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Ryan Matsumoto Profile picture
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27 May, 4 tweets, 2 min read
I think Trump would have done about the same had COVID never happened.

Trump's net approval rating was at -9.1% on 3/1/20 and -8.0% on 11/2/20, per the @FiveThirtyEight polling average.

There also wasn't really a shift away from Trump in places that were hit hardest by COVID.

Some of the places where COVID hit hardest (NYC, RGV) actually shifted the most *towards* Trump.

Demographic trends swamped any limited anti-Trump COVID effect that might have existed.
The "COVID cost Trump the election" theory is popular for a few reasons:

- Democrats think Trump did an *awful* job - surely that should have hurt him!
- Republicans want to shift blame for losing to an external factor.

I just don't think it's very well supported by the data.
I do, however, think that COVID gave Trump his best opportunity to change the tide and win.

If Americans thought he had done a better job at handling COVID (and perhaps if more stimulus checks passed), Trump could have gotten enough of a bump to win.

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More from @ryanmatsumoto1

Ryan Matsumoto Profile picture
5 Jan
Forced to choose with no Tossups, I’ll go with:

Tilt D
Ossoff by 2
Warnock by 2
3 key data points to this election:

#1: Perdue edged out Ossoff by 1.78 points in the first round.
#2: Early vote data shows strong initial Democratic turnout, especially with Black voters.
#3: Polls give Democrats a *very slight* edge.

#1 favors GOP and #2/3 favor Democrats.
The ratings are based on my confidence in each side winning rather than the expected margins.

There's a lot of uncertainty in this election, and there are very strong arguments in favor of Republicans pulling this off.

Read 5 tweets
Ryan Matsumoto Profile picture
3 Jan
I would say that the strongest argument in favor of Republicans is that Perdue won the first round by 1.78 points.

The pro-D counterargument is that early voting turnout data is strong for Democrats.

(1/6)

A lot of this comes down to how revealing you think the early vote data is.

On one hand, many people have been burned by EV analysis in the past. The GOP can just show up on Election Day.

But there are a few factors that make EV potentially more interesting this time...

(2/6)
First, we have a decent baseline comparison of the November election. It's recent enough that there probably aren't a ton of people changing their minds.

This makes Early Vote analysis better than comparing 2012 to 2016, for example, when many people switched sides.

(3/6)
Read 6 tweets
Ryan Matsumoto Profile picture
30 Dec 20
New Georgia Senate poll from @WinWithJMC:

Ossoff 53%
Perdue 45%

Warnock 54%
Loeffler 45%

This Georgia poll also asked how/when voters plan to vote.

Just 7% said they planned to vote on Election Day.

If that actually pans out, tough to see how Republicans win given the pro-Democratic Early Vote data.

But 7% just seems REALLY low.

20% of the votes in November came on Election Day. So 7% in the runoff would be EXTREMELY low.

The crosstabs have Perdue winning the Election Day vote 84% - 16% and Loeffler winning it 78% - 22%.

If way more than 7% of votes come on Election Day, that would benefit Republicans.
Read 5 tweets
Ryan Matsumoto Profile picture
24 Dec 20
The explanation for 18 of 19 'bellwether counties' breaking their streak of voting for the winner is pretty simple.

Compared to the country as a whole, bellwether counties are substantially whiter (82% vs. 60%) and less college educated (22% vs 32%).

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
In the past, white working class voters voted more like the country as a whole, making these counties a good barometer for the country.

But in 2016, Trump made massive gains with white voters without a college degree, helping him win many bellwether counties by double-digits.
The bellwether counties actually became unrepresentative of America in 2016, when they voted 16 points to the right of the nation (versus 1 point to the left of the nation in 2012).

They only retained their bellwether status that year because Trump narrowly won the election. Image
Read 4 tweets
Ryan Matsumoto Profile picture
21 Dec 20
Georgia Senate Early Votes by Race (12/21 update):

White: 54.4% (56.5% in general election)
Black: 32.4% (27.7% in general)
Hispanic: 1.9% (2.6% in general)
Asian: 2.1% (2.6% in general)
Native American: 0.1% (0.1% in general)
Other/Multiple/Unknown: 8.4% (10.5% in general)
Democrats will be happy that Black turnout is relatively strong so far. But they'll want to increase Hispanic/Asian turnout as well.

But important to keep in mind that it's still VERY early - there are 2 more weeks of voting left and a lot can change!

It is important to be **very careful** when looking at early vote data. 80% of Georgia's general election votes were cast early/by mail, but the 20% cast on election day was heavily Republican. And the 80-20 split may be different for the runoff.

Read 5 tweets
Ryan Matsumoto Profile picture
19 Dec 20
The numbers in Kentucky absolutely do add up.

- Kentucky is a heavily Republican state (Trump +26 in '20)
- Eastern Kentucky has gotten increasingly more Republican
- Senate results have become increasingly correlated with presidential results

One of the points in the article is that McGrath underperformed party registration statistics in rural Breathitt County, KY.

But the explanation is simple: over last 20 years, many former Democrats started voting Republican, but they just didn't update their party registration. Image
Another example raised is Elliott County, which never voted for McConnell before 2020.

But this is also easily explainable. The county used to be Democratic, but has gotten more Republican because of: (1) Policy issues like coal (2) Trump's gains with white working class voters Image
Read 4 tweets

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