"Will you shut up, man?" US Politics October 2020

In other non-surprising news...

Quick thread. Warning: not super exciting.

1. In the course of our reporting on Trafalgar Group—part of the due diligence we often do while entering polls—we've learned that some of their polling was done for partisan clients that weren't clearly disclosed.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 30, 2020

Democrats say Biden’s strength among other groups - namely seniors and suburbanites - will compensate for any drop-off in Latino support.

For every working class person of color who doesn't go to the voting booth, we'll win two white Republicans in the Atlanta suburbs.

I mean...yeah

whatever happens on Tuesday I have no doubt that Dem leadership will learn All the Wrong Lessons

If Biden loses I'm pretty sure they will release a statement saying they promise they'll run Bernie next time.

https://imagesvc.meredithcorp.io/v3/mm/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.onecms.io%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F6%2F1998%2F05%2Fmov_rev-18.jpg

A bit of gloom for you (though not sure a low Floridan Latino turnout would be such a bad thing for Biden!)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-30/biden-aides-see-warning-signs-in-black-latino-turnout-so-far

― Alba, Friday, October 30, 2020 5:33 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah, I'm the only Miami-Dade County person on ILX and have stopped caring about early voting, precisely because it's not determinative.

HEAR ME, ROBERT

The Biden campaign co chair

We're delivering assistance to Angelenos facing economic hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Starting Monday, with our new Early Pay LA program, @LADOTOfficial will offer a $20 discount on parking citations paid within 48 hours. https://t.co/jqG5kxudvi

— MayorOfLA (@MayorOfLA) October 31, 2020

🤮

I've been following that 538 graphic with all the little red and blue dots the past few weeks; Biden hit 90 in 100 simulations for the first time tonight.

They are, reportedly, still going forward with the election.

https://i.imgur.com/TghybTj.png

dammit, meant to post this slightly edited version

https://i.imgur.com/YuDCAwB.jpg

That cartoon dog has become part of my life too the past few weeks.

i'm cautiously optimistic about the shape of this distribution:

https://i.imgur.com/aF7UtER.png

90% of the outcomes are biden victories, first of all. but of the winning simulations, the most common are around the 400 EV/landslide territory.

these models don't include voter suppression and litigation fuckery, of course. but still, if in 2017 you showed me a flash-forward of the election polls right now, i would be feeling much better

it's NOT a dog, clemenza, it's FIVEY FOX

fivethirtyeight.com is in its mid 1990s GamePro era

The Trump distribution graphic is literally the mirror image--I guess that's inherent in the math and not just happenstance?

yeah, it's the mirror. i'm not sure why they present it twice. i guess because if you're a trump fan, your ideas got there first?

Harris County ends early voting with almost 1.44 million votes after seeing a surge of 90K votes Friday, the most in a day since Oct. 19 (the 7th day of early voting)

Final totals, minus some remaining mail ballots:

In-person: 1,264,811
Mail: 170,410
Total: 1,435,221 #txlege

— Jasper Scherer (@jaspscherer) October 31, 2020

Early vote jumped today in Hidalgo Co (McAllen), as @KamalaHarris @BetoORourke @JulianCastro rallied supporters

County finishes w 187,893 early + mail votes.

There were 173,437 total votes there in 2016

E Day to come.

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) October 31, 2020

That second result is kinda key — a valley focus for Texas that caek had pondered.

Nate Silver is Sushi X

xp word. also

BREAKING: El Paso in-person early voting today is nearing 15,000, according to Lisa Wise of @EP_Elections. We have surpassed our entire 2016 turnout of 218,890, with Election Day still to come.

— Bob Moore (@BobMooreNews) October 31, 2020

El Paso numbers are promising given the COVID situation there.

I know in terms of things like the long game usurpation of SC seats and voter suppression, the GOP is all about cementing minority rule by whatever underhanded means necessary. But inasmuch as they usually at least try to make it all look above-board to undiscerning eyes, I have to wonder (perhaps naively): has rigging an election outright ever really been part of the GOP playbook? Like if Biden's win is decisive, is there any historical precedent suggesting that they're liable to just be all nakedly 'nope' about it? Via means that are at all effective, anyway (as I'm sure President Pissbaby will still be nope-ing his head off as they drag him out of the WH gate)?

is there any historical precedent suggesting that they're liable to just be all nakedly 'nope' about it

https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/gw-bush-painting-435x580.jpg

Another Texas note:

Just in: Travis Co., TX (Austin) reports 553,290 votes cast for the entire early voting period - 118% of the total votes it cast for president in 2016. And we’ve still got Election Day to go.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 31, 2020

Also per Ralston the last minute Nevada stops by Trump and Pence appear to have achieved...nothing:

Final post of the night, all:

In-person early voting is over in NV, and Dems have a robust firewall in Clark County. Turnout has been high, so there will not be as many votes left for Tuesday as some thought.

