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Divided We Stand

Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.

Thursday, October 31, 2024

HIstorical Data on Partisanship of House Districts.

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

Drew DeSilver at Pew:
The Republican Party currently has control of the U.S. House of Representatives, but it has an exceptionally narrow majority – 220 seats versus 212 for the Democrats, with three more seats vacant. That means Democrats need a net gain of just six seats in November’s elections to take control.

That might not seem like a tall order, but in any given election, the vast majority of House districts are won by the party that already holds them. In 2020, for instance, 93% of districts were retained by the same party; only 18 of 435 districts (4%) flipped.
How we did this

Has it always been this way? Or was there a time when House districts weren’t firmly in the grip of one party or the other, election cycle after election cycle?

To find out, we examined the outcome of every House election – regularly scheduled ones as well as special elections to fill vacancies – from 1922 to 2020.

House districts are redrawn following each decennial census to reflect population changes, so districts aren’t directly comparable from one census period to another. With that in mind, we analyzed election results in 10-year segments. Each segment includes the five regular House elections held between census years, along with any special elections.

We found that in every 10-year segment, after adjusting for redistricting changes, most districts were consistently won by either Republicans or Democrats.


Our analysis begins with the decade following the 1920 census. Between the 1922 general election (for the 68th Congress) and a series of special elections in 1932 for the outgoing 72nd Congress:Republicans won every election in 161 House districts (41% of the districts we analyzed in this period) and all but one race in 35 more districts (9%).
Democrats ran the table in 141 districts (36%) and won all but one election in another 23 (6%).
Only in 30 districts

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Sixers and the Senate Cycle

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

The six-year cycle of Senate elections is crucial to understanding the chamber's partisan makeup.

A Senate class elected in a midterm will face reelection in a presidential ytors.ear, and vice versa.  The political conditions of the second will be different from the first.  A wave election brings in a set of senators who are vulnerable to defeat six years later.  The GOP took control of the Senate in the Reagan sweep of 1980, and lost it in 1986.  The GOP tied in 2000, suffered a big setback in 2006.  


STEVEN SHEPARD and KATHERINE TULLY-MCMANUS at Politico:
Democratic Sens. Jon Tester, Sherrod Brown and Bob Casey have had a lucky streak of election environments since they first came to the chamber in 2006. That luck seems to have run out.

The first elections for Tester (Mont.), Brown (Ohio) and Casey (Pa.) coincided with a Democratic midterm wave after six years of George W. Bush in the White House. In their second campaigns, their party’s presidential nominee won the popular vote by 4 percentage points. The third? Another blue wave repudiating Donald Trump.

But 2024 is a different story. At best, the two parties face a neutral political environment, as evidenced by tied polling from the presidential race down to Senate contests.
...

The first elections for Tester (Mont.), Brown (Ohio) and Casey (Pa.) coincided with a Democratic midterm wave after six years of George W. Bush in the White House. In their second campaigns, their party’s presidential nominee won the popular vote by 4 percentage points. The third? Another blue wave repudiating Donald Trump.

Suburbs 2024

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020

Elena Schneider at Politico:

Kamala Harris is counting on suburban voters to do what they’ve done since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016: reject him.

It may be the single most important piece of her electoral math. While Donald Trump has made inroads with Black and Latino men, polls in the late stage of the election show the suburbs could still power her to victory. The latest Wall Street Journal poll found Harris leading among suburban voters by 7 percentage points, while a Reuters/Ipsos analysis showed the vice president winning suburban households by 6 points.
Nicholas Fandos and Grace Ashford at NYT:
New York may not be a presidential swing state. But there is perhaps no more important battleground in this year’s race for the House of Representatives than the Empire State.

From the tip of Long Island to Syracuse, the two major parties are fighting over a half-dozen suburban swing districts — five held by Republicans — that helped decide the House majority in 2022 and are expected to again in November. While Democrats hold voter registration advantages in almost all of them, polls show that the Republicans’ focus on the southern border is resonating, along with other issues.


Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Game of Shards


Mike Allen at Axios:
The future of news and information is upon us. Welcome to the shards of glass election — and news era.

Why it matters: How and where Americans get informed has broken into scores of pieces — from young men on Joe Rogan's podcasts, to suburban women following Instagram influencers.

