The mail vote list is on Clark County website. You can just go there and download it and count the return numbers.
Clark VBM ~ total 67.4k D 30.3k R 17.6k. Add them to the VBM outside Clark, and the in-person votes reported by the state. You get total over143912 votes, D edge at 1742.
Yeah, smaller than we would like. But similar to the overall registration.
I guess T camp wants to push more their people to vote in person. Once these votes counted on the election day, and a lot of D votes are in VBM, it will have a red mirage like 2022. He will then go ahead claim winning Nevada anyway.
So far 9.19% of registered Rs and 9.19% of registered Ds have voted. Some indication that there's a slight lag in Clark County due to mail ballots going out a bit later, so I'd guess Ds have a slight turnout edge. Given that they have a bigger turnout edge historically, but also everyone gets a mail ballot now, which changes voting patterns, it seems pretty even to me.
Somehow I got slightly larger Clark VBM number from there website. Maybe the county included returns waiting to cure.
I got a similar spreadsheet, but don’t want to put it on share yet. Essentially the turnout rate as observed, is on par. Consider mails in the pipe, maybe even slightly D leaning.
CCM won in an electorate 20k more registered Rs, and Gov Sisolak lost by less than 20k. So Ig the NPAs turn out in 2022 were at least slightly D leaning. Not sure in a Presidential turnout, but I would bet even tilting D more.
With numbers like these, you sort of see why Harris' campaign is targeting disaffected Rs. Turnout looked awful for Trump/Republicans in 2016, but they peeled off disaffected Ds and overcame it. Harris may hope to do the same.
At least at some point today, CNN was talking about betting markets and whether they were a good election predictor - I have no idea what was actually said, as all I could see was a TV screen with no audio or captioning.
I also have no idea how people can watch cable news at all. I've spent two days staring at BBC News and CNN (with no choice but to have them right in front of me for hours), and it's the same stories and features over and over again, with the same footage. It's honestly nauseating, and I can't even hear what they're saying!
Aaron, what is the estimated value of the media coverage that these Polymarket bets have generated? I ask, because that the primary intention here seems to be to influence the media narrative. If the value of that coverage exceeds $30 million, then those four bet-placers have made a very good investment – not least politically!
Just filled my tank for my weekend trip; I paid $2.74\gal(the same price as my last fill up on 10\7);I'm in New Smyrna Beach, Florida for reference; what are the gas prices where you are? Thanks for the responses
I actually paid 2 quite different prices in SoCal within an hour of each other. I wasn't paying attention and urgently needed gas in West Hollywood, $5.19, 2 gallons. Then filled at Costco, Huntington Beach on the way home, 3.95.
Average price in the state of CA right now is about $4.60, about $1.40 higher than the national average. Lowest price in greater L.A. is $3.79, Costco’s are generally very close to the bottom of price range, several of them in the area are at $3.85.
I am not there now, but for a long time the price of gas in Norway has been between $8 and $9 per gallon. So it’s always seemed odd to me when Americans complain about the price of their dirt-cheap gasoline.
Norway famously being a large exporter of oil and gas for the past 50 years, with a huge sovereign wealth fund built on the proceeds, has kept the price of petrol high via tax policy, maximizing exports, in an intelligent departure from the actions of most producer countries. The government provides far more to citizens using oil revenues than the value to the typical individual if cheaper petrol. Norway produces 2-3 percent of global O&G, about 30-40 times their share of global population. Government revenues from oil are about half of total revenues, though the government continues to run a surplus and increase the size of its sovereign wealth fund.
Meanwhile, the USA continues with massive subsidies for its oil and gas companies, although these are largely camouflaged. Much of the massively costly war efforts in the Middle East have benefited oil companies – with none of the costs placed on them. Then again, the American economic model has, with a few exceptions, been to "socialize costs, privatize profits".
During the banking crisis of 2007–2008 the government gave massive bailouts. What I found peculiar is that the federal government did not demand equity in return. Had it done so, demanding equity in the form of shares that then had low value, the government could have later sold these as the banks and their shares recovered, making a sizeable profit on behalf of tax payers.
Another quirk of the American oil and gas industry is subsidizing agribusiness to grow corn that is used to produce ethanol, which bizarrely enough is added to the gasoline, actually degrading it! Moreover, massive energy is required to produce the ethanol, meaning the net energy extracted when it is burned in our internal-combustion car engines is not that impressive.
Well said all around. One minor correction: the government did take an equity share of AIG and later sold it for a profit. Should have done it all around as you say.
Legit question politically bc I swear prices go down right before an election. Gas companies do not want to be a topic of electoral conversation so they lower prices right before an election.
dont sleep on Wisconsin. The Democratic party chair is probably the best in the country and the new legislative maps will open up a lot of competitive seats that Democrats haven’t been able to be competitive in
years due to gerrymandering. I think the opportunity to vote for Harris and also new representatives in the state will drive more Democrats to the polls. Many Republicans chose to retire instead of run so their turnout machines are not in effect. GOTV and Harris will win.
Strength/health of state parties in WI, MI, and PA is what is keeping me sane(ish) over the home stretch. Feeling better about NV, too - which would get us beyond media-fueled "faithless elector" dramatics.
I would add North Carolina to that list. Anderson Clayton (age 26) has been an incredible leader for the state’s Democratic Party! She has done so much to rejuvenate Team Blue in NC!
It’s interesting that I’ve seen two state legislative seats run ads in the Twin Cities. One is the our state senate special that decides control of the chamber, but that’s just the GOP at least trying to put on a showing in what’s a blue seat.
The other seat is a WI assembly seat just on the other side of the border and both sides are going hard. I’m not sure what the district used to look like but now it’s a compact district comprising of Hudson, River Falls and the surrounding townships. Voted for Trump by a hair as the two cities dominate population wise, but they’re not blue enough to overcome how red the townships are. It’s a good one to watch to see how the urban/rural divide shakes down between Dems and GOP.
It’s also telling that I don’t see any ads for MN state house. I’m sure Duluth is getting rocked with ads but nothing in the Twin Cities. Not surprising because every time I’ve read prognostications, I find them extremely pessimistic and reaching for an angle. The MinnPost article talked about here a few weeks back talked about 16 seats up for play. Biden won all but one of them. In a Pres year, the GOP is kind of screwed here and is likely to see losses rather than gains.
