The Mayor-elect drove historic turnout and a historically young electorate. Plus: Democrats made inroads with Trump supporters Tuesday; The role of cable news in Trump's 2024 win; + more!
I would love to learn more about "issues off the usual left-right axis such as corruption, affordability, and greed," and I'm curious about how the administration's out-in-the-open cruelty might affect voters as one of these issues. I find myself mostly motivated to mobilize for Democrats based on things like ICE acting as a domestic terrorist organization and traumatizing whole communities. How much is this cruelty costing Republicans electorally? Can we quantity if this had any effects on the results of this week? If Trump really did manage to lower prices, would voters be OK with their neighbors being disappeared off the streets?
These are proportions, the change in young voters is them making up a larger share of the electorate. It's a zero sum thing, if the youth share of 100% goes up then the old share must go down.
Just want to thank you for linking The Business of the Culture War. I am a veteran of both the last days of the “network era” at ABC News and the dawn of the cable news at MSNBC. While I have long felt the devolution “ruined everything” I had never thought of exactly why and how. This paper is outstanding.
Your work and your explanations of it are fantastic. The Krugman conversation was illuminating in many ways so don’t think of my comments as hostile. I could be wrong but there was no discussion of race. Could it be that we’ve reached the racial Valhalla that Chief Justice Roberts and comrades believe we have? Or, have whites been temporarily scared out of their racism as they were in 2008? And the longer you and Krugman talked about the electoral variants the more I felt like I was reading the horoscope…not trivializing your work, rather the opposite: it’s complicated.
I'm an old white woman, so perhaps this is out of my wheelhouse, but we are nowhere close to racial "Valhalla" (what a weird analogy).
Witness the Trump administration removing every black Admiral and General from the top ranks of our military. The erasure of black history in public schools, the gerrymandering to split the minority vote, the WHITE NATIONALISM.
Agree completely. The use of the term Valhalla is sarcastic and reflects Roberts reasoning in Shelby County a dozen years ago to destroy the voting rights act that there is no discrimination anymore.
Not just you: The result in VA is consistent with a national environment closer to D+8. Possible the bias in polls in NJ and VA is hitting the generic ballot too. We’ll have a much better idea early next year
IIRC it became standard practice last year to weight by recalled vote. I bet a lot of polls are weighting to 2024 recalled vote and that's biasing them towards more conservative outcomes.
I wonder if it could partly be an artifact of the polls at this point overwhelmingly surveying registered voters rather than likely voters. Still, that would leave unexplained Dems’ greater lead at this point in 2017.
I would love to learn more about "issues off the usual left-right axis such as corruption, affordability, and greed," and I'm curious about how the administration's out-in-the-open cruelty might affect voters as one of these issues. I find myself mostly motivated to mobilize for Democrats based on things like ICE acting as a domestic terrorist organization and traumatizing whole communities. How much is this cruelty costing Republicans electorally? Can we quantity if this had any effects on the results of this week? If Trump really did manage to lower prices, would voters be OK with their neighbors being disappeared off the streets?
The change in young voters is +15 and the chage in old ones is -15. Seems odd that you seem to comment only on the former ?
These are proportions, the change in young voters is them making up a larger share of the electorate. It's a zero sum thing, if the youth share of 100% goes up then the old share must go down.
Just want to thank you for linking The Business of the Culture War. I am a veteran of both the last days of the “network era” at ABC News and the dawn of the cable news at MSNBC. While I have long felt the devolution “ruined everything” I had never thought of exactly why and how. This paper is outstanding.
I've seen people quoting your column all week this week!
First good week I've had all year!
I think you can see in these victories the broad outlines of a 2026 policy agenda:
1. Achievable reforms to address affordability.
2. Anti-corruption/anti-authoritarianism.
3. On cultural issues, wide berth for candidates to do what works in their districts.
Your work and your explanations of it are fantastic. The Krugman conversation was illuminating in many ways so don’t think of my comments as hostile. I could be wrong but there was no discussion of race. Could it be that we’ve reached the racial Valhalla that Chief Justice Roberts and comrades believe we have? Or, have whites been temporarily scared out of their racism as they were in 2008? And the longer you and Krugman talked about the electoral variants the more I felt like I was reading the horoscope…not trivializing your work, rather the opposite: it’s complicated.
I'm an old white woman, so perhaps this is out of my wheelhouse, but we are nowhere close to racial "Valhalla" (what a weird analogy).
Witness the Trump administration removing every black Admiral and General from the top ranks of our military. The erasure of black history in public schools, the gerrymandering to split the minority vote, the WHITE NATIONALISM.
Agree completely. The use of the term Valhalla is sarcastic and reflects Roberts reasoning in Shelby County a dozen years ago to destroy the voting rights act that there is no discrimination anymore.
It reminded me of Kash Patel a few weeks ago, "See you in Valhalla" and I was thinking maybe he didn't know that's a "whites only" space. ;D
Seems surprising generic ballot still only D+3.1% … environment seems more favorable to Dems than that.
Not just you: The result in VA is consistent with a national environment closer to D+8. Possible the bias in polls in NJ and VA is hitting the generic ballot too. We’ll have a much better idea early next year
IIRC it became standard practice last year to weight by recalled vote. I bet a lot of polls are weighting to 2024 recalled vote and that's biasing them towards more conservative outcomes.
I wonder if it could partly be an artifact of the polls at this point overwhelmingly surveying registered voters rather than likely voters. Still, that would leave unexplained Dems’ greater lead at this point in 2017.