North Carolina is an interesting case study, because rurals have become a lot redder and the urban cores have become far bluer, but the suburbs haven't moved as much as elsewhere. Meanwhile, Black turnout in the rurals *tanked* in 2020, which hurts Democrats in such a close state Image
Chart is PVI-adjusted. Data was gathered by @stewroel, who knows way more about this state than I do, so go drop him a follow.
Another thing to note is that Appalachian rurals (in the west) have not behaved like the rest of the rurals in the state. Not so coincidentally, Biden overperformed by a decent amount in the rural west, per a demographic/partisanship regression-based model.
Basically, what happens is this: if the national environment is slightly D-leaning again in 2022 (not guaranteed but I believe it's actually more likely than not), NC is winnable for Ds provided that they hold the west margins (plausible) and drive up rural Black turnout.
preemptively saying that I don't really feel like engaging in a debate about whether 2022 is going to be D-leaning or not, because it's not going to be productive here. I'm just stating that *under this assumption*, Dems have a clear path to victory in terms of campaign strategy.
Under this lens, @EScrimshaw's point about Beasley being the best Democratic bet to activate rural Black voters begins to make a lot of sense. scrimshawunscripted.substack.com/p/scrimshaw-sp…

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More from @lxeagle17

7 Apr
This is so unsettling Image
God bless the ASU
Read 4 tweets
6 Apr
It's kind of strange to see how much glee some people derive out of reminding other people of "impending doom around the corner".

It honestly sounds like such an exhausting way to live.
For example, "you do know variants mean we'll never go back to normal? Permanent social distancing may be here"

Or "You know Trump will win in 2024 and the GOP will have 60 seats by then, right? After these two years, we'll be back to the minority for the next 6"
There's a difference between "caution is warranted" and "let me project endless pessimism to spoil your mood", and it honestly feels like we're so used to getting disappointed that a ton of people now project pessimism onto everyone else to ensure that they feel the same fear.
Read 4 tweets
2 Apr
As I touched on in my @Center4Politics piece, the Democratic Party collapsed in Florida this year, performing a whopping 3.8% (!) below expectation. The serious underperformances in Tampa and Miami/Broward/Palm Beach more than negated any gains elsewhere.
centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/ar…
There are deeply-rooted issues in Florida that go far beyond canvassing and will take years to fix. Democratic collapse with subgroups means that to win Florida 2022, you need “stellar”. This is a state in which a lot of trends are currently going against Democrats.
Unless she can reverse the decline against Cubans/West Indians or peel off a lot more college whites, I don’t see how the math works for Nikki Fried in 2022. She *could* be that stellar superstar candidate, but I have yet to see anything indicating it.
Read 4 tweets
29 Mar
Darren Beattie is a speechwriter fired by Trump for attending a white nationalist gathering. He then got appointed by Trump to the commission preserving Holocaust-related sites in 2018.

He currently works for the Biden administration in the same capacity (appt carried over).
Suffice to say that anyone working for the Biden administration who is like this on social media (attacking young female reporters, promoting Nord Stream 2, etc) and who has a history of attending white nationalist gatherings should not be working for them for long.
This may not be something I’d necessarily expect the admin to catch right away given just how many people like these are now in the ranks from the previous administrations, but they really should not be there for too long.
Read 4 tweets
27 Mar
Even if you think Manchin won't help pass any variant of HR-1, there is absolutely no universe in which giving Republicans control of the Senate to show voters that "they're responsible for nothing getting done" is preferable to Democrats electorally than keeping the majority.
With a GOP Senate, you likely drag out nominations and confirmations far beyond what's acceptable, cannot extend the extremely useful programs in the ARP, cannot pass nearly as good of a budget bill...I mean, the list goes on. Nothing gets done.
Also, "two members of our own party defected to the GOP because we took a stance, so give us the majority back to pass bills" is an argument *easily* countered by "Can you imagine how bad they are? They can't even keep their own majority intact, how do they govern for America?"
Read 4 tweets
24 Mar
It's interesting to see Biden underperforming by almost 2% in Wisconsin, relative to underlying factors and the national environment. He should have won it by close to the amount he won Michigan by, but he didn't actually improve by as much as expected in the WOW counties
Interestingly, it's not as if Biden massively overperformed in the Wisconsin rurals, despite seeing almost no change from 2016 margins; the demographics of that area make it more friendly than not to Democrats (comparatively speaking).
What I wonder about is if WOW sees another massive snap left at some point soon. The GOP there is much stronger and much more energized than they are in many other suburban strongholds, but the evidence we see suggests that the red firewall is still beginning to crack, if slowly.
Read 5 tweets

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