How tempted do you think the Harris campaign is to go after Trump's age and "exhaustion'? Sort of a "Let's turn the page on the boomers running things". I'm sure it would be awkward with Biden but i'm not sure he would care much if it helps.
Obama hit it pretty hard tonight in Tucson. "You'd be concerned if your grandpa was acting like this. We don't need to see what an older, crazier Donald Trump looks like with no guardrails."
But that said - if you want to hit it, I think you have to go pretty much all in on it. Every second ad should reinforce the theme. Anything less and it simply won't get into the vibes in time.
Update from Saturday: it seems like the campaign gets the potency of the attack line. Per BBC live coverage: "[Harris] said she wants to spend the next two weeks highlighting that Trump is "increasingly unstable and unfit" to be president - a common attack line she takes against her Republican opponent."
And Walz with the nice zinger, per NYT live coverage: "It’s pretty clear the tired, divisive and old rhetoric of Donald Trump matches the tired, divisive and old Donald Trump."
Though the Provincial parties are unaffiliated with the national ones in Canada and often quite different. The now defunct BC Liberals were the main right-wing party there for some decades.
I wonder if there's some equivalent to Getting Republicans Elected Every November for the Canadian Greens?
Though in general they have much less of a two-party system in Canada, so the notion that the Greens could have a breakthrough election is much more plausible.
The NDP has been the governing party in all of the Western provinces at some point. (As well as a disastrous stint in Ontario in the early 90s.) This gave them credibility well before 2011.
1) This close to Election Day, what is your sleeper race? That race that has gotten little to no attention but winds up much closer than expected or flips and shocks everyone? (Doesn't necessarily have to be a federal race)
2) Since it was mentioned in Friday's digest, what race do you think ends up being the VA-10 (of 2018) of this cycle? The race everyone seemed to agree that one side had in the bag and yet money kept being spent there to the detriment of other races.
As an aside, I don't watch much live local TV so I rarely see local political ads. I started watching my local CBS Station here in San Antonio about 2 hours ahead of the Allred-Cruz debate and stated keeping track of what I saw. In that time frame I counted 25 political ads:
12 on the U.S. Senate race (7 Anti-Cruz, 2 Anti-Allred, 2 Pro-Allred, 1 Pro-Cruz)
12 from State House race candidates (HD 74, HD 80, HD 118, & HD 121)
I'd feel better about IA-02 if the Democrat there wasn't being massively outraised and outspent. I wanna see Corkery win, but I doubt she has the infrastructure, network and resources to win over and reach enough voters.
Right, but that's why it's a sleeper - not necessarily to win but to be closer than expected, if Democrats in Iowa are actually having a comeback year.
I think Ne-Sen is the sleeper race of all sleeper races. Outside of politics needs and Nebraskans I doubt anyone really realizes that there is a decent chance a Republican incumbent might lose.
Yeah, I'd definitely like to see Dems invest more in El Paso County and Colorado Springs. IMO Dems have a lot of potential for significant gains there.
My sleeper race is AZ-02. This is the northeastern AZ district where the one-term GOP incumbent is not very popular and the Democratic candidate is a former president (or chairman, i forget the proper title) of the Navajo Nation, which is probably the largest ethnic group in the district. There are also some other indigenous groups in the district as well as others who may vote Dem. I gave a small donation to Jonathan Nez, the Dem about a week ago, thinking this was one of my longshot races. Now there is a poll showing Nez tied with Crane at 42%. There are lots of undecided people left but the top of the Repub ticket is weak (Tr*mp and Lake) and so with a high native turnout it might be winnable.
It would be pretty sweet if the seat which the GOP grossly gerrymandered in 2020 to put a Dem Congressmember out of reach for most of the D+80 native population of AZ concentrated therein, manages to overcome that due to the batshit crazy behavior of the first term GOP incumbent.
This is my choice too but your write-up says most of what I would have written. (Great minds!) Cook and Sabato rate this race as Safe-R. Crane has raised and spent almost 2X what Nez has raised and spent and, until Inside Politics polled it this week, I knew of no polls and no media attention. Even after Inside Politics polled the race, it kept its rating as Likely R (which surprised me). Sounds like a sleeper race to me.
One reason I would also pick it is that the Inside Politics poll found that neither candidate is very well known and the undecided voters "really don't like Eli Crane." Who knows? Lightning could strike.
BTW, I made a small donation to Nez today, violating my personal rules re donating to non-competitive races, particularly so late in the season.
The district is very tough to poll. Nez needs maximal minority turnout, not just native turnout, maximal college student turnout (NAU), maximum ticket splitting by sane GOPers, and low turnout by discouraged GOP voters.
I donated to Nez early on. I like to give seed money to long shot candidates who I think could be transformational - especially in places where they're unlikely to attract much funding. (So not running against, say, MTG)
Per the census the seat (formerly majority-minority with about 1/4th native is now 55% non-Hispanic white, with 18% native and 19% Hispanic population and 4% multiracial with the small remainder of the population very small numbers of Black and Asian residents. Most of the Hispanic population in this district is multi-generational U.S. born (including a lot of my extended family), it’s similar to NM and SW Colorado in that way. It’s also one of the most Mormon districts in the country outside Utah, I haven’t run the numbers lately but top 10.
MI 04. Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Holland, St. Jo/Benton Harbor. GOP incumbent Huizenga won in 2022 with 54% when challenger only had $35000 in funds vs $3.2M. This year's D, Jessica Swartz, has raised 900k vs 2.8M. A well known Libertarian candidate also on ballot again that I'd probably "not ask" outside groups to support.
SC01 Nancy Mace. She wins primaries by rather slim margins. Charleston continues to grow immensely. SC gerrymandered asany Blacks out of district as possibly but she still only got 56% last time. New challenger, Michael Moore (not that one) has ties to the AA musuem. Mace has 3 to 1 fundraising advantage.
