Thread by @RachelBitecofer

1. Negative Partisanship Rules All.

@AlanIAbramowitz & @stevenwwebster 1st applied this concept to American political behavior in their polarization research after Alan spent a decade needlessly proving that the mass public was, indeed, polarizing & not just "sorting." I used

https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1367517467854073863

2. it to argue that our sorted, polarized, and hyperpartisan electorate, where party-preference, including the lean of most Indies, predicts vote choice mths out from election day. Therefore, our elections have become highly predictable- look for demographics for each party's

3. emerging coalition, know where they will win & lose. Fir Ds this meant places w concentrations of college edu voters (IE the suburbs) were about to explode in favor of Ds, some from preference changes but also from turnout change among Ds & Indies who had been latent in the

4. Obama midterms. They would be driven to turnout by negative partisanship, an explosion of turnout motivated by fear and hate of the opposition party. In this case-motivated by Donald Trump. The early signs of massive changes in turnout & demos came in special elections and the

5. VA 2017 cycle, where even D primary turnout exploded (D primary turnout is noisy signal at best, just FYI). The D candidate turned the "normal" tight D win into a 9 pt blowout and a 15 seat pick up in the state house. The big thing I learned from the 2018 cycle though was that

6. via their electioneering methods, and dictated by Trump's refusal to follow "best practices" (insisting on rallying w endangered senate races, for ex) the GOP was able to artificially generate neg. partisanship- and instead of declining as Ds did when they controlled the prez

7. R turnout in the midterms also increased! This is why I was predicting R turnout to go up in 2020. And that is indeed what happened. It is also why I believe that due to the midterm effect, the longstanding pattern of the prez's party losing seats in the midterm, generating

8. neg partisanship- something Dem campaigns have NEVER done and even outside Pacs have stayed away from, is critical for Ds to have any hope of not getting slammed in the midterms. This is why I decided to leave election analysis & form @StrikePac. We need better electioneering

9. and we need it now bc the 2020 congressional map was not a matter of forecasters failing it was a matter of electioneering failing. And the cost of losing THAT cycle was very very high. The cost of 2022 will be even higher. So yes @ezraklein- neg. partisanship rules all. Dems

10. need to realize it asap and adjust accordingly bc clearly if elections were about ideas, policies, the median voter, decency, etc. they would not have gone net -10 seats in 2020. As the RNC has known for more than a decade, elections are about strategy & branding. That's it.