I'll do a deeper dive and modeling tomorrow.https://t.co/QaEyq6FUeb pic.twitter.com/6NxTVlq0f6

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) October 31, 2020

Per Elections Project Nevada is at 88% of its 2016 vote already.

California is at 66% in comparison but I predict a big rush over the weekend as people finally work through all the propositions. Combined with expanded ballot drop off points in many areas, those numbers will rapidly increase.

I know in terms of things like the long game usurpation of SC seats and voter suppression, the GOP is all about cementing minority rule by whatever underhanded means necessary. But inasmuch as they usually at least try to make it all look above-board to undiscerning eyes, I have to wonder (perhaps naively): has rigging an election outright ever really been part of the GOP playbook?

Think Rehnquist in Arizona as a young poll watcher intimidating Black voters.

Realizing it can't win because its policies are unpopular, the GOP resorts to suppression and, yeah, minority rule.

Also per Ralston the last minute Nevada stops by Trump and Pence appear to have achieved...nothing

wait, was trump visiting vegas? imo he didn’t have a prayer in clark county of all places

Here's a fun and probably useful data project on 538, predicting at what rate each state will have proceeded with their count by close of broadcast on election night:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-results-timing/

--

lol / aww at poor western Hawaii being eagerly in the "all counted quickly" category

Although almost everyone in Washington votes by mail, late-arriving ballots can favor Democrats; if that happens again this year, the party could improve its margins in the days after Election Day.

this will likewise be anticlimactic on the day, but having seen lots of TV ads of the absolute mutants running on the R side in the last few weeks, will be fascinating to see if swings and margins do come into play. I don't have a vote, but this week I did take a fat sharpie down to the Chinese / Vietnamese part of town to draw C&Bs on the forehead of a dude running against Inslee, having seen his posters from a car the day before.

With all the attention we've paid to Florida itt, it had skipped me that the early votes there are typically tabulated before polls close: that's going to have a huge effect on the TV horse race.

You bet. We'll get the Panhandle's vote an hour later because it's on central ime.

*time

and it's deep red with the exception of Leon County, home of Tallahassee.

maybe I’m misremembering but isn’t Jacksonville one of the very few metros in the US that’s reliably red? like one of maybe three? or am I missing a bunch.

Duval County is somewhat conservative for an urban county. It began moving away from the Democratic Party somewhat sooner than the rest of Florida. Despite the small Democratic plurality in registration, the county's Democrats are nowhere near as liberal as their counterparts in other large Florida counties, such as Miami-Dade and Orange. The county has only supported a Democrat for president four times since 1956, the last being in the 1976 cycle when Jimmy Carter managed to take the county.

The Republican edge in Duval has lessened somewhat in recent years. It swing from a 16-point win for George W. Bush in 2004 to only a three-point win for John McCain in 2008. Mitt Romney won an equally narrow margin in 2012. In 2016, Donald Trump only won the county by fewer than 6,000 votes even as he narrowly carried Florida.

I know Gillum won the county in 2018.

Fingers crossed and all that, but what's giving me some hope is America's dogged contrarianism. The only thing we hate more than losers is winners, and there's nothing more satisfying than taking a winner down. Especially sore winners, especially winners that barely won.

Those Texas numbers ... again, who knows, but I wonder, looking back on all of this, what was the earliest point that anyone thought Texas was a real Democratic possibility? I seem to recall even back in 2015 that Texas was unique among its peers for lack of enthusiasm for Trump. Either way, certainly underscores the reality that local races may be gerrymandered to hell, but the presidential race is all about turnout, running up those numbers.

Early voting numbers in the morning at 89.5 million. Things slow down over the weekend and this last weekend means a number of states have stopped early voting in the run up to Tuesday, but we’ll be at 90 million soon enough and all predictions are 100 million by Tuesday morning is pretty well likely.

wait, was trump visiting vegas? imo he didn’t have a prayer in clark county of all places

ICYMI: Seven Pennsylvania counties are now officially waiting to count mail ballots until Nov. 4, per @cbszak.

That's a big deal for PA results. Why?

These seven counties *currently* have received 141,977 ballots. Trump won PA by 44,292 votes in 2016.

— Cara Korte (@CaraKorte) October 31, 2020

Pennsylvania is going to be an end of week regardless, that's not new news.

mostly GOP counties, no? or counties won by Trump?

It's not news, but what makes it newsworthy is

Oddly enough, Trump won 6 of these 7 counties pretty handily in 2016.

Having 6 Trump counties in a swing state without results on election night could make Trump STFU about wanting results that night — and reduce the chances of him taking it to SCOTUS to try and stop counting. https://t.co/28eVQ1U7KO

— Angry Staffer (@AngrierWHStaff) October 31, 2020

Also good to set expectations in advance. If they are deliberately waiting until Wednesday to count votes, then it lessens the chance that it's seen as a mysterious delay.

ahhh ok that makes sense