Nov. 2 ELECTION ANALYSIS

    Comments

    Nate Silver:

    I don't think this follows. In most recent elections, Democrats lost ground in rural areas but gained in the suburbs. Last night, they lost ground in the suburbs too. That's different and it's worth asking why (and, yes, the answers are probably complicated and multi-causal). pic.twitter.com/DJsL4rAIcV

    — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 3, 2021


    Now, it's true electoral trends are thermostatic (i.e. they tend to break against the governing party) in somewhat predictable ways. But part of that is because parties adjust their strategies after defeats, in e.g. the way the GOP did in Virginia that it didn't in California.

    — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 3, 2021

    As a corollary, Democrats probably should consider strategic adjustments in response to last night—exactly how they should change it and on what issues is a harder question, of course—rather than just attributing it to a poor national environment.

    — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 3, 2021

    Entirely plausible scenario is that GOP has a bunch of good outcomes in 2021/2022 without Trump but then nominates Trump anyway and has a bad 2024. https://t.co/AtqmjXXYNC

    — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 3, 2021

    Up at @FiveThirtyEight, liveblog of Virginia and other elections tonight:https://t.co/AifCHV8hJJ

    — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 2, 2021

    My basic, boring take though is that Virginia probably won't affect the 2022 midterm odds very much (dreary outlook for Dems either way, TBH). It'll mostly impact *how* 2022 is contested and what political elites argue about.https://t.co/AifCHV8hJJ

    — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 2, 2021

    Yglesias from last night on creating and spreading a narrative before you've got strong data


    I think that where many analysts, even Yglesias, seem to be missing big time, and I just found out, is that the Lt. Gov. Elect is a woman with black skin, immigrant parents from Jamaica who brought her along at age 6 (DACA anyone?) , military service (a marine; for the Pentagon friendly in VA!), an advanced degree, experience running a homeless shelter and has lots of experience running for VA office not to mention being vice president of the Virginia Board of Education. Sounds like a swing-vote getter to me! Especially from woman of all colors and immigrants:

    Winsome Sears From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    [...] Sears was born in Kingston, Jamaica and immigrated to the United States at the age of six. Her father arrived with just $1.75 and took any job he could find while also continuing his education.[2] She grew up in The BronxNew York City.[3] She served as an electrician in the United States Marines.[4] Sears earned an A.A. from Tidewater Community College, a B.A. in English with a minor in economics from Old Dominion University and an M.A. in organizational leadership from Regent University in Norfolk, Virginia[5]

    Career[edit]

    Before running for public office, Sears ran a homeless shelter.[6] In November 2001, Sears upset 20-year Democratic incumbent William P. "Billy" Robinson, Jr. while running for the 90th district seat in Virginia's House of Delegates.[7][8] Sears was the first Jamaican female Republican,[9] first female veteran, and the first naturalized citizen delegate, to serve in the House of Delegates.[10] She challenged Democrat Bobby Scott in 2004 for Virginia's 3rd congressional district seat, but lost,[11] garnering 31 percent of the vote.[4]  and has received presidential appointments to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Census Bureau.[12]

    In September 2018, Sears entered the race for U.S. Senate as a write-in alternative to Republican candidate Corey Stewart.[13] She received less than 1% of the vote.[14] On May 11, 2021, she won the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor of Virginia on the fifth ballot, defeating second-place finisher Tim Hugo by 54% to 46%.[15] On November 2, 2021, she won the race for lieutenant governor of Virginia on a ticket with businessman Glenn Youngkin, becoming the first black woman elected to a statewide office in Virginia.[16] In her victory speech she said, "When I joined the Marine Corps, I was still a Jamaican. But this country had done so much for me, I was willing, willing, to die for this country.” [17]


    Yglesias on the whole "CRT" thing, with comment from Zachary Elwood

    also many further replies are interesting

     


    on Nassau County, 1 of 2 counties making up Long Island, NY (which extends out into the ocean just like Cape Cod does in MA) the first county to the east of the NYC border in Queens. Shane Goldmacher is a national politics reporter for the NYT previously the chief of politics for the Metro NY area desk:

    The results in Nassau County seem an important piece of understanding what is happening in the suburbs

    — Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) November 3, 2021


    Some of the context https://t.co/i09FBvp7xw

    — Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) November 3, 2021

    Yea - maybe all politics aren’t local as much anymore? How many swing does SALT impact? How un-energized is dem base by DC stalling? How much is just anti incumbent because of supply chain / inflation pocketbook stuff? Or maybe it’s just property taxes.

