Debunking the popular theory that Nikki Haley's relatively substantial support in GOP primaries has been due to Dem leaning voters flooding the GOP primary vote, thereby suggesting that Haley's strong showing isn't actually a bad sign for Trump... We recently analyzed the GOP primary individual turnout history in the NC primary. Haley won 23% there. Looking at the unaffiliated voters who comprised one-third of the GOP vote, there is no indication that these voters were Dems seeking to stop Trump.

Here's my grand* unified theory of this presidential race, and why I feel like the Biden team should feel pretty good about their standing:

*this is not all that novel or deep Polls are consistently showing Biden faring much better among "likely voters" relative to all registered voters or American adults. We can quibble about what a likely voter is, but the same thing is apparent if you filter on past turnout history.

I've got a few mins, so I'll share my observations as I go through the new Suffolk poll released this morning.

suffolk.edu/-/media/suffol… On the first page of tabs, a look at the sample. Remember, this is registered voters. So voters age 65+ are 22% of this poll's sample, but will be closer to 35% of ballots cast. More in a second on what that means...

Lots of fun dismissive jokes today about "crosstab truthing" towards anyone raising any concerns about this poll, but this is perhaps the more insidious counterweight to questioning crosstabs: lending them lots of credibility when they support your priors, ignore when they don't.

https://twitter.com/admcrlsn/status/1764096001575383525

If you're going to write a story about how Biden is hurting with young voters based on one poll, shouldn't you write a follow up story now talking about how Biden has miraculously rallied back support among young voters? (trick question, you should write neither)

Some of the loudest messaging right now is Dems/progs demanding that we all admit that Biden is old, and "deal with it".

Here's a newsflash - everyone is aware of his age. I understand why it might worry you, because the stakes are so high. But what are we asking for here?

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1759221750095618325

Not a single voter will be convinced to change their mind if they think Biden's age is a concern. They can be convinced of two things:

- All evidence suggests he has been a very capable president, regardless

- The alternative is far, far worse

So maybe let's focus on that?

NY3 Special Election Eve Wrap Up Thread:

The early in person votes have all been cast now, with >60k votes ready to be counted. By party reg they are +10 Dem (ie, the share of early votes cast by reg Dems is 10 pts higher than that of GOPs). That's a 2.8 pt improvement on '22.

https://twitter.com/tbonier/status/1756849693970006059

The mail votes will continue to trickle in over the coming days, but I wouldn't expect to see more than a few thousand more come in. About 13k have been returned, and by party reg they are +29D, compared to +26 in '22.

Perhaps unsurprising to anyone, I have lots of issues with Matt Yglesias' latest piece "Joe Biden is Currently Losing the Election". Some disagreements based on perspective, some on outright errors. I will agree with Matt on one broad point - we should all be operating with the understanding that Trump can win this election, and it won't take some far-fetched scenario for that to happen, and act accordingly.

It was nice of Taylor Swift to engage in a conspiracy with the NFL, the Biden administration, and Pfizer, to fix the Superbowl in KC's favor, in order to make up for the regular season games that she was responsible for them losing. (Did I do this right, MAGAs?) Also, Fauci.

I'm seeing more and more voices on the left suggesting that the "smart" thing to do is to abandon Biden and let Trump get elected, to show the Democratic Party that it needs to better represent their interests. Beyond the inherent danger in this strategy, it's also deeply flawed. If you walk away from the table, those who remain make the decisions. The likelihood that Dems will move to the left if Biden loses is not high. Nader acting as a spoiler for Gore in '00 led to John Kerry as the nominee in '04.

The KY turnout history for the '23 statewide election is posted! You'll recall this was the election where Dem incumbent Gov Andy Beshear won by a 5 pt margin.

Some quick takeaways from the turnout data... Dem turnout was strong. The 2023 electorate, based on partisan registration, was +2.9 GOP. While overall turnout was almost identical to '22, the '22 electorate was +6.8 GOP.

This knocks down one the immediate post-election hot take that Dems did well despite weak turnout.

