sides, then I start to believe, just maybe, this race could be competitive. Time will tell.
Yeah. I'll take these on balance given that Siena has been a couple points right of the averages since late 2023 (possibly overcompensation but of course we don't know). Even if they're exactly on, we're at 270.
Trump +6 in Ohio is consistent with Harris +4 in Pennsylvania which their other poll found. For whatever reason NYT seems to be getting results comparable to other polls in the northern states but better for Trump nationally and in the sunbelt states.
If the poll is right, Mr. Moreno will need more than undecided Trump voters to break his way. Mr. Brown would still lead by two points, 50-48, if voters who are currently undecided in the Senate race chose the candidate who aligns with
the party of their presidential vote choice. Instead, Mr. Brown leads because he has the support of 10 percent of Mr. Trump's backers. To win, Mr. Moreno will need to pull some of that support back.
Undecided Trump voters going their way to Moreno would have to do so for a good reason.
It's not crystal clear what exactly Moreno has to offer for them. Sure, JD Vance could campaign for him, but it might not make a difference for the undecided voters.
I'm seeing a consistent pattern of Harris doing worse than our senate candidates across multiple polls. It's hard to imagine we'll see this level of consistent senate overperformance across the board will carry through to election day.
Either Harris will improve, senate dems will do worse, or a bit of both as they meet closer to the middle. Although they're only stating the senate margins in this specific poll, so it could come down to greater undecideds in one election but not the other.
Lake explains Gallego. She's toxic af and a proven lover. Rosen is an incumbent, and has been in Congress for 8 years. While not a multi term incumbent, she is definitely an incumbent with incumbent's advantage.
But again, is Lake more toxic than Trump? How does one reconcile being okay with Trump but finding Lake to be a bridge too far? In less polarizing times, I'd be more convinced by Rosen's apparent firm grasp on Nevada as sometimes first-term Senators are given an unusual amount of bipartisan grace when running for their second term, but why is her standing so much stronger than Catherine Cortez Masto's standing was two years ago when her political resume was so similar?
I think a lot of it may just be that people reject Lake because she sounds unhinged, but are willing to ignore when Trump acts just as bad because they've already voted for him at least once and don't want to admit to themselves that they were wrong about him or (worse) got played by him.
I’ve said this before, but the fact she’s a woman I think creates an added electoral penalty to already being “crazy, extreme” etc.
Also, Adam Laxalt was a former statewide elected Republican in Nevada, so we shouldn’t have been surprised he put up such a tough challenge. He was mostly considered a “normal” Republican, which we all know swing voters LOVE to vote for. Sam Brown is a much weaker opponent, he’s never won a race before.
Pretty much every “Trump, but not Trump” candidate has crashed and burned and Trump himself has only won 1 election with 46% of the vote, so he’s not exactly an electoral powerhouse either. So Lake flaming out trying to do that isn’t surprising.
TLDR: NV-Sen 2024 is not the same race as NV-Sen 2022. That’s why there’s a difference.
It’s an interesting dichotomy. I think most would agree here that the only way to hold the Senate is with over performance on the Senate level in at least two of OH, MT, TX, FL (and with latest data, maybe even NE and MO). But at the same time too much of an over performance by Sen candidates would give Trump the presidency. Does anyone really see a Republican president with a Dem Senate and House? I certainly don’t but based on some of the polling numbers it seems possible.
The NYT/Siena poll is credible enough that I am not going to dismiss the idea that they have done a better job of ascertaining what the electorate will look like than everyone else. And if the electorate that they think will show up does, Trump probably wins. That said, they are very consistently producing more Trump-friendly numbers than other pollsters. I think their recent Sun Belt numbers were better for Trump than Trafalgar's most recent numbers in those states.
On Thursday, American Muckrakers posted about emails it received detailing how the conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports, which claims to be nonpartisan, shared polling results with Trump advisers and campaign officials like Dan Scavino, Susie Wiles, and John McLaughlin. The advisers, Rasmussen, and the nonprofit organizations that pay it for polling are violating tax and election laws, according to American Muckrakers.
Here are my updated crude 31- and 14-day polling averages. I exclude GOP troll polls (Rasmussen, Trafalgar, etc), any polls released by partisan organizations, and some with really sketchy methods such as ActiVote. For the 14-day state averages, the number of polls is in parentheses.
AZ: 31-day T+1.0, 14-day T+1.9 (7)
GA: 31-day T+1.1, 14-day T+0.9 (10)
MI: 31-day H+2.7, 14-day H+2.9 (8)
NV: 31-day H+1.7, 14-day H+2.0 (4)
NC: 31-day T+0.2, 14-day T+0.3 (12)
PA: 31-day H+1.5, 14-day H+1.7 (13)
WI: 31-day H+2.5, 14-day H+1.9 (6)
US: 31-day H+3.1, 14-day H+4.0
The national post-debate polls show movement toward Harris, but the state polls don't really. With margins this small, it could just be a function of which firms are polling where. For now Harris has clear polling leads in enough states to win. It's possible (IMO unlikely) that polls are systematically too favorable to Dems as they were in 2020, but at this point Trump needs either a systematic polling error or a big October surprise: his own campaign strategy suggests that he has little room to grow his own vote, as his ads have been entirely aimed at discrediting Harris. On top of that, Harris has more ads booked the rest of the way and a better ground game by all accounts.
Observation/gripe: Suppose the situation was reversed, and Harris was up 1-2 in Wisconsin and about 1 in Michigan, North Carolina was tied, and Trump was up about 3 in Georgia, 2 in Nevada and Arizona, and 1-2 in Pennsylvania. I suspect most media outlets wouldn't be calling the race a tossup as they do currently.
She originally was a Green Party member who ended up running in the Peace & Freedom Party with Cindy Sheehan of all people as her running mate only for Sheehan to unsuccessfully disassociate with Barr soon after.
Then Barr starts supporting Trump and then it's like she's both MAGA and a socialist. I know she's gone bonkers for the last number of years (especially with her tweets) but it's clear she wants the whole system blown up.
That's been pretty well bunked for a few decades now. OTOH, people who are fundamentally authoritarians can pretty clearly move between right and left with ease.
Nah, I see her pulling a Manchin and becoming a No Labels member. She fits the bill and naturally will do anything she can to stay relevant. I doubt going to the GOP will suit her.
She already drunkenly did this in a College Students for Trump events months ago. It's clear that the narcissism and attention were far more important to her. Or as one friend of mine, who has actually met her once or twice and works in the entertainment business put it, there is a certain class of very loud, very obnoxious leftist for whom being anti-establishment, a perception of themselves as a jaded cynic seeing the truths no one else is willing to speak, is far more than any actual political belief. That's why you had Roseanne in the 90s blasting gay rights, pro-union, anti-free trade, anti-corporate, feminist (and pro choice) themes from a blue collar white midwestern setting (part of what made Roseanne such an amazing show originally), which also featured atheism and agnosticism, who has now turned into a cheerleader for Christian nationalists and right-wing conservatives, because they have claimed the mantle of anti-establishment and truth speakers against power. Though I also think there are some genuine issues at play here that I'm not in a position to diagnose.
As far as races are concerned, I'm actually seeing a bit of an all-state tour trend in Senate races for red seats Democrats are not expected to win. Perhaps I could call this the Beto Effect as after Beto O'Rourke ran for the US Senate in Texas back in 2018, his all-county campaign made headlines throughout 2018.
Two such campaigns are in the TN-SEN and WV-SEN races. Both Gloria Johnson and Glenn Elliott in their respective races are probably the strongest Democratic Candidates in Solid Republican races even while their all-county tours aren't necessarily going to make the races any closer than they've already been.
What I'm most interested to see is how swing regions in TN and WV are going to be impacted by these Senate races.
I don't know TN but in researching WV, Monongalia County, a swing county where Biden barely lost in 2020, could likely become bluer as a result of Elliott's candidacy (he's becoming very visible) and even the presidential election. There are also three WV counties, Cabell, Jefferson, and Kanawha, that aren't swing countries but ones where Biden got 40+% of the votes. They could inch upwards a bit in turnout, but it remains to be seen.
