2018 U.S election

[Sommerswerd]

Now he has a real live opponent, and he can play the heel victim to a captive audience of 325 million people. He has never wanted anything so badly in his life.

FTFY

 

[metalhead]

Having an annoying heel schtick is the hallmark of a great heel.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Somebody besides me grew up watching WWF wraslin'

 

[Lexicus]

It's worth noting that there is still no sign of this happening. Losers have mostly conceded, and despite the blather about fraud in recounts and noncitizens voting, none of these talking points are actually being allowed to affect who is certified the winner of elections.

Well, yes, and I already admitted I was wrong about this, somewhere...

I just saw these posts during a re-skim of the Kavanaugh thread and thought I'd comment. This isn't to pick on Lexicus specifically but to point out a general sentiment that I've heard quite a bit in left-wing circles:





It's worth noting that there is still no sign of this happening. Losers have mostly conceded, and despite the blather about fraud in recounts and noncitizens voting, none of these talking points are actually being allowed to affect who is certified the winner of elections.

Even in a somewhat illiberal "flawed democracy" type of state, it is worth opposing the ruling party by electoral means. The tables are slanted, but not so much that opposition victories are impossible or that election results are overturned wholesale. It would take quite a bit of further deterioration before we would reach that point.

The Republican advantage amounts to about 1-2 points across the board by "soft" suppression through ID and other laws and about 1 point by felon disenfranchisement. That's the actual total. Then they have advantages of 3-5 points in the House by gerrymandering and clustering effects, and some similar advantage in the Senate because there are more rural than urban states. There's actually no consistent advantage in the EC - Obama's vote distribution actually gave him a slight advantage against his opponents, but Clinton underperformed in the swing states while overperforming in solid states like Texas and California. The EC is undemocratic, but not in a way that advantages either side.

So while this is awful and should be contested, the slant in the playing field can be overcome. This is very different from holding total sham elections or overturning results entirely. Despite everything that is going wrong, the political process does matter.

There are all the other elements of the Republican coup to consider. North Carolina's legislature stripping its governor of all those powers, the blatant rigging of the Georgia election...

The electoral college advantages the Republicans, hopefully not by enough to matter, but we'll see. As I've said elsewhere if the Democrats aren't able to tap into popular discontent over the "elites" and the economy I doubt they can win in 2020. And there are a few different reasons that I think it's very possible the Democrats won't be able to do this.

 

[metalhead]

Somebody besides me grew up watching WWF wraslin'

Yep

And remember back then how the weekly show was usually Hulk Hogan or Ultimate Warrior beating up some no-name guy? That was Trump vs. the Media. Trump was going to win, everyone knew it, and you only watched it because hey, it's the Hulk!

Now that he has Pelosi to fight with, it's like Wrestlemania. All the fights you actually want to see because you don't know who is going to win. Even the Hulk can lose at Wrestlemania.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Someone needs to remind him that the heels, even the great ones, were always forgotten almost immediately.

 

[Takhisis]

(…)
The EC is undemocratic, but not in a way that advantages either side.

So while this is awful and should be contested, the slant in the playing field can be overcome. This is very different from holding total sham elections or overturning results entirely. Despite everything that is going wrong, the political process does matter.

Well, no. You see, the Democratic Party candidates have won the popular vote in all but one general elections since the Reagan-Bush years, i.e since the Soviet Union fell and anti-Commie rhetoric became pointless.
The one time the Republicans won the popular vote they got a majority in the electoral college.
In two out of six elections where the Democrats won the popular vote the Republicans won a majority in the electoral college. So yes, the EC does give an advantage to one side.

That would be a cold day in hell. He might siphon off funds to himself somehow, but he's shown no sign so far of being a quitter.

He already has siphoned off funds to his campaign by giving his 2016 campaign ‘loans’ which were then paid back from the money contributed by his backers.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Make a lynching joke. Mind breakingly stupid, but, Mississippi, so being elected Senator remains possible.
Agree that making it more difficult for Democrats to vote is a good idea. Again, Mississippi, so not like it's the end of a GOP campaign.
Moving on, today we get pictures of the Senator posing with Confederate artifacts that were posted to her Facebook, captioned "Mississippi history at its best!"

Is this woman trying to make some sort of statement on how the GOP can carry Mississippi no matter what? Is there a 5th Avenue in Mississippi somewhere so she can shoot someone in the middle of it and outTrump Trump?

