Should we trust atlas poster's knowledge of their home communities more?

[ProgressiveModerate]

In hindsight, there seemed to be somewhat of a theme amongst Harris-supporting Atlas posters where many were bearish on Harris's prospects in their local community, but assumed it would be different elsewhere and she would ultimately be favored to win.

I certainly fall into this bucket. I'm from NYC and go to college in upstate NY and always said I thought Biden (and later Harris) would do poorly in NY. Specifically, I said I thought that Trump could get Zeldin numbers or better in many parts of NYC, especially many of the ethnic pockets - something many other atlas posters said or implied wasn't possible. I made threads asking questions like if Harris could fall below 70% in Brooklyn, and heading into election day I only had her as a narrow favorite in places like Passaic County. I also said I generally expected Harris to hold up better in upstate NY, which looks to be mostly correct.

However, I also sort of assumed that Harris would just hold up better in most the rest of the Country and do similarly to Biden 2020. I remember having discussions with atlas posters from places like Forsyth County GA, and Collin County, TX where pre-election I generally expected Harris to make notable gains which didn't manifest. Turns out they were correct in being bearish on Harris's prospects in those counties.

I guess one could also argue this carries into social groups as well - the demographic where I did accurately pick up a noticeable rightwards swing was amongst young people and in particular young men.

I wonder if going forwards, we should put more weight in what "high quality" atlas posters have to say about the communities they're most familiar with.

[Paul Biya isn’t going far enough]

Yes.

[TWTown]

Personally, I didn’t see that much energy for Harris. A week or so before the election, I took a walk around my Biden +60 neighborhood in Chicago and found only one Harris sign. It took me until after Election Day to find my next Harris “sign”, a sticker on the bumper of a car. I suppose that was a bigger sign than anything because I couldn’t walk outside without running into a Biden sign back in 2020.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Personally, I didn’t see that much energy for Harris. A week or so before the election, I took a walk around my Biden +60 neighborhood in Chicago and found only one Harris sign. It took me until after Election Day to find my next Harris “sign”, a sticker on the bumper of a car. I suppose that was a bigger sign than anything because I couldn’t walk outside without running into a Biden sign back in 2020.

Same thing here, although in much of NYC you don't really do yard signs for obvious reasons. I never felt the "we're seeing 2008 levels of enthusiasm" here, or anything close to it.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

Some people have valuable insight for sure. In 2020 GoldenMainer (I-ME) talked about how Susan Collens was actually popular in the state and got a lot of results in Maine and she had a good chance. I don't mind anecdotes, I love to read them actually. My gripe is when people gatekeep their states and dismiss others for their thoughts. Just because someone lives in a state does not make their viewpoint any more valid or legitimate than someone else's. I absolutely hate it when people say "I live here and that's not the case, your wrong".

[Pericles]

If anything it seemed like most of the anecdotal data skewed Harris, which may have been true or it may have been what people wanted to see.

[TheReckoning]

Atlas posters are extremely unrepresentative of the broader public, so not at all.

[ottermax]

What skewed things for me was how prevalent Harris signs and energy was in parts of SoCal that are historically Republican leaning like North County in San Diego, Whittier, and parts of Los Angeles. But it was also clear to me campaigning in working class Latino neighborhoods that there was very little energy or engagement with politics right now - especially for progressives.

However what scares me is how entrenched some of these politics feel. The rightward shift among young Latinos is something I've seen since 2021 (post-Covid + rise of Tiktok) and it feels really permanent in a sense. On the flip side the more educated people I know who have been traditional conservatives have flipped to becoming diehard Democrats now, but there's a lot more young Latino men than highly educated people in the electorate.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Of course.

I get my news on the USA primarily from this forum first, then I watch PBS New Hour. Then I merge the two for a more rounded perspective

The political analysis of this election has been excellent. Some really good discussions post-election. Pre-election was a bit of a whirlpool. I will make an exception for Ottermax. His series of posts pre-election were very organised.

I much prefer the raw and ugly truth of people on the ground telling their story and situation.

The pain is real.

[Averroës]

Not necessarily.

I always thought that it was close, once Biden stepped aside, but my prediction throughout most of the campaign was that Trump would sweep the swing states. It was only during the closing week of the campaign that I changed my mind, and a lot of that had to do with positive anecdotes I was hearing from Harris supporters who live in those states.

Those anecdotes still make sense in retrospect. Despite losing the swing states, Harris overperformed in most of them. Her vote totals don't look all that disappointing. 2020 was the highest turnout election in modern history and it made sense to assume that there would be some erosion.

The problem was that I wasn't hearing from anyone who could see just how high turnout would be once again, or that Trump held a massive advantage among less politically engaged voters. That's always going to be hard to predict.