I'm no expert on Tennessee, but on general principles, I'd look at what happens in the suburbs, particularly those of Nashville and presumably Memphis, though I've heard less talk about those and many of those suburbs are in Arkansas.
Our only realistic goals this decade in Tennessee are getting the Nashville area to be too blue to crack in 2032 and to try and make Knox county competitive to light blue.
I’m hoping Gloria Johnson does better than 2020 Democratic Senate Candidate Marsha Bradshaw, who got 35% of the votes.
She could go in the low 40% range in terms of votes but I really don’t know if she would be able to hit the 45+% mark. Phil Bredesen got roughly 44% of the votes in Marsha Blackburn’s first Senate run but now she’s running for re-election as a freshman Senator.
We could always use our fellow liberal Taylor Swift’s help!
I'm not sure why but Tennessee's suburbs still generally remain obnoxiously red. But it's not as if Tennessee is any more evangelical or rural than say Georgia or North Carolina. Maybe Tennessee remains more largely rural and exurban, but Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga and Knoxville are all growing cities and from what I've read and heard they tend to attract young professionals with their culture and atmosphere. It may just be the voting history of the state still being ancestrally Republican vs North Carolina. Georgia by contrast, with Atlanta has a far larger metro of over 6 million people combined with a massive influx of Northern and younger professional transplants.
The eastern third's one of the most ancestrally GOP parts of the country, the western third's got roughly a 1:1 correlation of race and party, and the middle third's still got densely populated rurals to pair with burbs whose population is heavily of Southern origin.
East Tennessee supported the Union during the Civil War. Thus they have essentially always been hardcore Republican. Even when the Republican Party in most of the south was nonexistent due to the "Party of Lincoln" association.
I think it's mostly because Tennessee is just like Florida, a sponge for tax-averse right-wing refugees from blue states. The same types of people moving to Fort Myers, Florida, are also moving to Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Hmmm. That is a problem, especially considering TN is more red than FL.
On the other hand, Gloria Johnson has been focusing on meeting voters in all-99 county diners over a month ago. She’s certainly doing effective retail politics, even if Marsha Blackburn is heavily favored to win the race.
Agree, it’s within the realm of possibility that TN becomes the Republicans biggest “safe” state depending on TX and FL trends. That really doesn’t put them in a great position to win the presidency. Will be interesting to watch the trends of Nashville to see if it could ever become an Atlanta and make the state competitive.
I know a right wing retired Latino cop from LA who moved his family of 6 to Tennessee for exactly that reason. From social media the fairly moderate adult daughter married an undereducated local RWNJ and swung seriously rightward from the multiple degreed L.A. party girl I knew.
On the other hand, my fairly liberal “aunt” (who moved from WV to CA in the early 80’s) also sold her place in OC and moved back East to Tennessee in retirement, unfortunately she has since lost a long battle with cancer.
If nothing else, it's good for the party to have credible candidates who can actually campaign in deep red areas, as opposed to being either completely incompetent or grifting a la Marcus Flowers.
I'm really impressed with the Democratic Senate Candidates running in red states this election cycle. They have credible backgrounds and interesting profiles.
Democrats in red states need to be fired up and expand the base.
In the case of the WV counties i mentioned where Biden got 40% of the votes, the most notable cities in the state are located in those counties. Definitely not deep red territory. Locally wise, Glenn Elliott could help turnout in cities like Charleston, Huntington, Morgantown, and others depending on what his ground game is looking like.
As far as TN is concerned, local turnout would be more applicable for Gloria Johnson in cities like Memphis and Nashville, where there are more diverse number of demographics favorable to Democrats than the rural parts of the state.
I'm just curious if we have candidates further down the ballot(otherwise, it's kind of a waste to a large degree)that can benefit; I'm talking state lege, County council, local Council\Mayor
I can't comment on the more local races, but I would think in both TN and WV in the Senate and Presidential races that turnout will help the local races in areas that are not deep red.
I was going to add something about WV Democratic Senate Candidate Glenn Elliott as I've mentioned his name before in previous discussions on DKE and The Downballot:
While he's not likely going to win the election, from a qualitative standpoint, I believe Elliott's become a surprisingly effective messenger as a Democrat in WV while recognizing how deep red the state has become. He also happened to be a delegate for Kamala Harris at the DNC Convention, which shows how dedicated he is to the Democratic Party.
What percentage does he need to get to deserve to be called a "surprisingly effective messenger for Democratic Party"? I don't think we can say he is until the votes are counted.
I actually think he could get to 35% but this is also an open Senate race. What helps Elliott is that Governor Jim Justice has been getting bad press with the businesses he owns and has become more aloof in the state. This doesn't assure Elliott will win the race as Justice and the WV GOP have a stranglehold on the state, but he has an opening with this.
Even though this was back in 2014, Democratic Senate Candidate Natalie Tennant did receive 34.47% of the votes in an open Senate race against Shelley Moore Capito when she was first running for the Senate. 2014 wasn't of course a good year for Democrats but the main reason why 2020 Senate Candidate Paula Jean Swearengin got 27% of the votes was that she was too liberal for WV and she was running against Capito when she was already a Senator.
This is purely my opinion but in Elliott's interviews as well as statements, he's aimed to keep the right balance between being a Democrat vs. what WV needs are. I'm not sure how this will end up translating into votes but essentially, Elliott has positioned himself not to be divisive and is more of a unity candidate. He has a good grasp on the issues but still mindful that he has to appeal to more than just simply the Democratic Party base. According to Elliott himself, Wheeling (where he's served two terms as Mayor), is a conservative city so if that's the case, he has the ability to be bipartisan as needed to get things done.
As far as the votes are concerned, it remains to be seen how far through WV Elliott will be able to make an impact. The biggest problem he faces isn't being a Democrat but getting enough visibility to the degree where voters think they know him. That's been evident in polls. It's hard to mount a Senate campaign in a mountain state like WV without help from the DSCC and other significant grassroots groups. In a way though, it actually makes things easier for Elliott. I don't think the DSCC getting involved would help the race.
Pretty sure this violates the rule against discussing I/P here.
I was specifically referring to election ramifications;but I can delete if the discussion is not civil
I’d ask that we not have this discussion here. Thanks.
= Polling =
Fox News/Beacon (D)/Shaw (R) (09.20-09.24.2024):
PA:
Pres LV H2H: Trump (R) 49%, Harris (D) 49%
Pres LV Full: Trump (R) 48%, Harris (D) 48%, Oliver (L) 2%, Stein (G) 2%
Pres RV H2H: Harris (D) 50%, Trump (R) 48%
Sen: Casey (D) 53%, McCormick (R) 44%%
NC:
Pres LV H2H: Trump (R) 50%, Harris (D) 49%
Pres LV Full: Trump (R) 49%, Harris (D) 47%, Oliver (L) 1%, West (JFA) 1%, Stein (G) 1%
Pres RV H2H: Harris (D) 50%, Trump (R) 48%
Gov RV: Stein (D) 56%, Robinson (R) 40%
In other words, who knows?
Only thing good from this is that Casey is running far enough ahead of the top of the ticket that even if an unfriendly 2016 or 2020-style electorate shows up on November 5, he seems well-positioned to withstand it.
Really interested to see if these Pres/Sen divergences hold up. As we know in 2020 they basically all collapsed to a few points at most, with a couple of notable exceptions. In NH Shaheen got several points ahead of Biden, but even senators like Warner (VA), Durbin (IL), and Merkley (OR) found themselves having very Biden-like coalitions. To say nothing of Gary Peters, Tina Smith, Ben Ray Lujan, and all of the GOP seats we were contesting. But this year, basically every Dem senator, and even candidates in open Dem seats, are running several points ahead of Harris. I highly doubt Casey loses but I'd be shocked if he does win by ~10 in the end.
I wouldn't be shocked by that, but yes, it will be interesting to see.
The unusually high (of recent cycles anyway) degree of poll divergence between the Presidential race and the Senate contests has been one of the most fascinating trends this year, especially as it continues to endure post-Labor Day. I keep waiting for the races to settle but they haven't yet.
