this is when real men cried

2006 is really more shocking than 2008 bc the economy was still decent and Dems won bc voters thought they were the New Dealers again for reasons unknown

and 2014

the weirdest part for me is that it seemed the party really learned their lessons well in 2006 and 2008

shoutout to this TIME 1984 autopsy which had Joe Biden as the last name in their presidential hopefuls.

...with 50-70 of the most racist Americans of the century

I mean, Hunter S. Thompson's response was "I'm Going to Kill Myself" and, well, he squeezed out at least a few more decades, ig

as much as lead poisoning is a factor, this is unironically closer to what most of Gen X did

it's bad that this ruined a generation of Dem leaders, OTOH, wow that was not good

that was 1980, but yes, those losses basically ruined the country

Look, would I have stayed sane as a Democrat after this? UHHHHHHH maybe

I know this is super cringe now, but thankfully none of us had to react to the 1980-1988 presidential elections.

1. 21-22 specials were showing a roughly tied or even Dem-leaning environment, which matched the nonpartisan generic ballot polling. But more importantly it seemed to match events, e.g. late 2021 the specials were awful for Dems, it got better after Dobbs

2. Yes, the economy is too bad, imo.

oh ya go for it

...Trump/Republicans will not be manifesting a 4-pt swing out of thin air.

which is exactly what you would've focused on from the 2018 exit polls! Except...the ground shifted.

(Also, gun policy being 4th is incredible)

which is exactly what you would've focused on from the 2018 exit polls! Except...the ground shifted.

(Also, gun policy being 4th is incredible)

oh, yeah the pundits are just dropping the ball and stuck in 2023, or even 2019. unfortunately, I haven't been able to create a narrative of what's happening either.

It's pretty funny how the 2020 Democratic primary was conducted at the exact time in modern US history when voters were least concerned about the economy. It's going to end up as an enormous outlier.

Dems special performances were very good in 2019, then started to flag as 2020 came around.

This is all to say that special elections were a really good indicator until around mid-2022. Truthfully, a lot of indicators seem to have broken around mid-2022.

Just on a rant about specials: in 2018, Dems saw a big dropoff in their special election performances between May and October 2018 (the swing was just D+2!). At the time, it was little-noticed, but it did reflect a drop in the generic ballot/rise in Trump approval after Jan. 2018 (bc of ACA?)

For VA-11 with Walkinshaw, I think he did better than Harris in every single Fairfax County precinct...bleak, but also that makes sense! this NJ-11 random number generator over/under performance is weird.

So, going back to this bc I think it's genuinely fascinating, having now forced myself to look at precinct-level shifts for these specials (on VoteHub and on my own, thanks VPAP), it's actually very rare to see so much movement in opposite directions.

TX SD-09? It's all blue, no breaks!

Yeah he grifted a ton of the money and is continuing to do so

Overall, the direction is clearly in favor of Dems, so this is all sophistry for nerds and doesn’t matter.

It’s funny, if you used fundraising as a heuristic for a WAR model on the specials, Behn did the best bc the spending was close to tied.

But another “progressive” campaign from Josh Weil was the worst. He had the most money and the worst challenger but did worse than others.

Another interesting note from NJ-11 was that fundraising was far more even than we saw in recent specials. Mejia outraised Hathaway 2:1, Shawn Harris outraised Fuller 4:1, and Josh Weil outraised Randy Fine by a ridiculous 9:1

So, of that trio, Weil may have been the worst performer

tbh there does seem to be a lack of knowledge from analysts on *why* it’s happening, saying Dems are high-propensity is a cop-out bc these are the voters least likely to turn out.

And the real answer, economic conditions, isn’t borne out by data and causes endless arguments from PhDs

NJ-11 was a fuck-you to elections analysis

-turnout was abysmal, just 22-24%, but Dems did worse relative to Harris than other specials
-champagne socialist thesis flopped, Mejia overperformed in working-class areas
-prog landslide ruined bc R candidate was ”moderate” and made it 2014 in some towns

80% of just MI Dem primary voters in DFP opted out of the Hasan Piker favorables bc they don’t know who he is