A suspicion I have, based on polling and name ID, is that a lot of the reason the "ancestral Democrats" effect persisted downballot is because most people didn't even know who those candidates are but considered themselves Democrats still when name ID was stripped away.
These folks would say "yeah, the national Democrats definitely don't represent me" etc, and that's because they know who those candidates actually are (based on Fox News etc).

But when you strip away name ID, it's down to party ID, which likely tends to take longer to switch.
@JMilesColeman @gelliottmorris @baseballot @SenhorRaposa does anyone have any data to back this up or contradict it? Would love to see some actual research on it but I haven't seen anything, so this is informed only by polling and name ID.
Been thinking about this some more -- there's a few angles to this. On one hand, name ID for hyper-localized races may explain some of it.

On the other hand, when you consider things like union endorsements, that may actually explain voting Dem locally almost instinctually.
I actually think the take holds up better than I thought it initially did. Voter awareness is often low, so name ID helps make up for it. In its absence, you fall back to endorsements, party ID, and local party stances, which are way more in line with the median voter in the area
Another thing to remember is that a Democrat in West Virginia was not a national Democrat, and they took great pains to draw that distinction and took some pride in it. I mean, that's how you saw people elect George W. Bush by double digits while sneering at the R running for Gov
And so when you vote, you're not voting for the national Dems, but for the candidate who your union endorsed, for the candidate who is part of your party, the "true Dems" instead of the "national ones" etc.

I do wish I had some data on name ID and how it changes with the race.

• • •

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

Keep Current with Lakshya Jain

Lakshya Jain Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

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

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @lxeagle17

11 Feb
no, Marjorie Taylor Greene cheating on her husband with two different people is not a *good* thing, and she should not be immune to criticism for it. she tries to claim a moral high ground on "family values" while pushing awful QAnon conspiracies and railing against LGBTQ folks.
I'm not naive enough to think that even half of Congress is clean with regards to spousal fidelity. They're not, and it's no secret. I didn't think Cunningham's affair, as bad as it was, disqualified him.

I don't judge political fitness on that. A ton of politicians have affairs
But it *does* reflect on you if you center your image around Family Value policies and then try to strip other people of rights by saying they're not following Biblical Values, all while you decide to break someone's trust and cheat on your spouse.
Read 5 tweets
11 Feb
Me talking to people who say states like Missouri will *never* go blue again:
It could take 20-30 years for Missouri to turn blue again. But things change in politics very quickly, and very weird things tend to happen that we could never have foreseen. Cast your mind back 30 years -- did it seem plausible for a Democrat to win Virginia but not Missouri?
You don't need to pour 40 million into unwinnable races, but you definitely should try to run good candidates in every single state, from West Virginia to Nebraska to Hawaii. The point is to build up infrastructure and party strength to expand your message.
Read 4 tweets
11 Feb
A way to tell when realignment has kind of completed is when an ancestrally Democratic state's elasticity begins to look normal instead of being extremely high.

And aside from Joe Manchin, that's exactly what we get in West Virginia. This state is Republican, through and through
Manchin is the last holdover for WV Dems. There's absolutely nothing left for them here after he's gone. There just aren't many votes left out there.

The good news is that realignment has completed, essentially, and this is their floor. Now comes rebuilding, fueled by DC exurbs.
preemptively asking you to chill with the "yOu CaN'T jUsT iGnoRe JoE mAnChiN" takes please, you absolutely literally cannot replicate his success there, whether you run a Bernie candidate (Swearengin) or a conservative Democrat (John Perdue lost in 2020!).
Read 5 tweets
30 Jan
Why I'm *highly* skeptical of Democrats unseating Rubio in Florida, in one set of numbers:

Miami-Dade, President 2016 (Trump vs Clinton): D+29.4
Miami-Dade, Senate 2016 (Rubio vs Murphy): D+11.3

Dade has only gotten more Republican since then.
Now, there's an argument to be made that a lot of the 2020 results were those changes flowing downballot, but I don't buy it, because Nelson won Dade by ~20 against Scott. Even accounting for low-propensity voters, the 2018->2020 swing indicates a harder snap to the right.
So I'd expect Dade to likely be single-digit margins for Rubio's race (though I don't know if that's the case with DeSantis), and I personally don't think Democratic gains in Pinellas and Duval will be enough to offset what will likely be a single-digit margin in Dade for Senate.
Read 4 tweets
27 Jan
Here's the problem with the recall for the GOP:

(a) Newsom has a ~58% approval rating in December, making a recall less likely (though not impossible). Gray Davis had a 24% approval.
(b) California is way more Democratic now than it was in 2003.
To the "Democrats will splinter the vote" field of thought: I don't know if this is as likely. The state Democratic party is far more coordinated, and I have yet to see anything that changes my mind about the GOP not splintering their own vote through 2 or 3 major candidates.
If this is to succeed, their best bet is to hope Newsom's approval tanks, that the vaccine rollout continues to lag instead of accelerating like it has been this week, and then get Faulconer as their only major candidate. Even that might not be enough. It's a very uphill climb
Read 4 tweets
27 Jan
I dunno, there was a pretty important election in Georgia like three weeks ago and I feel like we did okay in that...
Seriously, Trump won this district by 21 and Democrats lost it by 10.6 two months later. You can read a whole ton of random signals into a low-turnout special, but if you want to reconfirm doomerism, go ahead, I guess.

I honestly think it's a decent result.
Now, it's very true Miller-Meeks won it by 3% only in 2018.

So if you're looking for a sign of presidential changes now persisting at a higher rate in downballot races, this is also some type of validation for that.

There's a lot of cross-cutting signals here.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!