The two most intriguing examples are Arizona and Nevada. As I said yesterday, it's hard to reconcile that there are tens of thousands of Arizona voters who think Trump is acceptable but draw the line with Kari Lake, although another poster sagely pointed out that Hispanic men could account for a good share of the ticket-splitters. The Nevada situation is stranger as Jacky Rosen strikes me as being about as Generic D as they come so her continually running far ahead of Harris is confusing. I'd be surprised if the two races didn't converge substantially by November. Recall that Mark Kelly appeared to be running far ahead of Biden in 2020 polling but by election night the divergence was less than 2 points.
Another 2020 Senate race with a pretty big spread was Mississippi where Mike Espy ran 6 points closer to his challenger than Biden did.
One of the interesting things that's often missed about our narrow statewide wins in the 2022 election in AZ relates to the simple story that we won those races with a GOP leaning electorate because each of the 4 GOP losers (Kari Lake, Mark Finchem, Blake Masters, and Abe Hamadeh) was so toxic that sane Republicans couldn't support them and split their tickets. The piece that's misunderstood is that for the most part the same ticket splitters didn't vote Dem for all 4 races. Instead different Republican voters typically defected on only one or two races. The relatively narrow results hide the fact that quite a few AZ GOP voters actually split their tickets in high profile races. When considering just those 4 races, 18.7% of Maricopa County voters split their tickets. When considering all partisan races, 37.4% of Maricopa County voters split their ballots.
Interesting; thanks. Are you suggesting that AZ ticket-splitting this cycle is highly possible? And how does one of the four toxins you mentioned running again in the highest-profile downballot race figure in?
I think the pool of available split ticket voters in AZ is bigger than generally understood, and I do think Lake will underperform Trump and Trump will underperform generic GOP legislator. I'm hopeful we'll see 2022 ticket splitters consolidate more for us downballot, rather than simply increasing the number of ticket splitters who vote for both Harris and Gallego but GOP downballot. At this point Lake is damaged goods and I expect her to do relatively worse than in 2022 (thank the GOP primary voters for saving the AZ Dem Party from kicking away a U.S. Senate seat). I also expect 2024 to be bluer than 2022 in AZ simply due to demographic trend, and improved turnout due to being a presidential year.
How much of this was GOP voters pulling the lever for Trump and bailing on the rest of the ballot? Perhaps there are more low information GOP voters that bail than Dems?
I'm interested in two races in particular - the Pennsylvania state senate elections in SD-37 and SD-49. If we win both of these, along with SD-15 (which should be an easy Dem flip), and keep control of the state House, then Dems would win a trifecta in Pennsylvania. (There are no other realistic Dem flips in the PA Senate this year, and none of the Dem seats are in any particular danger.)
Does anyone have any knowledge about how those two races are going?
I have 0 insider knowledge, but I can give you the fundraising numbers in each, courtesy of https://www.transparencyusa.org/pa/races?type=State%20Legislative%20%28Upper%29
SD15 D $650k R $123k
SD37 D $159k R inc $773k
SD49 D $303k R inc $500k
In short, before the campaign began, Democrats were poised to pickup the easy one, were fighting for one and not so much in the other. That said, the Democratic primary in PA where these Democrats were chosen was held on April 23rd, so that’s hardly enough time for any candidate to do much of anything, let alone start raising some cash. So in essence, we know exactly what we did before looking at these reports. Have I mentioned how dumb this financial reporting schedule is? I should probably mention that.
However, this data only goes to May. Apparently PA campaign fundraising reports has a 5 month gap of no reports being required lol. The next report is on October 25th, which imo this entire schedule from top to bottom is freaking ridiculous. There’s no plausible explanation to have a 5 month gap in an election year for any state. Let alone for the preeminent swing state that determines the presidency and whether Democrats get a trifecta or not.
If Democrats win a trifecta or Treasurer or whoever the heck it is that’s in charge and came up with this very terrible reporting schedule, that needs to change, like, the day after being seated.
On Thursday the LDP of Japan had its leadership elections to replace Fumio Kishida. Despite a huge number of candidates, the race more or less went as expected, going down to a huge two-way showdown between Shigeru Ishiba and Sanae Takaichi. Takaichi would have been the first woman to occupy the post but don't let that fool you; she's a close protege of the late Abe Shinzo who was the leading backer of her career and she manages to be even more conservative than him. She also lacks all of the pragmatism that defined Abe, leaving just the pure ideologue. What's more, she was, ironically, the most socially conservative of the bunch, with a history of inflammatory anti-LGBT commentary and was the only LDP candidate in the running who has been staunchly on the record opposing letting married women (or men, sometimes) keep their original surnames (in Japan, upon marriage, you create a household and it has to be registered under one name, so both parties must take on the same last name).
Happy she lost (even if only very narrowly). But it's not like Shigeru Ishiba is much better. It was just a predictable result. Ishiba comes from the "centrist" wing of the party, but he's long been extremely friendly with Abe and Abe's faction. He has good relations with the conservative, is himself (like almost every ambitious member of the LDP), a member of the ultraconservative nationalist Nippon Kaigi, and has a reputation for being a military otaku (he loves tank miniatures and models and is a geek for military weapons and history). He's another Suga style insipid party insider, having occupied the position of President of the party. He's been a member of the Diet since 1986 (his father was a popular politician and he won office at age 29). He's neither old nor young, conservative nor moderate, which helped him consolidate most of the mainstream field.
Interestingly enough, Ishiba comes from Tottori Prefecture, which is one of the physically smallest prefectures (fourth or fifth smallest), and also the least populous of all Japan's prefectures, with less than 450,000 residents. In Japan, Tottori is famous for having very little going for it; I mean it just has no famous landmarks (like Izumo Taisha in neighboring Shimane), no really famous cultural traditions or landmarks, and just in general because of it's odd location, not a lot of historically important events have ever occurred there. The only thing its really known for is the Tottori Sand Dunes which are Japan's only sand dunes and maybe Mt. Daisen, one of Japan's 100 famous mountains and also a very popular skiing area for people in the Kansai region around Osaka to go to during the winter.
Sanae Takaichi comes from Nara Prefecture. In fact, I believe Abe was murdered while stumping for her when he changed his schedule last minute following an adultery scandal for the LDP politician he was originally set to stump for that weekend (and leaving Nara police almost no time to prepare a security plan).
Speaking of Abe, I've never seen anything like it, 2 years after his assassination. I've never heard of an assassination ruining the reputation of the person assassinated while the perpetrator is widely sympathized. Abe had already left office with multiple scandals (several involving his wife) and approval ratings in the teens, but he was still something of the power behind the scenes in the LDP. Since his assassination, the extensive network his family helped the Unification Church cult (strangely enough a radical Korean cult with an anti-Japan bent of all things), gain influence over all most of the LDP in exchange for using their cult members for GOTV and campaigning (for free), led to his own brother having to resign from the diet. Then his own faction got caught up in the fundraising scandal were LDP politicians in multiple factions were hosting fundraising parties and then skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars off the top to distribute to members (of the Diet) without reporting it either, and his faction was also dissolved and it also came back that this practice went back years and years, all the way to when he was PM. Abe redefined modern Japanese politics, was the longest serving PM in post-war history, and was the most successful politician of the democratic era, and yet being assassinated just turned into a series of events and brought widespread media and public attention, to the rot behind his political machine and definitively discredited him.
The Unification Church scandal led to Kishida, (another moderate, centrist candidate who also united other factions to defeating the Abe faction's chosen candidate, Takaichi) or at least enabled him, to largely purge his cabinet of Abe loyalists, and now Abe's favored protege has lost two elections to the leadership (she may or may not have a chance for a third run; the LDP is worse than the Tories, its a den of self-serving vipers cynically after power and with little loyalty; it wouldn't surprise me to see another ambitious conservative politician upstage Takaichi in the next leadership elections, which probably won't be that far in the future).
Now if only the opposition party situation wasn't a rampant mess, if only the Left wasn't completely fragmented, unprofessional, poorly organized, and incompetent, and if only there was actually a well-funded political movement like Hatoyama's coalition in 2009 to take advantage of years and years of LDP scandals and increasing voter dissatisfaction. Abe built an LDP that was too successful, but for most of the interior of the country, workers and common people haven't seen benefits from his policies and even in the cities, many are disenchanted with the arrogance and corruption of the LDP (a result of it being too successful). The increasingly conservative and less pragmatic bend of much of its membership also creates, I think, more opportunities for other parties. The next elections should bring them back down to earth more, but the different opposition parties need to have a plan, especially the Democratic Constitutional Party of Japan or whatever it's calling itself these days (it has fallen apart, dissolved, fused with other parties and renamed itself 3 times since losing power a little over a decade ago to Abe).