NC11. The Hurrican Helene district. Chuck Edwards didn't win by a ton least time. Who knows how the hurricane disruptions will affect turnout? Asheville hit hard, but population is denser there so easier to get to polls. Likely high number of climate change voters.
Indiana Gov. Covered in previous dailies.
Wasted $ race.
FL Senate. I wish I felt differently, but I think Demographics in FL have gotten worse for Ds in last 4 years, not better. I'd prefer the money go to Kunce or Osborne. Or into races in IN or WV. I know a lot will disagree with me here about how viable DMP is. I sincerely hope you are right and I'm wrong.
I doubt MO or WV are more viable than FL as well. But they are cheaper. Jim Justice is just as tainted with mining as Rick Scott is with health care and Hawley only just got over 50% against McCaskill. DMP vs Scott reminds me of Lyndsey Graham vs Jaime Harrison or McConnell vs Amy McGrath in 2020. Especially with Graham's race, there were good polls for Harrison, but you had to have a very rosy view of demographics.
FL is not comparable to SC, let alone KY. Or at least it hasn't been. If Siena is right and Trump wins FL by 13, we'll have something else to talk about. But I don't understand your concern with money. Which campaign is lacking in money? Also, really, please forget about WV! Super-safe Republican!
Just responding to Jacob M's question about which race seems settled but everyone is still spending a lot of money at the expense of other races. I thought it would be fair to suggest where else the money might go.
Democratic Senate Candidate Glenn Elliott has been doing good with fundraising, namely with unemployed voters in WV. He’s getting traction because Jim Justice is really a lame duck GOP Senate Candidate who is doing nothing to stop the negatives he’s been getting a lot.
At the same time, Elliott unlike Lucas Kunce in the MO-SEN race has been getting significantly less media attention. Elliott as of just recently got an interview with Forbes, which may get him traction but he also went on Fox News months ago. It’s really hard to say how this media attention he’s getting is going to impact WV voters.
Kunce by contrast has been regularly on MSNBC for months and has been interviewed by Chris Hayes and others. It’s pretty clear MO is more friendly to Democrats than WV but that’s not a ringing endorsement.
The article I cited reveals that unemployed people across the country donated to Elliott’s campaign. Quite frankly, this may be referring to WV, where there are in fact many unemployed or underemployed West Virginians. I don’t know how the unemployed outside of WV would donate to Elliott’s campaign considering he wouldn’t exactly represent them or even win the race.
MO-SEN Race but it depends on who is reporting it.
-Democratic Candidate Lucas Kunce has dominated the fundraising the whole year.
-He is cutting Senator Josh Hawley’s lead to single digits in multiple polls as of recently.
-Kunce’s rallies have been consistently packed for over a month now.
-Hawley himself has not been doing well in his campaign as far as running for re-election. Has continuously been on the defensive as a result of the pressure from Kunce’s campaign.
Of course, Hawley is still likely to win. However, I fail to see how this is a Solid Republican race. I remain convinced it’s Likely Republican but that Hawley won’t win by a sizable margin.
If Kunce improves on the percentage of votes that Jason Kander got as a Democratic Senate Candidate back in 2016, then that’s real progress.
Frankly, more investment should be made in MO by Democrats so they don’t have to rely on a war veteran like Kander or Kunce to get traction. MO is not a deep red state like ID or WY. Lots more Democrats in MO, which also happens to be a midwestern state.
Surprised no one has mentioned MO-02 yet. It moved left from Senate 2016 Jason Kander (3 point loss statewide) to 2022 Trudy Busch Valentine (13 point loss statewide).
My sleeper race is MN-Sen. With each new round of polls, Amy Klobuchar's lead gets more pathetic. Partly because Republicans are so embarrassed about their nominee, even local GOP leaders shrug Royce White off and admit he's gonna lose. But the polls tell a different story. I'm confident Klobuchar will still win, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if she only outran Harris by a point. Klobuchar +5 seems like a real possibility at this point, and three months ago just about everybody would have figured it would be Klobuchar +25.
I'm not anticipating a lot. I know we shouldn't put too much emphasis on a single poll but that MN-02 poll this week showing Craig +8 in the same sample as Trump +2 was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser. Right now, I'm guessing Harris-Walz finish somewhere between Hillary in 2016 and Biden in 2020 in Minnesota. And that Klobuchar gets remarkably less distance than expected from the top of the ticket.
And speaks to his election strategy of turning out his own supporters vs winning over new ones. The women he’s speaking to probably do call their husbands lazy pigs. When he talks about policy or about Democrats, he’s a psycho. When he talks to his own supporters directly, he knows their language. Which, says a lot about current American politics.
Our system is so stupidly set-up that we could win the House, lose the Senate, win the Presidential popular vote but lose the Electoral Vote. We end up with the weakest part of the trifecta while we got more voters over-all and should control everything.
More corruption coming out of the Orange County supervisors office.
Chris Wangsaporn (real name), the chief of staff to Andrew Do resigned after it came out that he seems to have directed a $275,000 contract for mental health services to his girlfriend/now wife who produced no work product.
Andrew Do is the supervisor who is under federal investigation for directing money to a not for profit run by his daughter that allegedly misdirected money for personal use.
Other supervisors are pushing Do to resign, and have removed him from committees.
So far, there hasn't been a major attempt to tie the closeness of Michelle Steel to Do, nor resurface her corrupt dealings when on the OC BOS.
Unfortunately, County government has been a cesspool in OC for years, think bankruptcy and corruption in the sheriff's office.
Picking up this seat would be a coup in solidifying Democratic control of County government in OC.
Michelle Steel (CA-45) is in trouble even outside of the Do connection. A rabid McCarthyite who accused her previous opponent of being in league with Communist China, she is opposed this time by Derrick Tran, who is an excellent, self-assertive candidate. He has a 50-50 chance of taking Steel down, depending on how things go for Democrats in California. This is one of four or even five Republican House seats in California that could switch if there's a Democratic landslide here.
A sleeper race is in CA-16, where the progressive Democrat Evan Low has a chance of taking down the non-ideological front-running Democrat, Sam Liccardo. It's an all-Democratic general election in a very blue district.
