Post-Election Results Analysis (4 Viewers)

[superchuck500]

The election data is always very interesting. Let's have a thread to discuss it so that it doesn't get washed away in the gameday thread.

We always suspected that a portion of the Trump vote in 2016 will leave him based on overall distaste with his conduct as president. There appears to be some evidence of that emerging . . . here's some from Wisconsin.

 

[LA - L.A.]

Regarding the Presidential race itself, which I think has less meaning for the future, but still interesting:
While there were some exceptions, it seems to me Trump lost support - with many states showing a drop of somewhere between 2-4%.
Now - was that due to actual loss of support or was it due to Trump's election strategy of not pushing mail-in voting.
I think there is a good argument to be made that had the Trump campaign used ground game resources to solicit mail-in votes Trump would have won - give that it seems almost certain he left a lot of votes out there while the Biden campaign did not.

While Trump's percentage share of votes decreased, he got more actual votes this time around. I think he maximized the turnout of those who support him. I don't think there is anything legal he could have done differently to win the election. I don't think anything he did kept his supporters from voting and voting for him.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

Regarding the Presidential race itself, which I think has less meaning for the future, but still interesting:
While there were some exceptions, it seems to me Trump lost support - with many states showing a drop of somewhere between 2-4%.
Now - was that due to actual loss of support or was it due to Trump's election strategy of not pushing mail-in voting.
I think there is a good argument to be made that had the Trump campaign used ground game resources to solicit mail-in votes Trump would have won - give that it seems almost certain he left a lot of votes out there while the Biden campaign did not.

Obviously I don't have any special insight into this, but I don't think this the case. Turnout was incredibly high, and Trump had people going door to door while the Democrats did not. I think to a certain extent embracing mail in voting might have helped Trump a little bit, but I'm not sure it would to any significant degree.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

Honestly, I think Trump probably got nearly every vote available to him. Consider he barely won last time (80,000 votes over three states), never had an approval rating over 40-something percent, the first President to lose jobs while in office in like a 100 years, and a pandemic that has claimed over 200k+ lives (note, for this purpose I'm not assigning actual blame, just pointing out that the president almost always gets credit or blame for what happens during their term deserved or not)... and the election was still not a landslide against him.

 

[Saint by the Bay]

Honestly, I think Trump probably got nearly every vote available to him. Consider he barely won last time (80,000 votes over three states), never had an approval rating over 40-something percent, the first President to lose jobs while in office in like a 100 years, and a pandemic that has claimed over 200k+ lives (note, for this purpose I'm not assigning actual blame, just pointing out that the president almost always gets credit or blame for what happens during their term deserved or not)... and the election was still not a landslide against him.

Agreed, and I think Biden got every vote available to him as well.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

Agreed, and I think Biden got every vote available to him as well.

Pretty much. It's hard to say otherwise when a record percentage of the population voted.

 

[wardorican]

I think the success Republicans saw with Hispanics and blacks are going to push many in the party to embrace a path to something like a new New Deal Coalition.
You get 2/3 of the working-class white vote along with 40% Hispanic and 15% black you are going to win a lot of elections. They would give the Democrats the big business/country club types that make up the neoconservatives/Lincoln Project-types and go populist.
Not sure what the party would look like if it fully embraced this view, but we will find out soon.

Was it much success? I'm just asking, because this is all I've seen...

Trump did make small gains with Black voters. Here’s why.

With disinformation and economic promises, Trump lobbied hard for the Black vote in the final days of the campaign.

www.vox.com

"

• Black voters made up about 11 or 12 percent of the electorate, according to the AP and Edison, respectively.
• The AP found that 90 percent of Black voters went to Biden and 8 percent to Trump.
• Edison Research determined that 87 percent of Black voters voted for Biden and 12 percent for Trump.
• Both found Black men were more likely than Black women to support Trump. In the AP’s case, 12 percent of Black men voters backed Trump, compared to 6 percent of Black women; in Edison’s case, 18 percent of Black men voters cast ballots for Trump, while 8 percent of Black women did the same.

"

 

[JimEverett]

It's a sensible strategy, but I think the problem is that after two decades of strong rhetoric against illegal immigration (mostly aimed at central and south America), the base and many of the pols themselves are going to find it challenging to embrace the Latino electorate, who will likely continue to be suspicious that many Republicans continue to be anti-Latino in general because they're just not very good at telling the difference.

