🚨 NEW today is the @EchelonInsights#SplitTicketAtlas updated for 2022: Almost 100 maps showing unique voter coalitions by state, and answering who performed better where: Trump, or Republican gubernatorial and Senate candidates in 2022.
Governors' races are new to the most recent version of the #SplitTicketAtlas. A particularly telling slide: @BrianKempGA improved over Donald Trump virtually everywhere in GA, but not in places like Henry County, which have seen rapid demographic change in the last 2 years.
In Vermont, @PhilScott4VT had overperformances of as much as *101%* in margin over the Republican candidate on the ballot in 2022.
I initially thought this Idaho map had to be wrong, since it looks so much more random than other states. It wasn't: Just the effect of Ammon Bundy as a third-party candidate for Governor.
Nebraska is an interesting example of a state that seems split 50/50 regionally, but a lot of these orange Trump-first counties are very sparsely populated.
Lessons? Even if split ticket voting is on the decline, we saw in 2022 that it still matters. But when planning for a campaign you shouldn't assume over or underperformances will be spread out equally across the state.
🚨 NEW POLL: Voters say that most major financial goals are out of reach for the typical American family. This includes a plurality who say owning a good home in a good neighborhood with good schools. Considered most out of reach is raising a child on one parent's income.
On what people say they can comfortably afford without having to cut back in other areas, only groceries get a majority response. Barely a third of people making under 75k/year say that they can comfortably afford most items.
Joe Biden on Social Security in 2024 is just like Bill Clinton on Medicare in 1996 except without the willingness to do anything to break with the college educated white liberals driving the party left on culture war issues.
Remember what Bill Clinton did to make sure he wasn’t seen as just another liberal Democrat:
- Triangulation
- Signing DOMA
- Sister Souljah moment
- Bringing on Dick Morris
- School uniforms, V-chips, death penalty for drug kingpins, etc.
Biden is doing nothing like this.
Biden is right to go for a political layup on Social Security. But the most impassioned parts of the speech were the social/cultural parts, not the economic parts, and this is most likely what got heard — because those issues aren’t boring.