The good news is that many big corporate donors are abandoning her, to the tune of WalMart actually demanding their money back. Hopefully some sort of precedent will be established and GOP candidates across the board will be struggling for cash.

 

[Bootstoots]

Well, yes, and I already admitted I was wrong about this, somewhere...

I figured you might have, but I didn't see that post. I also chose a post from a moment when tempers were running very high - the day before Kavanaugh's confirmation, just after Collins tipped her hand and made it certain he was being rammed through despite everything. So I knew it was a little unfair at the outset.

There are all the other elements of the Republican coup to consider. North Carolina's legislature stripping its governor of all those powers, the blatant rigging of the Georgia election...

Not to minimize what happened, but the Georgia election managed to come within 1.5 points despite everything Kemp and the Georgia Republicans did, with a black woman running as an unapologetic liberal. The previous election was decided by an 8-point margin. That is a truly remarkable outcome and points to Georgia being winnable in the very near future despite foul play. It would not be surprising if their legislature would follow NC's lead had Abrams won or if the Dem wins in 4 years, but they can't do that for the President or Senate.

The electoral college advantages the Republicans, hopefully not by enough to matter, but we'll see. As I've said elsewhere if the Democrats aren't able to tap into popular discontent over the "elites" and the economy I doubt they can win in 2020. And there are a few different reasons that I think it's very possible the Democrats won't be able to do this.

Well, no. You see, the Democratic Party candidates have won the popular vote in all but one general elections since the Reagan-Bush years, i.e since the Soviet Union fell and anti-Commie rhetoric became pointless.
The one time the Republicans won the popular vote they got a majority in the electoral college.
In two out of six elections where the Democrats won the popular vote the Republicans won a majority in the electoral college. So yes, the EC does give an advantage to one side.

My thinking on the Electoral College is borrowed from Nate Silver's reasoning on tipping-point states, probably one of my favorite concepts to come from that site. From an article on whether the Democrats are now doomed to an EC disadvantage:

The good news for Democrats is that political coalitions change quickly, and even relatively minor changes can shift the Electoral College advantage from one party to the other. It’s possible to determine which party had the Electoral College edge even when it didn’t produce a different winner from the popular vote. For example, we can say that President Obama had the Electoral College advantage in 2012 and would have been favored to win it if the popular vote had been tied.

We can determine this by means of FiveThirtyEight’s tipping-point calculation. It works like this: Sort the states in order of the margin of victory or defeat for the Republican candidate, starting with the most Republican state (in [the 2016] election, this was Wyoming, for example). Count up the cumulative number of electoral votes in these states, awarding zero votes for any state won by a third-party candidate [and ignoring faithless electors]. Whatever state puts the Republican over the top to an overall majority — which currently requires 270 electoral votes — is a tipping-point state. Next, do the same calculation in reverse, starting with the most Democratic state. Usually this produces the same result, but it can differ if there were states won by third parties or if there could have been an Electoral College tie. Thus, each election has one or two tipping-point states.

[Boots note - there are rarely two tipping point states if no states go for a third party, which hasn't happened since 1968. It suffices to figure out the tipping point for the winning party in each election.]

In 2012, for example, the tipping-point state was Colorado, which Obama won by 5.4 percentage points. If every state had moved toward Mitt Romney by 3.9 percentage points, yielding a tied national popular vote, Obama would still have won Colorado by 1.5 points — and every other state he originally won by more than 1.5 points — and thereby the Electoral College.

So, to illustrate, here's the tipping point state calculation for Obama's win in 2008. The columns are first the state/district, then its vote margin (D-R), then the running total number of EC votes they've won. Never really did figure out tables here so apologies for the bad alignment:

DC +85.9 3
HI +45.3 7
VT +37.0 10
RI +27.8 14
NY +26.9 45
[...]
NH +9.6 262
IA +9.5 269
CO +9.0 278 <-- tipping point
VA +6.3 291
OH +4.6 311
FL +2.8 338
NE-02 +1.2 339
IN +1.0 350
NC +0.3 365

Obama won the national PV by 7.3, so Silver's "electoral college advantage" is D+1.7. For 2012, it comes out to D+1.5. But for 2016, the tipping point state was WI at R+0.8, while the national PV was D+2.1, so the EC advantage was R+2.9.