Great post. Thanks for explaining all of that!
https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1839661911060672545?t=CCr97p4--jMihOVlMLRD9Q&s=19
Virginia early voting today vs this point 2020:
Dems 53.7% (-1.3%)
Reps 39.4% (+7.7%)
Less folks will vote early than in 2020, particularly Dems (b/c GOP use it less).
Comparing the splits to 2020 will be near useless. I think the better comparison eould be 2022. The volume will be much lower, obviously but in terms of the split.
Plus, is actually, sometimes, encouraging his side to do it.
This is the modeled party BS from TargetSmart. Virginia has no party registration!
Modeled party ID, in a no party reg state, comparing partial early voting from today to four years ago, in the midst of a pandemic (and Trump worries) causing historically abnormal early voting from Dems...hard to think of a data point less useful for 2024 analysis!
https://politicalwire.com/2024/09/27/democrats-hard-line-evolution-on-immigration/
So, I get that Harris is trying to outflank Trump on undocumented immigration, but are the Democrats going to join the Republicans in being demagogic about immigration from now on, becoming part of the problem and keeping undocumented immigrants an underclass whose rights as workers can be violated with impunity while employers use them to undercut legal labor and the U.S. shuts itself off to refugees running for their lives because their arrival, like that of refugees from the Nazis in their day, is inconvenient, or will she pander amorally only for the duration of the campaign and then disappoint those many or few people who were sold on her expediently momentary hard line? Is immigration reform now a completely dead idea because the Democrats have concluded that it's politically inconvenient and they can successfully appeal to people who hate immigrants and immigration? And just how many people who would have otherwise voted against them are really going to be sold on this new-found hard line by the Democrats against the huddled masses yearning to breathe free?
"While we understand that many people are desperate to migrate to the United States, our system must be orderly and secure. And that is my goal."
Sounds reasonable. And reasonable is what her entire campaign is built on.
Yeah, that certainly is reasonable, but I didn't like the bill Trump killed, and considering that economists figured out that it was only due to immigration, including illegal immigration, that the U.S. economy bounced back from the Covid doldrums, shutting ourselves off from asylum-seekers is definitely not a wise policy.
Agreed.
However, there should be an ongoing effort to ensure countries where asylum-seekers are coming from can get better economies. The U.S. doesn’t always have to be the only place where employment opportunities should be.
Of course, there would have to be trade-offs with certain countries depending on what their economies are like. This would be more of an ongoing foreign policy affair.
Last time I checked only about 10% of those who’ve left Venezuela ended up in the U.S. a far smaller percentage of refugees from Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan are here. It’s not close to being the case that the US is the only country taking refugees/asylees, despite being a leading cause of why folks are leaving their homes.
Also Cuba although I don’t see migrants to represent a substantial portion of those coming in the US.
That said, if there’s an opportunity to build strong relations with a country where migrants are coming from it’s Cuba. President Miguel Diaz-Canel has expressed openness for continuing relations with the US although during the Trump and Biden Administration they have taken a back burner.
With Venezuela, it’s more complicated.
https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/hialeah/article285207352.html
The fact that Harris went to the border on a late September campaign stop tells me she continues to feel highly vulnerable on this issue. If it was really only the "fifth most important issue to voters" as some around here have said, she wouldn't be making a point of drawing attention to it in a swing state this late in the campaign.
Could Biden have put a lid on the gaming of the asylum process earlier than the fourth year of his Presidency? That's the underlying question here that shapes this debate and why the border issue is such a profound vulnerability. Democrats raised their hands in support of decriminalizing border crossings in 2019 and 2020, and because the "asylum" loophole was allowed to be manipulated for millions of border crossings for so long before Biden finally dropped a executive order with some teeth in the months before the election, voters can be forgiven if they believe that decriminalized border crossings are exactly what we got. A more perfect road map to tap the vein of MAGA fury could not possibly have been paved.
But one thing is absolutely for sure......any political will for good-faith comprehensive immigration reform legislation that significantly expands the number of legal immigrants granted visas has been crushed for the foreseeable future in the deference to accommodating so many people allowed to cross the border illegally. Those who've defended the manipulation of the asylum process for so long have only succeeded in setting back the political clock on the immigration reform debate decades.
Your position on immigration is clear, but do you think Harris will convince anyone that she's suddenly anti-immigration?
There's a middle ground between being "anti-immigration" and signalling stronger enforcement of border crossings. I'm pretty confident that a sizable share of immigration-senstitive voters would reward a political leader who could clearly articulate that they recognize the difference.
The other thing is that there is a segment of progressives who wants no immigration enforcement at all or complete open borders. If you don’t agree with that 100%, you’re automatically a “racist”.
That segment can be marginalized, just like the "defund the police" folks can be. So that's largely a non-issue.
Fair point.
Must like many other right-wing straw men, I'm sure these kinds of people exist and are incredibly obnoxious and also incredibly online, but this is not a large or even viable constituency in the party. To put it in context, literal Nazi sympathizers and self-identified Nazis are a larger and more influential constituency in the Republican party than these far-left college activists are in Democratic politics.
I know people who are in the zero enforcement camp, and not just online. (Some of my acquaintances regularly go to rallies and vigils outside a Boston jail where migrants are detained.) But I agree that outside of the progressive / leftist bubble they carry very little weight.
She and Biden had me convinced they, like Obama and Hillary, were more than willing to throw human rights out with the bathwater when it comes to pandering to xenophobia on border issues. Better than Trump, but no wonder so many Latinos are disillusioned with Dems and registering independent.
I’m half-Hispanic. Not all Hispanics support illegal immigration.
If you support 3 year olds representing themselves in immigration proceedings, as was official policy defended in court by the Obama administration, you’ll be the first Hispanic Democrat I’ve talked to who did.
Also, no, why would you think it proves the issue is not #5? #5 is still important.
If she goes she is admitting she is vulnerable, if she doesn't go she is afraid of the issue. Head I win, tails you lose.
I do think Harris made the conscious decision to spend this week addressing her "less popular" issues - economy and immigration. She's tackling perceived weaknesses directly rather than ignoring them, figuring the benefit outweighs the danger of making those issues more salient.
Am I sure it's the right choice? No, I'm not sure. If I had to guess, I'd say it's wise, but I don't know.
So that “someone” who claimed it was the 5th most important issue was me, and I provided polling to back up that assertion in response to your claim that a plurality of voters considered it the key issue. I’m still waiting for you to provide a link to the poll where that result was obtained.
In the meantime he’s a poll that shows it as the #2 issue. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1362236/most-important-voter-issues-us/ But don’t get too excited because that’s with only 11% of people naming it as the their key issue. Here’s another one https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/poll-finding/kff-health-tracking-poll-september-2024-harris-v-trump-on-key-health-care-issues/ where immigration is #3, but again with only 12% identifying it as the primary issue.
What the evidence seems to show, is that Republicans care far more about immigration than anyone else does. It consistently ranks as the #2 issue for Republicans. Could it rank higher for potential voters in some swing states (AZ, NV) and TX where the Senate seat seems to be in play? Sure, and if you have any polling on that (or again, any polling that supports your position at all) I’d be happy to see it and take it into consideration. I’m starting to think you don’t actually have any though.
None have come up in a cursory scan of polls. Most polls seem to be asking "is this issue important to you?" and then ticking off a bunch of issues with responses to "very important" to "not very important". Not many polls are outright asking voters what their #1 issue is. The exit polls will and I'll stand by my prediction from late last year that "immigration and the border" will top the list. I could be wrong and either the economy or reproductive rights rank higher, but I can predict with high confidence that immigration and the border will rank higher than 11% on voters' top issues.
