2021 Election Cycle

[Octavious]

Yes that is some good news for sure. curious to see if the Republicans claim cheating if they lose in NJ. It certainly will not be a large margin.

[Skinypupy]

These results tell me three things. All of which I have suspected for a while now, and expect to see writ large across the midterms:

1. Dems did not gain nearly the ground with suburban white voters (especially women) as they assumed they did. The last presidential election was a rejection of Trump the man, not any of the policies he represents. Plug in an unthreatening white guy with the same platform, and the pendulum immediately swings back the other way. Will be interesting to see how that factors into whether Trump is the candidate in 2024.

2. With CRT, the GOP has - once again - completely won the messaging war on the stupidest bogeyman ever. Playing up the fear and/or racism of the uneducated masses is proving to be a winning play.

3. Conservative voters are highly motivated and very mobilized, while liberal voters are perfectly willing to sit on the sidelines because they don't feel sufficiently inspired.

In short, we're fucked.

[El Guapo]

This election is only a few data points, but seems like the big picture is that Trump is and remains a cultlike figure among uneducated white voters, and nothing that's happened in the past year or past five years has dimmed that (and so nothing seems likely to do so in the future, other than maybe Trump embracing Critical Race Theory or something).

The big problem is that while uneducated white voters are a minority, they're a large minority, and so this gives the GOP a large base of highly motivated voters that would otherwise be low propensity voters. So then after you add in educated right leaning voters who are GOP partisans, then you only need to get a relatively small percentage of independents / centrists / conservative Democrats, who aren't that hard to get in any GOP-leaning political environment.

[Octavious]

I don't know if the Republicans really should toss Trump out there again. The HUGE swings in counties in NJ leads me to believe that he was just that horrible. Which I mean duh. Then again if they have the house and the senate they could run a tiger out there and just send it to the states.

[Carpet_pissr]

This election is only a few data points, but seems like the big picture is that Trump is and remains a cultlike figure among uneducated white voters, and nothing that's happened in the past year or past five years has dimmed that (and so nothing seems likely to do so in the future, other than maybe Trump embracing Critical Race Theory or something).

The big problem is that while uneducated white voters are a minority, they're a large minority, and so this gives the GOP a large base of highly motivated voters that would otherwise be low propensity voters. So then after you add in educated right leaning voters who are GOP partisans, then you only need to get a relatively small percentage of independents / centrists / conservative Democrats, who aren't that hard to get in any GOP-leaning political environment.

What do you mean by “uneducated”? No college degree?

[El Guapo]

This election is only a few data points, but seems like the big picture is that Trump is and remains a cultlike figure among uneducated white voters, and nothing that's happened in the past year or past five years has dimmed that (and so nothing seems likely to do so in the future, other than maybe Trump embracing Critical Race Theory or something).

The big problem is that while uneducated white voters are a minority, they're a large minority, and so this gives the GOP a large base of highly motivated voters that would otherwise be low propensity voters. So then after you add in educated right leaning voters who are GOP partisans, then you only need to get a relatively small percentage of independents / centrists / conservative Democrats, who aren't that hard to get in any GOP-leaning political environment.

What do you mean by “uneducated”? No college degree?

Yeah, pretty much that.

[Skinypupy]

And just like that, all the voter fraud went *poof* because the GOP candidates won.

[El Guapo]

I don't know if the Republicans really should toss Trump out there again. The HUGE swings in counties in NJ leads me to believe that he was just that horrible. Which I mean duh. Then again if they have the house and the senate they could run a tiger out there and just send it to the states.

Yeah, there is a material amount of data suggesting that there's also a fair amount of Republican voters who just dislike Trump personally even while being ok with Trumpism (the GOP did do well in 2020 generally considering, while Trump underperformed other GOP candidates).

At the same time, I doubt that it's possible for the GOP to run in 2024 on anything other than Trumpism, and I doubt that they can run on that without Trump himself. If Trump drops dead of a heart attack in 2023 then people could fight over the mantle, but otherwise Trump's not going to allow anyone else to be the guy, and no one significant will challenge him. And even if divine intervention occurred and someone was able to beat Trump in a GOP primary, then I think that the GOP would lose the bulk of the MAGA activitists powering their base (they would probably stay home in large numbers).

[malchior]

These results tell me three things. All of which I have suspected for a while now, and expect to see writ large across the midterms:

1. Dems did not gain nearly the ground with suburban white voters (especially women) as they assumed they did. The last presidential election was a rejection of Trump the man, not any of the policies he represents. Plug in an unthreatening white guy with the same platform, and the pendulum immediately swings back the other way. Will be interesting to see how that factors into whether Trump is the candidate in 2024.