    — Josh Gold (@JGoldny) November 3, 2021

    Although you have to look at westchester, where Latimer focused on property taxes before reading too much into it.

    — Josh Gold (@JGoldny) November 3, 2021

    And the New Jersey suburbs, too.

    Lots to look at for full picture nationally.

    — Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) November 3, 2021

    Totally. Im actually looking forward to reading the hot takes! However dumb some may be. Although it’s 3 AM so@I may be regretting that when sober and awake tomorrow!

    — Josh Gold (@JGoldny) November 3, 2021

    Massive red wave on the island.

    — Bob Hardt (@bobhardt) November 3, 2021

    Except it isn't. Both Nassau & Suffolk currently have Democrats as county executive & district attorney. Substantial populations of Black, Latino, Asian residents. Affluent areas with college educated professionals. Unless absentees save her, few thought Laura Curran would lose.

    — Winfield (@middleburgher) November 3, 2021

    Maybe your counting identity groups as coalition members when say half of "Latinos" etc vote R.

    — rank & file (@dhegertz) November 3, 2021

    Just pointing out that it's not really Fox or Trump country. Has many independent voters, who determine election results. Narrow margins here remind me of when Suozzi lost the county executive to Mangano. Suburbs are still very competitive & Democrats can't take them for granted.

    — Winfield (@middleburgher) November 3, 2021

    People are looking for larger meanings to draw from these elections, I'm guilty. So agree, it's always mire complicated than at first glance.

    — rank & file (@dhegertz) November 3, 2021

    Laura Curran is currently losing 48% to 52% without absentees. She narrowly won in 2017 with 51%. There are national issues in the background, but she ran a good campaign on local issues like property taxes. I thought she'd be several points ahead. Nope, another very narrow race.

    — Winfield (@middleburgher) November 3, 2021

    Suffolk County was a bloodbath as well. Of the 10 towns, 6 have Republican supervisors. While not all towns were up, 2 of the 4 dem supervisors were unopposed. Dems went from 10-8 majority in leg to 12-6 minority.

    — something witty (@WhosePolitics) November 3, 2021

    Oh and the incumbent DA went down too

    — something witty (@WhosePolitics) November 3, 2021

    (^ Suffolk is the next county east, out into the ocean, including the Hamptons and Montauk)

    Who could have predicted that bail reform would not be a good thing?

    — Susan Marie (@SusanM1956) November 3, 2021


    Wow. It’s like 2009 but more.

    — Patrick Whittle (@pxwhittle) November 3, 2021

    Patrick, it's NUTS. And in some cases, it's not even close.

    — Randi Marshall (@randimarshall) November 3, 2021

    Have you driven in any neighborhood on Long Island lately? It’s blue stripe flags everywhere you look.

    — J. Robidoux (@Horace_Badun) November 3, 2021

    yeah I see it when I go through Rockville Centre

    — Redcoat (@Redcoat60223965) November 3, 2021

    edit to insert missing intended tweet


    related addition:


    here she's talking about districts in Queens NYC that are close to Suffolk County going GOP, they are heavily Asian-American immigrant:

    She's complaining about bi-lingual "outreach" to change votes to Dems. But I suspect that's not going to work unless you're offering strong anti-crime, pro-small-business, pro less taxation policies and are anti-affirmative action in schools. These are classic small business owing people who work 12 hrs. a day, 7 days a week and have managed to climb the ladder enough to buy a small house or something like that, whatever language you speak to them, they are still going to go with voting GOP for local offices! They don't want more bureaucracy and they don't want nanny state stuff, no way. Probably even Bloomberg pissed them off with his anti-big-gulp sodas and anti-cigarette stances, they could make good money off of those...




