DJT would be well lower than Carter if not for Fox and the right wing media. Of course he wouldn’t have even sniffed the nomination without that crew.
Yup, much like Brexit, the worm was destined to turn on Trump based on demographics alone.
It turns out that if you get in by a razor thin margin, then any population trend that doesn’t go your way is serious trouble.
My current terror, pardon if it had been discussed: Kanye actually runs. It would siphon off massive votes from the Dems. He’s a Trump fan. It could be a literal conspiracy to win 2020 for Trump, just for giggles.
Not great, but what do I know.
There’s a dedicated thread for this comically unlikely scenario.
Short version: Filing deadlines and lack of organization make this scenario nigh impossible, and it’s unclear that his running would be a net benefit to Trump even if he did.
At noon today, Kanye missed the ballot access deadline in New Jersey. That means he will not be on the ballot in Indiana, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina and Texas. That’s 116 electoral votes that he will not have any chance of earning due to not being on the ballot.
Kanye has also not made an official FEC filing yet, as of tonight. That would be the first step he would need to make to start collecting signatures – without the signatures coming from an officially declared exploratory committee, those signatures are likely to be 100% challenged and thrown out. (Not that I think he’s collecting them, anyway.)
He’s already not done anything that I can tell to officially move his candidacy forward, and as such he looks SUPER unlikely to make the ballots in Colorado on Thursday, or Michigan, Florida, Oklahoma or South Carolina next week. If he misses those deadlines, he’ll lose out on the chance to compete for another 70 electoral votes, and will be up to 186 electoral votes being out of reach.
Third-parties combined won’t get over 2.5% this cycle.
That’s a prediction I feel fairly safe about. They do better when people feel the stakes are lower, or a party splits.
The Libertarian Party typically has an easier time getting ballot access for their presidential ticket in all 50 states, and they’re almost there already.
The Greens, on the other hand, are struggling a bit to get to 50. They’re on the ballot in 22 states only as of today. This time in 2016, they were already nearly at 50.
Wait, is this literally true, or just historically true? What if (however unlikely) he runs a historically successful write-in campaign? Especially if votes for “Ye” or “Yeezee” are combined to his total?
I think this also is relevant in case Trump dies or flees to a non-extradition treaty country before the election–who could the GOP put on the ballot to replace him after these deadlines have expired?
There is no way in fuck that “Ye” or “Yeezee” would ever be considered a legitimate vote for West by any electoral authority.
A human being has a better chance of sprouting wings and flying to the moon than he or she does of mounting a successful write-in campaign.
It is literally and historically true.
… for President, you should add. Because Lisa Murkowski and Strom Thurmond won write-in campaigns for Senate.
facepalm dot gif.
What’s the title of this thread again? (Fair dinkum though, I suppose; within their states, Murkowski and Thurmond were well-known, high name recognition and – in Murkowski’s case – incumbents who ran very well-funded and organized political operations to win write-in campaigns to return to office.)
Anyway, to get realer for a moment: voting can be a bit of a hassle in even the most normal of circumstances. In 2020, it’s likely to be more than a hassle – in many states, it’s likely to be something that has barriers to participate in that it typically doesn’t have.
In 2020 – more than any other election in my lifetime – those that vote are likely to be people who really want to vote.
Those voters are going to be fairly unlikely to engage in performative write-in voting.
And as Alstein suggests (credit where credit’s due), a recent (but extremely small sample size) pattern that has been noted by both Nates and Whiz Kid Harry Enten is that in an election in which non-Democratic or Republican votes for president are more than 5% of the final vote tally cast nationally, in the next subsequent election the non-Democratic or Republican vote total is typically less than 3% of the national tally.
Finally finally: typically in order for a write-in vote to be counted at all, the write in vote must be for a candidate who has certified his or her write-in candidacy by filing paperwork with the state election board. 33 states have this requirement.
I had my moment of panic with the Kanye announcement, then I realized that it’s actually pretty hard work to spin up a Presidential campaign. Unless a group of rich Republicans come out of nowhere to spin up a team for Kanye, he’s not going to do what it takes. Does he have a single person on staff to help him file as a candidate?
This was/is all a dumb PR stunt for his album coming out.
This was the one (mild) worry I had about Kanye. But…
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It hasn’t happened yet, and it’s getting later and later for it to happen.
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Any professional who takes such a gig is probably ending his or her career in this field.
Plus:
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Kanye is likely to say or do goddamn near anything, which makes even associating to his candidacy a high risk, and
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Kanye seems incredibly unwilling to cede control over anything – even his most hare-brained, Tracy Jordan-esque ideas.
This whole thing seems like a perfect vehicle for someone like Jacob Wohl. He clearly doesn’t care about his reputation. I wonder why he hasn’t jumped on.
Nate’s going to get fired for daring to show such horrific Dems in Array numbers.