Thank you for the analysis. I've come to disregard much of the punditry, which seems clickbait for a small audience. How many people even hear 'Democratic messaging' these days?
Projections based on 2024 voting patterns may be a poor way to forecast 2026 votes. Still wondering if the extreme gerrymandering may miss important shifts in opinion and turnout.
Once again, I think this points to how pundits mis-read the lesson of Mamdani.
That message is: listen to the pain points facing your constituents, propose concrete solutions, and stay on point. Politically, it matters less what those solutions are than showing you'll work for your constituents.
Importantly, those specific pain points differ from place to place. Free and faster crosstown buses aren't going to get Abigail Spanberger elected in Virginia any more than farm subsidies would get Mamdani elected in NYC. So Mamdani's specific policies in New York City are not necessarily a formula for Democrats across the nation. But he does demonstrate a framework that can be applied in districts nationwide.
Our politicians want to think of themselves as "data driven," but too often they are just herd animals, following the flow. If they had the mettle to see for themselves, their relationship to the data would be healthier. Discernment and leadership should inform the desire to hold and exercise office. We wish ...
This is good analysis. Here is a more complicated followup topic suggestion: to what extent do we see the rich-world divide between political elites and the median voter on immigration reflected in US polling data?
It makes sense as a followup because immigration is the other plausible big driver of a cross national anti incumbent backlash in 2024, and there has been recent research showing AIUI that most rich countries' elected officials hold more liberal views on immigration than their median voters. I would be interested in your take on how this is or is not playing out in the US context.
Entirely agree. Also Democrats need to listen to local constituents and shape their tactics to fit the constituents' needs as far as possible. Affordability now, the economy going forward, and sane immigration policy SEEM primary, but listening locally is crucial. The Republicans are also dping so many outlandish things, I finally cannot tell which are distractions and which are real vulnerabilities they are trying to use covering lies and craziness to hide.
I’m not telling a polling expert anything he doesn’t already know here, but question framing is everything. “Which party do you trust more?” is a very different question from “which party do you trust?”
Hence why I wholeheartedly agree with your focus on anti-incumbency. It’s not just accurate, it is a vitally important distinction.
The tendency to misinterpret the punishing of incumbents as a mandate for the party that’s been newly returned to power has been greasing our slide downward in congressional productivity, executive branch oversight, and the wholesale general decline in faith in these institutions. Witness the concurrent and simultaneous slide of both parties’ approval ratings among Indepdendent voters over the last 25 years. What used to ebb and flow in the mid 40s is now plumbing the low 30s.
And yet the wrong lessons keep being learned. Neither party is ever truly punished for their mismanagement, they are simply put in timeout for a little while. There is little real incentive to learn and adapt. And it would be misguided, in my view, for Democrats to learn the wrong lesson here.
This is not a new phenomenon. When overwhelming antipathy for George W Bush turned into huge electoral victories for the Democrats, I remember very well Speaker Boehner and Eric Cantor going into the White House thoroughly chastened, tail between their legs. Rahm Emanuel’s response to their overtures toward cooperation was “F@ck ‘em. We have the votes.” The president told them more artfully in the meeting “elections have consequences”.
In assessing that moment in time, James Carville, who clearly should’ve known better, wrote a book titled “40 More Years: How Democrats Will Rule The Next Generation”.
Two years later, Obama was, by his own reckoning “shellacked” in the mid terms. The Republicans were rewarded for doing everything they could to obstruct and throw stones. That’s the lesson they learned. Did congressional Republicans get more popular? No they did not. Did America benefit from this model of governance? Absolutely not.
The constantly misperceived electoral mandates and the skewed incentive structure are combined in hastening our decline. There is no genuine need to try and win an election. Just the need to ensure that the other guy loses the election. And there’s a world of difference between those two models of governance.
It should thus come as no surprise how toxic things are after so many years of this paradigm - at least a generation at this point. And it should also come as no surprise that so little gets done. What was once the hope of passing Grand Bargain legislation has turned into struggling to pass short term continuing resolutions. And it should similarly come as no surprise that it will continue this way as long as the extant incentive structure and misinterpreted narrative remains.
Pollsters, for the most part, are asking the same questions they always have as if nothing substantive has changed in our politics.
