Tweet

Xenocrypt

28 Nov, 10 tweets, 2 min read

Haven't clicked behind the paywall but I am skeptical of the initial framing that Democrats' main problem in state legislative races was "Biden/downballot R voters".

They mention a district here and there that voted Biden/R, but there's nothing comprehensive...

What's the counterfactual? Is it "what if literally every Biden voter voted D straight down the ballot, AND Ds also had their Trump voters who voted D downballot"? IE, "what if Ds won TX-24 AND still held WI-03"? Or is it "what if no ticket-splitting"?

Is either of those a plausible counterfactual? IMO no, there's always some ticket-splitting, and often especially when you win new voters top-of-the-ticket. EG Ds won PA row offices in 2016 even as Trump of course carried state, Ds still did a bit better than Biden in the RGV...

...so then the question is "did 2020 have an unusual amount of ticket-splitting (or dropoff etc) in a way that hurt Democrats?". And maybe! But again you need a comprehensive analysis, comparing to past elections, etc.

At least in the House, Democrats' problem in at least a bunch of the most-watched suburban districts (AZ-06, IN-05, MO-02, the other Texas ones, etc) was that Biden lost them, not that Biden won them but there were a lot of Biden/R or Biden/None voters.

At least it seems that way so far. And maybe the state legislatures are different. Certainly there's...whatever the hell happened in New Hampshire to explain. But there's no substitute to waiting for or collecting the full numbers, Biden/Trump by district, etc.

https://twitter.com/dhmontgomery/status/1332714536927850496?s=19

Yeah like I keep saying, there's two questions, "how much did ticket-splitting/dropoff matter" and "was there an unusual extent or distribution of ticket-splitting/dropoff vs. past elections".

https://twitter.com/dhmontgomery/status/1332714536927850496?s=19

And those might have different answers in different places. Sometimes it's ambiguous, like with outliers like Susan Collins.

But ultimately, Biden won Pennsylvania by 1.2 points and lost Texas. Sure, his "coalition" might have fit the maps better than that of past Democrats...still.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

More from @xenocryptsite

Xenocrypt

@xenocryptsite

28 Nov

https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/status/1332733136715780096

Are India and China really so much more internally and uniformly dense than anywhere else, or is that some kind of Census boundary translation artifact?

https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/status/1332733136715780096

https://twitter.com/AlanMCole/status/1332771241262985217?s=19

I think this is actually how cartogram-type maps can be misleading in the opposite way as normal maps. Asia is "just" 60% of global population, you know, a lot, but not 80% or 90%.

https://twitter.com/AlanMCole/status/1332771241262985217?s=19

Like yeah the first map makes it look like nobody lives in Clinton counties, but the second map makes it look like EVERYONE lives in Clinton counties, and that's wrong, too.

Read 4 tweets

Xenocrypt

@xenocryptsite

28 Nov

https://twitter.com/mavericksmovies/status/1332779072850636808

SAG ensemble nomination rules are a travesty.

https://twitter.com/mavericksmovies/status/1332779072850636808

https://twitter.com/xenocryptsite/status/1081223758319374336?s=19

https://twitter.com/xenocryptsite/status/1081223758319374336?s=19

"Crazy Rich Asians" only nominated one of the three people in this widely-used press photo, sorry, Koh Chieng Mun and Nico Santos. But sure nominate Harry Shum Jr. for his two-second credit cookie cameo.

Read 4 tweets

Xenocrypt

@xenocryptsite

28 Nov

Do publications like fact-check articles and editorials on electoral politics for basic logic and accuracy before publishing or nah. I mean feel free to DM me if you need that done.

@jacobinmag

Like if you're talking about down-ballot Democrats under-performing Biden, maybe don't have your main examples be Starr County and Zapata County, where they over-performed Biden, @jacobinmag. That kind of thing.

Or publishing, in the New York Times, that "the number of registered voters in Georgia has decreased since 2012", in August 2018.

Read 7 tweets

Xenocrypt

@xenocryptsite

28 Nov

Note to county election sites: If you have a fancy precinct webmap etc, that's great and all, but then that means you have the precinct data in a machine-readable format, so can you just...also share that, thank you, Xenocrypt.

(Sometimes one can do this anyway with view-source and such, but...extra work.)

Chester County, Pennsylvania went with "let's make each precinct a separate PDF".

Read 4 tweets

Xenocrypt

@xenocryptsite

27 Nov

So from what I can tell, people like "The Mandalorian" because of its stand-alone episodes and disconnection from the main "Star Wars" universe, and they're also very excited it's bringing in famous characters and building an overarching story?

I remember when I liked "Arrow" because it was refreshingly grounded, practical, and limited...

And then of course they used that to "world-build" the complete opposite of that. I guess it was popular for a while but it never really fit for me (especially since the CW's budget and production style was uh, a little more suited to grounded, limited plots).

Read 8 tweets