Steel’s China accusations were Rovian, she and her husband sold political influence in the US to CCP officials and mainland Chinese business interests.
A judge has ordered all of the bank accounts of Viet America Society and it's affiliates frozen. This is the organization that's the focus of the Do corruption investigation. Potentially several million of funds are involved.
While the FBI is investigating VAS and Do, the County of Orange is suing to try to recover funds. Much evidently involved federal covid funds.
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 and Gateway. For the 14-day state averages, the number of polls is in parentheses.
AZ: 31-day T+1.4, 14-day T+1.5 (6)
GA: 31-day T+1.0, 14-day T+1.4 (7)
MI: 31-day H+1.0, 14-day H+0.9 (11)
NV: 31-day H+1.2, 14-day T+0.3 (4)
NC: 31-day T+0.5, 14-day T+0.3 (6)
PA: 31-day H+0.8, 14-day H+0.4 (11)
WI: 31-day H+1.0, 14-day H+0.1 (8)
US: 31-day H+3.0, 14-day H+2.6
These numbers aren't as good for Harris as they were earlier this month. The frequency of state polling has dropped except in MI and PA and I would take the 31-day averages more seriously than the 14-day ones. For example, WI's 14-day average no longer includes the Marquette poll showing Harris up 4. The 14-day average is more meaningful for the US. A number of national polls have shown movement toward Trump lately, but as Dies Irae noted yesterday this seems to be mainly coming from shifts in the party ID of their samples, in many cases showing R+3 national samples which would match the 2022 midterm and would seem to be too red for a general election in which Dem enthusiasm seems to be at least as high as it was in 2020. I suspect the recent red shift reflects change in response bias more than change in voting intentions.
There's a gap in high-quality state polling recently, likely due to the calendar; pollsters want to get their final reads in late October and don't usually do polls in the week or two before then. Unless they're crappy pollsters (cough cough red wavers).
Wow. Very informative. Democrats gained at least 1 point from their polling average. The only outlier was 2020. People said that because of Covid restrictions that Democrats did not do face to face GOTV in 2020 and that was the reason for not doing as well. That will not be the case this time. GOTV!
That would be quite the stunner if the 2012 electorate showed up next month....one where black turnout exceeded white turnout and where wide swaths of the conservative base sat out the election as they didn't think the GOP nominee was right-wing enough.
It is the first time a black woman has ever been the nominee of a major party, and the first time since 2012 that a black candidate has headed the ticket, it’s not terribly unlikely that black voter turnout will increase again. And while the right wing fringe may have been more likely to boycott Romney, other fractions of the GOP are unhappy with Trump and that’s increasingly true.
Fuck, I’m breaking a rule but for a good cause. (Good trouble.) Remember the 2008 primary and Hillary had black voters wrapped up at first bc they knew her? Then, they got to know Obama and everything flipped. Harris never got that chance as a Pres candidate. She never “won them over” like Obama did. The recent emphasis of talking to black male voters by Obama says a lot.
I googled to find the “article.” It’s a pro-cop, pro-big box editorial from the Ed Board that’s the personal toy of the world’s 2nd biggest thief (billionaire).
Random trivia, but still fun.
On a similar absurd random sports trivia note - the last 3 times Spain won the European Championship (1964, 2008 and 2012) Democrats won the WH
The mail vote list is on Clark County website. You can just go there and download it and count the return numbers.
Clark VBM ~ total 67.4k D 30.3k R 17.6k. Add them to the VBM outside Clark, and the in-person votes reported by the state. You get total over143912 votes, D edge at 1742.
Yeah, smaller than we would like. But similar to the overall registration.
I guess T camp wants to push more their people to vote in person. Once these votes counted on the election day, and a lot of D votes are in VBM, it will have a red mirage like 2022. He will then go ahead claim winning Nevada anyway.
Michael Pruser at DDHQ has a nice spreadsheet for the NV vote:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uPZIgl4G2qFEjuKCVjE3MBkiPz1d3DvJ/edit?gid=1078533895#gid=1078533895
So far 9.19% of registered Rs and 9.19% of registered Ds have voted. Some indication that there's a slight lag in Clark County due to mail ballots going out a bit later, so I'd guess Ds have a slight turnout edge. Given that they have a bigger turnout edge historically, but also everyone gets a mail ballot now, which changes voting patterns, it seems pretty even to me.
Exactly.
Somehow I got slightly larger Clark VBM number from there website. Maybe the county included returns waiting to cure.
I got a similar spreadsheet, but don’t want to put it on share yet. Essentially the turnout rate as observed, is on par. Consider mails in the pipe, maybe even slightly D leaning.
CCM won in an electorate 20k more registered Rs, and Gov Sisolak lost by less than 20k. So Ig the NPAs turn out in 2022 were at least slightly D leaning. Not sure in a Presidential turnout, but I would bet even tilting D more.
With numbers like these, you sort of see why Harris' campaign is targeting disaffected Rs. Turnout looked awful for Trump/Republicans in 2016, but they peeled off disaffected Ds and overcame it. Harris may hope to do the same.
1600 votes is unambiguously bad for us. Hopefully things turn around there over the next 2 weeks.
At least at some point today, CNN was talking about betting markets and whether they were a good election predictor - I have no idea what was actually said, as all I could see was a TV screen with no audio or captioning.
I also have no idea how people can watch cable news at all. I've spent two days staring at BBC News and CNN (with no choice but to have them right in front of me for hours), and it's the same stories and features over and over again, with the same footage. It's honestly nauseating, and I can't even hear what they're saying!
I find BBC World Service pretty good. BBC TV in the UK was not nearly as good when I watched it in 2010, very sensational and lots of "light news."
Aaron, what is the estimated value of the media coverage that these Polymarket bets have generated? I ask, because that the primary intention here seems to be to influence the media narrative. If the value of that coverage exceeds $30 million, then those four bet-placers have made a very good investment – not least politically!
Just filled my tank for my weekend trip; I paid $2.74\gal(the same price as my last fill up on 10\7);I'm in New Smyrna Beach, Florida for reference; what are the gas prices where you are? Thanks for the responses
I actually paid 2 quite different prices in SoCal within an hour of each other. I wasn't paying attention and urgently needed gas in West Hollywood, $5.19, 2 gallons. Then filled at Costco, Huntington Beach on the way home, 3.95.