Both campaigns have targeted small, often little-appreciated shards to reach hyper-specific pockets of potential voters. The campaigns are doing this with unorthodox, sometimes lengthy media appearances and precision ad targeting.Former President Trump reached way more potential male voters with his three-hour Rogan conversation (33 million views over the weekend) than he could have with a dozen or more appearances on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC combined. All three cable news networks skew very old in viewership, with median ages ranging from 67 to 70.
Vice President Harris reached more young women on Alex Cooper's "Call Her Daddy" podcast, a show about sex and relationships, than she could on CBS' "60 Minutes" and ABC's "The View" combined. Both shows skew very old, too.
Memes, prediction markets and long-form podcast interviews shape the conversation as surely as any front page.

Monday, October 28, 2024

A Night at the Garden

Our latest book is Divided We Stand The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Our next book will look at the 2024 race.  Trump has a history of stoking racism.

Hannah Knowles and Isaac Arnsdorf at WP:
A comedian who warmed up the crowd at Donald Trump’s rally here Sunday described Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage,” attracting widespread criticism and triggering a Trump campaign statement disavowing the remark.

The comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe of the “Kill Tony” podcast, was one of several opening speakers who lobbed sexist, racist and otherwise demeaning insults at a variety of targets during a Madison Square Garden rally meant to showcase Trump’s broad-based support in the home stretch of the presidential campaign.
Pennsylvania, perhaps the most critical swing state, is home to one of the largest populations of Puerto Ricans in the country. Danielle Alvarez, a Trump campaign senior adviser, said in a statement that Hinchcliffe’s “joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

Trump’s campaign did not disavow other comments made by warm-up speakers at Sunday’s rally.

 At Newsweek Khaleda Rahman lists some of those comments:

  • "Believe it or not, people, I welcome migrants to the United States of America with open arms. And by open arms, I mean like this," Hinchcliffe said, while waiving his hands and mouthing: "No, go back."He added: "It's wild. And these Latinos, they love making babies too, just know that. They do, they do. There's no pulling out. They don't do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country."
  • Hinchcliffe also pointed to a man in the audience before saying: "That's cool, Black guy with a thing on his head. What the hell is that, a lamp shade? Look at this guy! Oh, my goodness. Wow! I'm just kidding, that's one of my buddies. He had a Halloween party last night. We had fun, we carved watermelons together. It was awesome!"
  • "In fact, she is the devil, whoever screamed that out. She is Antichrist," said David Rem, a sanitation worker billed as Trump's childhood friend, although it has been reported the pair met for the first time just two weeks ago.
  • "Kamala Harris is the least qualified candidate to ever run for any political office in American history," businessman Grant Cardone told the crowd. "She makes her boss look competent. She's a fake. I'm not here to invalidate her. She's a fake, a fraud. She's a pretender. Her and her pimp handlers will destroy our country. They will."
  • "I just got back from Israel about two weeks ago. They love Trump in Israel. Just you know, they love him," radio personality Sid Rosenberg said. "I get back and they go, 'Sid, you want to speak at this MSG thing?' I go, 'Sure—out of character for me to speak at a Nazi rally. I was just in Israel.' But I took the gig."
  • "She is some sick b******, that Hillary Clinton, huh?" Rosenberg said. "What a sick son of a b****. The whole f****** party. A bunch of degenerates. Lowlives, Jew-haters, and lowlives. Every one of 'em. Every one of 'em."



Coming Apart, Falling Behind

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020. Our next book will discuss the extraordinary fight between an elderly white ex-president and a younger Black/Asian woman. Class and education are part of the story.


Emily Badger, Robert Gebeloff and Aatish Bhatia at NYT:

Take white men working without a college degree. In 1980, they made more than the average American worker.

But over 40 years, even as their inflation-adjusted income has remained relatively flat, they’ve fallen well below the average income.

In the reordering of the U.S. economy since 1980, white men without a degree have been surpassed in income by college-educated women.

What this captures is a sense of relative standing — not just how well you do on your own terms, but how you fare compared with everyone else. In short, a sense of status.

As the American economy has shifted over the past 40 years away from manufacturing and toward services and “knowledge” work, this less visible hierarchy within the economy has shifted, too. Jobs that helped build the nation, like the machinists and metalworkers who were mostly white men without college degrees, today make a shrinking share of what the average American worker does. Newer kinds of work, like financial analysis and software development, have come to pay much more.

