So this is not really a critique of @bartongellman's piece but an observation on mail-in balloting. THREAD
There's a general assumption that Democrats will overwhelmingly vote by mail and Republicans will vote in person. Recent polling by Change Research confirms that view "
"Democrats are more likely to vote by mail (44% nationally, 54% in the battleground), compared to Republicans (8% nationally, 10% in the battleground)."
However, the numbers are shrinking: 28% say they will vote by mail. That's down from 33% in the summer.
And strong majorities of voters in battleground states intend to vote early or in person, so it's far from clear that Trump will by leading in vote counts in these states on Election Night.
But there's something very interesting:
"Majorities in every state except for NC and AZ say that they will return their ballot at a drop-box or at the election office instead of through the USPS." The number who intend to drop off their ballots in MI Is 83%.
What that tells me is that voters are playing close attention to election security issues; are aware of the slowdown in mail delivery; and are changing their behavior as a result.
That suggests to me that you could see the numbers on mail in voting further decline and more voters may choose to vote in person or vote early.
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I have even less idea what this means, but as best I can surmise a lot of political pundits have convinced themselves that a) policy matters (it generally doesn’t) and b) if they say “expand the map” enough times it’ll magically solve the Democratic Party’s problems
These arguments about how Dems can allegedly win in states where they haven’t been competitive for more than a decade - and where Trump has repeatedly won by double digits - are divorced from reality.
One of the strange things about the argument made by @ezraklein, @AJentleson, @mattyglesias, and others that Dems need to moderate their policies and expand the Senate map is that it oddly ignores how remarkably successful Dems are in winning statewide races in swing states 🧵
Swing states offer a test case for how successful the two parties are in places where a) they aren't swimming against the tide of partisanship & b) there is a closely divided electorate. Also, it tells us how effective the two parties are at winning over the political center
And the Democratic track record in swing states is remarkably solid. In the seven swing states, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina, Democrats control 10 of 14 Senate seats (70 percent).
For Truth & Consequences, I did a deep dive on @Catalist_US's 2024 exit poll data, and the results are surprising.
One of Catalist's major data points, that Harris did well among consistent, highly engaged voters, is very good news for Democrats' near-term political prospects.
Highly engaged and consistent voters are more likely to vote in non-presidential elections, and Harris's strong performance with this cohort suggests Democrats could do very well in the 2026 midterms.
We've already seen strong Democratic overperformance in special elections this year, which is consistent with Democrats' advantage with highly engaged voters.
Just to underscore the audaciousness of this grift - the “Trump Bible” is 20 TIMES more expensive than other bibles available online AND Oklahoma is requesting 55,000 bibles, which is nearly 30 percent more than the number of classroom teachers in the state
There's another amazingly corrupt element to this grift. Most Oklahoma school districts have said they don't intend to request bibles because state academic standards don't require their use ... so most of these bibles won't ever show up in a classroom oklahoman.com/story/news/edu…
The Oklahoma Supreme Court has said schools maintain control over curricula and don't have to use the bibles. Superintendent Walter has no authority to force them to do so.
Lots of people are analogizing Biden’s withdrawal to LBJ’s withdrawal in 1968 … they are very, very different situations. 🧵
When LBJ announced his departure from the race on March 31, 1968 no one saw it coming. There’d been virtually no speculation that LBJ might drop out and only a handful of people knew his plans before he announced them. There were no trial balloons.
Americans were stunned. Even though LBJ had barely won the NH primary over Gene McCarthy and RFK had entered the race about 2 weeks earlier, the reigning assumption in DC was that LBJ would run and be the Democratic nominee in November
CNN says Biden "has privately acknowledged that the next stretch of days are critical to whether he can save his reelection bid for president."
Why would the WH leak a story that feeds the narrative that Biden might drop out?
Because the WH is under enormous pressure, particularly from Capitol Hill, to "do something" to respond to Thursday's debate. They are getting slammed for being tone-deaf and gaslighting Congress about Biden's predicament.