I'm still skeptical of anyone who was highly confident that Trump would win, by the way. There's still credit in getting a gut-level call right, but if you're saying there was an evidence-based reason to view him as anything more than a slight favorite, I would need to be persuaded.

[He's turned to dust now, one of the chosen few]

We should trust people's experiences of places more than glib truisms about their demographics and voting patterns.

[EastOfEden]

I think so, yes.

My read on things here in Utah was pretty close to right, locally. I thought it pretty much looked like 2020, but with a slight further swing toward Ds in suburbs and among white voters, and a slight swing toward Rs in urban centers and among minorities, which would more or less cancel each other out. And that's exactly what happened - in Utah. Swing from 2020 is less than a tenth of a percentage point. But it turned out that what was happening in other places was rather different.



For whatever it's worth, I've also been vindicated about Davis County. Universal swing right nationally? Nope, Davis is swinging 3 points left (that's a 9 point trend, to the extent that the notion of trend even applies in this election) and Harris is the first D to hit 35% there since Johnson.

What's weird is Morgan County swinging left even more. It has a population of 12,000 and is literally 88% Mormon. And no, it's not spillover from Davis (doesn't even have a road connection) or Summit (everything north of Wanship is as R as Morgan is). I have no explanation for that one.

[Steve from Lambeth]

We should trust people's experiences of places more than glib truisms about their demographics and voting patterns.

[Joe Biden 2028]

Yes. A lot of points I've been arguing for months ended up being proven right.

1. I'm 25, but I consider myself an old soul. I am friends with a lot of people old enough to be my parent and my grandparent.

When Biden had the extremely poor debate in June, every Democrat kinda shrugged their shoulders. Some said he should drop out but not a single one said they wouldn't vote for him. For reference, I am mostly talking about African Americans age 40+. In fact, many weren't bothered by it. This is a demographic with a lot of health problems.

When Harris became the nominee, more shoulder shrugs. No one aged 40+ were upset, but I never notived any enthusiasm either. Much less Obama 2008 levels, which is laughable for me. If anything, I saw even less enthusism than 2020. People were just burnt out of politics.

Here was something that was shocking to me. Black men under the age of 40 opening disliking Harris and rooting for Trump. I knew guys who voted for Hillary and Biden, but not Harris. Sure, some black guys I knew voted for Harris. But I knew more who stayed home. And yes, I knew several that voted for Trump for the first time.

The conclusion I reached is that Harris didn't really gain any new voters. Actually she lost some when it came to African Americans.

2. Being 25, I know a lot of Gen Z people obviously. College age, grad students, etc. Most refused to vote Democrat because of Gaza. Didn't matter if it was Biden or Harris. I saw no change. Once again, I never saw the enthusiasm people online were claiming Harris had.

The conclusion I reached was that Harris made no gain with young voters.

3. Finally, Muslim voters. I am a second generation Muslim American. A Palestinian American to boot. Almost every Muslim I knew voted for Biden in 2020, because of the Muslim ban and the Saudi led war in Yemen. The Gaza conflict made most of them stay home. I knew a few Jill Stein voters.

That said, I know a lot of store owners. Guys aged 40+. And I heard plently of grumbling that Democrats were soft on crime and made shoplifitng legal. There has definitly been a rise in crime in my area since 2020 despite the stats saying otherwise.

I also heard a lot of grumbling about Democrats caring more about trans issues than Gaza. No one wants a man to guy into the female restroom.

To my knowledge, I didn't know anyone Muslim American to vote Trump. But he was very much seen as more favorable or prefered by males aged 40+. Many of whom are immigrants!

The conclusion I reached is that Harris made no gains with Muslim voters

I know atlas will disagree, but I don't think picking Harris over Biden made any difference. Not in Tennessee. Of course we aren't a swing state so we don't matter but I doubt it was much different in the rest of the country.

I am not saying Biden would have won or was on track to win. But I don't think he would have done much worst tbh.

Just my personal observation

[ProgressiveModerate]

Some people have valuable insight for sure. In 2020 GoldenMainer (I-ME) talked about how Susan Collens was actually popular in the state and got a lot of results in Maine and she had a good chance. I don't mind anecdotes, I love to read them actually. My gripe is when people gatekeep their states and dismiss others for their thoughts. Just because someone lives in a state does not make their viewpoint any more valid or legitimate than someone else's. I absolutely hate it when people say "I live here and that's not the case, your wrong".

Agree, and I remember GoldenMainer and they were one of the main reasons I was always a bit bearish on Gideon's prospects (though I certainly did not see Collins + .

I think the gatekeeping this is very true, but I do think there's a certain level of culture and vibes of a community you'll never truly understand without living there. I think many posters have stereotypes about places they're not from that often aren't true, but then those stereotypes feed into their analysis.

