Cautiously Optimistic
Please forgive any typos or badly structured sentences. I haven’t sent anything out for a while because things changed so fast the landscape would have shifted significantly by the time I was ready to send. At the bottom of the post I have a couple of articles that are shaping how I am thinking about America and our opportunities post election. Worth reading.
HOW ARE THINGS?
Better than they were two weeks ago. With massive voter turnout and another 14 days off the clock while we still have the lead, these weeks feel productive. Biden is winning decisively and every day that goes by without Trump changing the race, the closer we are to the body politic rejecting him like the virus he is. That is exciting, though I’m loath to place an exclamation point at the end of that statement. Doesn’t seem right.
POLLS
Biden is leading nationally by 9 pts in both the latest NYTimes poll and the FiveThirtyEight average of polls. I was also using the RealClearPolitics average as a hedge against confirmation bias, but they rate polls from Rasmussen and Trafalgar as legitimate. They are partisan shops that consistently produce outlier polls showing Republicans winning in unlikely places by unlikely percentages. They could simply be tweaking their turnout assumptions in ways that are favorable to Republicans, but in dark moments I think they are providing pollster cover for Republicans to steal the elections. So, screw ‘em. They are out. If you are interested in this type of thing, Nate Silver tearing apart the cross tabs from a Trafalgar poll is entertaining.
The state polls show if the election were held today ( 75,792,256 votes have already been cast) Biden would win the presidency. Without some heavy handed hanky-panky it’s hard to see a path for Trump to 270 electoral votes. Knowing the make up of the supreme court, the Republican’s talent for keeping people from the polls, and not counting ballots, I think Biden has to win a state by at least 3pts to be safe. The map below reflects the current average polls from FiveThirtyEight. It is worth noting that Biden is running at or above 50% in MI, MN, PA, and WI, and Trump hasn’t cracked 46% in any of them since at least prior to March.
THEFT AND SUPPRESSION
I don’t think Trump has the intelligence, focus, or self control to steal a bag of chips from a 7-11. But Mitch McConnell, Bill Barr, and Leo Leonard do, as proven by their expert packing of the federal bench with judges far to the right of the American people. They represent the current manifestation of the Republican party, one that is singularly focused on holding power, and it is naive to believe Biden’s steady lead will shield us from their ability to work from inside the government to hijack the election. My hope is Biden is leading by a high enough margin in enough states to make it impossible to steal. But …
TEXAS IS IN PLAY
My house is getting ads from both presidential candidates, Kamala is making a run through Texas on the Friday before election day, Ted Cruz and Beto O’Roark are both telling their national organizations they need to put money into the state, and the youngs are voting. All reasons to believe we really can flip the house, and not only put the presidency out of reach for Trump, but do it with a bang.
Back to the youngs. Above is a graphic from Tufts University showing 2020 youth turnout compared to 2016. The Texas number is eye popping. The vote differential between Trump and Clinton in Texas in 2016 was 647,600, and the youngs have already cast 753,600 ballots. While clearly Biden isn’t winning 100% of those votes, he is leading among 18-29 year olds by 22 pts or so according to recent polls.
On the other hand two different well respected data firms, Ryan Data & Research and TargetSmart, only show a slight increase in the share of young voters in the overall percentage of the Texas vote compared to 2016 and 2018. More concerning, both also show Republicans outvoting Democrats in the early vote, though determining the party of a voter in a state that doesn’t require partisan registration is hard in the best of times and harder still with unprecedented early vote.
I have to assume the internals for the Biden campaign show a close race or they would not be sending Kamala to Texas on Friday. She’ll headline events in Houston, the Rio Grande Valley, and Fort Worth, which will take an entire day, representing a serious investment. Additionally, Beto came within 214,921 votes of beating Cruz just two years ago and the up tick in the youth vote could close that gap. Fingers crossed. (And phone banking!)
Another fun analysis is from our friends at the Texas Tribune in the form of a video - it includes the always smart Ross Ramsey.
If you haven’t yet, VOTE! At this point, vote in person or if you have a mail in ballot deliver it to the drop box in person. And if you’ve already voted sign up to phone bank or send texts.
You can monitor the early vote in Texas with the Texas Tribune’s handy poll tracker. Tonight’s graph shows we have officially overtaken our entire early vote number for 2016.
THE HOUSE AND THE FUTURE
We are watching state races and are hopeful we can flip the Texas house. This cycle is particularly important because it is a census year and that means redistricting and that means fighting gerrymandering. The only hope we have in Texas to have reasonably sane districts is to flip the house.
FiveThirtyEight has an easy to understand section on redistricting including the cool graphic below. Worth checking out.
Speaking of the future, two really good articles outlining different paths for the country.
Ezra Klein takes a look at the future of US democracy and finds it dark. The basic premises is that the whole endeavor depends on the loser of an election being willing to stand down and fight again another day. He makes a compelling case that Republicans have crossed the line, possibly irreversibly, not just in this election cycle, but going back to 2000
Ron Brownstein also takes a look at the future of US democracy but finds it much brighter. His basic premise is the kids are alright, there are a lot of them, and they are the most liberal, educated, and diverse cohort in history. Generation X and the Millennials are more engaged than young people before them and will change the kind of country America becomes.
TOOLS
Texas Tribune’s vote tracker. The Tribune is often the best source of information related to elections in Texas, so it’s always good to go to their site and look around.
https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas-early-voting-numbers/
FiveThirtyEight’s election poll averages. The best source for daily poll updates, broken out by national and state.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/national/
The Financial Times presidential election tool. I really like the layout and they pull from Real Clear Politics poll averages, which lean more republican, helping me to avoid confirmation bias.
https://ig.ft.com/us-election-2020/
The US Election Project tracks the early vote and provides partisan breakouts in states that register by party.
https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html
270 to Win has an easy interface to build maps and it is where I plug in information I pull from the other sites.
https://www.270towin.com/