The economy has effectively devalued the work and skills of some Americans, while delivering mounting rewards to others — reordering the status of workers along lines that increasingly shape the country’s politics too.


Ballot Measures

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

John Frank at Axios:

By the numbers: This year, voters in 41 states will have considered 159 ballot measures, with most appearing on Nov. 5, according to Ballotpedia, a tracking service.The vast majority were referred to voters by state lawmakers and commissions, while the remainder came from citizens who collected petitions to qualify.

What they're saying: The presidential election is a prime time for ballot measures because of the high turnout, said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, the executive director at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a progressive group.Other factors include partisan blockages at the state level, political parties trying to turn out issue-driven voters and the Dobbs decision, which has led to a record number of abortion-related referendums.

The big picture: The referendum count is on par with even-year elections when the average number of ballot measures is 161, said Ryan Byrne at Ballotpedia.
  • 10 states — including Arizona, Colorado, Florida and New York — are deciding whether to protect access to abortion or place limits on it.
  • Five states and Washington, D.C., are considering overhauls to how elected leaders are picked, whether through changes to primary elections, ranked choice voting or both.
  • Three states — Florida, North Dakota and South Dakota — are weighing whether to legalize marijuana.
The intrigue: Though the overall numbers are consistent, the 57 citizen-led initiatives this year are the most in a presidential election year since the 76 in 2016.

PPIC shows that Californians still have a conservative streak on crime:

Proposition 36 would allow felony charges for possessing certain drugs and for theft under $950, if the defendant has two prior drug or theft convictions. After reading the Proposition 36 ballot title and summary, 73 percent of likely voters say they would vote yes, while 25 percent would vote no. In September, findings were nearly identical (71% yes, 26% no). Today, as there was last month, there is broad—and bipartisan—support for Proposition 36. Regionally, support is highest in the Inland Empire (80%) and lowest in Los Angeles (70%, 71% Orange/San Diego, 73% Central Valley, 73% San Francisco Bay Area). Two in three or more across demographic groups would vote yes on Proposition 36.

...

 Proposition 6 (Eliminates Constitutional Provision Allowing Involuntary Servitude for Incarcerated Persons). Likely voters are slightly more likely to say they would vote no (56%) than yes (41%) on this legislative constitutional amendment. Support for this measure has declined slightly since September (46% yes, 50% no).

 



Sunday, October 27, 2024

Polling and HIstorical Data

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses election predictions.


Bruce Mehlman:

Polling is an inexact science (though still better than a Ouija Board). Political polls in 2020 & 2016 consistently under-estimated support for President Trump, especially in the “Rust Belt” swing states of MI, WI & PA. Have they solved the challenges this time, over-corrected (as in 2022) or once again failed to measure a mighty MAGA army? (NYTimes)


Saturday, October 26, 2024

Russia Is Helping Trump



From ODNI:
Today, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released the following statement:

“The IC assesses that Russian actors manufactured and amplified a recent video that falsely depicted an individual ripping up ballots in Pennsylvania, judging from information available to the IC and prior activities of other Russian influence actors, including videos and other disinformation activities. Local election officials have already debunked the video’s content.

This Russian activity is part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans, as detailed in prior ODNI election updates. In the lead up to election day and in the weeks and months after, the IC expects Russia to create and release additional media content that seeks to undermine trust in the integrity of the election and divide Americans.”

Shannon Bond at NPR:

The purported Bucks County video shows a person's hands opening envelopes and removing and examining the ballots inside. The person rips up ballots marked for Trump, cursing at the former president, while leaving ballots marked for Vice President Kamala Harris alone. "Vote Harris," the voice says at one point.

But the envelopes and ballots shown are not what the county uses to vote, the Bucks County Board of Elections said.

 ...

The purported Bucks County video shows a person's hands opening envelopes and removing and examining the ballots inside. The person rips up ballots marked for Trump, cursing at the former president, while leaving ballots marked for Vice President Kamala Harris alone. "Vote Harris," the voice says at one point.

But the envelopes and ballots shown are not what the county uses to vote, the Bucks County Board of Elections said.
...
Darren Linvill, co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, traced the Bucks County video back to a Russian propaganda operation known as "Storm-1516", first identified by Clemson, which is known for its tactic of producing staged videos that it then launders through influencers and phony news outlets.

