How the Democrats took back Michigan

[Virginiá]

Not sure how its a “take back” when they failed to win either the State House or State Senate.

Gerrymandered to hell, just like Wisconsin.

Wisconsin assembly was a failure even if it's a gerrymander. NC was a much more brutal gerrymander yet dems made gains. It's clea4r the rust belt besides maybe pa is trending r. You only picked up like 1 seat in the assembly.

Trending R???   They won the state senate and state house votes in both Wisconsin and Michigan easily.   In Michigan it was by 5% and in Wisconsin it was by 8%.    It's just a matter of Geography and Gerrymandering that kept the Republican majorities intact.

It's not even like 2016 was the first time these states have had close elections in the past couple decades either, and this year doesn't really help the R-trend argument. This election also seemed to totally reverse the trend among young voters in PA/WI/MI/MN as well, sending them back to Democrats in droves, so while I can see why some would say Republicans are on the upswing there, I don't really agree. At least in the sense that such a trend is going to really deliver for the GOP.

[Virginiá]

Can't say I really enjoyed the article. It's just one of those post-election fluff pieces that doesn't really add anything new except some small details about how the candidates came to be/organized themselves.

This wasn't a Presidential election lmao so this doesn't count as 'taking back Michigan.' BTW John James was not too far from winning as a relatively unknown and underfunded figure.

Why does a presidential election count but not, say, a Governor's race? Not everything revolves around presidential elections, and in fact, that kind of race is even less relevant because it's a single federal election for a national office, whereas a sweep of state executive offices has direct and tangible impacts on the actual state in question. If anything, the failure to take back even a single chamber of the legislature (regardless of why) is more significant here.

[Virginiá]

Because he isn't arguing in good faith.

I don't even know why I responded tbh

[Virginiá]

I just think it's odd and quite frankly, pointless, to try and force people to "think" about their choices more by making them actually check off each one individually. You're not going to get people to make better decisions that way (I'd have to see studies to believe it at least), and for all the people who already know they are voting straight ticket anyway, by not allowing this feature, you just create longer lines and waste people's time. It's not even like straight ticket voting states are the only ones with absurdly consistent election results either. Nevada doesn't have it and their results were very similar across different branches/offices, indicating people mostly voted straight ticket anyway.

If we want people to actually put more thought into the political process, we should more aggressively teach civics in middle/high school, so as to lay the foundation for the critical thought we want people to use. I don't know why this is ignored so much. It seems like such an obvious solution.

[Virginiá]

tbf, she just came up short of 10 points, so it's not insignificant.