magnet
4917
It doesn’t matter how Manchin votes when we don’t need his vote. When it does matter, eg ACA repeal, he votes with Democrats. So he is just as useful as any other Democrat.
KevinC
4918
Kinda depends on the situation though, doesn’t it? Utah used to have a one Democrat congressman, which is about right given the population splits. Since they redrew the maps, there’s really not much of a hope of any Democrat winning here.
Hillary won 27% of the vote here in 2016, but you can see how they’ve deftly carved that up.
Despite 1 in 4 Utahns voting Democrat (even for Crooked Hillary!), we’ll be getting 0 out of 4 Representatives. And given how red-leaning the state is, those are all safe districts for the Republicans.
1st District: 65.4% Republican, 27.2% Democrat
2nd District: 61.5% Republican, 34.1% Democrat
3rd District: 73.3% Republican, 26.7% Democrat
4th District: 53.5% Republican, 41.7% Democrat
Voter turnout isn’t going to help my situation too much.
Sure a 6+ point swing would give Utah one Democratic congressperson. In states like this is take a good candidate and some help to elect the minority party.
But this works both ways. 34% of MA voter voted for Trump in 2016, yet the Democrats hold all 9 congressional seats. A plus 7 election swing like 538 talks about would flip 2 with a generic candidates.
The number of gerrymander blue seats if far out numbered by the gerrymander red seats.
Well I mean…this is the kind of thing that your hands are clean on or they’re not. It’s hard to have a ton of sympathy for the “no fair…their side is way better at cheating than ours is” complaint. Be better cheats.
Right. I think the original point in all this gerrymandering talk was that if one side turns out the vote, gerrymanders can (not always, but definitely can) backfire, because the very nature of them involves putting a decent-sized demographic segment of the opposition party into a friendly district.
Has a possibility, for instance, to boomerang on the GOP in Michigan and Florida this cycle.
Okay, can someone explain this to me?
I’ll give it a shot, since I was confused too.
Initially abidingdude thought so who cares what Taylor Swift thinks?
She has 112 million followers on instagram, so apparently quite a few.
Ah, that makes sense.
You could do worse things then follow Taylor Swift. She seems smart enough to stay out of trouble and probably has people that keep her from making a mess.
Ack sorry. I got lazy and posted links instead of explaining. I am duly chastened.
No problem.
People care about Taylor Swift, and unlike Trump, she actually seems informed about some of the issues.
JoshL
4929
Yes Taylor Swift is fairly well known. Unfortunately, probably at least 80% of those followers are under 18. Maybe more like 99%.
I mean, not really. T Swizzle’s been around for ages and lots of her fanbase have aged up with her, including a whole mess of Millennials. She’ll lose a lot of fans for those remarks, but they’ll do good, too.
2013 snapshot
https://www.quora.com/What-demographics-listen-to-Taylor-Swift
"What demographics listen to Taylor Swift?
While not an exact measurement, we can use Quantcast’s traffic data on her site as a proxy. […]
-
Her audience is primarily female. 67% of her website’s visitors are female, with 33% male.
-
Her audience tends towards young adults. Visitors to the website are 1.58 times more likely to be in the 18-24 age range and 1.27 times more likely to be in the 25-34 age range. Additionally, college students are 1.28 times more likely to visit her site.
-
Taylor Swift is reasonably popular among most ethnic groups - except African Americans, who are .66 times as likely to visit her site compared to the rest of the internet. (Caucasians and Asians are at 1.02 and Hispanics are at 1.13)."
Yep, she first became a star in the mid-oughties, and will turn the big 3-0 next year. Meaning her first major cohort of fans are well above voting age.
(Being old, I have a poor sense of modern pop-culture time so I did have to look this up. I do engage in witty intergenerational banter with some folks just out of college on a regular basis to keep hep with the jive, but during our wacky back-and-forths we have established two things: first, I remember everything since 2000 as happening “just recently.” Second, they remember everything since 2000 as “everything they remember, period, because 2000 was a long time ago, and they were, like, two.”)
Oghier
4933
Laughed because… yep. Know how that goes.
Nesrie
4934
Man, you managed to make me feel old. I was not 2 2000, sadly.
JoshL
4935
Well, I stand corrected. I extrapolated from the fact that my 12 year old daughter is already over Taylor Swift.
JD
4936
Shocker.
Fox & Friends contributor going the expected “stay away from politics” route as is their wont.
Obligatory image.