For example, one of the worst immigration policies Republicans ever embraced was the idea of "self-deportation" - the idea was that if members of the public at key access points (public libraries, grocery stores, school registrars, etc.) became de-facto immigration officers and demanded to see documentation or proof of citizenship, illegals will get so discouraged at life in America that they will elect to return to their home country. The problem was that those members of the public de-facto immigration officers don't have "illegal detectors" and it just became a program of profiling and discrimination against all brown people, no matter if they were citizens just like the person demanding to see their documents.

That kind of fairly recent history which, in many ways, continues to the present makes it hard to get to something like 40% with some real PR work - but that would take genuine outreach and change in views among the base and the lower level party members that come from the base. I just don't see that happening to any meaningful degree.

Looking at CNNs exit polls data shows that Trump increased "Latino" support by almost 20% from 2016 to 32% in 2020 and increased black support 50% to 12%. That was done while being called the most racist President in the modern era.
In Florida he went from 35% to 47% with Latinos while seeing no change with blacks (8% to 9%).
In Texas he went from 34% and 11% to 41% and 9% (a decrease)
In Georgia he went from 27% and 9% to 37% and 11%
In Arizona he went from 31% to 36% (no data on black voters)


Even more to the point: I think Republicans have lost a good amount of the "educated" white vote forever, or at least for this generation or so.
Take Georgia as an example: People assume that Georgia turned on black voters. no doubt black voters were the difference, but the white vote share of the electorate was basically the same as in 2016, CNN has it up 1% from 60% to 61% actually, and Trump saw his support decline from 75% to 69%. The black share of the vote was 29% and declined from 30% 4 years ago. And Trump actually GAINED black support, from 9% to 11%

I am sure there are going to be Republicans who think they can get those voters back, but I don't. The base of the party is not going to tolerate a Romney-type of anything close.

One final thing I will say as well. I don;t think it is that hard to get 40% hispanic vote for Republicans, they have already done it in several places. And there is already a real tension, imo, in Democratic policies as it relates to Covid. Do Democrats placate the rich urban liberals and the middle class suburban women by pushing "closing up"? That does not appeal to large swaths of Hispanics - as well as white working class, their interests here align. It is something Republicans would do well to exploit in the coming year.

 

[Saint by the Bay]

I know I’m repeating myself, but I think the economic shutdown issue makes it hard to know if those gains are real or single issue. Blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately being effected by COVID shutdowns and restrictions. The guy screaming open up your economy is going to sound good to them.

Even the issue of uneducated/educated white voters I think isn’t necessarily a long term Republican trend. It was a Trump trend but I don’t know that it carries over to anyone else. I think Lindsey Graham is trying to position himself as the Trump of 2024, but it won’t be authentic.

The last 4 years, and especially 2020, have been so unusual I think we have to wait until 2024 to figure out what the landscape really is. There are two things I think are definitely not mirages:

1. The Cuban vote is Republican and that makes Florida light red. It’s not really a battleground state anymore.

2. The divide between rural America and everywhere else is the biggest divide in American politics, by far.

 

[JimEverett]

There are some interesting trend lines with the Republicans embracing a more populist approach, and Democrats embracing a more elitist approach.

There's a significant portion of the population that is economically liberal and socially conservative, and I think that makes up a lot of the Trump base, and would have a lot of appeal with a large portion of the minority population. If they fully embraced criminal justice reform and made a more explicit effort to reject any and all white nationalists (ie, publicly state that our goal is to become a more racially diverse country and anyone who wants to have a white nation state should leave the party), it would be a pretty formidable voting bloc.

But there are some major issues preventing that from happening. A significant portion of the Republican party has been built on fighting socialism, which makes embracing certain policy positions problematic.

I think opposing socialism does well for Republicans wanting to reach Hispanic voters. And I think that (increasing Hispanic support) will be the driving force of any potentially successful effort to expand the Republican coalition - as opposed, say, towards getting more support from upper-income suburban women.

 

[JimEverett]

Obviously I don't have any special insight into this, but I don't think this the case. Turnout was incredibly high, and Trump had people going door to door while the Democrats did not. I think to a certain extent embracing mail in voting might have helped Trump a little bit, but I'm not sure it would to any significant degree.

You could be right. I think, though, it is much easier to give a person a ballot/help them fill out a request for ballot/etc and have them mail it in or collect it, etc. then it is to get people to and from polls and have them potentially wait 15 minutes or longer. In a race Trump lost by 150,000 votes, like Michigan, probably no difference, but in place like Wisconsin or Arizona - it could have been different.

 

[JimEverett]

never had an approval rating over 40-something percent,

I am not sure why anyone would ever believe polls again, which is another good topic regarding this election.

 

[Saint by the Bay]

I am not sure why anyone would ever believe polls again, which is another good topic regarding this election.