"The particular video about Bucks County came from an account that we were familiar with," Linvill said. "It has originated Storm-1516 narratives before."
Cliff Watts at Microsoft:
Russian operatives continue to take steps to undermine the Harris-Walz campaign. Russian actors continue to create AI-enhanced deepfake videos about Vice President Harris. In one video, Harris is depicted as allegedly making derogatory comments about former President Donald Trump. In another from a Kremlin-aligned troll farm we track as Storm-1516, Harris is accused of illegal poaching in Zambia. Finally, another video spreads disinformation about Democratic vice president nominee Tim Walz, gaining more than 5 million views on X in the first 24 hours.

While most of these videos received minimal engagement, they underscore Russia’s ongoing use of both traditional and AI-generated content to influence U.S. audiences and stoke political discord. We have also seen some actors shifting their content publishing strategy from Telegram to X to reach U.S. audiences.

Friday, October 25, 2024

Russia and Campaign 2024

 Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses foreign influence and Trump's attack on democracy.  Russia helped Trump through 2020.  As Russia began its latest invasion of UkraineTrump lavished praise on Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. 

David Klepper at AP:

Groups in Russia created and helped spread viral disinformation targeting Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Tuesday.

The content, which includes baseless accusations about the Minnesota governor’s time as a teacher, contains several indications that it was manipulated, said the official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Analysts identified clues that linked the content to Russian disinformation operations, said the official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the office of the director.

Digital researchers had already linked the video to Russia, but Tuesday’s announcement is the first time federal authorities have confirmed the connection.

The disinformation targeting Walz is consistent with Russian disinformation seeking to undermine the Democratic campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris and Walz, her running mate. Russia also has spread disinformation aimed at stoking discord and division ahead of voting, officials said, and may seek to encourage violent protests after Election Day.

 JD Vance goes full moral equivalence on NewsNation:

Both of these parties want this war to end. And I think unfortunately, you’ve got a lot of American leaders who like to beat their chest and say, Well, this is the good guy and that’s the bad guy. Look, yes, Russia should not have invaded Ukraine, but we are where we are, and what’s in the best interest of America, and what I believe is in the best interest of Ukraine and Russia is for the killing to stop. 

Thursday, October 24, 2024

Third Parties and Congressional Elections

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

Ally Mutnick at Politico:
House Democrats are turning to unlikely saviors to help their nominees win in difficult districts: third-party candidates.

In Montana, Ohio and Alaska, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is signaling to its allies that they should boost Libertarians or independent candidates in three targeted House races. All three seats were won by former President Donald Trump in 2020 and it will be difficult for Democrats to win them without siphoning off Trump’s voters from the GOP congressional candidate.

The DCCC previewed the strategy on messaging websites often referred to as “red boxes” — a public and legal way for them to signal outside groups under campaign finance law. The House GOP campaign arm is also asking its allies to get involved in Alaska, where the top four vote-getters advanced from the all-party primary. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent in the general election, the race proceeds to ranked-choice voting.

In Alaska, a super PAC allied with House Democrats has already answered the DCCC request. Another Democratic-aligned group has waded into Montana.

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

General Kelly Goes on the Record

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the partiesThe state of the GOP is not good. 

 Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellioncoups, and secession.  

Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.   

He is planning an authoritarian agenda and would take care to eliminate any internal dissent.


General Kelly thinks Trump is a fascist. Michael S. Schmidt at NYT:
In response to a question about whether he thought Mr. Trump was a fascist, Mr. Kelly first read aloud a definition of fascism that he had found online.

“Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said.

He added: “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic:

In their book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser reported that Trump asked John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?” Trump, at various points, had grown frustrated with military officials he deemed disloyal and disobedient. (Throughout the course of his presidency, Trump referred to flag officers as “my generals.”) According to Baker and Glasser, Kelly explained to Trump that German generals “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.” This correction did not move Trump to reconsider his view: “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the president responded.

This week, I asked Kelly about their exchange. He told me that when Trump raised the subject of “German generals,” Kelly responded by asking, “‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” He went on: “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’ I explained to him that Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.” Kelly told me Trump was not acquainted with Rommel.
Kelly—a retired Marine general who, as a young man, had volunteered to serve in Vietnam despite actually suffering from bone spurs—said in an interview for the CNN reporter Jim Sciutto’s book, The Return of Great Powers, that Trump praised aspects of Hitler’s leadership. “He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things,’” Kelly recalled. “I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, (Hitler) rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world.” Kelly admonished Trump: “I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing.’”