Considering most elections in Europe in the last few years has turned on immigration, it's pretty tone-deaf to think the laws of gravity won't apply here, especially now that the unwritten "I won't talk about immigration if you won't" truce ended among Presidential nominees after the Obama years. The yawning class divide over this issue makes it easy for the college boys in the media and in election analysis community to fail to notice how salient the issue is outside their upscale suburban cul-de-sacs. We'll know in a little over a month who was right I guess.
If you're right that that's the #1 issue, it's not going to be by people who want fewer hassles at the border, and Trump will win by a considerable margin. I think it's extremely unlikely to be the #1 issue.
There are literally two polls in my comment above that ask “what is the most important issue to you” so they’re not that hard to find. No idea on how good the pollsters are but they’re out there. I think the polls that ask about relative importance would actually support your theory better since it would allow someone to say both the economy and immigration are important to them.
Regarding Europe, I’m not sure it’s an apples to apples comparison. You’ve got the Scandis, where yes, from what I’ve read immigration is a big issue. But those are very white countries. I would expect the fear of people of color to be greater than that in heterogeneous societies. And LePen keeps getting closer and closer in France. But, well, France… Additionally, the aftereffects of colonization are much more recent there, so the dynamic is probably different. Issue polls for the EU are even harder to find than for the US though, so if you have any links to them would be happy to review them.
I am going to agree with you on one thing though, and this goes against my assumptions, but immigration probably will rank higher than health care / abortion in the exit polls. I do think though, that how many people base their vote on each issue is still up for debate.
Look mate, I’m really not trying to be a dick here. But one of the main reasons I started posting on DKE was because people were just throwing out random opinions and stating them as fact. While I disagree with it, I have no problem with your theory that immigration is the key issue, it’s a legitimate hypothesis. The reason I keep pushing back is because you have constantly claimed that you have facts to back your opinion up but those facts have never materialized. I try to be very clear in what I conclude from evidence vs what is my gut instinct, if you did the same I wouldn’t be nearly so argumentative.
And to clarify, there were actually polls showing immigration as the #1 issue, but they were from before the Democratic nominee swap and thus obsolete.
Which polls? Because if we’ve seen immigration as an issue decrease in importance with the “Border Czar” as candidate that is extremely promising.
Here's one....
https://news.gallup.com/poll/611135/immigration-surges-top-important-problem-list.aspx
Thanks for that. If you dig into the actual poll responses https://news.gallup.com/file/poll/611138/240226MIPEcon.pdf economic issues still top Immigration 30-28. It’s just that only 12% of folks said Economy in General while the other 18% cited something more specific. When you break it down by party, the percentage responses for Economic Issues, Economy In General, Immigration are:
Rep: 29-11-57
Ind: 34-13-22
Dem: 27-12-10
So as with all the other polls I’ve seen, it’s largely something Republicans care about. Less than 1 in 4 Independents cite it as their primary concern. As mentioned above, I’m surprised to see health care / abortion listed so low.
It seems Gallup used some selective data points in order to claim that Immigration is the #1 issue.
Since it’s a monthly poll we have more recent data to look at as well, https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx. From Feb to Sep, the economy in general has gone from 12% to 24%, economic issues as a whole from 30 to 44% and Immigration from 28 to 22%.
My theory, which the data seems to support, is that except for the hardcore Republicans, most people don’t care that much about immigration, except when they’re told to. Was there anything going on in February 2024 which may have caused increase interest in immigration? I had to look up the timing of it but yup, that’s when the Immigration Bill was in the news. If you look at the trend lines in the first link the number of people who named immigration as their #1 issue tripled between Aug 2023 and Feb 2024. I suspect there was a corresponding increase in news coverage about it as well.
Similarly, since the breakdown of the Immigration bill, there has been a mostly steady decrease, with a recent uptick in September, which I would guess is due to the latest racist crap being pushed by the Republican Party.
Which leads me to my final conclusion as to why immigration is not going to be the deciding factor of this election: the lack of news about the caravan. I actually expected to be inundated with news about it by now, yet there has been next to nothing. If it really was that much of a weakness for Harris, Trump’s allies would be ratcheting up the hysteria about it, and probably causing additional instability in Latin America to make it happen.
Here’s my thoughts on this. Politics vs policy imo.
Politically, this is a very shrewd and smart move for Harris to embrace the tough border deal and move the Democratic Party further right on the issue. If she can start eating away Trump’s advantage on the economy and immigration, she’s far more likely to win. I’ve often felt that Democrats should pick 1 issue to break from our base on to help win more elections. Like Hassan’s last minute announcement of not allowing refugees relocating to her state. Or Peltola’s oil/gas support. Just 1 thing where you fit your constituents better, not your party, giving credibility to the voters who decide which party candidate wins every election.
Policy wise though, I despise it. But I also recognize, this bill is where a majority of Americans are, who want tougher border laws. Either center or center-right depending on your own political ideology policy in exchange for fixing the broken immigration system and Democrats hopefully winning the presidency is a trade I make every day of the week. Do I have compassion for those who will be negatively impacted like those showing up at the border? Yes. Do I wish they would be welcomed? Yes. Am I willing to risk a Trump’s presidency or Republicans in government on this 1 policy when I like 90% of the rest of Harris platform? No. I’ll swallow it and become a full throated supporter of the border deal bill.
Those voters stuck in the middle get two entirely different version of reality bombarded by both parties and I think you’re far more likely to get them moving to the center or right on a key policy issue then if you just went with the progressive mindset on everything.
Governing means compromise, so overall it’s her best move politically, but her worst move on policy.
Valid points. Harris has shown she can be tough when she needs to be, especially on the issue of immigration.
Yup and this border deal bill support could open the door to undecided or Trump leaning voters to at least opening their ears to the rest of the Harris campaign on other topics. They may not end up liking it, but at least they could hear her out whereas maybe before they didn’t.
I'm doubtful about that.
We don’t know exactly why, but at least in GOP swing voter focus groups, this is what has happened. Undecided voters moved to Lean Kamala and Lean Trump voters moved to Undecided.
Because of her statements about limiting asylum?
I’ll also add, this intuitively and evidence wise makes a lot of sense. Trump had been tied with Harris for some time, but now it’s considered tilting her direction. 2-3% doesn’t seem like much of a difference, but there aren’t a whole lot of undecided voters in the first place. So a 2-3% shift showing up in swing voter focus groups almost uniformly? Yeah, I can buy that being the case nationally.
On July 29th Harris was up 44.4-44.0% or +0.4 points up in the 538 average. Today she’s up 48.5-45.7% or +2.8 points up.
Well stated. I don't think I have to embrace everything a candidate does to support her, though. I will continue to oppose steps against people needing asylum as immoral and unacceptable.
That’s fair enough! For me, it’s a great way to show how extreme and out of touch Republicans are with average Americans so I’m going to continue promoting it even if I don’t agree with it. It’s pretty much the big issue I disagree with her on and it’s one where the Democratic base is out of touch with what the majority want, which is important to those few swing voters who hate both parties and always decide every election winner.
Joe Biden in 2020 had the different from Democrats, “old white guy moderate” to entice these voters esthetically to help win their votes in the middle or centre-right. Yes, people hated Trump, but against other Democrats who ran in the primary to the left? Maybe they don’t vote for them, stay home, write-in/3rd party or vote for Trump and he’s still president right now.
Kamala doesn’t have that esthetic to win crossover votes, so she needed 1 issue to break from the party base and moved her party closer to where the country is, to signal her independence as a “different Democrat” to try to win those crucial voters again. They were closed off to Biden due to feeling he wasn’t up to being president another 4 years, but now they’re open to hearing her pitch.
Also, I think we’re closer on policy then we think because verified claims of refugees should be and is accepted by Harris as the right thing to do. But it’s the lead up to those claims being proven where the disagreement comes from on the process. We agree on the end result though.
Yeah, if your asylum case isn't heard because they don't like where you ran to, it doesn't matter if Harris would theoretically consider it valid.
https://x.com/tbonier/status/1839830108254720122?t=TQ6h8dmK3ljR3HQHUlO8AQ&s=19
Native American voter registration (just as of today) has surged following Kamala Harris' entry into the race vs this point in the last two cycles in the state of Montana. It's a difference of about 1,500 but significant for the state if the Senate race is close and not already a runaway for Sheehy. Also -perhaps- a sign that Harris may have energized this voter base across board.