Among nonpartisan independents (steadily growing bloc over time // now nearly half the entire electorate):
It’s past time, in my view, to start asking some new questions and to start providing a new intellectual framing of our state of politics.
All told, I’m very grateful indeed as a nonpartisan that you are pointing this anti-incumbency dynamic out. This model of misperception, more than anything else in my view, speaks to the steady decline in our discourse and in our ability to govern ourselves effectively.
I really love your newsletter and analysis. I've been having a running argument for months with people over this "Should the Dems move to the middle" narrative. The data and analysis you provide here speaks for itself. Thanks also for calling out the MSM for its obsession over partisan framing, which does not reflect reality. What the MSM is doing in this regard is not only irresponsible but reckless, because it's fueling a movement that seeks to throw the most marginalized, vulnerable members of our society under the bus based on the flawed notion that it will be good for Democrats politically (which it won't, but even if it were, it would still be immoral and a betrayal of the party's stated core values). I'm happy to be investing my money in newsletters such as yours instead of subscriptions to legacy media like the NYT, WAPO, CNN that I no longer trust or even respect.
I feel like I am on a roller coaster that never stops. So many lows come after reading what this administration is doing. Yet reading your notes puts me back on the top so thank you.
Except that Hillary Clinton did not do well with blue collar workers, and neither did Kamala Harris. Biden did, although whether that would have been the case in 2024, given what is stated in this article on anti-incumbency, we will never know.
I hope (but highly doubt) that this administration will teach both pundits and voters something that they generally do not believe.
Trump is proving that the federal government has huge potential to make any economy worse very rapidly, while Biden proved that there is little it can do to fix it quickly.
Thank you for the analysis. I've come to disregard much of the punditry, which seems clickbait for a small audience. How many people even hear 'Democratic messaging' these days?
Projections based on 2024 voting patterns may be a poor way to forecast 2026 votes. Still wondering if the extreme gerrymandering may miss important shifts in opinion and turnout.
Once again, I think this points to how pundits mis-read the lesson of Mamdani.
That message is: listen to the pain points facing your constituents, propose concrete solutions, and stay on point. Politically, it matters less what those solutions are than showing you'll work for your constituents.
Importantly, those specific pain points differ from place to place. Free and faster crosstown buses aren't going to get Abigail Spanberger elected in Virginia any more than farm subsidies would get Mamdani elected in NYC. So Mamdani's specific policies in New York City are not necessarily a formula for Democrats across the nation. But he does demonstrate a framework that can be applied in districts nationwide.
Our politicians want to think of themselves as "data driven," but too often they are just herd animals, following the flow. If they had the mettle to see for themselves, their relationship to the data would be healthier. Discernment and leadership should inform the desire to hold and exercise office. We wish ...
This is good analysis. Here is a more complicated followup topic suggestion: to what extent do we see the rich-world divide between political elites and the median voter on immigration reflected in US polling data?
It makes sense as a followup because immigration is the other plausible big driver of a cross national anti incumbent backlash in 2024, and there has been recent research showing AIUI that most rich countries' elected officials hold more liberal views on immigration than their median voters. I would be interested in your take on how this is or is not playing out in the US context.
And this kind of cogent analysis is why I subscribe. I hope the Dems are listening to you.
Entirely agree. Also Democrats need to listen to local constituents and shape their tactics to fit the constituents' needs as far as possible. Affordability now, the economy going forward, and sane immigration policy SEEM primary, but listening locally is crucial. The Republicans are also dping so many outlandish things, I finally cannot tell which are distractions and which are real vulnerabilities they are trying to use covering lies and craziness to hide.
I’m not telling a polling expert anything he doesn’t already know here, but question framing is everything. “Which party do you trust more?” is a very different question from “which party do you trust?”
Hence why I wholeheartedly agree with your focus on anti-incumbency. It’s not just accurate, it is a vitally important distinction.
The tendency to misinterpret the punishing of incumbents as a mandate for the party that’s been newly returned to power has been greasing our slide downward in congressional productivity, executive branch oversight, and the wholesale general decline in faith in these institutions. Witness the concurrent and simultaneous slide of both parties’ approval ratings among Indepdendent voters over the last 25 years. What used to ebb and flow in the mid 40s is now plumbing the low 30s.
