Just ran a basic machine-learning voter file analysis to illustrate the folly of betraying gun voters.
Of a 55,072,850 pool of voters in Ariz., Fla., Iowa, Me., Mich., Minn., N.H., N.C., Ohio, Penn. and Wis., a whopping 12,748,553 are Second Amendment voters.
That's appx. 23.1%
Here's what party affiliation looks like for battleground Second Amendment voters.
Of the 12,748,553 2A voters in those key battlegrounds...
3,831,600, or 30.06%, are verifiably Republican
2,874,532, or 22.55%, are inferred Republican
Worth noting, "inferred" is very accurate.
For those bad at math, that's nearly 53% of a quarter of the battleground electorate. By gender, they're almost an identical reverse mirror image of the battleground electorate, 52% male vs 48% female.
So far, all downside here, as I said.
Let's look at their income levels.
Added gender from the prior tweet here, as well.
But now income:
$100K - $149,999: 2,780,380, or 21.81%
$150K - $174,999: 387,498, or 3.04%
$175K - $199,999: 570,695, or 4.48%
$200K - $249,999: 495,251, or 3.88%
$250K+: 619,536, or 4.86%
Nearly 62% earn < $100K
So what?
So, in summation...
These are Republican base voters, and voters the GOP should be targeting for crossover votes because they're RIPE for the taking.
Instead, they're talking about depressing them. Again, they are a SIGNIFICANT chunk of the battleground electorate.
Good luck.
Thread Update:
Last night's thread was just an initial impression of the analysis. Here's a more in-depth analysis of the importance of the gun rights base to a Republican presidential candidate.
This thread reports on the DeSantis/Haley Feud over who sucks less. I'm going to quote repost a few with data showing why they are both making arguments that are incorrect and irrelevant.
In 2018, @JohnKerry met in London w/ Hussein Agha, a close associate of Mahmoud Abbas, and told him NOT to talk peace with Trump B/C he would be removed from office w/in a year and after Abbas would get a better deal.
2. @JohnKerry asked Agha to tell Abbas that Palestinians should “play for time” until Trump was removed, after which, it would be the "time for Palestinians to define their peace principles" instead of accepting Trump's two-state proposal.
Now all these people are dead.
3. Realizing the Palestinians were never going to come to the table, especially not with members of the opposition party engaging in actual sedition and undermining his peace plan, Trump moved to united the Arab countries with Israel and isolate the Palestinians with the accords.
Republican leadership and the vast majority of the elected conference in both chambers lie to get elected, then cave in the face of opposition from media and Democrats, while selling out their voters to donors and rent-seekers.
It's not a sustainable political environment.
All these years polling party leadership, it has always been the case that Democrats like their leaders and have favorable opinions of them, while Republicans HATE their leaders.
Why, irrationality?
No, it's rational to loathe someone who constantly lies to and betrays you.
A few things people who misread the electorate never understood, and why things they thought would hurt Trump have actually made him stronger.
1. Regime Credibility
This isn't the 1980s. GE voters do not trust his enemies. FBI, DOJ, etc. are deeply corrupt and voters know it.
Once upon a time, federal prosecutors had credibility and their accusations in indictments were trusted. But nobody trusts them anymore, with good reason.
It's been bad for years, but bad actors like @Comey, @petestrzok, Weismann, etc, totally killed all faith in the feds.
@Comey @petestrzok Now on to the primary.
2. GOP Voters Were Not "Ready to Move on from Trump"
Even at DeSantis' high water mark, the data never suggested a big enough lane existed to derail Trump. Nobody ever dominated the wine track (educated) enough to counter Trump dominating the beer track.
Post Script: The scumbag who did that owes us thousands of dollars and is the reason we @BIGDATAPOLL now have a pay first policy.
He's basically a former cop pretending to be a political strategist who folds up shop with each billing cycle, because the law makes it hard to chase… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Laura, when they first pulled that libel, attempted to publish his deadbeat account for all to see, but @elonmusk and his fake crusade against speech suppression kept suppressing it.
In fact, she tried again tonight and it refused to publish, again.
The DeSantis strategy 'he's the anti-lockdown champion' isn't working for a few reasons, the biggest being 1) voters aren't stupid and 2) it's not true.
Point being, politics are politics, and that's the nature of the game. But why are these angles not working for DeSantis AND, moreover, why are they dug in like ticks pretending nothing is wrong?
They attack everyone, and conduct ZERO introspection. It's rather pathetic.