Also note that the surge happened largely BEFORE Sheehy called Natives drunks.
The chart averages out to about 200 per week in the last 14weeks. Assume 95% of native voters pull for Tester. So this probably matters if he is within 0.5pt.
Would help to know if there are other voter registration metrics in MT besides just Native American voter registrations that are going in the Democratic Party's favor.
Still, 1,500 votes count.
https://broadbandbreakfast.com/booker-blocks-passage-for-cruzs-take-it-down-act/
Not sure how I feel about this but Cory Booker had, at the last minute, blocked a bipartisan bill from Ted Cruz that went after deepfake/AI generated porn. It was wrapped up in a series of uncontroversial bills planned for passage but Booker came out in the moments before voting to block it.
He gave little reason why but he is a very close friend of Colin Allred and didn't want to give Cruz a victory.
Part of me is disgusted our politics is this cutthroat but the partisan in me also wants zero wins for Cruz and an Allred victory. :/
He should have at least given a reason. "Because it would be a victory for Cruz" is not a good reason to oppose legislation if you think it's good legislation.
If that's the case, I think Booker is overreacting. My impression is that Texans wouldn't prioritize this issue as much as they would with bread & butter issues (especially the Hispanic voters).
I doubt very much that Cruz would get traction in his Senate campaign with this issue. One bipartisan bill he proposed doesn't make up for his more than 6+ years of being an actor in the Senate (in other words, he's never really tried being a Senator).
That said, I think the bipartisan bill while certainly to be effective is too narrow of a legislation. I would hope there would be a broader legislation that does more than simply going after the deepfake/AI generated porn.
I don't think persuadable voters pay attention to policy or legislation anyway. The people who do pay attention to policy and legislation are already decided.
Likely true.
Sure.
I just wish the bar wouldn’t be set so low when it comes to regulating deepfakes and AI.
the damage is so severe that there is no way Hurricane Helene will not impact voting in FL, SC and NC
I'm sorry to hear that.
I as well. The death toll announcement choked me up. And there's more on the way unless the repeated victims get rid of fascists and fascist-enablers like DeSantis and Trump so that we can do what Democrats always do: address problems while the "loyal opposition" oex everything possible to block us.
Only speaking of Florida; we usually do a pretty good job of making sure any voter that wants to, will get their vote in(even if it is online); however, lots of folks probably have other priorities after the storms have passed
glad to hear; but, like you said, priorities and only a little over a month
DeSantis has turned down millions in disaster preparedness aid from Washington; that can't be a positive at the moment
If this were October 28th not Septemebr 28th I'd agree. But even with something as close to the election as Hurricane Sandy, the impact on the election turnout was pretty small even then. I can't imagine a significant number of undertones 5 weeks out, especially inland in the Carolinas
Probably not Florida. The direct impact zone is sparsely populated, which doesn’t even include Tallahassee. The city gets lucky as being right on the left or the safer side of the path, the damage seems to be relatively light.
great to hear. thanks
Same for ATL metro. It only passed about 80 miles to the east of the city, but most of the sprawl sit on the left side of the storm center. Some moderate rains and wind, nothing serious. But the right side had suffered a hit. NC bears the blunt of the hit, mostly from flooding, and many places as far as to Charlotte suburbs are still out of power.
My elderly (late 70's) widowed aunt's house and car both got totaled. She's on the water in Pasco County, and had retreated inland to a friend's house to ride out the storm. She passed out and had to be transported to the hospital after seeing the condition of the house. She'll probably end up staying in WV for a few months (2 of her 5 kids and all of her grandkids are back there now).
Sorry to hear that.
Here's to hoping she had proper insurance(here in Florida many folks have let their insurance lapse; a horrible decision imo)
Is it that they let it lapse, or that they are simply uninsurable? Even if insurance is possible it may be beyond the means of many. Just not sure how many people actually made a decision vs were forced into it.
Without getting into a debate; all I am saying is that anyone owning property in Florida needs insurance or should frankly not own
I mean that’s fair to new buyers, but I suspect there are folks who had insurance but no longer are able to obtain / afford it. It’s all fine and good to say well they should sell and move but that may not always be realistic.
Don’t know, hope so too, but my (late 40’s) retired firefighter cousin and his wife drove down Friday from WV and yesterday he and a volunteer crew of 15 from her faith community gutted the bottom 4 feet of the house, removed all the damaged items, laundered all of the clothes at a laundromat one of them owns, and sprayed the house with an anti microbial. She’s being taken care of.
Cousin Kirk’s actually early 50’s now, i forget how old I’m getting.
That's good news; mold is a thing; hoping all is better moving forward
That's truly wonderful to hear. Cousin Kirk, his wife and her volunteer friends sound like amazing people.
I wish her all the best, under these sad circumstances.
Really sorry to hear what she is going through. I wish her the very best recovery.
She may need to fly into Asheville quickly. Maybe with FEMA director.
Not a bad idea
My friends in the Clemson area note lots of downed trees and no power, but things that mostly will be at least temporarily repaired in a month.
Western NC and Eastern TN seem to be in far worse shape. I'd guess basic transportation will be functional in a couple weeks, though with lots of circuitous detours. Mountains roads are hard to fix.
Biden’s response to damage in NC, GA, and FL could have a substantial impact.
DeSantis actually turned down a huge amount of money from the Feds(what an idiot)
And a fascist. And a despicable individual. He cares nothing for the people he allegedly represents; he just craves power and actually thinks he has a political future.
I'm sure the president and vice president - soon to be the president in my belief - are highly reluctant to politicize this tragedy (the GOP would, of course), but I'm wondering about some sort of ads or other voter reachout pointing out DeSantis's vile actions and tying them and him to Trump and Scott.
NE-SenA: When the outside group money starts flowing on BOTH sides, then I start to believe, just maybe, this race could be competitive. Time will tell.
https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2024/09/27/sleepy-no-more-fischer-osborn-u-s-senate-race-in-nebraska-wakes-up/
NEW Siena/NYT Poll: Michigan: Harris 48: Trump 47; Slotkin by 5 over Rogers;
Wisconsin: Harris 49: Trump 47; Baldwin by 7 over Hovde;
Ohio: Trump 50: Harris 44; Brown by 4 over Moreno
Nebraska 02: Harris 52: Trump 43
https://scri.siena.edu
Those Ohio numbers are really good.
Yeah. I'll take these on balance given that Siena has been a couple points right of the averages since late 2023 (possibly overcompensation but of course we don't know). Even if they're exactly on, we're at 270.
They seem like outliers in comparison to Siena's numbers for other states this time.
Trump +6 in Ohio is consistent with Harris +4 in Pennsylvania which their other poll found. For whatever reason NYT seems to be getting results comparable to other polls in the northern states but better for Trump nationally and in the sunbelt states.
From the article:
If the poll is right, Mr. Moreno will need more than undecided Trump voters to break his way. Mr. Brown would still lead by two points, 50-48, if voters who are currently undecided in the Senate race chose the candidate who aligns with
the party of their presidential vote choice. Instead, Mr. Brown leads because he has the support of 10 percent of Mr. Trump's backers. To win, Mr. Moreno will need to pull some of that support back.
Undecided Trump voters going their way to Moreno would have to do so for a good reason.
It's not crystal clear what exactly Moreno has to offer for them. Sure, JD Vance could campaign for him, but it might not make a difference for the undecided voters.
The good reason being that they're bigoted and support Republican extremists. That's really easy to imagine!
Yes but if Trump is on the ballot, such voters are likely to vote in higher numbers for him vs. Moreno.
Undervoting is common, regardless of party.
Nice calculation and it gets Brown to 50.
I don't want to sound like I'm jumping the gun here but is it possible Harris may outperform Biden's numbers in OH this time around?
I think it’s possible. Losing by 6 or 7 instead of 8.
That would be good!
I'm seeing a consistent pattern of Harris doing worse than our senate candidates across multiple polls. It's hard to imagine we'll see this level of consistent senate overperformance across the board will carry through to election day.