I don't think so. The person who needs to learn this lesson is incapable of accepting he is the problem. Trump still will be the candidate if he chooses to run. I don't think he will be able to contain himself. I'm sure some folks will talk that up as a good thing because he could cleave this coalition we see here. IMO I don't see any positive to a potential Trump run. Though in the end this is bit like speculating on what form the destroyer will take.

2. With CRT, the GOP has - once again - completely won the messaging war on the stupidest bogeyman ever. Playing up the fear and/or racism of the uneducated masses is proving to be a winning play.

The whitelash theory got support again. The Democrats aren't even fighting in the culture war the Republicans have waged. This might be the single biggest factor in all this. The Southern Strategy still works and will continue to work. Meanwhile the Democrats are principally promising policies without any ability to achieve results.

3. Conservative voters are highly motivated and very mobilized, while liberal voters are perfectly willing to sit on the sidelines because they don't feel sufficiently inspired.

The democratic base doesn't deserve this IMO. They are like Mets fans. They turned out in record numbers last year and in end they got almost no return. On any front. Policy, justice, or even day to day impact. The American Rescue Plan? Nearly irrelevant. They have little tangible thats shows that electing the Democrats mattered. I don't know how anyone expected them to care much less be inspired. Ideally you'd be able to motivate them to keep fighting endlessly but at some point the politicians did have to deliver.

In short, we're fucked.

It isn't looking good for sure. In a month we will be fighting another battle in our cold civil war over the debt ceiling again. And one side is reinvigorated now.

I'll say my big takeaway at the grand scale is Biden looked weak since his administration botched Afghanistan. He has been plagued with problem after problem since. The economy and COVID didn't help but still his performance has been lacking. A lot of this defeat rests on him to be honest. Going into elections with a 42% approval rating is a lot of weight on races. That's just how it tends to work out.

He has to find a way to recenter. He went to Europe last week looking shaky and he returns badly, badly wounded. He has a year to heal that wound and turn this around.

[El Guapo]

And just like that, all the voter fraud went *poof* because the GOP candidates won.

From the 538 election blog:

Ahead of yesterday’s election, both Trump and Youngkin surrogate Amanda Chase were still beating the election fraud drum, with Chase even baselessly claiming that votes would be digitally switched. So how does Youngkin’s win fit into that narrative?

Well, Big Lie believers are rationalizing the victory by claiming that the election was rigged, but enough patriots came out to vote to overwhelm the planned fraud. Here’s the top comment on the top post currently on Patriots.win, a pro-Trump message board:

“Of course the elections are still rigged. I am not even remotely pretending otherwise. We need to vote en masse every time anyway to keep forcing them to cheat even harder. Not voting is surrender.”

And here’s part of a Telegram post from last night by a major QAnon influencer who has more than 125,000 subscribers:

“Here’s a dose of reality: Youngkin’s already won the Governorship. Right now the slow motion votes rolling in closing the gap is them attempting to cheat. Here’s the kicker though; MAGA came out and crushed their algorithms tonight! Virginians weren’t leaving it for chance and swept the state red!”

If you thought Republicans winning elections undercuts the Big Lie narrative, that is absolutely not the case.

[Smoove_B]

Yes that is some good news for sure. curious to see if the Republicans claim cheating if they lose in NJ. It certainly will not be a large margin.

They're in a virtual tie at this point, apparently separated by a few thousand votes. Absolutely insane that this is so close. Insane.

At the same time across the state, not all counties have included early voting results in the vote tallies that have been reported, nor have some included vote-by-mail counts. In fact, clerks can accept ballots postmarked by Election Day until Nov. 8.

Provisional ballots, meanwhile, have yet be opened. Counties can’t start counting the paper provisional ballots cast by voters who come to the polls until the last mail-in ballot is counted.

On top of that, is the almost certain expectation by both camps to call for a recount. New Jersey does not have an automatic recount law, but the candidates — or interested groups — may request one. A recount request is triggered by the filing of a suit in state Superior Court in the counties within 17 days of Election Day.

All of that means that a winner will probably not be declared anytime soon.

[malchior]

No surprise. It isn't like it is honest discourse. It needs the barest basic internal consistency to survive.

[Octavious]

Yes that is some good news for sure. curious to see if the Republicans claim cheating if they lose in NJ. It certainly will not be a large margin.

They're in a virtual tie at this point, apparently separated by a few thousand votes. Absolutely insane that this is so close. Insane.

