Rep. Tom Reed (R, NY-23) fiercely criticized at town hall

[GlobeSoc]

The PVI of this district is kind of misleading, it's a combination of heavily Republican rural areas that probably swung toward Trump along with Ithaca. Ithaca prevents it from being too Republican but the district is heavily polarized and there's not a whole lot a Democrat could gain in Ithaca. Of course one possibility is Ithaca turnout surges and rural turnout craters, very likely in a bad Trump midterm.

...or that Republican support in rural areas craters.

Does anyone think that Donald Trump is any more knowledgeable about agricultural issues than he is about defense or foreign policy? 

2017 is beginning to look like another "Year Without a Winter"... see also 2012, when the usual blizzards that leave behind heavy snows that blanket the Corn Belt  and protect the ground water while melting late in the spring just in time to allow copious soil moisture for germinating grain crops. Although summer 2012 was not really dry, the corn crop was much below average. I can imagine southern Michigan looking much like the northern San Joaquin Valley of California with yellowed laws (which also reduced our lawn mowing). But streams were low, suggesting a low water table.

Global warming cause poor crop yields and will hit farmers in their bank accounts, and what has usually been a reliable constituency for Republicans could turn on the GOP.   

How long would you say it would take for the rurals to turn against the GOP if this is the case, and what districts would have the largest swings from such a backlash?

[(Still) muted by Kalwejt until March 31]

I'm pretty confident, by the way, that had Mitt actually run, the mixture of being much stronger in New England and the rural West than Rubio, while simultaneously much weaker among religious conservatives (and caucus-goers; remember, Rubio won MN, which Romney lost to Santorum) in the South, would've been pretty terrible for Trump -- Mitt could've more-or-less matched Rubio in Iowa, stolen both NH and NV from Trump, while bleeding hard enough in South Carolina to push the state to Cruz. Trump would've still entered the primaries first-place in the national popular vote, but with much better spread to his opposition, he would've quickly fallen apart, not winning any states until Super Tuesday and only a few Southern ones even then.

The race would probably have narrowed to a Romney v. Cruz fight, which I suspect would've basically become a replay or Romney v. Santorum, with narrow victories in Midwestern states finally culminating in massive triumphs in the Northeast that push Cruz out.

-Why would Mitt win New Hampshire? Kasich and Rubio combined didn't amount to enough votes to beat Trump in New Hampshire. Romney was only strong in the Northeast in the 2012 primaries due to the extremely weak slate of candidates. Romney's South Carolina performance in real life was basically the same as Rubio's.

[Vosem]

I'm pretty confident, by the way, that had Mitt actually run, the mixture of being much stronger in New England and the rural West than Rubio, while simultaneously much weaker among religious conservatives (and caucus-goers; remember, Rubio won MN, which Romney lost to Santorum) in the South, would've been pretty terrible for Trump -- Mitt could've more-or-less matched Rubio in Iowa, stolen both NH and NV from Trump, while bleeding hard enough in South Carolina to push the state to Cruz. Trump would've still entered the primaries first-place in the national popular vote, but with much better spread to his opposition, he would've quickly fallen apart, not winning any states until Super Tuesday and only a few Southern ones even then.

The race would probably have narrowed to a Romney v. Cruz fight, which I suspect would've basically become a replay or Romney v. Santorum, with narrow victories in Midwestern states finally culminating in massive triumphs in the Northeast that push Cruz out.

-Why would Mitt win New Hampshire? Kasich and Rubio combined didn't amount to enough votes to beat Trump in New Hampshire. Romney was only strong in the Northeast in the 2012 primaries due to the extremely weak slate of candidates. Romney's South Carolina performance in real life was basically the same as Rubio's.

Polling in December 2016 of Trump v. Mitt had Mitt beating Trump; it's because there was (is, really) a segment of voters who voted in both 2012 and 2016 for "a businessman", who they believed could fix the economy, and so switched from Mitt to Donald. In NH, at least, polling showed Mitt could've won most of them back had he run.

Rubio ran a campaign that leaned more heavily on social conservatism than Mitt's. Mitt won 28% of the vote in SC in 2012, but keep in mind that he had no "establishmentarian" challenger still in the race by that point; virtually all of Kasich and Bush's support in 2016 (16%) would've come from Mitt, with the remainder having gone to Rubio; this leaves about 10% of Rubio's support which was socially conservative, anti-Romney, and anti-Trump. In a race where Romney ran, Rubio would probably never have surged in the first place, and those voters would've leaked to Cruz, who would then have been tied with Trump in the state, 32-32. I presume that in such a scenario it would've been clear that the race in South Carolina was a two-horse one, and enough other anti-Trump votes would've leaked to Cruz to push him over the top.

Rubio and Mitt are superficially similar, but they ran different campaigns that had different (overlapping in some respects, but not in others) bases of support. Compare Romney's 43% in Beaufort County with Rubio's 28% -- barely half. Or Rubio's 18% in Horry to Romney's 30%. Or, alternatively, for a more rural, socially conservative area, compare Romney's 18% in Edgefield County to Rubio's 22%. Different candidates, different campaigns.

[pbrower2a]

The PVI of this district is kind of misleading, it's a combination of heavily Republican rural areas that probably swung toward Trump along with Ithaca. Ithaca prevents it from being too Republican but the district is heavily polarized and there's not a whole lot a Democrat could gain in Ithaca. Of course one possibility is Ithaca turnout surges and rural turnout craters, very likely in a bad Trump midterm.

...or that Republican support in rural areas craters.

Does anyone think that Donald Trump is any more knowledgeable about agricultural issues than he is about defense or foreign policy?  

2017 is beginning to look like another "Year Without a Winter"... see also 2012, when the usual blizzards that leave behind heavy snows that blanket the Corn Belt  and protect the ground water while melting late in the spring just in time to allow copious soil moisture for germinating grain crops. Although summer 2012 was not really dry, the corn crop was much below average. I can imagine southern Michigan looking much like the northern San Joaquin Valley of California with yellowed laws (which also reduced our lawn mowing). But streams were low, suggesting a low water table.

Global warming cause poor crop yields and will hit farmers in their bank accounts, and what has usually been a reliable constituency for Republicans could turn on the GOP.    

My district (MI-07, a declining-industrial district with agriculture returning to the importance that it once had) would be a Democratic takeover. This is the Corn Belt.

I'm thinking of some rural districts in Iowa, southern Wisconsin and Michigan, and northern Illinois and Indiana, and northwestern Ohio that would become vulnerable.  

Were I running on a Democratic ticket for Representative (state of federal) I would take on global warming for its effect upon agriculture.

Don't like the blizzards? There's a solution for you. It's a seven-letter word that begins in F and ends in A. We really do need our grain crops, and they need some winter blizzards.  
How long would you say it would take for the rurals to turn against the GOP if this is the case, and what districts would have the largest swings from such a backlash?
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