Either Harris will improve, senate dems will do worse, or a bit of both as they meet closer to the middle. Although they're only stating the senate margins in this specific poll, so it could come down to greater undecideds in one election but not the other.
Long term incumbents have long overperformed other candidates, especially for president.
Doesn't explain Gallego or Rosen though.
Lake explains Gallego. She's toxic af and a proven lover. Rosen is an incumbent, and has been in Congress for 8 years. While not a multi term incumbent, she is definitely an incumbent with incumbent's advantage.
But again, is Lake more toxic than Trump? How does one reconcile being okay with Trump but finding Lake to be a bridge too far? In less polarizing times, I'd be more convinced by Rosen's apparent firm grasp on Nevada as sometimes first-term Senators are given an unusual amount of bipartisan grace when running for their second term, but why is her standing so much stronger than Catherine Cortez Masto's standing was two years ago when her political resume was so similar?
I think a lot of it may just be that people reject Lake because she sounds unhinged, but are willing to ignore when Trump acts just as bad because they've already voted for him at least once and don't want to admit to themselves that they were wrong about him or (worse) got played by him.
I’ve said this before, but the fact she’s a woman I think creates an added electoral penalty to already being “crazy, extreme” etc.
Also, Adam Laxalt was a former statewide elected Republican in Nevada, so we shouldn’t have been surprised he put up such a tough challenge. He was mostly considered a “normal” Republican, which we all know swing voters LOVE to vote for. Sam Brown is a much weaker opponent, he’s never won a race before.
Pretty much every “Trump, but not Trump” candidate has crashed and burned and Trump himself has only won 1 election with 46% of the vote, so he’s not exactly an electoral powerhouse either. So Lake flaming out trying to do that isn’t surprising.
TLDR: NV-Sen 2024 is not the same race as NV-Sen 2022. That’s why there’s a difference.
And Sam Brown is also a Senate candidate who is too right wing for NV because of his anti-choice views. It isn't just Rosen.
Is Brown further right than Adam Laxalt two years ago? Who kept the race so close?
It’s an interesting dichotomy. I think most would agree here that the only way to hold the Senate is with over performance on the Senate level in at least two of OH, MT, TX, FL (and with latest data, maybe even NE and MO). But at the same time too much of an over performance by Sen candidates would give Trump the presidency. Does anyone really see a Republican president with a Dem Senate and House? I certainly don’t but based on some of the polling numbers it seems possible.
"Does anyone really see a Republican president with a Dem Senate and House?" No, I sure don't.
The same was true for Biden.
The incimbency thing explains some of it, an especially bad candidate (Lake) explains AZ.
And Trump will likely outperform a generic MAGA.
One interesting comment in the NYT live feed from Jonathan Swan is that these numbers track with Trump's internals.
Also second poll this week to have Vargas ahead in NE 2
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/house/general/2024/nebraska/district-02/bacon-vs-vargas
The NYT/Siena poll is credible enough that I am not going to dismiss the idea that they have done a better job of ascertaining what the electorate will look like than everyone else. And if the electorate that they think will show up does, Trump probably wins. That said, they are very consistently producing more Trump-friendly numbers than other pollsters. I think their recent Sun Belt numbers were better for Trump than Trafalgar's most recent numbers in those states.
On Thursday, American Muckrakers posted about emails it received detailing how the conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports, which claims to be nonpartisan, shared polling results with Trump advisers and campaign officials like Dan Scavino, Susie Wiles, and John McLaughlin. The advisers, Rasmussen, and the nonprofit organizations that pay it for polling are violating tax and election laws, according to American Muckrakers.
https://newrepublic.com/post/186444/conservative-poll-rasmussen-secretly-worked-trump-team?utm_medium=social&utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=SF_TNR
No surprise. They've decayed since Scott left.
They were biased before then. Only have gotten worse.
Picking up Nebraska's 2nd would go a long way to taking back the House. No Democrat in the delegation since the late Brad Ashford a decade ago. 😲
Fry that Bacon!! 💙🇺🇲🌊🙏
We’re at 89-1 the past 30 years in NE congressional races. Stealing one this cycle would be a boost to our House hopes.
Here are my updated crude 31- and 14-day polling averages. I exclude GOP troll polls (Rasmussen, Trafalgar, etc), any polls released by partisan organizations, and some with really sketchy methods such as ActiVote. For the 14-day state averages, the number of polls is in parentheses.
AZ: 31-day T+1.0, 14-day T+1.9 (7)
GA: 31-day T+1.1, 14-day T+0.9 (10)
MI: 31-day H+2.7, 14-day H+2.9 (8)
NV: 31-day H+1.7, 14-day H+2.0 (4)
NC: 31-day T+0.2, 14-day T+0.3 (12)
PA: 31-day H+1.5, 14-day H+1.7 (13)
WI: 31-day H+2.5, 14-day H+1.9 (6)
US: 31-day H+3.1, 14-day H+4.0
The national post-debate polls show movement toward Harris, but the state polls don't really. With margins this small, it could just be a function of which firms are polling where. For now Harris has clear polling leads in enough states to win. It's possible (IMO unlikely) that polls are systematically too favorable to Dems as they were in 2020, but at this point Trump needs either a systematic polling error or a big October surprise: his own campaign strategy suggests that he has little room to grow his own vote, as his ads have been entirely aimed at discrediting Harris. On top of that, Harris has more ads booked the rest of the way and a better ground game by all accounts.
Observation/gripe: Suppose the situation was reversed, and Harris was up 1-2 in Wisconsin and about 1 in Michigan, North Carolina was tied, and Trump was up about 3 in Georgia, 2 in Nevada and Arizona, and 1-2 in Pennsylvania. I suspect most media outlets wouldn't be calling the race a tossup as they do currently.
Would this be 276 electoral votes?
Yup;276-262
It seems like 276-262 is the most probable outcome right now.
So, I just watched the Roseanne Barr and Tucker Carlson MAGA campaign event from Tuesday. Anyone else see this?
wouldn't watch them if they were the only living things left on the planet!
Oh, this was worth the trip for the entertainment value. Wild effing ride. Roseanne started ranting about how liberals are literally eating babies.
I find Barr fascinating:
She originally was a Green Party member who ended up running in the Peace & Freedom Party with Cindy Sheehan of all people as her running mate only for Sheehan to unsuccessfully disassociate with Barr soon after.
https://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2015/02/of-noodges-and-nukes-by-cindy-sheehan.html
Then Barr starts supporting Trump and then it's like she's both MAGA and a socialist. I know she's gone bonkers for the last number of years (especially with her tweets) but it's clear she wants the whole system blown up.
The horseshoe left is far closer to the horseshoe right than it is to even the furthest left members of the Democratic party.
That's been pretty well bunked for a few decades now. OTOH, people who are fundamentally authoritarians can pretty clearly move between right and left with ease.
Especially when their center-left nominal allies who actually hold power are much less willing to go authoritarian.
I wonder whether Sinema will ultimately become a right-wing extremist.
If the $$$$$$$$$$$$ comes in, absolutely.
Probably.
likely already is!
There's no evidence of that.
More likely a fiscally conservative socially liberal commentator who claims said position makes her wiser than all other beings.
Nah, I see her pulling a Manchin and becoming a No Labels member. She fits the bill and naturally will do anything she can to stay relevant. I doubt going to the GOP will suit her.
Doubt it. She isn't crank at all, more like an extreme highbrow 90s establishment type. She's a true believer in bipartisanship for its own sake.
That’s definitely No Labels vibe for sure.
I think she will enjoy life on corporate boards and as a vineyard owner.
She already drunkenly did this in a College Students for Trump events months ago. It's clear that the narcissism and attention were far more important to her. Or as one friend of mine, who has actually met her once or twice and works in the entertainment business put it, there is a certain class of very loud, very obnoxious leftist for whom being anti-establishment, a perception of themselves as a jaded cynic seeing the truths no one else is willing to speak, is far more than any actual political belief. That's why you had Roseanne in the 90s blasting gay rights, pro-union, anti-free trade, anti-corporate, feminist (and pro choice) themes from a blue collar white midwestern setting (part of what made Roseanne such an amazing show originally), which also featured atheism and agnosticism, who has now turned into a cheerleader for Christian nationalists and right-wing conservatives, because they have claimed the mantle of anti-establishment and truth speakers against power. Though I also think there are some genuine issues at play here that I'm not in a position to diagnose.
