New census data on 2020 turnout is out:
White, non-Hispanic share of the electorate drops to 71 percent from 73.3 in 2016
Black share of the electorate drops slightly, from 12.4 to 12.3 percent
Hispanic share increases to 10.6 from 9.2 percent
Demographic change was the main driver of the shift.
The turnout rate among non-Hispanic white voters increased by 5.6 points, slightly above the 5.4 point national average
Black turnout rate increased by just 3.2 points
Hispanic turnout rate increased by 6.1 points
Here's the change in the white share of the electorate, by state.
State data is pretty noisy, don't interpret the details!
One preemptive example: it's likely the white share of the electorate declined slightly in both PA/MI, rather than big drop in one and increase in the other
In general, the story in this data is pretty consistent with what else we've seen; no big reevaluations required.
But we're getting pretty close to the end of the post-2020 data wave, and so we're getting near the time to start the take machine back up again
White voters without a four-year college degree represented 40 percent of the electorate, down from 42 percent in 2016.
That's even though the turnout rate among non-college whites increased more (6.3 pts) than whites with a degree or nonwhite voters with or without a degree
In 2016, Masscahusetts became the first state where four-year college graduates represented a majority of the presidential electorate.
In 2020, it's joined by New York, Colorado and Maryland, with Vermont, New Jersey and Connecticut close behind at 48% or more
I should note that most people who have thought hard about this, and I'd put myself in that category, believe that the CPS overestimates the college educated share of the electorate (and nonwhite turnout, as well)
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A nice FiveThirtyEight summary of some of the various GOP electoral biases, which were quite extreme in 2020 and could conceivably get worse
(by their definition, the GOP E.C. edge grew from 3.5 to 3.9 points with the new population figures on Monday) fivethirtyeight.com/features/advan…
One minor thing: just because something is biased doesn't mean it's counter-majoritarian. The House is conceived to reflect majority will. The Electoral College is complicated, but it's not really counter-majoritarian and to the extent it is, that's not why it's biased
The Senate, on the other hand, really is designed to check the majority (the extent that's good or bad is another question, ofc).
What's fascinating is that the Senate, EC and House are all similarly biased against Dems, despite being intended to be biased in very different ways
It's 2028. Kamala Harris loses the election by the margin of... 89 census takers in New York and Minnesota
It's a tough map to pull off, but there are a few other ways to get there (if Dems get 269 and MN is red, then Democrats lost by the margin of MN getting the final vote over NY)
He offers a few possible actions Congress might consider:
--ensure paper balloting
--fix the electoral count act
--impose basic safeguards on vote counting
--support local election administration
My sense is that this is probably only the start of the conversation on how to address these kind of issues.
Progressives have spent years thinking about expanding voter access. Few people have spent time any time thinking about election subversion
I'm a little surprised this concept hasn't already taken off! There was a paper in Science by a lot of prominent political scientists last fall. It deserves a book--it's a clarifying lens for thinking about America today--so I'm giving it an article pcl.stanford.edu/research/2020/…
In recent news, I think sectarianism helps make sense of the declining role of policy debate in sustaining partisan conflict. It's hard to make sense of, say, Dr. Seuss or Rubio on Amazon unionization unless you put intergroup hostility at the center of politics
One thing about Democratic gains in the Sun Belt and Republican gains in the Rust Belt is that it's at least beginning to upend the 2010-era story about gerrymandering, redistricting, and the Democratic 'geographic' disadvantage in the House
From 2010-2014, the main story about the Democratic disadvantage in the House centered on purple/blue states where Democrats faced a two part problem: Republican gerrymandering and a Democratic 'geographic' inefficiency problem
The geograhpic problem was simple: in the blue/purple states, Obama's strength mainly depended on running up the score in areas that were already blue (thus yielding few new D districts), while Republicans won rural/exurban areas narrowly, netting more districts with fewer votes
What I implied is that new the law probably doesn't increase the length of lines, and could just as easily shorten lines.
I am not implying that lines don't matter to turnout (the article, in fact, says long lines affect turnout), or to human beings
When it comes to the effect on in-person voting, there are provisions cutting in both directions.
An example in the negative direction: ending the Fulton County bus voting stations, which could directly alleviate a problem
An example in the positive direction: expanding early voting days and the provision requiring that large precincts with long lines (over an hour) either add staff, add machines or split apart.