    Great question and coming from someone who would love it if what he calls "Successor ideology" were a big cause:

    Anybody do a roundup on school board elections in VA? Seems that not many anti-CRT candidates won?

    — Wesley Yang (@wesyang) November 4, 2021

    Definitely revealing himself as someone who likes to go on facts rather than favored narrative.


    shocking anti-incumbent news in NJ:



    You know, i see "first woman of color as mayor of Boston" and I'm like, fine, and then i see the following about hundreds of years ruled by "white male", and I'm suddenly "fuck you, who else was going to do it?- some Chinese coolie pre-Boxer rebellion under the Emperor? some Mexican in the age of Pancho Villa? some Turk in the era of the Caliphate?" Applauding new inclusion doesn't have to have this gratuitous shitting on white males just because we got things done and led the country to being largely #1 in the world (and with Europe the most progressive democracies, for all the hiccups along the way). Like it or not, women have more trouble lifting and moving 100lb loads, as an example of the physical requirements for much of the world's work until maybe 40-50 years ago in mines, farming/ranching, ocean transportation, military, et al., which is also how men who weren't elected mayor of Boston often died much much younger. A friend noted Busch spills more beer in a day than Sam Adams brews in a year. Make similar comparisons to all these other alphabet categories. I had someone going on and on about how many "female engineers" there are - certainly not many til of late, many focused around chemical and computers rather than say civil and manufacturing, and then the woman started equating being a physicist with being an engineer - uh, no, applied engineering has in general been much less attractive to females (oops, shouldn't use that loaded term) than natural sciences, for whatever reasons, even though there are obviously exceptions, and there's a reason you don't have to push & promote "men in STEM" very hard, whatever that reason is, just like girls will easily play with Barbies no matter how grotesque their actual physiognomy is.


    As a *flip in perspective* exercise in empathy I invite progressives to think for a moment about this detail from Matt Taibbi's dispatch from Virginia: 1/x pic.twitter.com/uEFnqq1Fp8

    — Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) November 3, 2021

    also see:

    but his best is this one:

     


    Hey, remember the good old days of late 2001?

    That Osama was a uniter, not a divider, he just didn't realize it.cheeky

    Identitarian essentialism sucks.

     


    thread related to your rant (tho they don't focus on the male thing as they should, it's just presumed)

    '

    continues...

     


    Nate Cohn, election & poll analyst for the NYTimes:


    Hah, the best part is the look on her face when they go split screen


    hmmm:


    11:40 AM Moscow


    "Get those kids off my lawn" vs "hope i die before I get old" - race version. Works every time (at least in the US - we're so easy to manipulate and get thrown off stride)



    the Democratic party, one big happy family

    As I said, he needs to resign https://t.co/nTNK43DdiF

    — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 4, 2021

    You need to resign. https://t.co/Ysx469Y338

    — Sally Albright (@BySallyAlbright) November 4, 2021

    She’s the worst https://t.co/iWeChemZVk

    — Sally Albright (@BySallyAlbright) November 4, 2021

     


    noting significant amount of stuff like this:


    WASHINGTON — In Shakespeare, when characters want to fulfill their desires, they escape to what’s been called the Green World.

    And that’s what Democrats promised voters: that they could leave behind the vitriol and aggravation of Donald Trump’s America and escape to an Arden that was cool, calm and reassuring.

    Democrats violated that pledge. On the way to that verdant forest, we got led into a circular firing squad. Tight margins in Congress do not bring out the best in pols.

    “We promised to change the rancor and division,” said one top Democrat. “So we offered something else: division and rancor." [.....]

    continued at

    Wokeness Derails the Democrats

    By Maureen Dowd @ NYTimes. com, Nov. 6, 2021


    There’s some truth in what James Carville told Judy Woodruff: “What went wrong is this stupid wokeness. Don’t just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Wash. I mean, this defund the police lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools.”