Yeah, polls now have to prove themselves right again before anyone will take them serious again. It will be interesting to dig in to where/why they were wrong.

 

[MT15]

Yet there were exit polls cited in this thread Most polling people said exit polls were pretty much worthless this election because people self-segregated in their behavior.

 

[JimEverett]

Yeah, I should probably question my use of exit polls data while criticizing polls themselves. I assumed they use different methodologies, but I really don't know.

 

[superchuck500]

Looking at CNNs exit polls data shows that Trump increased "Latino" support by almost 20% from 2016 to 32% in 2020 and increased black support 50% to 12%. That was done while being called the most racist President in the modern era.
In Florida he went from 35% to 47% with Latinos while seeing no change with blacks (8% to 9%).
In Texas he went from 34% and 11% to 41% and 9% (a decrease)
In Georgia he went from 27% and 9% to 37% and 11%
In Arizona he went from 31% to 36% (no data on black voters)


Even more to the point: I think Republicans have lost a good amount of the "educated" white vote forever, or at least for this generation or so.
Take Georgia as an example: People assume that Georgia turned on black voters. no doubt black voters were the difference, but the white vote share of the electorate was basically the same as in 2016, CNN has it up 1% from 60% to 61% actually, and Trump saw his support decline from 75% to 69%. The black share of the vote was 29% and declined from 30% 4 years ago. And Trump actually GAINED black support, from 9% to 11%

I am sure there are going to be Republicans who think they can get those voters back, but I don't. The base of the party is not going to tolerate a Romney-type of anything close.

One final thing I will say as well. I don;t think it is that hard to get 40% hispanic vote for Republicans, they have already done it in several places. And there is already a real tension, imo, in Democratic policies as it relates to Covid. Do Democrats placate the rich urban liberals and the middle class suburban women by pushing "closing up"? That does not appeal to large swaths of Hispanics - as well as white working class, their interests here align. It is something Republicans would do well to exploit in the coming year.

Yeah that’s fair. I think you’re right that the most important shift from 2016 to 2020 was a largely white demographic that constitutes the “up for grabs” vote - those independents or independently minded who simply found Trump so distasteful (and potentially such a poor manager of the great issue of this administration) that they were unwilling to endorse him for another term. No matter what their persuasions are otherwise.

 

[GMRfellowtraveller]

I think the success Republicans saw with Hispanics and blacks are going to push many in the party to embrace a path to something like a new New Deal Coalition.
You get 2/3 of the working-class white vote along with 40% Hispanic and 15% black you are going to win a lot of elections. They would give the Democrats the big business/country club types that make up the neoconservatives/Lincoln Project-types and go populist.
Not sure what the party would look like if it fully embraced this view, but we will find out soon.

this assumes that it was a particular message that found resonance - i don't think that's remotely true
i think it's more a subset of each population who is as susceptible to authoritarian propaganda and outright lies as non-degree holding whites
to replicate that success, Rs would have to run another 'outsider' populist - i both don't think that person is out there and i REALLY pray they are not

 

[Saintamaniac]

I disagree. They got in Trump's head. They made him look like a tiny thumbed moron and it was entertaining. Even if Biden hadn't won, their efforts would have been a silver lining in a year of giant, shirt-colored clouds.

I don't have much to add about the Lincoln Project but to say that even if it didn't change one vote, those ads had the affect of showing me that there were Republicans who still believed that truth and hypocrisy matters. It showed me that there were still some Republicans who put the country and the constitution above power. Trump had the power of the presidency to tell lie after lie and abuse the office as he saw fit. The LP, in my opinion, combatted those lies.

If all you saw were the trump lies and Republicans going along with them, it would be really easy just to cast all Republicans as liars, cheats and power hungry traitors to their principles. LP showed that there were still Republicans willing to call out lies and violations of constitutional norms.

Trumps whole schtick was to lie enough time to the point where people began to either believe the lies or simply accepted his lies as normal. In essence just accepting that's what he does. LP, IMO, fought back against those lies by exposing them. Whether that had an impact on votes is debatable. I'm just one person but seeing Republicans call out lies and hypocrisy made a difference in how I see traditional Republicans and not the Trump Republicans of 2008-current.

 

[DaveXA]

this assumes that it was a particular message that found resonance - i don't think that's remotely true
i think it's more a subset of each population who is as susceptible to authoritarian propaganda and outright lies as non-degree holding whites
to replicate that success, Rs would have to run another 'outsider' populist - i both don't think that person is out there and i REALLY pray they are not

Oh, someone is out there. But, I hope that someone chooses another profession.