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G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
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13 May, 4 tweets, 2 min read
I have done a lot of math & my final answer is that the difference between a precinct in Kenosha, WI and an identical one 300 miles away was a 1.5-2% decrease in votes for Joe Biden. The police violence & protests in WI last summer almost certainly helped Trump, all else equal.
As with any activism, you have to weigh electoral consequences w/ political gains/messaging, so what I'm not saying here is that "Democrats shouldn't talk about race and policing" or that "Black people shouldn't protest being shot in the back by police" — just validating numbers.
If anything, the dynamic whereby the police can shoot unarmed black ppl point blank, subsequently inflame tensions w/ rioters, plaster the coverage on Fox News and then have their allied political party gain from the fallout is an incredibly distressing & important finding
The other thing to note is that protests _countrywide_ were associated with an increase in Biden's vote share. This fits a broader pattern in the literature that shows violent/destructive speech is fuel to the fire for right-wing "law and order" candidates

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More from @gelliottmorris

G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
14 May
Here's how Biden won in 2020, according to new numbers from Catalist:

1) A surge in turnout among black voters that pushed him over the line in AZ + GA
2) A shift toward Ds among whites, especially suburban college-educated ones, all over the country

economist.com/united-states/…
A lot of press has focused on Democratic losses among Hispanics, but important to look at the other side of the coin too (especially given that, uh, Biden won?). But R losses among whites amounted to far more votes, since they are a larger share of the electorate.
Catalist's numbers suggest a bigger problem for Rs. New voters in 2020 were about as blue as you'd expect based on their age, but much younger than the overall pop. GenZ will only continue to grow as a % of the electorate, & R gains with Latinos will not offset these deficits. ImageImageImageImage
Read 8 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
13 May
Moderates might be willing to run in an open primary **with different voting rules** but political scientists have no historical evidence for this re: open v closed.

If the pool of people running is more polarized, that polarization has to come from somewhere—eg media + elites.
It is weird to me that some people are so dedicated to arguing with an enormous volume of political science literature on this subject
I’d be really interested in seeing a qualitative study of this — maybe the quant lit has missed something. But the best explanation is that candidates are more polarized because everyone is more polarized, not because primaries are pushing them far left/righr
Read 5 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
8 May
Won’t be a popular tweet, but I think political scientists mostly disagree that closed partisan primaries are the root cause of ideological polarization.

andre-baechtiger.ch/tl_files/baech…

escholarship.org/content/qt5pz0…

pitt.edu/~woon/papers/w…
TED Talks are great. But I think I’m gonna stick with people who actually study politics, not a cheese factory owner, on this one
As a general rule, I tend to tune out people who say “x is the ONE single REAL reason that things are bad, and all your other nuanced explanations are wrong”
Read 4 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
5 May
There is no evidence that the J&J pause last month has led to a decrease in Americans' willingness to get vaccinated
One explanation is that the share of people actually getting_vaccinated decreased (perhaps for additional reasons than the J&J pause!) but those people are telling pollsters they'll get it later
(though this has not shown up in survey data)
Read 4 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
4 May
The central conflict between "radical" and "moderate" Republican candidates/elected officials today is not over politics or policy, but evidently whether the party should have any commitment to free and fair elections at all
gelliottmorris.substack.com/p/the-big-lie-…
What Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, and Adam Kinzinger all have in common is not that they favor the same policies or cultural war items, but that they believe in democracy and validated election results. Yet they are a fringe in a growing anti-democracy party.
"Can the center hold?" is a tired question in American politics — but it has evolved a much more serious framing over the past six months.
Read 4 tweets
G. Elliott Morris Profile picture
4 May
Eh..

1) A "durable majority" might not translate into electoral victory due to minoritarian institutions. Some might say that's the whole point of the critique!
2) Don't throw out the turnout -> D gains hypothesis yet. There is a clear county-lvl correlation in 2020 pres results
In general, the 'demographics is destiny' thing has always been dumb and short-sighted, but the fact that Trump made gains with Hispanics doesn't invalidate the magnitude of their vote for Biden or lower turnout rate. The lowest propensity voters are still probably D voters
This tweet really does miss the point, though -- Republican electoral laws right now are clearly *designed* to make voting harder for minorities and city-dwellers, probably to the gain of the R party. Looking at aggregate demo patterns isn't helpful here.

Read 6 tweets

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