Everyone's linking to this, and rightly; fascinating and thoughtful even where I think he's wrong:
nymag.com/intelligencer/…
nymag.com/intelligencer/…
One small thought: The fact that it's secular or de-churched young black voters who are more likely to trend GOP should be a depressing and even damning data point for white conservative Christians.
A reader asked me to enumerate some disagreements with Shor. Easier than the column-writing I'm supposed to be doing so here are a few:
1. "Obama-Trump voters are motivated by racism, but Dems still need their votes" is bracing and smarter than some alternative theories but it still seems reductionist about how populist economic views and "racial resentment" get entangled.
2. Agree with @LeahLibresco that highly-educated voters have more *partisan* coherence but that's not necessarily the same as the *ideological* coherence Shor ascribes to them:
3. Agree with @matthewstoller that Shor is very smart about general trends but maybe too agnostic/fatalistic about how policy choice and events can redirect them:
4. Relatedly I'm a little skeptical of projected-forward electoral college trends precisely because of the malleability of the electorate depending on policy and events.
Here endeth the procrastination.
Actually, one more point: this is right; is it that ppl vote more coherently now bc of the internet, or that Dems once had an ideology more optimized for urban-rural alliances and now they don't? Surely the latter as much as the former.
