Elliott, this answers one aspect of the question convincingly, but I am not sure it gets at the structural problems of the '24 weight. What if Trump voters are saying they didn't vote in the '24 election but that decision is not strongly tied to "Trumpiness" but rather the diffuse economic pain and anxiety caused by policy and executive action? In that case, the defectors would be across the coalition and would not show up as an aggregate change in underlying conservatism (which Trump represented poorly to begin with). Regardless, it seems that all that really matters is if more Trump than Harris voters are claiming not to have voted in '24, because this shunts more of them into the 'didn't vote in '24 but likely voter in '26' category. This should be one of the rarest self-selection categories (presidential non-voter, likely midterm voter) so I wonder if you can see if there are more than might be expected or have appeared historically.
Question: Since Verasight captures people's left-right identity on a 7-point scale, and (I imagine) they also capture each participant's party affiliation (GOP/Ind/Dem), can you have them produce the distribution of Independents' identity along that 7-point liberal-to-conservative scale?
Elliott, this answers one aspect of the question convincingly, but I am not sure it gets at the structural problems of the '24 weight. What if Trump voters are saying they didn't vote in the '24 election but that decision is not strongly tied to "Trumpiness" but rather the diffuse economic pain and anxiety caused by policy and executive action? In that case, the defectors would be across the coalition and would not show up as an aggregate change in underlying conservatism (which Trump represented poorly to begin with). Regardless, it seems that all that really matters is if more Trump than Harris voters are claiming not to have voted in '24, because this shunts more of them into the 'didn't vote in '24 but likely voter in '26' category. This should be one of the rarest self-selection categories (presidential non-voter, likely midterm voter) so I wonder if you can see if there are more than might be expected or have appeared historically.
Great insight, as usual.
Question: Since Verasight captures people's left-right identity on a 7-point scale, and (I imagine) they also capture each participant's party affiliation (GOP/Ind/Dem), can you have them produce the distribution of Independents' identity along that 7-point liberal-to-conservative scale?
cool piece! sometimes a lack of any trend is itself a very interesting takeaway
Thanks for another interesting analysis. I’m always impressed by your creativity and rigor!
G. Rigor Morris?