I've been thinking about this poll data for a few days, and want to share some data to explain why I am skeptical of the phenomena we are seeing that shows Trump performing well with low turnout propensity young voters. Bear with me..

https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1741507483456196751

First, let me make it clear that I'm not calling Nate out here or suggesting he's doing something wrong. I applaud his transparency. He's simply sharing the NYT polling data, which is interesting and illuminating.

Regarding the polls showing Trump winning as much as 31% of the Black vote, one of the things @SimonWDC and I have been saying for over a year now is that we have to pay attention to more than just the polls. Here's an example of what we're talking about... If there was truly such a radical realignment happening with Black voters, you would expect to see evidence, not just in polls. Yet, all of the other data sources show unwavering support for Dem candidates from Black voters.

There's been a lot of ink spilled lately about polls showing Trump winning over a significant (>20%) share of the Black vote. Here's a quick exploration of that idea, with a few thoughts of what might actually be happening. I looked at the results from the elections in Virginia earlier this month, isolating the near-homogeneous Black precints. If Republicans are truly building a "multicultural working class coalition" one would expect to see it in those results. I didn't.

I was reminded of a stat I ran a while back, and decided to re-up it here with some context:

In Kansas, 84% of the voters in the August election on abortion rights came back out to vote in the November election.

But, remember the surge of women registering after Dobbs? If we look just at the women under age 30 who registered after Dobbs and voted in the August abortion rights measure, only 33% came back out to vote in November.

Sunday show producers/reporters/hosts:

I hope you will ask every GOP elected official on your show today if they support Donald Trump's call to "root out" the "vermin" in this country, and if so, what that looks like to them. And if not, what are they going to do to stop him. Halfway through ABC's "This Week", they mention Trump's calls for retribution, with no mention of the "vermin" comments. No guests. Jon Karl promotes his book in the segment. Then, the next segment is back to Dem doom with Manchin's retirement.

Some asked if I could replicate the PA analysis from this thread for every state, so I did. I used modeled partisanship, and compared the Dem margin among regular voters ('20 and '22) with dropoff voters ('20 not '22).

https://twitter.com/tbonier/status/1723115725605245175

As noted in the original thread yesterday, the theory is that Republicans have only fared less well since Dobbs because the elections have been low turnout, and that the voters staying home are more GOP, and will come out in '24. But the data doesn't agree.

I'm about 10 pages in to Ruy Teixeira's new book "Where Have All The Democrats Gone" (I know, crazy Friday night) and I'm wondering if he tried looking for them in polling places, perhaps in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections where they won the popular vote? He could look in the VA legislature, or the WI Supreme Court, or PA Supreme Court, or the KY governorship, there are a few more in NJ after Tuesday, the two Dem Senators in GA... I'm just spitballing ideas here, trying to be helpful.

Okay, okay - even though we will get one more day of early vote data in by tomorrow afternoon, I'll share my close to final observations of the early vote in some key states with elections tomorrow, starting with Virginia. To spare you from having to suffer through several initial caveat-laden tweets at the outset of this thread, you can look at this one from last week that details them all.

https://twitter.com/tbonier/status/1719437757754302761

Cue the freakout music.

Do I think these polls depict where things will end up, absolutely not.

Do I think they demonstrate that there is work to be done, 100% yes.

https://twitter.com/ShaneGoldmacher/status/1721136469903913000

Polls 1 year out are going to be more of a referendum on the incumbent president's popularity. Next year's election will be a referendum on an anti-democratic former president who likely will have been convicted of several felonies by then.

Okay! 1 week until EDay in VA, here are my thoughts on the early vote so far. Let's start with some quick caveats: more than 2/3 votes will likely be cast on Eday, and many more early votes are yet to be cast. The TLDR version is that EV is still consistent with a close election. What you won't find in this analysis - statewide numbers. Our focus is on the battleground House and Senate seats. Statewide comparisons to previous elections are relatively meaningless. Control will be determined across a handful of districts.

This has been a GOP talking point that emerged over the past few weeks to explain away their party's awful track record in special elections since Dobbs. I'm surprised to see Dave adopt the argument, as it isn't backed by data.

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1713182445141402038

First, look at the 2022 elections. Taking the modeled Dem party ID advantage among voters by vote propensity, the less frequent the prior vote history, the more likely the voter identifies/votes Dem. Which is the opposite of what is claimed here.