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Lakshya Jain Profile picture
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21 Oct, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Points in favor of a Youngkin victory: Biden's approval is horrific, so independents might break R, and and Democratic turnout is undeniably lagging currently, so you could see him eke out a 1-2 pt win.

Points against: Virginia 2012-2020, and he *still* can't clear 46% in polls.
That last part is especially telling for me, because in every poll, the undecideds have been disproportionately Democratic, and we know from a lot of polling data that split ticket voting is quite low in this race right now. So the median scenario shouldn't be a tossup IMO.
Polling already seems to price in a Republican turnout/enthusiasm advantage, and even with that, Youngkin isn't crossing 46%, which is a problem. People are eventually going to decide, so he'll have to get a good bit of crossover votes he's not currently getting.
Where is he going to get the other votes from? That's what he needs to find. That, plus the polling average being D+4 (and our model is D+6.5) means I think the race is likely D.

2017 polls nailed Gillespie's share almost perfectly. They just undershot Northam.

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More from @lxeagle17

Lakshya Jain Profile picture
21 Oct
Here are all public, nonpartisan polls of likely voters conducted in October for #VAGov. Polling points to a D+4 race, but it really depends on the screen used. This stuff is really hard to model!
CBS/YouGov had two LV models, so both are included (but weighted by half to ensure that double-counting isn't a problem), and Monmouth's LV model was D+2, so we used that; our rule is to use LV results wherever possible.
That doesn't really favor a party; sometimes we put in things like D+2 instead of the tie among registered voters in Monmouth, but then we've also omitted the Fox D+11 poll of registered Virginia voters, so...
Read 4 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
20 Oct
We've updated the model made by @Thorongil16 and I with the Monmouth poll.

Our forecast is at D+6.7, with an 84% chance of Democrats winning, making our rating Likely Democratic. You can view the county margins at striderforecasts.com. 🧵[1/]
The Monmouth poll is absolutely not a good one for Democrats. Let's not dance around it. Even if you take the educational splits and weight it with our screen, which is 52% college-educated, you get a D+2 margin. This is not good.

What's going on, though?
From every poll, we see that Biden voters choose McAuliffe while Trump voters choose Youngkin, with little middle ground. But independents have taken an 18 point swing *in a month* in this poll. They were McAuliffe +9 last month, Youngkin +9 this month.
Read 9 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
12 Oct
Educational polarization means it is genuinely way more plausible for Democrats to win 53% of the two way vote than people think — it’s just that one of the key ways to do it lies in getting minority turnout to stay at presidential levels in off-years.
I’ll put it this way: a month ago, I wrote a piece about educational turnout differential and its electoral implications. But the upshot is that if Democrats can keep their minority turnout numbers high, then the midterm electorate is a point or two *more* favorable to them.
It means that if Black voters were 11% of the electorate in 2020, you’d want them to be around 11-12% of the electorate in 2022 — we’re speaking in terms of electorate share here. Essentially, the drop among minorities cannot be as stark as the drop among white noncollege voters.
Read 4 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
5 Oct
FWIW I still believe a default is not the most likely event; between the $1T coin, 14th amendment, and a filibuster carveout that Manchin refused to rule out, I think there's enough paths to prevent it.

But if it happens, voters will blame the party that controls all 3 chambers.
Nobody cares about the filibuster or Senate procedure.

If a voter loses their social security checks while a Democratic trifecta was in office, the response will be to blame the party that was in control for letting it happen. And that's basically all there is to it.
Want to make #VAGov one where you can credibly call the Republicans favored? you have to see an event of such groundbreaking proportions that it shifts the national mood 5 or 6 points to the right in less than 4 weeks. Something like a default.
Read 4 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
4 Oct
No matter what you try, you're probably not going to be able to reverse educational polarization -- backed up by data in the US and internationally.

IMO it's a better bet to maximize your current coalition's gains and hope that you sustainably drive up your popular vote margin.
Point that Nate brings up here, but it's more plausible for them to sustainably drive up their average popular vote margins and hope that carries them. A state being R+2 relative to the nation is ok if the nation's median is D+4, for example.
I'm in the minority, but I am not convinced that Democrats are long-term completely done in the Senate if this happens. Biden won 25/50 states. Let's say WI slips, but they gain two of NC/TX/AK. If you keep your vote share high enough and midterm penalties fade, you'll survive.
Read 4 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
4 Oct
The messaging needed to appeal to white working-class voters often directly conflicts with the strategy needed to keep current Dem voters engaged. And because of where the center of power is concentrated in the Democratic party (donors/staffers/etc), a pivot is near-impossible.
Parties aren't monoliths. You can't just press a button and shift focus. But if you did try to force a message shift at the top, the odds that you break through without some serious change in social/racial rhetoric are very minimal in today's day and age.
And because those WWC voters *no longer see themselves as Democrats*, the odds that you get them back are minimal, but the odds you manage to lose your primary by angering current voters are way higher as a result. So what's the incentive?
Read 4 tweets

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