Does Atlas rely too heavily on voter stereotypes?

[ProgressiveModerate]

The educated suburban wine mom who voted for Romney but despises Trump and now is a reliable Dem, especially post-Dobbs.

The Conservative religious non-white who finally flipped to Trump in 2020 b/c of COVID and culture war stuff and will continue to vote R for the foreseeable future.

ect, ect.

The biggest issue with these stereotypes in my view is they're often made retrospectively, yet applied to future scenarios that haven't happened yet. Say just for arguments sake, well to do suburban communities shift right in 2024, then a new stereotype would likely be created about how well off suburbanites despise "wokeness" or whatever and then that would be applied to the 2028 election, and so on.

I think these stereotypes are too often used as arguments to try and make a hypothetical scenario seem like reality.

[BlueSwan]

Well, I think it is reasonable to try to find patterns in voting behaviour, but of course you are right that voting behaviour is quite complex and that one risks making poor predictions based on these. I do believe that both of the phenomenons you mention are very real, but we tend to focus a lot on these because these are the SWING voters and hence extremely important for election outcomes.

I'm not sure to which extent these are made retroactively. The idea of educated women abandoning Trump was definitely aired before it materialized and the idea that socially conservative minorities are flocking to Trump due to COVID and wokeness is very much a current thing and in my view the main reason why Trump is currently winning (combined with the very same issues attracting more young white men than in previous elections).