 

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Boardrooms Drift Left (a Bit)

 Our more recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses voter demographics and the diploma divide.


The Political Transformation of Corporate America, 2001-2022
Columbia Law and Economics Working Paper No. 4974868
118 Pages Posted: 9 Oct 2024 Last revised: 17 Oct 2024
Reilly Steel
Columbia Law School; Princeton University
Date Written: October 02, 2024

Abstract

This article reconciles conflicting views about the political landscape of corporate America with new data on the revealed political preferences of 97,469 corporate directors and executives at 9,005 different U.S. companies. I find that average ideology for these individuals has shifted meaningfully to the left over time, changing from modestly conservative in 2001 to roughly centrist by 2022. This finding supports a middle-ground position between conventional wisdom casting "big business" as a conservative stronghold and revisionist views holding the opposite. Counterfactual simulations and a difference-in-differences design suggest multifaceted causes for these changes, and hand-collected data on corporate stances on LGBTQ-related legislation coupled with an instrumental variables design indicate that individual ideology has large effects on firm-level political activity. Overall, this transformation has profound implications for American politics, as the individuals comprising one of the most powerful interest groups—corporate elites—appear to be fracturing ideologically and to some degree even switching sides.
Suggested Citation:
Steel, Reilly, The Political Transformation of Corporate America, 2001-2022 (October 02, 2024). Columbia Law and Economics Working Paper No. 4974868, Available at SSRN:

Composition of the Electorate

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020. Our next book will discuss the extraordinary fight between an elderly white ex-president and a younger Black/Asian woman.

Ron Brownstein at CNN:
Extending a pattern that stretches back decades, White voters without a college degree, the cornerstone of the modern GOP coalition, have declined by a little more than 2 percentage points as a share of eligible voters since 2020, falling below 40% of the eligible voting pool for the first time ever, according a new analysis of the latest Census Bureau data by demographer William Frey shared exclusively with CNN.

While those working-class Whites are shrinking, Frey found that both Whites with at least a four-year college degree and voters of color have each increased since 2020 by about a single percentage point as a share of eligible voters. Those increases also continue long-term trends that have seen well-educated Whites grow to represent more than 1-in-4 eligible voters and people of color rise past 1-in-3.

These trends help explain why the former president has devoted so much effort to reaching beyond his traditional base of White voters without a college education to attract more Black and Latino voters, especially men. And, in turn, the trends help explain the emphasis the vice president is placing on attracting more college-educated White voters who have previously leaned toward the GOP — a priority she underscored by barnstorming across populous white-collar suburbs outside Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee with GOP former Rep. Liz Cheney on Monday.
...
He also found that women will comprise nearly 52% of all eligible voters, which should help Harris. But his analysis shows that number actually represents a very small shift in the eligible electorate since 2020 toward men, which at the margin might benefit Trump. Frey also finds that Generation Z will make a big jump in their share of eligible voters, from about 1-in-10 last time to more than 1-in-6 this year. That increase underscores the stakes in Harris’ attempt to max out her support among younger women and Trump’s determined attempts to court young men.

Monday, October 21, 2024

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the partiesThe state of the GOP is not good. 

 Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellioncoups, and secession.  

Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.   

He is planning an authoritarian agenda and would take care to eliminate any internal dissent.

 Annie Gowen at WP:

For the third time in a week, former president Donald Trump repeated his charge that Democrats allied against him are “the enemy from within” in an interview with Fox News during which he called the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol “a beautiful thing.”

Trump, in an interview with “Media Buzz” that aired Sunday, referred to Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, both California Democrats, as “bad people” who threaten democracy. Interviewer Howard Kurtz asked, “Are you prepared to say now that you will not use law enforcement to punish or prosecute your political opponents?”

Trump responded, “Excuse me, that’s what they’re using on me.”

In a separate Fox News interview that aired on Oct. 13, Trump said that his foes could be “very easily handled” by the National Guard, or, “if really necessary, by the military.” He repeated the line about the “enemy from within” days later during a Fox News town hall event.
“You call Americans who don’t support you ‘the enemy within.’ That’s a pretty ominous phrase to use about other Americans,” Kurtz noted.