Apparently, she raved about how the global elite are drinking human blood. Even Henry Ford would tell her to cool her jets a bit.
The vampire thing was honestly the less crazy thing about that rant. She was talking about how they're literally eating babies. Shit was wild.
She saw that classic episode of South Park where Christopher Reeves fed on babys' blood to heal his paralysis and took it seriously I suppose.
Is that really much crazier than that they're drinking human blood?
As far as races are concerned, I'm actually seeing a bit of an all-state tour trend in Senate races for red seats Democrats are not expected to win. Perhaps I could call this the Beto Effect as after Beto O'Rourke ran for the US Senate in Texas back in 2018, his all-county campaign made headlines throughout 2018.
Two such campaigns are in the TN-SEN and WV-SEN races. Both Gloria Johnson and Glenn Elliott in their respective races are probably the strongest Democratic Candidates in Solid Republican races even while their all-county tours aren't necessarily going to make the races any closer than they've already been.
What I'm most interested to see is how swing regions in TN and WV are going to be impacted by these Senate races.
I don't know TN but in researching WV, Monongalia County, a swing county where Biden barely lost in 2020, could likely become bluer as a result of Elliott's candidacy (he's becoming very visible) and even the presidential election. There are also three WV counties, Cabell, Jefferson, and Kanawha, that aren't swing countries but ones where Biden got 40+% of the votes. They could inch upwards a bit in turnout, but it remains to be seen.
I'm no expert on Tennessee, but on general principles, I'd look at what happens in the suburbs, particularly those of Nashville and presumably Memphis, though I've heard less talk about those and many of those suburbs are in Arkansas.
Interested to see how close TN-05 ends up.
Our only realistic goals this decade in Tennessee are getting the Nashville area to be too blue to crack in 2032 and to try and make Knox county competitive to light blue.
Sure.
I’m hoping Gloria Johnson does better than 2020 Democratic Senate Candidate Marsha Bradshaw, who got 35% of the votes.
She could go in the low 40% range in terms of votes but I really don’t know if she would be able to hit the 45+% mark. Phil Bredesen got roughly 44% of the votes in Marsha Blackburn’s first Senate run but now she’s running for re-election as a freshman Senator.
We could always use our fellow liberal Taylor Swift’s help!
I'm not sure why but Tennessee's suburbs still generally remain obnoxiously red. But it's not as if Tennessee is any more evangelical or rural than say Georgia or North Carolina. Maybe Tennessee remains more largely rural and exurban, but Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga and Knoxville are all growing cities and from what I've read and heard they tend to attract young professionals with their culture and atmosphere. It may just be the voting history of the state still being ancestrally Republican vs North Carolina. Georgia by contrast, with Atlanta has a far larger metro of over 6 million people combined with a massive influx of Northern and younger professional transplants.
I guess we’ll just have to see how Gloria Johnson turns out voters.
I’d imagine we’ll also see decent turnout among Democrats even if we’re obviously not going to see Harris win TN.
The eastern third's one of the most ancestrally GOP parts of the country, the western third's got roughly a 1:1 correlation of race and party, and the middle third's still got densely populated rurals to pair with burbs whose population is heavily of Southern origin.
East Tennessee supported the Union during the Civil War. Thus they have essentially always been hardcore Republican. Even when the Republican Party in most of the south was nonexistent due to the "Party of Lincoln" association.
I think it's mostly because Tennessee is just like Florida, a sponge for tax-averse right-wing refugees from blue states. The same types of people moving to Fort Myers, Florida, are also moving to Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Hmmm. That is a problem, especially considering TN is more red than FL.
On the other hand, Gloria Johnson has been focusing on meeting voters in all-99 county diners over a month ago. She’s certainly doing effective retail politics, even if Marsha Blackburn is heavily favored to win the race.
https://www.votegloriajohnson.com/events/
Agree, it’s within the realm of possibility that TN becomes the Republicans biggest “safe” state depending on TX and FL trends. That really doesn’t put them in a great position to win the presidency. Will be interesting to watch the trends of Nashville to see if it could ever become an Atlanta and make the state competitive.
I know a right wing retired Latino cop from LA who moved his family of 6 to Tennessee for exactly that reason. From social media the fairly moderate adult daughter married an undereducated local RWNJ and swung seriously rightward from the multiple degreed L.A. party girl I knew.
On the other hand, my fairly liberal “aunt” (who moved from WV to CA in the early 80’s) also sold her place in OC and moved back East to Tennessee in retirement, unfortunately she has since lost a long battle with cancer.
I'm sorry.
Is Governor Bill Lee running TN like Governor Ron DeSantis? Or have TN's tax incentives been in the state for a long time?
If nothing else, it's good for the party to have credible candidates who can actually campaign in deep red areas, as opposed to being either completely incompetent or grifting a la Marcus Flowers.
I'm really impressed with the Democratic Senate Candidates running in red states this election cycle. They have credible backgrounds and interesting profiles.
Democrats in red states need to be fired up and expand the base.
Good candidates across the board; if anything, they may create small amounts of interest locally
Yes.
In the case of the WV counties i mentioned where Biden got 40% of the votes, the most notable cities in the state are located in those counties. Definitely not deep red territory. Locally wise, Glenn Elliott could help turnout in cities like Charleston, Huntington, Morgantown, and others depending on what his ground game is looking like.
As far as TN is concerned, local turnout would be more applicable for Gloria Johnson in cities like Memphis and Nashville, where there are more diverse number of demographics favorable to Democrats than the rural parts of the state.
I'm just curious if we have candidates further down the ballot(otherwise, it's kind of a waste to a large degree)that can benefit; I'm talking state lege, County council, local Council\Mayor
I can't comment on the more local races, but I would think in both TN and WV in the Senate and Presidential races that turnout will help the local races in areas that are not deep red.
Hard to say until the election results come.
I was going to add something about WV Democratic Senate Candidate Glenn Elliott as I've mentioned his name before in previous discussions on DKE and The Downballot:
While he's not likely going to win the election, from a qualitative standpoint, I believe Elliott's become a surprisingly effective messenger as a Democrat in WV while recognizing how deep red the state has become. He also happened to be a delegate for Kamala Harris at the DNC Convention, which shows how dedicated he is to the Democratic Party.
What percentage does he need to get to deserve to be called a "surprisingly effective messenger for Democratic Party"? I don't think we can say he is until the votes are counted.
I'm hoping he gets to 30%; I will leave it to you guys to discuss the significance
I actually think he could get to 35% but this is also an open Senate race. What helps Elliott is that Governor Jim Justice has been getting bad press with the businesses he owns and has become more aloof in the state. This doesn't assure Elliott will win the race as Justice and the WV GOP have a stranglehold on the state, but he has an opening with this.
Even though this was back in 2014, Democratic Senate Candidate Natalie Tennant did receive 34.47% of the votes in an open Senate race against Shelley Moore Capito when she was first running for the Senate. 2014 wasn't of course a good year for Democrats but the main reason why 2020 Senate Candidate Paula Jean Swearengin got 27% of the votes was that she was too liberal for WV and she was running against Capito when she was already a Senator.
I re-edited my original comment for clarity.
This is purely my opinion but in Elliott's interviews as well as statements, he's aimed to keep the right balance between being a Democrat vs. what WV needs are. I'm not sure how this will end up translating into votes but essentially, Elliott has positioned himself not to be divisive and is more of a unity candidate. He has a good grasp on the issues but still mindful that he has to appeal to more than just simply the Democratic Party base. According to Elliott himself, Wheeling (where he's served two terms as Mayor), is a conservative city so if that's the case, he has the ability to be bipartisan as needed to get things done.
As far as the votes are concerned, it remains to be seen how far through WV Elliott will be able to make an impact. The biggest problem he faces isn't being a Democrat but getting enough visibility to the degree where voters think they know him. That's been evident in polls. It's hard to mount a Senate campaign in a mountain state like WV without help from the DSCC and other significant grassroots groups. In a way though, it actually makes things easier for Elliott. I don't think the DSCC getting involved would help the race.