That's interesting; thanks for this update
Average price in the state of CA right now is about $4.60, about $1.40 higher than the national average. Lowest price in greater L.A. is $3.79, Costco’s are generally very close to the bottom of price range, several of them in the area are at $3.85.
I just paid $2.99/gal this afternoon in my New Hampshire town.
Drove up to my parents' place in Minnesota. Prices ranged from $2.83 to $2.99. It was as low as $2.61 last weekend.
3.13 tonight, 50 minutes north of NYC. It feels like a multi year low.
I am not there now, but for a long time the price of gas in Norway has been between $8 and $9 per gallon. So it’s always seemed odd to me when Americans complain about the price of their dirt-cheap gasoline.
Norway famously being a large exporter of oil and gas for the past 50 years, with a huge sovereign wealth fund built on the proceeds, has kept the price of petrol high via tax policy, maximizing exports, in an intelligent departure from the actions of most producer countries. The government provides far more to citizens using oil revenues than the value to the typical individual if cheaper petrol. Norway produces 2-3 percent of global O&G, about 30-40 times their share of global population. Government revenues from oil are about half of total revenues, though the government continues to run a surplus and increase the size of its sovereign wealth fund.
Yes, indeed – and well summarized.
Meanwhile, the USA continues with massive subsidies for its oil and gas companies, although these are largely camouflaged. Much of the massively costly war efforts in the Middle East have benefited oil companies – with none of the costs placed on them. Then again, the American economic model has, with a few exceptions, been to "socialize costs, privatize profits".
During the banking crisis of 2007–2008 the government gave massive bailouts. What I found peculiar is that the federal government did not demand equity in return. Had it done so, demanding equity in the form of shares that then had low value, the government could have later sold these as the banks and their shares recovered, making a sizeable profit on behalf of tax payers.
Another quirk of the American oil and gas industry is subsidizing agribusiness to grow corn that is used to produce ethanol, which bizarrely enough is added to the gasoline, actually degrading it! Moreover, massive energy is required to produce the ethanol, meaning the net energy extracted when it is burned in our internal-combustion car engines is not that impressive.
Well said all around. One minor correction: the government did take an equity share of AIG and later sold it for a profit. Should have done it all around as you say.
2.72 South Carolina lowcountry
Legit question politically bc I swear prices go down right before an election. Gas companies do not want to be a topic of electoral conversation so they lower prices right before an election.
Great question; I'm not so sure but it's something to consider; plus, I think it can marginally help Harris(and any marginal positive is terrific)
dont sleep on Wisconsin. The Democratic party chair is probably the best in the country and the new legislative maps will open up a lot of competitive seats that Democrats haven’t been able to be competitive in
years due to gerrymandering. I think the opportunity to vote for Harris and also new representatives in the state will drive more Democrats to the polls. Many Republicans chose to retire instead of run so their turnout machines are not in effect. GOTV and Harris will win.
Plus our side is flush with dough $$$$$$$$$$
Strength/health of state parties in WI, MI, and PA is what is keeping me sane(ish) over the home stretch. Feeling better about NV, too - which would get us beyond media-fueled "faithless elector" dramatics.
I would add North Carolina to that list. Anderson Clayton (age 26) has been an incredible leader for the state’s Democratic Party! She has done so much to rejuvenate Team Blue in NC!
It’s Anderson Clayton, but yes, I agree.
Thanks! Sloppy of me. Corrected.
It’s interesting that I’ve seen two state legislative seats run ads in the Twin Cities. One is the our state senate special that decides control of the chamber, but that’s just the GOP at least trying to put on a showing in what’s a blue seat.
The other seat is a WI assembly seat just on the other side of the border and both sides are going hard. I’m not sure what the district used to look like but now it’s a compact district comprising of Hudson, River Falls and the surrounding townships. Voted for Trump by a hair as the two cities dominate population wise, but they’re not blue enough to overcome how red the townships are. It’s a good one to watch to see how the urban/rural divide shakes down between Dems and GOP.
It’s also telling that I don’t see any ads for MN state house. I’m sure Duluth is getting rocked with ads but nothing in the Twin Cities. Not surprising because every time I’ve read prognostications, I find them extremely pessimistic and reaching for an angle. The MinnPost article talked about here a few weeks back talked about 16 seats up for play. Biden won all but one of them. In a Pres year, the GOP is kind of screwed here and is likely to see losses rather than gains.
How tempted do you think the Harris campaign is to go after Trump's age and "exhaustion'? Sort of a "Let's turn the page on the boomers running things". I'm sure it would be awkward with Biden but i'm not sure he would care much if it helps.
Clinton did that yesterday with Walz in NC
Obama hit it pretty hard tonight in Tucson. "You'd be concerned if your grandpa was acting like this. We don't need to see what an older, crazier Donald Trump looks like with no guardrails."
But that said - if you want to hit it, I think you have to go pretty much all in on it. Every second ad should reinforce the theme. Anything less and it simply won't get into the vibes in time.
Update from Saturday: it seems like the campaign gets the potency of the attack line. Per BBC live coverage: "[Harris] said she wants to spend the next two weeks highlighting that Trump is "increasingly unstable and unfit" to be president - a common attack line she takes against her Republican opponent."
And Walz with the nice zinger, per NYT live coverage: "It’s pretty clear the tired, divisive and old rhetoric of Donald Trump matches the tired, divisive and old Donald Trump."
Harris is running a new ad using the line 'unstable, unhinged, unchecked'.
I heard that; do you know how widely it's running?
It’s national as it was on during the Georgia Texas college football game.
It will be election day in British Columbia, Canada's third most populous province tomorrow! https://globalnews.ca/news/10818467/bc-ndp-favoured-close-race-final-bc-election-poll/
It’ll be an interesting test to see what the modern CPC can actually accomplish with its trend towards being GOP Lite
Though the Provincial parties are unaffiliated with the national ones in Canada and often quite different. The now defunct BC Liberals were the main right-wing party there for some decades.
