***Official Political Discussion Thread***



if trump was 40 years younger and more flexible:

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Yeah, Illinois is firmly blue. No need for Pritzker. Need a major swing state VP. Shapiro is probably the way to go, even if it means PA goes back to red for governor. NC is the wild card. If you got him, and NC turns blue, and they hold onto PA, MI, MN, WI and AZ, it's a done deal.

I live in Pa and don't want Josh to go. He's doing wonders here and if that GOP nutjob who ran against him tries to sneak back in, this state is screwed for the next few years. 😞 I'm fine with Cooper since he's maxed for term.
 
Some individuals are incredibly difficult to listen to. In what alternative reality could someone claim that President Biden's appearance today was performed by a paid actor? Their rationale was that he hasn't ascended stairs that quickly before.
 
Walz is the goods. So is Cooper imo but the issue is I don't know if that flips North Carolina or any of the battleground states in the midwest or southewest. NC went Trump

Not sure Walz does either but feel he would be more effective in the midwest and blue collar crowd
 
Walz is the goods. So is Cooper imo but the issue is I don't know if that flips North Carolina or any of the battleground states in the midwest or southewest. NC went Trump

Not sure Walz does either but feel he would be more effective in the midwest and blue collar crowd

I’m amazed every time there’s a round of VP speculation, so many people act like it’s the 1800’s and a VP candidate is guaranteed to “deliver” their home State.

The last time a VP pick made a difference in their home State was Lyndon Johnson in Texas in 1960.

It’s obvious that the demographic and ideological bent of the VP is what matters.

I think a VP pick can exert some influence on a region as regions cross State lines so in a round about way, the VP pick could nudge the median voter in a few States.

So in that context, I feel like Walz would be a great pick. Those slight nudges across the upper Midwest could be crucial because those battle ground Midwestern States are more likely to be decided by swing voters, whereas Democratic victories in the South are predicated on other factors.

Things like organizing, enthusiasm, demographic changes, the educational divide growing, and sometime sheer luck count in the South since there tend to be fewer swing voters than in battleground States in the Midwest.

Of course Dems basically own the North East with only 4 EC votes up for grabs nowadays.

Swing States in the West more or less come down to a game of turning out Mexican-American voters without college degrees.
 
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I’m amazed every time there’s a round of VP speculation, so many people act like it’s the 1800’s and a VP candidate is guaranteed to “deliver” their home State.

The last time a VP pick made a difference in their home State was Lyndon Johnson in Texas in 1960.

It’s obvious that the demographic and ideological bent of the VP is what matters.

I think a VP pick can exert some influence on a region as regions cross State lines so in a round about way, the VP pick could nudge the median voter in a few States.

So in that context, I feel like Walz would be a great pick. Those slight nudges across the upper Midwest could be crucial because those battle ground Midwestern States are more likely to be decided by swing voters, whereas Democratic victories in the South are predicated on other factors.

Things like organizing, enthusiasm, demographic changes, the educational divide growing, and sometime sheer luck count in the South since there tend to be fewer swing voters than in battleground States in the Midwest.

Of course Dems basically own the North East with only 4 EC votes up for grabs nowadays.

Swing States in the West more or less come down to a game of turning out Mexican-American voters without college degrees.
This study done prior to the 2016 election says you’re quite wrong.

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Also, politics are very different today. You never know.
I’d roll the dice on a state with 15-20 electoral votes where 2-3% will define the outcome. The past two elections had meaningless states behind the winning VP candidates (Indiana, California) but Tim Kaine was a lousy VP pick for Clinton. Following the study’s methodology, Clinton would have cleared VA without him by 2-3 pts still, while one of the three states she lost (that cost her) could have been won with a VP from there.

I want a VP from a battleground state. One who might resonate in an entire region and their home battleground state would be even better. That’s why I’m not sure Kelly is a good choice given AZ and neighboring Nevada have the smallest votes of swing states, and that the remaining ones are central to one another.
 

I’m always weary of political scientists using statistical models for Presidential races.

Those models rely on historical data and there’s just not much of it for presidential elections.

We’ve only had 59 of them in US History. Fifty-Nine is tiny for statistical purposes and that’s even if all 59 sampled were qualitatively exactly the same, which is, of course, not the case when you have to go back to the 18th Century to get those 59 samples.

So there’s obviously a dilemma for anyone doing this type of study. Does one only look at recent elections and have an extremely small sample size or does one get a still pretty small sample size of 59 and have a data set that includes elections from when powdered wigs were still in fashion.

It looks like the study cited and they chose a middle path

Our method relies on “synthetic controls” to create a new measure of the home state advantage for vice presidential candidates from 1884-2012. We focus on historical elections returns in states that are similar to the vice presidential nominee’s home state. These similar states together constitute the “synthetic” version of the home state that is similar the actual home state except in terms of the vice presidential candidate’s identification with the home state.

There’s a sample size of 32 which is not nothing but it means that many of those samples are from a time when political parties were ideologically unsorted, there wasn’t a common national culture, the Federal government played a much smaller role in most citizen’s lives, and there wasn’t even a secret ballot in some of the earlier elections in their model.

Moreover, the results were measured against a basket of demographically similar States as the VP’s home State. So it’s the VP’s ticket’s perform over Demographically similar States versus results in just the VP’s home State. They over perform but only by a margin that is not statistically significant.

The best conclusion to draw is that VPs do have an effect on demographic groups since their ticket performs as well in other States with similar demographics.

This is all to say that virtually no voters in recent elections change their votes or turn out because the VP is from their State.

In the past, that actually was the case but even using the methodology used in the article, it’s still the case that the most recent election where a VP could have flipped a State was in 2004, 20 years ago.

So it should be the case that you pick a VP based on demographic appeal and use good quality polling data to see how they might effect the outcome in multiple States where the VP’s favorable demos could be decisive.

Fortunately, demographic impact in a given election year can much more easily be ascertained by simply doing good polling.


Sorry for the long rant BTW. I’m just that much of a stats geek.
 
I saw someone on Twitter make a good point about third parties.

You only here from them every four years.

At best they are naive and at worse they are either trying to play spoiler or they are grifting and don’t care if they empower reactionaries.


If the Green Party, for example, were serious, they’d have spent the last 20-30 years running for local offices and telling their members to vote for Democrats in competitive Statewide races and for Democratic Presidential Candidates in swing States.

By growing their numbers and coordinating, they’d probably be able to get a growing share of the popular vote which would earn Federal Funds and they could recruit more people over time.

They could be selective and start competing in electoral districts where the GOP is not powerful and where they or the Democrat would both finish in the top two. They’d lose a lot of them but they’d still be raising their profile and getting more members.

The ones who win could caucus with Democrats and even a small number of them could leverage Democrats into passing favorable election laws like ranked choice voting and top two runoffs.

Eventually they’d win Congressional seats and even a few Senate seats and repeat at the Federal level as well as advancing their laudable policy priorities.

In time, the GOP loses enough power that they are the third party and/or the Greens absorb a lot of left leaning Democrats and caucus with those who remain Democrats.

THEN you go for the Presidency when you are confident that you’d win enough States with pluralities that you amass 270 ECVs.


Of they had been doing this for the last 30, 40, 50 years we would have universal health, majority workers on corporate boards, a UBI, and people in, say, Gaza would not be being bombed and starved. Someone like Bernie Sanders would be a centrist in this scenario, Kamala Harris would be our rightwing problematic fave, and Donald Trump would be selling EVs.
 
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