At the same time across the state, not all counties have included early voting results in the vote tallies that have been reported, nor have some included vote-by-mail counts. In fact, clerks can accept ballots postmarked by Election Day until Nov. 8.

Provisional ballots, meanwhile, have yet be opened. Counties can’t start counting the paper provisional ballots cast by voters who come to the polls until the last mail-in ballot is counted.

On top of that, is the almost certain expectation by both camps to call for a recount. New Jersey does not have an automatic recount law, but the candidates — or interested groups — may request one. A recount request is triggered by the filing of a suit in state Superior Court in the counties within 17 days of Election Day.

All of that means that a winner will probably not be declared anytime soon.

Eh I think Murphy will have at least a 1% gap in a few hours. Yay? Our county is the most Red. 67.2! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[El Guapo]

Yeah I think it's pretty likely at this point (80%+?) that Murphy pulls it out, from what I'm reading, unless there's some unexpected curve ball. Which is some relief, though not great that it's this close.

[Octavious]

It's really a repeat of 2020, but with a much closer result. R's all voted in person. D's voted by mail A LOT more. There's still tons of mail ballots to count so the lead shifts much later. Which of course is way too hard for anyone to understand so it makes it easy to claim cheating. There's zero chance we don't have people complaining about cheating with how this went. I can't promise that I won't throw a coffee cup at a co-worker.

There's like a 7K gap and growing now. I don't see how with the areas remaining the R's catch up.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2021-e ... ection_nav

[malchior]

Yeah this is almost certainly over in favor of Murphy. Still it can't be discounted that NJ has nearly a million more registered Democrats than Republicans overall. And still a little over a million people voted for Murphy. Democratic turnout was depressed severely. Republicans increased their tally by 50% over 2017.

Paul Begala last week said the Democrats had managed to depress their own turnout, energize their opponents, and pissed off the swing voter. He sounds prophetic right now.

Edit: The Twitter reaction has been illuminating. I don't know if it is shock or just delusion but many Democratic faithful are downplaying this. The data isn't lying. It is bad for them. One thing of note is that NJ was so taken as a gimme that no one bothered to do exit polls there. So we lost the opportunity to see how much of this truly is national overlap with VA. We only have the pattern similiarities. That isn't nothing but it is frustrating. The Democrats badly need that data right now because they have to figure out a strategy NOW.

Edit 2: Fun fact: Senate President Sweeney (who I despise with the fire of a thousand suns) is losing at the moment to a truck driver who spent $153. He is the longest sitting Democrat in NJ. I don't want the GOP to win a single seat. However it is complicated because I can't help but feel some joy in Sweeney's comeuppance and see King Norcross kicked back across the Delaware. On the other hand it indicates that the GOP is insurgent at the grass roots level. Sending people to rile up school boards across the country looks like genius malice at this point. It is paying dividends everywhere.

[Octavious]

Actually getting something done instead of fighting in circles would be a good start. I really can't blame a lot of people for not being motivated. So far to me it's been a total disaster. Messaging and in execution.

Most people are thinking now and not will happen next year or in 3 years.

[raydude]

IMHO in Virginia the Republicans seem to have figured out the secret sauce: be nice, act moderate, and don't say anything about polarizing issues like abortion until AFTER you win the election.

[Octavious]

Which leads to running like a crazy ass Trumper isn't the way to go now. I mean I almost see that as a positive in some way?

[Octavious]

[raydude]

Which leads to running like a crazy ass Trumper isn't the way to go now. I mean I almost see that as a positive in some way?

I'm hoping for another Hogan but anticipating another Abbott.

[Octavious]

I was strongly looking at moving to VA. Only reason I gave up is the job market doesn't fit what I do. Everything in Williamsburg/Virgina Beach areas was construction and military. Guess maybe I'm better off. So much cheaper property taxes....

[El Guapo]

Actually getting something done instead of fighting in circles would be a good start. I really can't blame a lot of people for not being motivated. So far to me it's been a total disaster. Messaging and in execution.

Most people are thinking now and not will happen next year or in 3 years.

Honestly politically I think Manchin and Sinema have already done real damage that can't be easily undone. There's been at least a month or two of headlines centered around Democratic infighting and about the bill being too large / not large enough / socialist overreaching / corporate sellout. Even if they ultimately pass both bills the impact is going to be diffuse enough and unattributable enough that any benefits probably won't help Democrats, except in maybe a general stimulus way.

It'll be worse if they don't pass anything, and somewhat worse if they don't pass the reconciliation bill, but it's going to be bad no matter what.

