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G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
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27 Apr, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Yes, the Democratic Party label has become more nationalized and progressive in recent decades. But the opposite has happened for the right too. Does the GOP actually, in fact, “get off easy?” How miscalibrated are public perceptions of the parties?
I’m genuinely asking here — if someone has research, please feel invited to self-promote here. I think the conventional wisdom on “activists are hurting the Democratic brand” is in need of some hard data, esp for the comparison against Rs.
I wonder how much this is a product of a certain ideological class of journalists on Twitter seeing a bunch of (yes, often tone-deaf) activist posts and articles and conflating it with the public’s reaction to the parties. This is why we have polls, people!
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G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
28 Apr
The share of adults identifying as Republican was also 25% in July 2020 and March 2019 -- and the leaned share was 38% — worse than the 40% the article claims was "worst" since 2012 — as recently as 2018.

I think this article is just factually wrong?
like, seriously... this took me 0.2 seconds to look up people news.gallup.com/poll/15370/par… Image
not clear to me the quoted tweet is a robust finding, as the share of GOP identifiers has rebounded (not completely) in our YouGov data — favs are down, but that doesn't matter much at the ballot box

Image
Read 4 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
26 Apr
New 2024 map just dropped
Read 4 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
26 Apr
If you decrease your expectations for the polls you will be much better off — but that doesn't mean they are useless, it means most people have been underrating potential error and misunderstanding exactly how (in)accurate they can be
For example, we assigned a 5% chance to Biden's actual vote margin in Wisconsin. That was probably too low (and we have written about why.) But the media reaction to that miss seems closer to what you'd want to see with a 1-in-100 or 1-in-1,000 miss. It's all miscalibrated.
The cool thing about blogging is that, over time, you get enough content to just footnote all your tweets

gelliottmorris.substack.com/p/lower-your-e…
Read 5 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
25 Apr
Anti-majoritarianism has gained a firm foothold on the American right over the last few years. Polls offer one partial remedy to our historically-biased electoral institutions, and the conservative outlets that are increasingly hostile to the general will.
gelliottmorris.substack.com/p/seeing-the-p…
I understand this is a tough argument to make — the deck is stacked against the majority in ways that simply sharing (good!) polling data isn’t going to fix. But my hope is with the right volume of coverage and a good attitude in Washington, we can come to see polls differently.
I have been blogging a lot recently about how we see and use the polls in non-electoral contexts, and if you’re into polls I’d really like if you put your name on my email list so I can tell you when my book on the same subject comes out next year:

gelliottmorris.substack.com/welcome
Read 4 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
23 Apr
Not sure people have really noticed this: the share of Americans favoring a legal path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants has just hit a 4-year low civiqs.com/results/immigr…
a classic jstor.org/stable/2111666…
So this might be less about thermostatic response and more about salience

Or maybe the thermostatic response is heightened for salient issues
Read 4 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
22 Apr
The only legitimate outcome in a democratic republic is for the majority to get what it wants the vast majority of the time. US institutions violate that principal. The minority’s only defense for this is “well that’s good for me,” which is a bad defense!

modelcitizen.substack.com/p/the-anti-maj…
The big reason why Americans have to obsess over protections for the political minority is because our institutions are so insulated against political accountability. If we had parliamentary democracy, or more proportional legislative chambers, the <50% would be at much less risk
(This is partly because the government is more responsive, but also because you don’t get factions that are committed to violating fundamental liberal rights to hold onto power)
Read 4 tweets

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