It's interesting that the poll had the NDP up +17 with the 55+ demographic. That's definitely different than our politics.
I wonder if there's some equivalent to Getting Republicans Elected Every November for the Canadian Greens?
Though in general they have much less of a two-party system in Canada, so the notion that the Greens could have a breakthrough election is much more plausible.
Only if the Liberals and NDP completely collapse. The NDP broke through nationally in 2011 because the Liberals completely collapsed.
The NDP has been the governing party in all of the Western provinces at some point. (As well as a disastrous stint in Ontario in the early 90s.) This gave them credibility well before 2011.
The Greens are also a pretty viable force in Vancouver Island and usually pick up several Victoria area ridings. It’s not a perfect comp
I just found out a new word: simp
Was it in a discussion of Lindsey Graham?
A couple of questions for the weekend:
1) This close to Election Day, what is your sleeper race? That race that has gotten little to no attention but winds up much closer than expected or flips and shocks everyone? (Doesn't necessarily have to be a federal race)
2) Since it was mentioned in Friday's digest, what race do you think ends up being the VA-10 (of 2018) of this cycle? The race everyone seemed to agree that one side had in the bag and yet money kept being spent there to the detriment of other races.
As an aside, I don't watch much live local TV so I rarely see local political ads. I started watching my local CBS Station here in San Antonio about 2 hours ahead of the Allred-Cruz debate and stated keeping track of what I saw. In that time frame I counted 25 political ads:
12 on the U.S. Senate race (7 Anti-Cruz, 2 Anti-Allred, 2 Pro-Allred, 1 Pro-Cruz)
12 from State House race candidates (HD 74, HD 80, HD 118, & HD 121)
1 Presidential (Anti-Trump)
IA-02 seems like a decent candidate.
I'd feel better about IA-02 if the Democrat there wasn't being massively outraised and outspent. I wanna see Corkery win, but I doubt she has the infrastructure, network and resources to win over and reach enough voters.
Right, but that's why it's a sleeper - not necessarily to win but to be closer than expected, if Democrats in Iowa are actually having a comeback year.
I think Ne-Sen is the sleeper race of all sleeper races. Outside of politics needs and Nebraskans I doubt anyone really realizes that there is a decent chance a Republican incumbent might lose.
CO-5. I’m angry it got no attention. I’m angry no one invested in El Paso County, CO.
Yeah, I'd definitely like to see Dems invest more in El Paso County and Colorado Springs. IMO Dems have a lot of potential for significant gains there.
I think we are a cycle or two away from being competitive in this district. I think money spent on CO-3 and CO-8 is a better investment right now.
My sleeper race is AZ-02. This is the northeastern AZ district where the one-term GOP incumbent is not very popular and the Democratic candidate is a former president (or chairman, i forget the proper title) of the Navajo Nation, which is probably the largest ethnic group in the district. There are also some other indigenous groups in the district as well as others who may vote Dem. I gave a small donation to Jonathan Nez, the Dem about a week ago, thinking this was one of my longshot races. Now there is a poll showing Nez tied with Crane at 42%. There are lots of undecided people left but the top of the Repub ticket is weak (Tr*mp and Lake) and so with a high native turnout it might be winnable.
I feel like a sleeper has to be rated Safe-R, not Likely, but others might disagree.
Cook and Sabato both rate AZ-2 as Safe R.
It seems like their ratings are wrong, then.
It would be pretty sweet if the seat which the GOP grossly gerrymandered in 2020 to put a Dem Congressmember out of reach for most of the D+80 native population of AZ concentrated therein, manages to overcome that due to the batshit crazy behavior of the first term GOP incumbent.
This is my choice too but your write-up says most of what I would have written. (Great minds!) Cook and Sabato rate this race as Safe-R. Crane has raised and spent almost 2X what Nez has raised and spent and, until Inside Politics polled it this week, I knew of no polls and no media attention. Even after Inside Politics polled the race, it kept its rating as Likely R (which surprised me). Sounds like a sleeper race to me.
One reason I would also pick it is that the Inside Politics poll found that neither candidate is very well known and the undecided voters "really don't like Eli Crane." Who knows? Lightning could strike.
BTW, I made a small donation to Nez today, violating my personal rules re donating to non-competitive races, particularly so late in the season.
The district is very tough to poll. Nez needs maximal minority turnout, not just native turnout, maximal college student turnout (NAU), maximum ticket splitting by sane GOPers, and low turnout by discouraged GOP voters.
I donated to Nez early on. I like to give seed money to long shot candidates who I think could be transformational - especially in places where they're unlikely to attract much funding. (So not running against, say, MTG)
Also partly because I saw the native vote as being so huge in Biden taking AZ, so wanted to both reward that and encourage more of the same!
Per the census the seat (formerly majority-minority with about 1/4th native is now 55% non-Hispanic white, with 18% native and 19% Hispanic population and 4% multiracial with the small remainder of the population very small numbers of Black and Asian residents. Most of the Hispanic population in this district is multi-generational U.S. born (including a lot of my extended family), it’s similar to NM and SW Colorado in that way. It’s also one of the most Mormon districts in the country outside Utah, I haven’t run the numbers lately but top 10.
Good questions.
My answer for Sleeper races.
MI 04. Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Holland, St. Jo/Benton Harbor. GOP incumbent Huizenga won in 2022 with 54% when challenger only had $35000 in funds vs $3.2M. This year's D, Jessica Swartz, has raised 900k vs 2.8M. A well known Libertarian candidate also on ballot again that I'd probably "not ask" outside groups to support.
SC01 Nancy Mace. She wins primaries by rather slim margins. Charleston continues to grow immensely. SC gerrymandered asany Blacks out of district as possibly but she still only got 56% last time. New challenger, Michael Moore (not that one) has ties to the AA musuem. Mace has 3 to 1 fundraising advantage.
NC11. The Hurrican Helene district. Chuck Edwards didn't win by a ton least time. Who knows how the hurricane disruptions will affect turnout? Asheville hit hard, but population is denser there so easier to get to polls. Likely high number of climate change voters.
Indiana Gov. Covered in previous dailies.
Wasted $ race.