“I think that’s accurate,” Trump replied, before referencing Pelosi and Schiff, two outspoken Trump critics.

“These are bad people. We have a lot of bad people,” the former president said. “But when you look at shifty Schiff and some of the others, yeah, they are to me the enemy from within. I think Nancy Pelosi is an enemy from within.”

 Michael M. Grynbaum and David McCabe at NYT:

“CBS should lose its license,” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform last week. “60 Minutes should be immediately taken off the air.” He has repeated his demands in speeches and in interviews, echoing his earlier calls for ABC’s license to be “terminated” because of his displeasure with how the network handled his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.

On Sunday, Mr. Trump ratcheted up his threats against CBS. “We’re going to subpoena their records,” he told Fox News in an interview, repeating his claim that the network’s edit of Ms. Harris’s recent appearance on “60 Minutes” was misleading. Asked if revoking a broadcast license was a “drastic punishment,” Mr. Trump did not answer directly, instead lobbing a string of insults at Ms. Harris, whom he called “incompetent” and “a Marxist."

PRRI:

Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to support their candidate assuming office by force after an election loss.
  • Nearly one in five Republicans (19%), including 23% of Republicans who hold a favorable view of Trump, say that if Trump loses the election, he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office.
  • About one in ten Democrats (12%), including 12% of Democrats who hold a favorable view of Harris, say that if Harris loses the election, she should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office.
  • Nearly half of Americans (49%) agree that there is a real danger that Trump will use the presidency to become a dictator, compared to only 28% who hold similar concerns about Harris.
Although most Americans reject political violence, Republicans remain more likely than Democrats to support potential political violence.
  • Nearly half of Americans (45%) believe Republicans are determined to stay in power, even if that means resorting to political violence, compared with about one-third (35%) who think the same about Democrats.
  • Nearly three in ten Republicans (29%) believe that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country, compared with 16% of independents and 8% of Democrats.
  • Republicans are twice as likely (27%) as independents (14%) or Democrats (12%) to agree that armed everyday citizens should be poll watchers, even if this makes some voters uncomfortable.
  • While most Americans (80%) disagree that “if the 2024 presidential election is compromised by voter fraud, everyday Americans will need to ensure the rightful leader takes office, even if it requires taking violent actions,” Republicans (22%) are more likely to agree than independents (14%) or Democrats (12%).
Views on whether Trump broke the law trying to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, whether the election was stolen from Trump, and whether those convicted in the Jan. 6 insurrection are being held hostage by the government are strongly shaped by partisanship and news viewership.
  • A slim majority of Americans (53%) agree it is likely that Trump broke the law to try to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, though just 17% of Republicans agree. Americans who most trust Fox News (12%) or far-right news outlets (4%) are the least likely to believe Trump broke the law to stay in power after losing the election.
  • More than six in ten Republicans (62%), compared with 27% of independents and 4% of Democrats, believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Americans who most trust far-right TV news outlets (84%) and Fox News (64%) are the most likely to agree with the statement that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
  • Only one in four Americans (25%) agree with Trump’s frequent claim that “the people convicted for their role in the violent Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol are really patriots who are being held hostage by the government.” Republicans (46%) are more than twice as likely as independents (20%) and about seven times as likely as Democrats (7%) to agree with this statement.

 

Sunday, October 20, 2024

Trump and Disinhibition

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.

One thing is certain about the current campaign:  Trump isn't getting any younger.  He is sundowning.


Donald Trump's repeated gaffes, non sequiturs, and plain odd behavior have opened the door to questions from opponents about the 78-year-old candidate's mental and physical fitness.

From bopping to the beat of his music playlist for nearly 40 minutes at a recent swing state town hall to blaming Ukraine for Russia's invasion, to riffing on locker room gossip about a pro golfer's anatomy, Trump is providing plenty of fodder for rivals who've declared him "unhinged" and worse.

As Republicans did to 81-year-old President Joe Biden earlier this year, Democrats including horror novelist Stephen King and former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are seizing every opportunity to bash Trump − and it's a target-rich environment.



