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Lakshya Jain Profile picture
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3 Aug, 4 tweets, 2 min read
I still don’t think this happens — I don’t think Democrats vote to recall by this margin, and a governor with a +5 approval likely doesn’t lose. But the poll has a Biden +30 electorate. It’s the first real poll I’ve seen with some genuinely concerning signs.
Previous polls were all varying degrees of ridiculous with LV screens. This one seems to rely heavily on persuasion, particularly with Hispanics and independents. If Newsom is actually underwater with those groups by double digits, he probably only survives by like 5.
Anyways, each cycle has ebbs and flows in polling, so I still stick to my notion that it *should* revert more to state partisanship and hold to my likely D rating. But in the absence of any other evidence, that’s the type of poll that would set off some actual concern.
Here’s a (more plausible, IMO) No +7 poll among LVs from CODA. Emerson has always shown a closer race, as Rakich notes, and it’d interesting to understand why. Anyways, public evidence points to Dems winning by mid-single digits currently, but I would still bet on this increasing

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Lakshya Jain Profile picture
1 Aug
Based on the evidence available, this race is no longer safe D, at least for now.

That said, Newsom has just begun campaigning and the undecideds break strongly Democratic. I expect that we’ll see things revert towards the state’s base partisanship as the recall approaches.
I’d be very surprised if this works for the GOP and if it doesn’t revert — we’ve seen that the undecideds don’t split evenly in heavily R/D states and CA’s universal vote by mail system helps solve a turnout problem for Ds. But he can’t sleep on it, and I don’t expect he will.
On evidence available to us for this race, it’s *currently* likely D. That’s not safe, and Newsom can’t sleep on it

But I don’t expect he will, and he’s starting to crank up campaigning. As voters begin to pay more attention, I’d expect Dems begin to get fired up and vote too.
Read 4 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
27 Jul
A hot-button issue has been “should CA Dems have picked a backup on the recall ballot?”

No. Newsom’s goal is to turn out Dem voters. Adding another D candidate splinters the vote and means some might vote Yes on recall and Yes to the replacement to get them into the office.
“Why not just have everyone coalesce around No and then have a backup just in case?”

Because that’s not how it works. Voters are messy, campaigns are messy, and there will be some defections from folks who are anti-Newsom and love the Dem alternative. You don’t want infighting.
The absolute last thing you want is a war on two fronts — you don’t need to fight your base and the opponents at the same time. “No on Recall, Yes on Bustamante” failed spectacularly in 2003 and led to the end of the careers of basically everyone involved.
Read 6 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
23 Jul
Okay, a more detailed thread of thoughts on "is it possible to out-organize voter suppression"...the answer is that "it depends" on a lot of things, not least of which is "what do you mean by voter suppression?".
Does voter suppression include gerrymandering? You can argue for one way or another, but a goal in voter suppression is to explicitly and intentionally deny a group of people adequate representation, and gerrymandering does that pretty well.
Can you out-organize maps that give the GOP a built-in R+10 advantage during a neutral year? No. End of story. If I remember the literature correctly, organizing probably makes, at best, a difference of one or two points -- maybe less. Which is important! But not enough.
Read 8 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
17 Jul
Ignoring baseline partisanship and going solely by race and education-based splits, Democrats performed about 8% below expected in Florida in 2020.

The struggles with the Cuban community are well-documented, but they also perform *way* worse than expected among college whites. Image
I see the white retiree issue, but here's the thing: it's not just Democrats struggling with them; that's not the underperformance area that stands out to me. There's a persistent underperformance among college-educated whites that cuts against the state's demographic profile.
I don't think there's honestly much to instill confidence in me that we reverse this, but if they wanted to do it, there's a path, even if it's very hard. 60% of Floridans are pro-choice, 73% are pro-climate action. 67% are majorly pro-criminal justice reform.
Read 5 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
14 Jul
Given educational polarization, what if you tried to predict 2020 2-party margin based on nothing other than education split by race (white college, white non-college etc)?

You'd still get a pretty strong correlation. The resulting over/underperformance map is interesting to see
Some thoughts...

[1/] Secular/non-evangelical voters are ones that Democrats perform really well with, which obviously isn't captured with just educational data
[2/] An area's baseline partisanship plays a huge role in determining immediate margins, so I wouldn't take this as gospel or whatever (none of the "OMG Wisconsin's sliding 20 points right in 2022" dooming) -- just a fun experiment to see what'd happen if the trend continues
Read 6 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
26 Jun
I've reconstructed the 2014 and 2018 electorates by demographic, thanks to @DKElections and @Catalist_US data and a lot of math

-Midterms are whiter, more educated (~2pt Dem boost with whites on education-based turnout differential)
-Minority turnout is a crucial wildcard

[1/] Image
Midterms are generally whiter + more educated; whites are ~2% more favorable to Dems on educational splits alone. This was more pronounced in 2018 than it was in 2014. If R voters are increasingly tied to Trump ballot presence, it could complicate things for the GOP. [2/] Image
I calculate the electorate demographic composition for 2014/2018 myself and project 2020 support by demographic onto each electorate to get an idea of what its partisanship would be now. 2012/16/20 demographic composition & 2020 2-way support by demographic are from Catalist [3/]
Read 11 tweets

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