[Octavious]

They sure have. Jack just jumped back in the lead, but I still think it goes Murphy based on what's remaining. Can't figure out where the last drop came from.

[$iljanus]

IMHO in Virginia the Republicans seem to have figured out the secret sauce: be nice, act moderate, and don't say anything about polarizing issues like abortion until AFTER you win the election.

There was a person being interviewed on CNN, perhaps a congresswoman, who was criticizing the Republicans for going back to the whole race playbook, most likely the boogeyman of Critical Race Theory. Well guess what, stop crying about that and think of something better because the GOP ain’t going to throw away a winning strategy because it’s sooo unfair. Relying solely on Northern Virginia to carry the day was really complacent of the Democratic Party. And this comment during a debate before the election was just amateur hour. What parent of any political stripe wants to hear that?!?

I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,”

[Octavious]

Mercer County just dropped a big batch of pain on Jack. Stick a fork in it.

[Octavious]

Durr Rep. 52% Sweeney* Dem. 48%

We REALLY screwed the pooch. The Senate leader may lose to a dude who spent pretty much nothing. Jesus

[Apollo]

These results tell me three things. All of which I have suspected for a while now, and expect to see writ large across the midterms:

1. Dems did not gain nearly the ground with suburban white voters (especially women) as they assumed they did. The last presidential election was a rejection of Trump the man, not any of the policies he represents. Plug in an unthreatening white guy with the same platform, and the pendulum immediately swings back the other way. Will be interesting to see how that factors into whether Trump is the candidate in 2024.

2. With CRT, the GOP has - once again - completely won the messaging war on the stupidest bogeyman ever. Playing up the fear and/or racism of the uneducated masses is proving to be a winning play.

3. Conservative voters are highly motivated and very mobilized, while liberal voters are perfectly willing to sit on the sidelines because they don't feel sufficiently inspired.

In short, we're fucked.

Let's also not forget disgruntled liberals like myself who are not inclined to vote for these new Radical Progressives. If the Progressive wing of the party blames all these losses on Joe Biden's moderate ideas (which I strongly suspect they will) and we get a much more progressive candidate running for President in 2024 (assuming Biden doesn't run for reelection, as many believe), we're going to see a 1984-style Democratic bloodbath in the Presidential race which will hurt Democrats down-ballot as well.

Of course, there's always the chance that they'll nominate Trump again, in which case the Democrats might have a chance to avoid disaster. We'll see...

But the 2022 midterms? Oh boy, it's not going to be pretty for Democrats.

[LawBeefaroni]

Durr Rep. 52% Sweeney* Dem. 48%

We REALLY screwed the pooch. The Senate leader may lose to a dude who spent pretty much nothing. Jesus

Everyman going to stick it to the swamp in Trenton. What could possibly go wrong?

[Octavious]

Worked out well the last 4 years!

Sweeney is a pile of crap, but man we are even more broken than I thought for this to happen. It looks like he is in fact going to lose at he was down 4% with 99% reporting.

[LawBeefaroni]

These results tell me three things. All of which I have suspected for a while now, and expect to see writ large across the midterms:

1. Dems did not gain nearly the ground with suburban white voters (especially women) as they assumed they did. The last presidential election was a rejection of Trump the man, not any of the policies he represents. Plug in an unthreatening white guy with the same platform, and the pendulum immediately swings back the other way. Will be interesting to see how that factors into whether Trump is the candidate in 2024.

2. With CRT, the GOP has - once again - completely won the messaging war on the stupidest bogeyman ever. Playing up the fear and/or racism of the uneducated masses is proving to be a winning play.

3. Conservative voters are highly motivated and very mobilized, while liberal voters are perfectly willing to sit on the sidelines because they don't feel sufficiently inspired.

In short, we're fucked.

Let's also not forget disgruntled liberals like myself who are not inclined to vote for these new Radical Progressives. If the Progressive wing of the party blames all these losses on Joe Biden's moderate ideas (which I strongly suspect they will) and we get a much more progressive candidate running for President in 2024 (assuming Biden doesn't run for reelection, as many believe), we're going to see a 1984-style Democratic bloodbath in the Presidential race which will hurt Democrats down-ballot as well.

Of course, there's always the chance that they'll nominate Trump again, in which case the Democrats might have a chance to avoid disaster. We'll see...

But the 2022 midterms? Oh boy, it's not going to be pretty for Democrats.

Yeah, when the answer to "their crazy" is "our crazy", you're going to lose some rational voters.