    There’s also some truth in what Representative Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Virginia Democrat in a tough re-election battle, told The Times’s Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns about the president: “Nobody elected him to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.”

     




    Harry Enten of CNN:


    Oh Jesus Fucking Christ, Biden's "unpopular" for the same reason Hillary was "unpopular" - there's a huge marketing machine to repeat over and over how bad they are however benign and middling they are. I keep seeing bullshit about how Americans want to focus on issues, but they want to focus on issues while being entertained by smash football. Biden is even more middlin' and non-controversial than Hillary, and he's a charming old corny non-controversial white dude, but a (un)healthy portion of the country is infected with Trumpism even though Trump may "go a bit too far", a natural extension of Newt Gingrich and Tom "the Hammer" DeLay and the Tea Party  born out of crash and burn (and Karl Rove, but Rove came across as nicer than he was/is). 


    Long Yglesias thread reacting to Perry Bacon Jr. on "the woke" thing and politics


    Harry insists



    WHOA: New Jersey’s most powerful Democratic boss predicts midterm carnage

    George Norcross says nobody in the state predicted last week’s losses for the party. “It was just a tsunami,” he said.

    By Sam Sutton @ Politico.com, 11/8, they made it the current headline story also

    NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — New Jersey’s kingmaker didn’t see it coming.

    George Norcross, the South Jersey insurance executive who leads one of the most powerful Democratic organizations in the country, had no idea Gov. Phil Murphy’s victory over Republican Jack Ciattarelli would come down to just a couple of percentage points. He didn’t see Democrats losing a half-dozen legislative seats to a Republican party that’s been in decline since Gov. Chris Christie left the Statehouse four years ago.

    He certainly didn’t see his close friend and political ally, state Senate President Steve Sweeney, losing an election to an unknown truck driver with a campaign war chest that would barely cover the cost of a few tickets to a New Jersey Democratic State Committee fundraising event.

    “It was just a tsunami,” Norcross said in an interview. “Nobody saw this coming. Nobody. Including me, and I like to think I’m pretty astute about this.”

    It’s gut check time for New Jersey Democrats. Every public poll had Murphy’s margin of victory in the high single digits or better. Turnout models from Monmouth University’s Polling Institute to state Democratic internals failed to predict a Republican wave in New Jersey, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 1 million voters.

    Sweeney was caught in the riptide and Norcross, a prolific fundraiser and unelected party chieftain with close ties to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, attributes his friend’s collapse and Murphy’s close shave to the party’s dismal plodding through the first year of President Joe Biden’s presidency.

    The administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, followed by months of infighting over an ever-shrinking multi-trillion dollar infrastructure and social spending package — the House passed the infrastructure bill Friday night — evaporated support within Democratic strongholds and erased gains made in conservative districts.

    According to Norcross, Democrats need to change voter perceptions fast if they want to preserve their majority in the House of Representatives. As many as four or five Democratic members of New Jersey’s House delegation will run into challenges with redistricting and reelection “if this mood maintains itself,” he said. “That’s trouble.”

    [....]


    Trump's MAGA movement shows resilience if it's able to continue on remotely without him.


    NH Gov.Sununu doing a big tease this morning on whether he will run for Senate in 2022 and try to win Democrat Sen. Hassan's seat for the GOP

     

     


    a reminder how dirty the fight can get:

    a lot of voters DO have bad memories about this sort of thing, all they care about is NOW...


    what Bernie-type lefties know: class war works and racialism warring doesn't:




    Very little from NGO world about how the Asian vote in New York City dramatically swung toward the Republican Party. For progressive organizations, this should be something like a crisis - Asians are the fastest growing group in NYC, by far - but nary a peep.

    — Ross Barkan (@RossBarkan) November 10, 2021

    What were the percentage swings?

    — Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) November 11, 2021


    will know more when absentee ballots are tallied but you had majority or plurality Asian Assembly Districts getting outright won by the Republican mayoral candidate, Curtis Sliwa

    — Ross Barkan (@RossBarkan) November 11, 2021

    Is there a party that is against rasicm and for equality instead of equity?

    — DreaminALife (@dreaminALifee) November 11, 2021

    They think ignoring it will make it go away.

    — Justin Allen (@JAllen_NYC) November 11, 2021

    anti-black propaganda is working on the Asian community, from magnet school admissions to black-on-yellow crime vids. Same thing is happening within the Hispanic and Muslim communities.

    — Oof (@Oof86583180) November 11, 2021

    Barkan writes for The Nation.

    But I think: doh, no surprise to me!

    This is a city of immigrants who stay to start small businesses and also do things like vote, and many of them, including many Caribbeans, are not real fond of the Dem Party machine nor of the city bureaucracy that bedevils them, nor are many very fond of Afro-American culture, think of it as about failure, too much like where they came from. And the latter is true especially for all kinds of Asian-American immigrants. And the smart ones also know Eric Adams has a history of being a machine pol.

    That pretty much goes for any Asian immigrant type I can think of -far east, near east, southeast, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, aetheist, Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Laotian,  etc.

    This guy is at at least looking at some big picture good stats.

    https://t.co/25RdNp3hi7

    — Ozzie Araujo (he/him) (@OzzieAraujo) November 11, 2021

    but even he is not going far back enough!

    Look, Giuliani ousted Dinkins, was re-elected until he couldn't be anymore, and Bloomberg was endorsed by Giuliani and spent a gazillion on of his own money on his first campaign, won and was re-elected until he couldn't anymore.

    New York is a city of immigrants who become citizens, and then move out of the city when they can afford to and those are for the most part not liberals!

    In Manhattan & Brooklyn, the well-to-do white and Jewish elites and young white free-lance careeristas being supported by their parents from allover the USA make up most of the liberals. Many of the ultra wealthy on Manhattan's upper east side are Republicans as are lots of the Staten Island well-to-do blue collar, like plumbers, electricians, contractors. Plenty of Wall Streets don't even vote in NYC, their home is in Jersey or other burbs (often even they can't afford the upper east side!)

    A lot of the rest of the city is immigrants! It's not Detroit, Afro-American culture does not rule! Never did. In the 20's visiting Harlem was seen as an "outre" night out like to a foreign country. I don't even know where NYC got the reputation of being liberal or lefty, hasn't really been like that for more than a century. It's like they are confusing Greenwich Village in Manhattan, neither of which are NYC. It's just tolerant of other cultures AS LONG AS EVERYBODY OBEYS THE RULES.(Fancy pants intellectual socialists and anarchists from early 20th century Greenwich Village weren't looked on very kindly, either--there was already enough chaos: lock em up! and don't let any more in at Ellis Island, either, turn em back)


    Uh, didn't we have a period across the country of black gangs targeting old Asian women or mugging Asians as they were unloading their cars or just random violence to Asians? Could that relate?


    Of course. But the mistrust of the culture was already there. i.e., korean deli owners vs. black teens hanging in the store especially since 1992 L.A. Rodney King riots...both cultures they feel the tension

    Interesting that sort of thing was prominent in NYC in the "West Side Story" era too, BUT the mistrusted were Puerto Rican youth, as possible troublemakers and the deli owners weren't Asian. From what I can tell from studying NYC history, Afro-American kids weren't much suspected as troublemakers but actually looked at as polite. What changed?


    A helpful reminder to us all that there's all kinds of Asian-Americans. Here's a bunch of them who are pro-football fans:



    Simplistic blaming of "the rural vote" is not the truth about what happened in the VA election, it's actually dangerously inaccurate:


    Yes!

    This is another reason I would add to the list of why bad local governance is a problem — you want a world where progressives can say the progressive states are delivering clearly superior outcome than the suburbs of Phoenix not just that they have more interesting restaurants. https://t.co/ub02ByraTL

    — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 12, 2021

    Edit to add: see for example, Orion's complaints about Seattle....