FL Senate. I wish I felt differently, but I think Demographics in FL have gotten worse for Ds in last 4 years, not better. I'd prefer the money go to Kunce or Osborne. Or into races in IN or WV. I know a lot will disagree with me here about how viable DMP is. I sincerely hope you are right and I'm wrong.
FL-Senate is a Lean-R race, but the idea that MO, let alone WV are more viable doesn't hold any water for me.
I doubt MO or WV are more viable than FL as well. But they are cheaper. Jim Justice is just as tainted with mining as Rick Scott is with health care and Hawley only just got over 50% against McCaskill. DMP vs Scott reminds me of Lyndsey Graham vs Jaime Harrison or McConnell vs Amy McGrath in 2020. Especially with Graham's race, there were good polls for Harrison, but you had to have a very rosy view of demographics.
FL is not comparable to SC, let alone KY. Or at least it hasn't been. If Siena is right and Trump wins FL by 13, we'll have something else to talk about. But I don't understand your concern with money. Which campaign is lacking in money? Also, really, please forget about WV! Super-safe Republican!
Just responding to Jacob M's question about which race seems settled but everyone is still spending a lot of money at the expense of other races. I thought it would be fair to suggest where else the money might go.
It's fair for you to suggest and for others to argue with you. That's what political discussion is.
Mining and screwing the Feds aren’t negatives in WV.
On WV:
Democratic Senate Candidate Glenn Elliott has been doing good with fundraising, namely with unemployed voters in WV. He’s getting traction because Jim Justice is really a lame duck GOP Senate Candidate who is doing nothing to stop the negatives he’s been getting a lot.
At the same time, Elliott unlike Lucas Kunce in the MO-SEN race has been getting significantly less media attention. Elliott as of just recently got an interview with Forbes, which may get him traction but he also went on Fox News months ago. It’s really hard to say how this media attention he’s getting is going to impact WV voters.
Kunce by contrast has been regularly on MSNBC for months and has been interviewed by Chris Hayes and others. It’s pretty clear MO is more friendly to Democrats than WV but that’s not a ringing endorsement.
Unemployed people have been contributing a lot to Elliot's campaign? I wouldn't think anyone would get a lot of contributions from unemployed people!
I cited this information in my blog post on DK but the Charleston Gazette-Mail is what has reported the information.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/18/1586387/-WV-SEN-Democratic-Senate-Candidate-Glenn-Elliott-Outraises-Governor-Jim-Justice-in-Third-Quarter
The article I cited reveals that unemployed people across the country donated to Elliott’s campaign. Quite frankly, this may be referring to WV, where there are in fact many unemployed or underemployed West Virginians. I don’t know how the unemployed outside of WV would donate to Elliott’s campaign considering he wouldn’t exactly represent them or even win the race.
MO-SEN Race but it depends on who is reporting it.
-Democratic Candidate Lucas Kunce has dominated the fundraising the whole year.
-He is cutting Senator Josh Hawley’s lead to single digits in multiple polls as of recently.
-Kunce’s rallies have been consistently packed for over a month now.
-Hawley himself has not been doing well in his campaign as far as running for re-election. Has continuously been on the defensive as a result of the pressure from Kunce’s campaign.
Of course, Hawley is still likely to win. However, I fail to see how this is a Solid Republican race. I remain convinced it’s Likely Republican but that Hawley won’t win by a sizable margin.
Likely-Republican is a reasonable rating for it, but a Kunce victory would be shocking!
Indeed!
If Kunce improves on the percentage of votes that Jason Kander got as a Democratic Senate Candidate back in 2016, then that’s real progress.
Frankly, more investment should be made in MO by Democrats so they don’t have to rely on a war veteran like Kander or Kunce to get traction. MO is not a deep red state like ID or WY. Lots more Democrats in MO, which also happens to be a midwestern state.
True, it's not as bad as ID or WY.
Getting Democrats elected in ID and WY, unless we’re talking at the local level, is like pulling teeth.
Funny thing is, ID is more friendly to Democrats than WY but at the state and federal level it’s hard.
Surprised no one has mentioned MO-02 yet. It moved left from Senate 2016 Jason Kander (3 point loss statewide) to 2022 Trudy Busch Valentine (13 point loss statewide).
My sleeper race is MN-Sen. With each new round of polls, Amy Klobuchar's lead gets more pathetic. Partly because Republicans are so embarrassed about their nominee, even local GOP leaders shrug Royce White off and admit he's gonna lose. But the polls tell a different story. I'm confident Klobuchar will still win, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if she only outran Harris by a point. Klobuchar +5 seems like a real possibility at this point, and three months ago just about everybody would have figured it would be Klobuchar +25.
You don't think Walz' presence on the ballot will have coattails in MN?
I'm not anticipating a lot. I know we shouldn't put too much emphasis on a single poll but that MN-02 poll this week showing Craig +8 in the same sample as Trump +2 was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser. Right now, I'm guessing Harris-Walz finish somewhere between Hillary in 2016 and Biden in 2020 in Minnesota. And that Klobuchar gets remarkably less distance than expected from the top of the ticket.
It'll be interesting to see. Thanks.
I have a strong feeling that this race has a large R undervote total from normal R voters
I think the days of senate candidates osignificantly uutrunning presidential candidates are pretty much over.
A moving message from Donald Trump in the closing weeks of the campaign:
"Get your fat husband off the couch. Get that fat pig off the couch."
"Get him up! Slap the hell out of him".
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1847446208094028251?t=nNzluF3Di7HnHWoKU_LMCA&s=19
He sure paints a vivid picture of a typical Trump supporter, doesn't he?
Nothing motivates me to vote more than my candidate calling me a fat pig!!
And speaks to his election strategy of turning out his own supporters vs winning over new ones. The women he’s speaking to probably do call their husbands lazy pigs. When he talks about policy or about Democrats, he’s a psycho. When he talks to his own supporters directly, he knows their language. Which, says a lot about current American politics.
"Get your fat husband off the couch. Get that fat pig off the couch."
You sure this wasn’t something someone said to Melania Trump`
I thought maybe he was quoting her book
My latest 2024 Election Predictions are now out on my Substack:
Summary:
The House is too close to call, but Democrats are favored to gain the House.
