Was race a predictor of a county’s trend direction?

[Unelectable Bystander]

Is it possible that “lower turnout” (relative to presidential) benefits solely democrats in white areas and benefits solely republicans in diverse areas?

This might explain:

-The extent of the R strength in the 4 biggest states (even though all 4 were likely primed to improve on Trump’s numbers even with presidential turnout, for various reasons)

-The rust belt’s relative lean being much further to the right in recent presidential years compared to recent midterms. It might also explain why Wisconsin, where R’s rely more on educated areas compared to Michigan and Pennsylvania, has held up much better for R’s in midterms than the other two.

-Plains states trending left this year

-Nevada

-Georgia not trending as far left as it could have in recent midterms (Kemp’s wins, Walker’s close loss, etc)

-Weird county results, like Mahoning being on of the few areas in Ohio to not swing left

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

AAD had a more nuanced version of this take on Election Day.

Considering how everyone was talking about how we all knew nothing going into this election, we shouldn't be surprised if there are f[inks]ed up results that are otherwise incongruous

Also, of course the turnout dropoff from 2020 was never going to be even. If we take the Dane and the NoVa stuff at face value, and then combine it with some of the special elections, it seems like Democrats are blowing the door open in specifically educated liberal white enclaves, even if they're not necessarily doing great with liberal whites in more racially mixed areas. (?? I don't know any other way to explain this pattern ??). That seems like a bit of an ominous omen for race relations, IMO.

This sounds very bad, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens when all the mail votes are counted.

The R House overperformance in NV mostly seemed to come down to Washoe County (NV-2). And the northern Metro Atlanta districts were redrawn to make the new GA-6 a R shoe-in, I can't see that race going D even in a 2nd Trump midterm.

[Skill and Chance]

This is overstated a bit, but it's undeniable at this point that high turnout helps Democrats in megacities and in the South, but helps Republicans everywhere else.

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

I think what is clear is Republicans need to dramatically change their messaging more to appeal to non college whites. Not so sure with minorities

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

catering to Asians or blacks -- both suboptimally distributed for the elecotral college -- doesn't make a large difference (good thread on the fruitlessness of the GOP trying to win the black vote: https://twitter.com/xenocryptsite/status/1635426013407485952). Hispanics aren't monolithic, some identify as white, and can be targeted.

https://twitter.com/rp_griffin/status/1633572091080441858
"If you take a bunch of policy questions on different topics and scale them, you find that ideological self-identification is far less predictive of views among Black, Latino, and API respondents."
 link

In every category here Asians are closer to Whites than Blacks or Latinos are, but are also closer to Blacks (and especially Latinos) than they are to Whites.


https://twitter.com/PatrickRuffini/status/1636449803423952898
"Here's the problem: Even if you can argue that ideology itself is an invalid construct, there's a huge mismatch between indices built off policy questions and Black voter support in general elections. Black & other voters *who take the exact same positions* vote very differently"
 link

Some things I'm seeing here regarding 2020 voter survey data:

• The conservative-on-30%-or-less subset of Latino voters were infinitely more likely to vote for Trump than every other racial group due to not being >95% Biden. Latinos por Trump effect?
• Asians were Trumpier than Latinos within the 30% to 60% conservative range (the gap is largest between 40% and 50% but still only 5% points or so for Biden-Trump margin), but more D/less R outside that range.
• 70% to 80% conservative Asians were noticeably less R than their Latino counterparts, suggestive of a #neverTrump effect.
• The conservative-on-80%-or-more subset of Black voters were unanimous Trump voters.