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Lakshya Jain Profile picture
@lxeagle17
Apr 24 • 5 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
IMO a reason many Dems are upset is that it feels like Calvinball

Dems do well in specials? Doesn't matter.
Trump does poorly in primaries? Doesn't matter.
Biden does poorly in primaries? Sign of weakness on the left.
Biden polls badly? Awful. Polls already overshot him in 2020.
I'm explaining. I'm not saying I agree with all of those arguments.

But it's clear to me that the reason this sentiment on Twitter exists is because there is a lot of talk focused around Biden's vulnerabilities in the data world, and not many about Trump's.
To this point, it's clear why that talk exists. You can easily reconcile Biden's polling woes with data, and show why the special elections and primaries may provide a false signal (IMO, valid counters exist to this too).

But that also pushes back on every point of Dem strength.
This also isn't helped by the fact that there is a group of pundits revolving around the data analysts who really want to jump on Democrats for either not being left-wing enough, or *too* left-wing. That's not the analysts' fault, but it contributes to why Democrats are mad.
Anyways, I think it's clear as to why people are angrier than usual about the polls, despite a very clean pattern emerging. The columns written at the moment have to explain Trump's polling strength. Doing that involves reconciling polls with the signals that seem good for Biden.

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More from @lxeagle17

Lakshya Jain Profile picture
Mar 11
It's a fascinating chart.

Couple points: you won't find hard electoral data for a big racial realignment yet. I edited it to show what it's like without 2024 polling.

But there's some evidence to suggest depolarization is happening, if not realignment🧵

Image
There's a very clear dip in support between 2016 and 2020, but it's not obvious that it's part of a massive trend — that dip is comfortably in line with historical margins of variability. Much of the variability you see is in current polling.
But when you dig deeper, you see that there *is* a growing trend of Democratic erosion among nonwhites. For example, younger nonwhite voters being far less Democratic (especially with Black voters) is fairly well established by now and is clearly visible.
Read 10 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
Feb 28
FWIW the "Uncommitted" campaign has to be very, very happy with tonight's results — the narrative in the media is already set.

They set a benchmark of 20K votes, and they cleared it easily. Virtually every politician and reporter is now saying it was a big success.
The truth is that this wasn't a good benchmark, because turnout is massively up. Percentage-wise, this is underwhelming for them — they're on track for 12-13% of the vote, which isn't much more than the 11% that voted against Obama in 2012. But the narrative is what mattered.
Elections are about optics more than anything. The more of a longshot something is, the more this rings true.

It's impossible to really determine a good benchmark for "uncommitted", so it's about making sure that you can get out in front of the story and set the tone yourself.
Read 5 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
Dec 4, 2023
So, one thing I have seen that seems obvious but is very much ignored in analysis is that in basically every election where it turns into "normal vs weird", the normal side massively overperforms. Which side is perceived as normal depends on the race, of course.

Let me explain.

Joe Kent vs MGP and Mark Kelly vs Blake Masters were both successfully framed as a weirdo with Nazi ties vs a pretty normal person.

Kathy Hochul vs Lee Zeldin and Tina Kotek vs Christine Drazan were both basically campaigns run by Republicans and independents who successfully took an issue the left is very weak on in the eyes of the electorate (crime).

Frisch vs Boebert, Ilhan Omar vs a random Republican, and Hobbs vs Lake are other good examples of candidates who are way too Out There being punished heavily by voters.

This isn't really about progressive vs moderate vs conservative. It's more about normal vs not-normal. Our @SplitTicket_ research found that within a certain ideological box, people all did pretty similarly. Freedom Caucus WAR (-0.8) was pretty similar to the Progressive Caucus (+0.2), which was similar to the New Democrats (-0.2).

But the Squad? 5.5 points below replacement. The "MAGA Squad" (Gaetz, MTG, etc)? 7 points underwater.

I think there's an increasing amount of evidence that a lot of this is just about being normal.
Now, to tie this back to the original post: Book bans themselves are just a symptom of why Democrats overperform in these races. When successfully weaponized, they repulse people by making the opposition look really extreme — usually because they have other crazy stances too.
(This doesn't belong in the tweet, but it isn't simply selection bias — I just gave a couple good examples. You can check the article for more if you want thorough analysis on incumbents and their ideological impacts, but there is a very real penalty paid for "weird extremists").
Read 4 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
Oct 24, 2023
Not sure this is true. Evers won by 3.5% as an incumbent governor in a heavily pro-choice state. Barnes lost by 1% against an incumbent GOP Senator who outspent him. That 4.5% delta is pretty normal, and our @SplitTicket_ metric has Barnes as a better candidate than Johnson.
Image
@SplitTicket_ You can say that Barnes *still* underperformed because Ron Johnson was a bad incumbent (I have seen this argument from a couple data people I do respect) but I am personally not sure that I'd chalk this loss down to Dems picking a poor candidate, given the spending data here.
@SplitTicket_ What happened was that Mandela Barnes went dark at the worst possible time and didn't get enough $$, which caused his numbers to slide. He was ahead after the primary, got massively outspent and fell, and then clawed back most of the ground in October, but it still wasn't enough.
Read 6 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
Aug 22, 2023
She's absolutely correct, but people like Kara Swisher (and a large chunk of the Silicon Valley tech journalists) helped build up the myth of Elon Musk in the first place and I think this is a great example of these things eventually coming full circle.
There was this recognition in SV (at least, among those I know) that Elon was both brilliant in some technical aspects and *also* very socially inept with a reputation that was somewhat overinflated from the PayPal exit. Somewhere along the line, people forgot about the last part
@PercivalSweetw2 Musk is quite capricious and egotistical and has an *incredible* appetite for risk-taking. And this can be a great asset for a company early on, but it needs to be managed very carefully because you can flame out rather hard — it doesn't always translate over scales.
Read 4 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
Aug 1, 2023
Currently, I think it's fair to say that while Joe Biden was the best nominee for Dems in 2020, he is *not* the strongest nominee for them in 2024, even accounting for an incumbency advantage.

Doesn't matter. Won't change the matchup. But that's what the data says.
If voter sentiment on the economy improves a lot, this may no longer hold — if voters begin associating Biden with stability and a great economy (possible, the election is a year out and economic indicators look good), then this might flip!

But that's not the current reality.
Presidential polls are *not* typically predictive this far out () but it is also true that the continued low approval ratings for Biden and his advanced age are flatly not good under any data lens. Age won't get any better, but his approval might.split-ticket.org/2023/06/20/how…
Read 7 tweets

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