Republicans are likely favored to gain the Senate.
Kamala Harris (D) is the mild favorite to win the Presidential election.
https://jgibsondem.substack.com/p/my-2024-election-projections-10182024
Our system is so stupidly set-up that we could win the House, lose the Senate, win the Presidential popular vote but lose the Electoral Vote. We end up with the weakest part of the trifecta while we got more voters over-all and should control everything.
https://laist.com/news/politics/top-aide-to-oc-supervisor-andrew-do-resigns
LAist is LA NPR
More corruption coming out of the Orange County supervisors office.
Chris Wangsaporn (real name), the chief of staff to Andrew Do resigned after it came out that he seems to have directed a $275,000 contract for mental health services to his girlfriend/now wife who produced no work product.
Andrew Do is the supervisor who is under federal investigation for directing money to a not for profit run by his daughter that allegedly misdirected money for personal use.
Other supervisors are pushing Do to resign, and have removed him from committees.
So far, there hasn't been a major attempt to tie the closeness of Michelle Steel to Do, nor resurface her corrupt dealings when on the OC BOS.
Unfortunately, County government has been a cesspool in OC for years, think bankruptcy and corruption in the sheriff's office.
Picking up this seat would be a coup in solidifying Democratic control of County government in OC.
Michelle Steel (CA-45) is in trouble even outside of the Do connection. A rabid McCarthyite who accused her previous opponent of being in league with Communist China, she is opposed this time by Derrick Tran, who is an excellent, self-assertive candidate. He has a 50-50 chance of taking Steel down, depending on how things go for Democrats in California. This is one of four or even five Republican House seats in California that could switch if there's a Democratic landslide here.
A sleeper race is in CA-16, where the progressive Democrat Evan Low has a chance of taking down the non-ideological front-running Democrat, Sam Liccardo. It's an all-Democratic general election in a very blue district.
Steel’s China accusations were Rovian, she and her husband sold political influence in the US to CCP officials and mainland Chinese business interests.
Also airport contracts
Link to DCCC write up of the Steel’s CCP connection reported in the WSJ: https://dccc.org/breaking-wall-street-journal-michelle-steels-shady-husband-found-selling-access-trump-chinese-foreign-nationals-donations-trump-campaign/
A judge has ordered all of the bank accounts of Viet America Society and it's affiliates frozen. This is the organization that's the focus of the Do corruption investigation. Potentially several million of funds are involved.
While the FBI is investigating VAS and Do, the County of Orange is suing to try to recover funds. Much evidently involved federal covid funds.
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 and Gateway. For the 14-day state averages, the number of polls is in parentheses.
AZ: 31-day T+1.4, 14-day T+1.5 (6)
GA: 31-day T+1.0, 14-day T+1.4 (7)
MI: 31-day H+1.0, 14-day H+0.9 (11)
NV: 31-day H+1.2, 14-day T+0.3 (4)
NC: 31-day T+0.5, 14-day T+0.3 (6)
PA: 31-day H+0.8, 14-day H+0.4 (11)
WI: 31-day H+1.0, 14-day H+0.1 (8)
US: 31-day H+3.0, 14-day H+2.6
These numbers aren't as good for Harris as they were earlier this month. The frequency of state polling has dropped except in MI and PA and I would take the 31-day averages more seriously than the 14-day ones. For example, WI's 14-day average no longer includes the Marquette poll showing Harris up 4. The 14-day average is more meaningful for the US. A number of national polls have shown movement toward Trump lately, but as Dies Irae noted yesterday this seems to be mainly coming from shifts in the party ID of their samples, in many cases showing R+3 national samples which would match the 2022 midterm and would seem to be too red for a general election in which Dem enthusiasm seems to be at least as high as it was in 2020. I suspect the recent red shift reflects change in response bias more than change in voting intentions.
There's a gap in high-quality state polling recently, likely due to the calendar; pollsters want to get their final reads in late October and don't usually do polls in the week or two before then. Unless they're crappy pollsters (cough cough red wavers).
This is great!
2024 polling averages echo 2012 polling averages
2024 D 49 R 48
2012 D 49 R 48 (Election Result D 51 R 47), compared to 2024: D 0 R 0
2004 D 47 R 49 (Election Result D 48 R 51), compared to 2024: D -2 R +1
2000 D 46 R 48 (Election Result D 48 R 48), compared to 2024: D-3 R 0
2016 D 47 R 44 (Election Result D 48 R 46), compared to 2024: D -2 R -4
2020 D 51 R 44 (Election Result D 51 R 47), compared to 2024: D +2 R-4
2008 D 52 R 45 (Election Result D 53 R 45), compared to 2024: D +3 R-3
polling averages taken from RCP for 2004-2020, wikipedia for 2020
Wow. Very informative. Democrats gained at least 1 point from their polling average. The only outlier was 2020. People said that because of Covid restrictions that Democrats did not do face to face GOTV in 2020 and that was the reason for not doing as well. That will not be the case this time. GOTV!
That would be quite the stunner if the 2012 electorate showed up next month....one where black turnout exceeded white turnout and where wide swaths of the conservative base sat out the election as they didn't think the GOP nominee was right-wing enough.
It is the first time a black woman has ever been the nominee of a major party, and the first time since 2012 that a black candidate has headed the ticket, it’s not terribly unlikely that black voter turnout will increase again. And while the right wing fringe may have been more likely to boycott Romney, other fractions of the GOP are unhappy with Trump and that’s increasingly true.
Fuck, I’m breaking a rule but for a good cause. (Good trouble.) Remember the 2008 primary and Hillary had black voters wrapped up at first bc they knew her? Then, they got to know Obama and everything flipped. Harris never got that chance as a Pres candidate. She never “won them over” like Obama did. The recent emphasis of talking to black male voters by Obama says a lot.
Washington Post article on Proposition 36 in CA:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/19/prop36-california-ballot-/
Link is broken
I googled to find the “article.” It’s a pro-cop, pro-big box editorial from the Ed Board that’s the personal toy of the world’s 2nd biggest thief (billionaire).