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U.S. House Win in Arizona for the (R)
So Republican Debbie Lesko has won a special election for Arizona’s 8th congressional district over Dem. Hiral Tipirneni.
Lesko, a former state lawmaker, will head to Washington to replace Franks, who resigned his seat in December midway through his eighth term over sexual-misconduct allegations. She will complete his term, which expires in January, and run for a full two-year term of her own in the fall elections.
Meanwhile, Democrats will point to an unbroken string of nine special federal elections now in which they have improved over their 2016 showing. That performance has the party looking ahead to the November elections with an eye toward regaining control of one or both chambers of Congress.
To do that, they still need to win a net 23 seats in the House after falling short in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.
Moments after winning, Lesko gave an emotional talk to supporters at the home of a neighbor who hosted her victory party.
“It’s very surreal,” she said. “Twenty-five years ago, I left an abusive husband. And I sure as heck, never would have dreamt in a million years that I would be running for Congress, be a congresswoman.”
I thought that the Elephants would never win again and we were facing a never-ending onslaught of Blue Wave. The Mainstream Media is talking about the narrow margin of victory for Lesko and why it portends disaster for the party of Donald Trump in the fall. But just maybe, maybe, that won’t be the case.
Published in General
@gumbymark alluded to a reasonably compelling thesis as to why Trump, and (maybe?) only Trump, would have pulled in a sufficient number of blue-collar Democrats/apathetic Republicans in states that mattered to carry the electoral college. This appeal is disparagingly referred to as appealing to “populism.” There were post-election analyses that bore this out. There is little other than speculation to serve the narrative that the likes of Cruz, Rubio, or (god forbid) Kasich would have garnered these voters.
Right. That’s countered by the millions of voters Donald Trump turned off, including the millions of people who sat home and the eight million people who voted for candidates other than Clinton and Trump.
If you look at presidential election results in individual Republican held congressional districts, you often see big differences between how many votes Romney got and how many Trump got.
That shows Republicans who sat on their hands rather than vote for Trump.
Fine. Unfortunately for this thesis there is quantifiable evidence in the form of actual votes in actual districts that turned to Trump to support the argument referenced above, and little but speculation as to the number of voters Trump “turned off” and whether any given number would have mattered anywhere in terms of electoral votes. If there’s something more concrete on this, I’ve missed it.
You don’t think the difference between votes for Romney and votes for Trump in certain districts count as quantifiable evidence?
Donald Trump won by a few thousand votes in a number of key states but polling had indicated that many Republican candidates could have beaten Clinton in the general, and as Fred noted exit polling also showed a decrease in voting participation from certain demographics in the Republican Party. As others have stated the American people tend to grow bored with parties that are in “power” (which usually means which party is holding the Presidency) and switch between the two parties every 8 years. 2016 was gonna be a Republican year and most projections prior to Trump winning the primary had indicated gains for the GOP in both the House and Senate.
Yet when the election occurred Republicans lost seats in both the House and Senate. Donald Trump had a negative coat tail effect. Could Clinton have won? Yes of course, nothing is set in stone (that is why we have the two exceptions mentioned with Reagan and Bush) but its quite clear after viewing her campaign’s actions that she completely mucked up her chance. Rather than fighting for battleground states, Florida for example, she wasted her time and effort in historically blue ones, she had numerous celebrities campaign for her in Nevada for crying out loud!
Rather than practicing for debates and giving real answers she just gave canned ones and tried to run on Trump being crazy. Donald Trump did the same strategy and just called Clinton a criminal and stalked her during one debate around the stage.
The question of who could win was answered by who was more trustworthy and Trump only won that thanks to a few thousand votes in the right states, while Clinton technically won the trust of more people overall.
It’s a start. It seems that someone somewhere should have done this, but I can’t find it.
Do you really want to hang any part of your hat on polling after this election?
Look, I know it’s a trope in conservative populist circles that the polling in 2016 was wildly inaccurate (or fraudulent or whatever), but that claim of inaccuracy doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
The polls weren’t wrong. They pretty closely matched the national popular vote and the state level polls were well within the margin for error. People really need to learn what percentages mean before they start claiming certainty as to the efficacy of polling.
The final predictions on the overall popular vote were reasonably accurate, if that’s your point.
Then there’s stuff like this.
FWIW:
Interesting. Does that chart exist in terms of percentages to account for population growth or changes in the size of the voting electorate?
Presumably not. Hence the “FWIW.”
As others have said, and for the same reasons, I am. If anything Donald Trump’s failure to lead by any margin above the margin of error highlighted how poor a general election candidate he was.
Should one let NYT opinion columns be used as evidence against polling? That is a little unfair.
By raw calculation Donald Trump did get more votes than Mitt Romney. No doubt about it. But how much does population inflation account for that?
One real red state in your example is Texas. Mitt Romney won with 4,569,843 votes to (57%) to Barack’s at 3,308,124 votes (41%). In 2016 Trump got 4,685,047 votes (52%) and Clinton got 3,877,868 votes (43%). Corrupt, old, and robotic Clinton gained over 500,000 more votes than the young, affable, and “messianic” Barack in Texas, an increase of 2 whole points for Clinton over Barack and Trump lost 5 points from Romney. Was that the result of population increase or what? Donald Trump only got 130,000 more votes.
Texas did gain 2 million more people between 2012 and 2016.
http://www.dshs.texas.gov/chs/popdat/ST2012.shtm
https://www.dshs.texas.gov/chs/popdat/ST2016p.shtm
Was there a demographic shift in the age of voters? I don’t know but I am skeptical that Donald Trump got out more votes than Romney because he was a better candidate. Simple population growth seems more likely.
For example:
The population of Texas grew by nearly 2 million people between 2012 and 2016 (source: https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/census.html)
The population of Florida grew by about 1 million people between 2012 and 2016 (source: https://www.bebr.ufl.edu/population/data)
The population of California grew by about 1.5 million people between 2012 and 2016 (source: http://www.dof.ca.gov/Forecasting/Demographics/Estimates/)
Whole numbers in these kinds of discussions sort of obscure the truth.
Despite the significant amount of negativity directed at Romney here, I think that he was the best candidate in my memory to lose. This started with a discussion of whether Trump’s victory was solely a product of HRC’s awfulness, and would have been achievable by his competitors for the nomination, or whether Trump, being Trump, he achieved electorally what the others would not have. Clarity on this likely awaits a lengthy dissertation. But, obviously, I believe that there is a stronger case for the latter based on voting in key areas. And I certainly don’t think the discussion is particular well served by pronouncements (not yours) to the effect of “Of course, anyone else would have beaten her.”
Statistically significant does not mean what you think it does. Correlation is not causation. Past performance does not predict future results. You only get to claim significance if you articulate a causal model, properly operationalize the model, get good data for the variables that produce the effect, and then measure significance.
The problem with real modeling of presidential elections is a “small-N” problem. As soon as we start adding variables, we consume degrees of freedom. With 8 or 16 data points, you are out of the realm of quantitative modeling because the signal gets lost in the noise.
Fortunately, since you claim party, not candidate, is what matters every 8 years, we can toss the 22nd Amendment restriction. That only limits candidates, not parties. So now we can look at the whole set of presidential elections. How many terms in a row did the Democratic-Republicans hold the Presidency, and why? How is it that Democrats held the Presidency for 5 terms just before passage of the 22nd Amendment?