#Actually, Hispanics* are a pretty huge part of the story about how Texas has become more purple and it's weird that I'm seeing punditry to the contrary!
* Asian and "other" or mixed-race voters also an important part of the story, but we'll leave that aside for now.
Here's a comparison between 2004 (Bush/Kerry) and 2018 (Cruz/Beto). Democrats gained ground among both whites *and* Hispanics, but the gains among Hispanics are larger.
Meanwhile, Hispanics have grown from 20% of the electorate in 2004 to 26% in 2018. They're still underperforming in comparison to their share of the voting-eligible population, but that's helped Democrats too.
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2) We also want to respect people's revealed preferences. a) There's a very strong tendency around the world to preserve summer PM daylight and b) also a preference (maybe a bit weaker though still strong) not to require people to wake up in darkness.
2b) Above about 40° N latitude the only way to satisfy both preferences is with a time change. Superimposing government mandates on strong revealed preferences is a bad idea. It's literally what China does (just one time zone for the whole country).
Exactly the same people who were mad about my takes that Biden needed to step aside are mad about my pointing out his obvious hypocrisy. I guess if you forgive him for quite possibly throwing an election to Trump you'll forgive him for anything.
Voters were smart enough to see through this shit. I voted for Harris. But that's why I believe in democracy more than I believe in the Democratic Party. You're not fooling anyone but yourselves.
Harris could also have distanced herself from Biden, although obviously a candidate who wasn't his VP would have had an easier time doing so. She refused to for reasons that are... not entirely clear or coherent? But if you can't grok the lesson here I don't know what to say.
We ran one more update, just because we don't want to have to worry about it on July 4. Trump national polling lead up slightly further to an even 3 points after a couple more national polls. natesilver.net/p/nate-silver-…
The model DOES update its STATE polling averages based on trends in national polls (and polls in other states) but it's probably being a little conservative there (i.e. it wants to see more state data); a little bit of an imbalanced ratio of national to state polls this week.
Also note the uptick for RFK Jr., which is probably best viewed as a "Sweet Meteor of Death" vote for people who are just incredibly unhappy with both their choices after the debate last week.
It's definitely one of the more fortuitous accidents of timing I've had as a writer. On Tuesday, I wrote a piece saying Democrats use "But Her Emails" to deflect legitimate criticism. And that's exactly what they've done since the special council report on Thursday...
Biden's age is not at all comparable to Hillary's emails. It is a much more important issue. He wants to be president until he is 86 years old! Voters ratioanally think it's important. I criticized #ButHerEmails early and often. This story is not the same. natesilver.net/p/not-everythi…
Although there was a fresh round this week, people have been using this ButHerEmails excuse to deflect legitimate reporting on Biden's age for months. It hasn't worked. Voters have more concerns than ever. Now he's trailing Trump *even as economic perceptions improve*. Not good.
I'M SORRY BUT YOU DID A MISINFORMATION SANDER! YOU'RE ONE OF THE BADDIES! You've routinely spread misinformation about the scientific consensus on COVID origins. The fact that you can't acknowledge this why the concept is incoherent.
Half the reason the Team Misinformation people bug me is because it's just so obvious what they're doing, taking genuinely contentious discussions and stigmatizing the positions that don't match their politics with the thinnest imaginable reeds of expert authority.
A lot of it, like denial of the *possibility* of a lab leak, is quite close to propaganda as commonly defined. It's trying to advance an agenda, it presents facts in a manipulative way, and it seeks to trigger an emotional response (by saying e.g. the lab leak is xenophobic).
🧵1/ Our biennial forecast self-review is out! There’s lots of detail in the story, please check it out. We think it’s really important to do this. It’s also one of those years where it may clear up some misconceptions. fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-o…
2/ Polls (in the aggregate) and forecasts had a good year. Polling averages did ~not~ predict a red wave. They showed a highly competitive race for the Senate and below-average (by historical standards) GOP gains in the House, though with much uncertainty.
3/ Democrats did slightly better than expected based on polls/forecasts, but really only slightly, much less than the degree to which the GOP overperformed polls in 2016 & 2020. It was a somewhat surprising year relative to historical norms, but not relative to polls.