Moving on from that endowment to him addressing his competitor, who is well-endowed financially in comparison to Trump’s campaign (Harris raised $1 billion in the less than three months she’s been a candidate, more than Trump has finagled in a year of campaigning), Trump hit another low when referring to her on Saturday. While he has been plenty derogatory to Harris since she entered the candidacy, having called her “retarded” and also “mentally disabled” during recent speeches, this time he resorted to just dropping the s-bomb.

“So you have to tell Kamala Harris that you’ve had enough, that you just can’t take it anymore,” he told attendees on Saturday while they cheered. “We can’t stand you. You’re a shit vice president. The worst. You’re the worst vice president, Kamala. You’re fired. Get the hell out of here.”


According to a recent online survey of 1,217 Americans conducted by Ipsos on behalf MDVIP, a national network of primary care doctors who focus on delivering personalized, patient-centered medicine and preventive care, finds that one-third of Americans have a close relative who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease or dementia (31%). The study also finds that two-thirds of Americans are concerned about their risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (67%), and that most are interested in mitigating this risk (80%). l

Musk Schemes

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses party organizations and campaign finance.

Rick Hasen:

Hugo Lowell: “Elon Musk says on stage at a town hall that America PAC will be awarding $1 million every day until the election to a registered Pennsylvania voter who has signed his petition. Musk awarded the first $1 million this evening to someone at the town hall, bringing the guy onto the stage and handing him a jumbo check, lotto-style. Musk is essentially incentivizing likely Trump voters in PA to register to vote: Petition is to support for 1A and 2A, so basically R voters. But they also have to be registered to vote, so if they weren’t already, they would do it now.”

Though maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, this one is clearly illegal. See 52 U.S.C. 10307(c): “Whoever knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his name, address or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the purpose of encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both…” (Emphasis added.)


Mercenary Door Knockers

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses party organizations and campaign finance.  Trump is outsourcing his ground game.

Don the Con is getting conned.

Hugo Lowell at The Guardian:

Donald Trump’s campaign may be failing to reach thousands of voters they hope to turn out in Arizona and Nevada, with roughly a quarter of door-knocks done by America Pac flagged by its canvassing app as potentially fraudulent, according to leaked data and people familiar with the matter.

The potentially fake door-knocks – when canvassers falsely claim they visited a home – could present a serious setback to Trump as he and Kamala Harris remain even in the polls with fewer than 20 days to an election that increasingly appears set to be determined by turnout.

The Trump campaign earlier this year outsourced the bulk of its ground game to America Pac, the political action committee founded by Musk, betting that spending millions to turn out Trump supporters, especially those who don’t typically vote, would boost returns.
But leaked America Pac data obtained by the Guardian shows that roughly 24% of the door-knocks in Arizona and 25% of the door-knocks in Nevada this week were flagged under “unusual survey logs” by the Campaign Sidekick canvassing app.

The Arizona data, for example, shows that out of 35,692 doors hit by 442 canvassers working for Blitz Canvassing in the America Pac operation on Wednesday, 8,511 doors were flagged under the unusual survey logs.

The extent of the flagged doors in America Pac’s operation underscores the risk of outsourcing a ground-game program, where paid canvassers are typically not as invested in their candidate’s victory compared to volunteers or campaign staff​.

 Former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA):


Saturday, October 19, 2024

Betting Markets and a Crypto Mirage

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses election predictions.

 Alexander Osipovich at WSJ:

Over the past two weeks, the chances of a Trump victory in the November election have surged on Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction market. Its bettors were giving Trump a 60% chance of winning on Friday, while Harris’s chances were 40%. The candidates were in a dead heat at the start of October.

Trump’s gains on Polymarket have cheered his supporters, and they have been followed by the odds shifting in Trump’s favor in other betting markets. Elon Musk flagged Trump’s growing lead on Polymarket to his 200 million X followers on Oct. 6, praising the concept of betting markets. “More accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line,” Musk posted.

But the surge might be a mirage manufactured by a group of four Polymarket accounts that have collectively pumped about $30 million of crypto into bets that Trump will win.
Polymarket presidential-election odds“There’s strong reason to believe they are the same entity,” said Miguel Morel, chief executive of Arkham Intelligence, a blockchain analysis firm that examined the accounts.

The big bets on Trump aren’t necessarily nefarious. Some observers have suggested that they were simply placed by a large bettor convinced that Trump will win and looking for a big payday. Others, however, see the bets as an influence campaign designed to fuel social-media buzz for the former president.