Like I could easily see how a non - New Yorker could look at Staten Island and think it should probably get bluer because it's relatively high propensity, very suburban (if not outright urban), and generally is not the type of place you'd expect Republicans to be doing as well as they are just from demographics. But it's hard for a non-New Yorker to get the true extent of the cultural self-sorting that goes on such that Staten Island keeps getting redder. And when I talk about the self-sorting, it's different than the types we see in some other places where it's powered by Seniors or highly religious folks - there's a very specific type that lives there that's just hard to put into words.

[RBH]

in regards to when I played ESPN's Streak For The Cash picks game, I always found that the teams I knew the most about or cared the most about would inspire worse picks so really our knowledge is only good if it turns out to be backed up by what happens

[Joe Rogaine]

It depends. Oregon is currently a very easy state to predict, for example. I would never say someone would have to live here to get us right, but then we haven't been a difficult state to gauge for over twenty years. I know people on social media, including other Oregonians, who were way too bullish about Trump's chances here. So living somewhere doesn't necessarily make you more insightful.

I do think it helps to live in a place because you may be able to pick up on subtle undercurrents that those watching from afar might not; maybe people on the ground in NJ had a sense of a Trump surge for example, while it surprised me. I definitely never would've predicted it would swing right like that, but I know others had a hunch.

[Roll Roons]

It depends. Oregon is currently a very easy state to predict, for example. I would never say someone would have to live here to get us right, but then we haven't been a difficult state to gauge for over twenty years. I know people on social media, including other Oregonians, who were way too bullish about Trump's chances here. So living somewhere doesn't necessarily make you more insightful.

I do think it helps to live in a place because you may be able to pick up on subtle undercurrents that those watching from afar might not; maybe people on the ground in NJ had a sense of a Trump surge for example, while it surprised me. I definitely never would've predicted it would swing right like that, but I know others had a hunch.

Given the sheer number of posters from NJ, I also wonder if they saw any signs that the state was going to trend hard to the right.

[ProgressiveModerate]

It depends. Oregon is currently a very easy state to predict, for example. I would never say someone would have to live here to get us right, but then we haven't been a difficult state to gauge for over twenty years. I know people on social media, including other Oregonians, who were way too bullish about Trump's chances here. So living somewhere doesn't necessarily make you more insightful.

I do think it helps to live in a place because you may be able to pick up on subtle undercurrents that those watching from afar might not; maybe people on the ground in NJ had a sense of a Trump surge for example, while it surprised me. I definitely never would've predicted it would swing right like that, but I know others had a hunch.

Given the sheer number of posters from NJ, I also wonder if they saw any signs that the state was going to trend hard to the right.

I'm from NYC but have a decent amount of familiarity with NJ because of family that lives there - I was generally pretty bearish on Harris in NJ relative to some others - I expected her to underperform in much of north Jersey for similar reasons to NYC, and in South Jersey I thought Trump 2024 was a good place for places like Atlantic County (and would narrowly flip it).

The thing I got wrong is I expected Harris to get left shifts out of NJ's more educated northern suburbs - my final County forecast had Hunterdon flipping Harris for instance, and this would help keep the state in the double-digit column for her. However, once again these were parts of Jersey I was least familiar with.

But overall I feel I did a good job at the internal coalition changes - I believe my final forecast had Passaic County voting to the right of Morris County for instance - something which very few others probably saw coming.

[有爭議嘅領土 of The Figgis Agency]

Reposting an edited version of my deleted post.

I'll accept my accolade of nailing Kamala's percentage margin in OR (D +14)- a 10 point Harris victory never struck me as plausible post-dropout. But I overestimated how well Trump would do in Multnomah County.

I underestimated her margin in WA in defiance of the polls, and over-guesstimated her margin in CA. Without knowing precinct-level results, the Bay Area shifted more or less how I expected it to, while SoCal shifted in similar ways as CA poll crosstabs suggested.

I correctly predicted massive R shifts in Safe D states based more on a dropoff in D turnout across all demographics rather than to persuasion (outside of maybe the NYC area). This was more predicated on long-term changes in social media vibes than anything concrete on the ground though, and my West Coast-based ass would've expected the actual NY, IL, MA, and MD margins to occur in a Harris 280-300 EV scenario.

I still don't understand how or why so many people in 2024-PRES thought Asians would swing D this cycle, as late as October. It seems like I underestimated how much both Subcontinental Asians and non-Safe D state Asians would shift, but after all I am a non-Subcontinental Asian who lives in a Safe D state.

[Lurker]

Mostly not, and with great caution at best. Generally it's just a lot of confirmation bias and meaningless anecdotes (whether it's yard signs, crowd sizes, enthusiasm and vibes, etc.)

[CheapDollarEra?]

Well, between random aerican and me on peruvia politics, you know who to choose.