[malchior]

Durr Rep. 52% Sweeney* Dem. 48%

We REALLY screwed the pooch. The Senate leader may lose to a dude who spent pretty much nothing. Jesus

But still fuck Sweeney. He is a corrupt pice of shit. It is long past time he got the axe. He personally slowed down so much good to line the pockets of King Norcross.

[Smoove_B]

If you had "Wednesday afternoon" as the point in time when "voter fraud" and "ballot dump" would start appearing on social media regarding the NJ election, collect your prize.

My county elections have the usual (GOP) suspects being easily re-elected. My local township Trump-loving official that called the administrator an agent of the Nazi secret police at the height of the pandemic in 2020 was re-elected without incident. I'm still not sure what to make of the local / area BoE elections. I don't have my finger on the pulse of those races so I'm not actually sure if the people that won did so on a platform related to masking and vaccination.

[Octavious]

Durr Rep. 52% Sweeney* Dem. 48%

We REALLY screwed the pooch. The Senate leader may lose to a dude who spent pretty much nothing. Jesus

But still fuck Sweeney. He is a corrupt pice of shit. It is long past time he got the axe. He personally slowed down so much good to line the pockets of King Norcross.

I figured you wouldn't be too upset about that one despite the message it sends.

[Octavious]

If you had "Wednesday afternoon" as the point in time when "voter fraud" and "ballot dump" would start appearing on social media regarding the NJ election, collect your prize.

My county elections have the usual (GOP) suspects being easily re-elected. My local township Trump-loving official that called the administrator an agent of the Nazi secret police at the height of the pandemic in 2020 was re-elected without incident. I'm still not sure what to make of the local / area BoE elections. I don't have my finger on the pulse of those races so I'm not actually sure if the people that won did so on a platform related to masking and vaccination.

I see tons of people posting sites where it said 100% reported for a county and then the next day Murphy flipped it. Uh it's a blue county and they didn't count the mail in ballots yet. At one point Fox had Sussex Blue at 100%. I guess I should call fraud on that? Whatever they can all go f off.

[Fireball]

The Virginia results really suck. It has become hard for a Democrat to lose a statewide race in Virginia, but it happened, and it had coattails because Virginians don't really split their ticket much down ballot.

1. McAuliffe was a very successful governor, but a bad campaigner. He didn't paint a vision for the future, he just kept calling Youngkin "Trump", which is the opposite of what you should do based on the 2018 election results.

2. The Senate should have passed the reconciliation bill a month ago. The legislating process shouldn't take this long, but Manchin and Sinema refused to behave in good faith.

3. This "Critical Race Theory" nonsense is just white supremacy in a new costume, but just pointing that out doesn't work because parents are very reasonably concerned about what their kids are being taught. Instead of explaining that CRT isn't in Virginia schools and how parents through elections have influence on curriculum, Terry blurted out that "parents shouldn't have a say" on such matters. Idiotic self-own.

4. No one was fired up about Terry. He beat two dynamic black women in the primary, but never replicated the enthusiasm their supporters had for them.

If any one of these hadn't been the case, it'd have been a McAuliffe +1 win.

On the rare bright side, I am very pleased that the local slate of Democrats swept the city council election in Alexandria.

[Skinypupy]

Good to see you FB.

[Defiant]

With regard to CRT, this is a good twitter thread to read:

[Carpet_pissr]

McAuliffe has always rubbed me the wrong way for some reason. I think it's his 'game show host/used car salesman" mashup personality.

BUT in his defense, I totally agree with his lightning rod comment. So parents should be able to dictate what is taught in the classroom? What do we do when God forbid, some parents don't agree with what some other parents think should or should not be taught?

Hey, let's also let citizens tell the local police and fire stations how they should be doing their jobs also, while we're at it.

We have been reduced to a populist mush. Jesus.

[El Guapo]

McAuliffe has always rubbed me the wrong way for some reason. I think it's his 'game show host/used car salesman" mashup personality.

BUT in his defense, I totally agree with his lightning rod comment. So parents should be able to dictate what is taught in the classroom? What do we do when God forbid, some parents don't agree with what some other parents think should or should not be taught?

Hey, let's also let citizens tell the local police and fire stations how they should be doing their jobs also, while we're at it.

We have been reduced to a populist mush. Jesus.

Yeah, the criticism is more about how he said it, I suppose. It made it sound like parents should be shut out entirely of the discussion, whereas the reality is that parents do have influence over curriculum but they're ultimately one voice among many. Which is appropriate. It's just that he presented it as "STFU parents".