    I read this as a colleague of Marjorie Taylor Greene warning Georgia's 14th Congressional district that she's way dumber than even Trump (and goes without saying that she doesn't have the help he did like coloring book briefings), that there's no there there, and they should start looking for someone with actual basic qualifications:


    Also via Intelligencer, DeSantis spokesman blaming vaccine passports on the Rothschilds (aka "da Jewz")

    Is our politicians lurning yet?


    clearly this spokesman's been lurning all the best conspiracy theories from the old days without checking out how they will play with a significant part of the local constituency! some "young Christian conservative" on his staff probably suggested it...oh boy...


    Politico is doing A TON of work and articles on REDISTRICTING! This is just a copy of what's on their home page right now. Just go over there - 

    2021 REDISTRICTING INTERACTIVE MAPS

    Say goodbye to swing districts. Lawmakers are drawing easy wins in dozens of states.

    In states where legislators drew the lines this decade, nearly 90 percent of congressional races were easy wins for one party or the other.

    BY  AND 

    SEE COMPLETED MAPS:   NORTH CAROLINA NEVADA IOWA OREGON FIND YOUR STATE

    Hundreds of House districts are being redrawn. Here’s who’s winning and losing.

    BY ALLAN JAMES VESTAL AND 

    MAGAZINE

    2021 REDISTRICTING

    ‘The Other Side Is Taking Advantage of Us’

    Congressional mapmaking used to be a sleepy affair. No longer.

    BY ALAN GREENBLATT

    Who's winning congressional redistricting: How we calculated our figures

    Projecting the partisan lean of 2022's new congressional districts takes a bit of history and a lot of math.

    Ohio Republicans plow ahead with go-it-alone redistricting — despite gerrymandering limits

    The GOP-controlled state legislature plans to pass a new congressional map this week that shreds two Democratic seats, but it will only stand for the next four years.

    BY 

    Redistricting squeezes 2 Democratic rising stars in Georgia

    BY ALLAN JAMES VESTAL


    The GOP now has a slim majority of the Florida vote; registered Dem majority there is gone with the wind:

    The day Florida Democrats dreaded

    By GARY FINEOUT @ Politico.com, 11/18/2021

    [...] Florida Republicans have caught up with, and now surpassed, Democrats in terms of registered voters. It's a feat that a few years ago was considered unthinkable even as the GOP continued to win close election after close election, whether it was Rick Scott in 2010 and 2014, and Ron DeSantis and Scott in 2018.

    Wire — The totals at the end of October showed there are now 6,035 more Republicans than Democrats in Florida out of nearly 14.3 million registered active voters. This accomplishment — telegraphed a few weeks ago by DeSantis — was called a “milestone moment” by Republican Party of Florida executive director Helen Aguirre Ferré.

    Vertigo — Democrats for their part are pushing back… somewhat. They have questioned the numbers of voters being reclassified as inactive from active in some counties. Democrats are still ahead by nearly 62,000 voters if you count those now listed as inactive. Yes, it’s true that those voters remain eligible, but less than 1 percent of those who turned out in 2018 were inactive.

    One — The plain fact is that Democrats once had a tremendous advantage — one that aided Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 wins in Florida — and it’s gone, Just three years ago, in the election that DeSantis barely won over Andrew Gillum, Dems had a registration advantage of more than 264,000. In 18 of the last 19 months, Republicans have outpaced Democrats in the number of first-time registrants. “The reality is that the state is changing,” said Ryan Tyson, a well-known GOP consultant. [....]


    Bill Scher on Sinema:

    If by "embarrassing" you mean "absolutely golden local TV coverage that perfectly validates Sinema's winning 2018 campaign rhetoric and can easily be used in her 2024 ads" https://t.co/eY4psQYZI6

    — Bill Scher (@billscher) November 21, 2021




    p.s. from Grumbach's thread, worth checking out because:


    election for Columbia, SC mayor:


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