Here's every race since 1976. The article has everything going back to 1864. 2016 was based on preliminary totals; the tipping-point state ended up being WI by 0.8 instead of PA by 1.1, and the PV was D+2.1 instead of R+1.8. The 0.3's cancel, so R+2.9 remains the figure.

As you can see, this measure of EC advantage flips back and forth between parties all the time, and there's no real pattern. Obama had the EC advantage in both of his elections because he was somewhat more popular in states that were likely to be close than in the nation as a whole. Trump was the same way.

I'll also try to head off another argument at the pass - that the EC is inherently racist. At the moment, a candidate's chances are dominated by a cluster of disproportionately white Midwestern states (treating PA as Midwestern), with Florida and arguably NC as the only large swing states outside this cluster. But that's happenstance - it is not guaranteed to remain that way. If you project current trends for population and voting patterns into the future, swing states c. 2028 will likely be dominated by the Sun Belt cluster of AZ, TX, GA, FL (still...sigh), and NC, while the Midwest may move into generally being more Republican than the nation as a whole.

None of this is to defend the EC as an institution. It causes votes from people who live in states that aren't likely to be close to just not matter at all. Hillary Clinton's negative swing in the Midwest was partially canceled by a positive swing in CA, AZ, and TX, so that she still won the PV by 2.1 points. But she lost a bunch of votes that count a whole lot and replaced them with worthless Californians and Texans. So the EC advantage flipped and now we have our first orange president.

 

[Takhisis]

Make a lynching joke. Mind breakingly stupid, but, Mississippi, so being elected Senator remains possible.

Even if the Waltons ask for their money back I suspect this person will get free coverage from Faux News praising her for ‘telling it like it is’.

 

[Bootstoots]

Make a lynching joke. Mind breakingly stupid, but, Mississippi, so being elected Senator remains possible.
Agree that making it more difficult for Democrats to vote is a good idea. Again, Mississippi, so not like it's the end of a GOP campaign.
Moving on, today we get pictures of the Senator posing with Confederate artifacts that were posted to her Facebook, captioned "Mississippi history at its best!"

Is this woman trying to make some sort of statement on how the GOP can carry Mississippi no matter what? Is there a 5th Avenue in Mississippi somewhere so she can shoot someone in the middle of it and outTrump Trump?

The good news is that many big corporate donors are abandoning her, to the tune of WalMart actually demanding their money back. Hopefully some sort of precedent will be established and GOP candidates across the board will be struggling for cash.

Chris McDaniel, a fan of neo-Confederate organizations among other things on the far right, placed third in the first round with 16.5% of the vote. So Hyde-Smith is trying to woo his voters for the runoff. She is presumably concerned they'd just stay home, which would put her in a tighter spot given she was only barely ahead of Espy (41.5-40.6) in the first round. Apparently she's calculated that this sort of far-right posturing will gain her more votes than it will lose.

I'm not sure about that, myself - either it works and she wins McDaniel's voters while not losing as many as she gains, or she loses enough first round voters and drives up black turnout enough to cause her to lose like Roy Moore.

If I were her, I'd just play it safe. Mississippi statewide results almost always come out to around 57-43, with very little variation. Its black voters vote 98% Democrat, its white voters vote about 88% Republican, and the racial split is 58-37 white-black with only 5% of anyone else. So all Mississippi elections usually do is spit out a bunch of white-black percentages.

But Alabama is usually polarized in exactly the same way, except with slightly more whites. We found out that there is an unlikely combination of factors that can result in a Democrat winning there, and I don't see why she wants to take that risk.

All she has to do is run a garden-variety campaign with well-funded turnout efforts in white places and she'll win. McDaniel's voters aren't going to stay home and risk a black Democrat winning. Not most of them, anyway. Apparently she's more of a risk-taker, though, or just sincerely as bigoted as McDaniel.

edit: Expanded post, changed some wording

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I hadn't looked. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the third party candidate was running on the Klan ticket, but I honestly am.

 

[Bootstoots]

I hadn't looked. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the third party candidate was running on the Klan ticket, but I honestly am.

He actually ran as a Republican. Mississippi apparently runs its special elections like Louisiana runs all of its: a jungle primary on Election Day with a majority required to win outright, otherwise the top two advance to a runoff. Here's the Wiki article on this election.

edit: And here is the article about McDaniel's first run for Senate. He came within a whisker of unseating Thad Cochran, losing in large part because of crossover voting for Cochran by black voters in the open primary. He was a little sore about that.