And yet the wrong lessons keep being learned. Neither party is ever truly punished for their mismanagement, they are simply put in timeout for a little while. There is little real incentive to learn and adapt. And it would be misguided, in my view, for Democrats to learn the wrong lesson here.
This is not a new phenomenon. When overwhelming antipathy for George W Bush turned into huge electoral victories for the Democrats, I remember very well Speaker Boehner and Eric Cantor going into the White House thoroughly chastened, tail between their legs. Rahm Emanuel’s response to their overtures toward cooperation was “F@ck ‘em. We have the votes.” The president told them more artfully in the meeting “elections have consequences”.
In assessing that moment in time, James Carville, who clearly should’ve known better, wrote a book titled “40 More Years: How Democrats Will Rule The Next Generation”.
Two years later, Obama was, by his own reckoning “shellacked” in the mid terms. The Republicans were rewarded for doing everything they could to obstruct and throw stones. That’s the lesson they learned. Did congressional Republicans get more popular? No they did not. Did America benefit from this model of governance? Absolutely not.
The constantly misperceived electoral mandates and the skewed incentive structure are combined in hastening our decline. There is no genuine need to try and win an election. Just the need to ensure that the other guy loses the election. And there’s a world of difference between those two models of governance.
It should thus come as no surprise how toxic things are after so many years of this paradigm - at least a generation at this point. And it should also come as no surprise that so little gets done. What was once the hope of passing Grand Bargain legislation has turned into struggling to pass short term continuing resolutions. And it should similarly come as no surprise that it will continue this way as long as the extant incentive structure and misinterpreted narrative remains.
Pollsters, for the most part, are asking the same questions they always have as if nothing substantive has changed in our politics.
Among nonpartisan independents (steadily growing bloc over time // now nearly half the entire electorate):
GOP favorability:
1995 - 55%
2005 - 46%
2015 - 41%
2025 - 33%
DEM Favorability:
1995 - 55%
2005 - 52%
2015 - 47%
2025 - 33%
Source: CNN / Gallup / SSRS Research
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26157888/cnn-poll-of-political-independents.pdf
It’s past time, in my view, to start asking some new questions and to start providing a new intellectual framing of our state of politics.
All told, I’m very grateful indeed as a nonpartisan that you are pointing this anti-incumbency dynamic out. This model of misperception, more than anything else in my view, speaks to the steady decline in our discourse and in our ability to govern ourselves effectively.
I really love your newsletter and analysis. I've been having a running argument for months with people over this "Should the Dems move to the middle" narrative. The data and analysis you provide here speaks for itself. Thanks also for calling out the MSM for its obsession over partisan framing, which does not reflect reality. What the MSM is doing in this regard is not only irresponsible but reckless, because it's fueling a movement that seeks to throw the most marginalized, vulnerable members of our society under the bus based on the flawed notion that it will be good for Democrats politically (which it won't, but even if it were, it would still be immoral and a betrayal of the party's stated core values). I'm happy to be investing my money in newsletters such as yours instead of subscriptions to legacy media like the NYT, WAPO, CNN that I no longer trust or even respect.
I feel like I am on a roller coaster that never stops. So many lows come after reading what this administration is doing. Yet reading your notes puts me back on the top so thank you.
The 1st graph suggests an imperfect correlation with the party not in power. Can you insert year lines & maybe shade columns by party of the Pres?
The table of Spanberger's margins versus Harris's is fascinating. Soanberger is basically reassembling Hillary Clinton's 2016 national coalition.
Except that Hillary Clinton did not do well with blue collar workers, and neither did Kamala Harris. Biden did, although whether that would have been the case in 2024, given what is stated in this article on anti-incumbency, we will never know.
Not the point of this piece but I found this sentence the most striking:
"First, because no politician in America is elected by national popular vote."
Speaks to the larger issue of how well our politicians reflect "the will of the people".
As a nation (and states) we need big changes to better align our politicians with our people.
G do you have NJ governor raw data (comparable to how you dissected the VA race)?
Thank you G
How about reading the tea leaves?
sadly i do not!
I hope (but highly doubt) that this administration will teach both pundits and voters something that they generally do not believe.
Trump is proving that the federal government has huge potential to make any economy worse very rapidly, while Biden proved that there is little it can do to fix it quickly.