This is from 538. Not a lot of ticket splitting (aside from ME, where it really hurt.) Turns out, Democratic performance relative to expectations was lower but given structural disadvantages, Dems down ballot did about as well as Biden.
A better take is that Democrats “performed poorly” in the Senate and House simply compared with pre-election expectations. But they still won more House seats than Republicans did, and arguably, the main reason they didn’t do better in the Senate is because of the chamber’s Republican bias. In reality, Democrats performed about the same in all three races, but the structures through which those results were filtered — the Electoral College, the Senate seats that happened to be up and a House map biased toward Republicans — produced different results.
Timex
3042
That title seems bad, given the data the article goes on to provide.
The data suggests that there was actually quite a lot of split ticket voting, it’s just that in wasn’t all slanted towards Biden doing better.
CraigM
3043
It actually doesn’t. Just that relative vote shares are close, but not 1:1.
See not every voter will vote on every race. Some Trump voters might have left house and senate blank, or GOP voters left president blank and voted the other races.
Or some people live in uncontested districts and didn’t vote for those races on some principle.
Not every ballot has every race filled in.
That a state has some small difference in votes does not imply splitting votes between parties. There are several other equally plausible actions that lead to the same outcomes.
One co-worker here voted Republican in state races, and Dem for Senate/president (first time voting Dem in his life)
Also NC did have varying results heavily in state races- Cunningham did the worst, and Cooper the best. One important race (Chief Justice) was under 1000 votes.
Jackson to me might be as good as Cooper. Has the same talent of not scaring moderates while giving progressives hope that you need to win.
I don’t think Democrats need to become more progressive to win elections, but they DO need to get more aggressive with campaigning and communication. I would kill to see a Democratic ad campaign that basically highlighted all the outrageous shit the GOP has pulled, including all the nonsense idiots like Gaetz and Greene spout all the time, and asked people “Do you really want more of this?”.
2020 was a victory because people had reached their boiling point with Trump. Much of the country was outraged at the thought of four more years of his shit, so they turned out in record numbers to say “Oh Hell No”. That is the power Democrats need to tap into if they want to keep winning elections. The GOP is playing right into their hands by essentially having taken over for Trump with a new outrage and abuse of power daily, and yet the messaging from Democrats is still “bi-partisan cooperation” and “wouldn’t it be great if” while they rely on the average person to figure out on their own how shitty the opposition actually is.
Well most people either can’t or won’t figure it out on their own. They need to be reminded daily that there is one party in our two party system that basically wants to turn America into an oligarchy and destroy the democratic process. One party that wants to take away the rights of 50% of Americans. One party that actively courts the votes of racists and worse, and acts like the Capitol Riot of 1/6 was “no big deal really”. The Democrats need to channel that outrage, remind the people that Trump may be gone, but in many ways what is happening now is actually WORSE, and the only way to fight it is to keep coming to the polls for as long as it takes to completely destroy the vile monster the GOP has become.
KevinC
3046
Given the 74 million people that voted for four more years of Trump, I’ve come to the sad realization that the answer to that is likely “yes” to a significant percentage of the electorate.
KevinC
3047
I wasn’t able to edit my post for some reason, but I wanted to acknowledge that yes, thankfully even more Americans came out to vote against Trump. But given how catastrophically inept, corrupt, and anti-democratic the Trump administration was it was shocking just how many Americans wanted four more years of that.
Basically, we need to make Republicans the enemy. If we can radicalize the population against Republicans hard enough, the progressivism will come from a desire to own the Republicans.
Timex
3049
This isn’t healthy though.
If you are entirely motivated by a desire for political battle, like the GOP base is, the problem is that you have no grounding in actual principles.
Once you let your party go down that road, then you’ll get someone like Trump who doesn’t care about your supposed principles at all, but takes over your party because he convinces people that he’s gonna “pwn the conservatards”.
I know it’s not healthy. The question is if the alternative is worse.
I really think the only way democracy is saved in America is going to be through leadership that can get total victory, without throwing democracy themselves out in the process.
That’s going to be tough, but going that route we at least have a chance of saving it, if the Republicans win, they’ll destroy democracy the next chance they get. As such, I’d be willing to fight fire with fire, especially since I feel my life is on the line for multiple reasons.
Banzai
3051
The laws already being passed that overrule voters are explicitly anti-democracy in the name if ‘election security’. Its already happening.
Manchin with a subtle but significant (maybe) change in language today. No longer talking “bipartisanship”, instead cautioning that he won’t rubberstamp just anything in an infrastructure bill headed for reconciliation.
Makes an infrastructure bill passing far more likely.
Banzai
3053
Soros must have gotten to him!
That was one of the more hopeful theories out there? Machin just needed to seem maverick enough for his base, and get enough stuff for W. Virginia, and then he would vote for it. He needed the dog and pony show to appease his base, before voting for what his base wanted.
Or, it could all just be the ramblings of an old man that truly believes that the Senate is somehow above all this.
I mean, tbh, if it’s just a matter of offering a bigger bribe than the Kochs, it’s not like we don’t have billionaires lined up for (parts of) the Progressive Agenda, too.
Progressives keep for some reason insisting that Joe Manchin is some out-of-touch, indigent senile goofball.
I know lots of folks hate his politics, but Joe Manchin knows exactly what he is doing. And he is one canny motherfucker. I don’t like that he’s that good at playing the game, personally. But he is that good at playing the game.
Manchin’s going to ask for this. And he may get it if Schumer thinks that a bigger bargain can be struck over reconciliation on infrastructure. (The biggest poison pills I’ve seen in here for more progressive Dems are the heightened voter ID requirements – though secondary ID like a utility bill isn’t the worst compromise to accede to.)
RichVR
3058
And election day should have been made a holiday long ago.
So Manchin is drawing the line at broadly mandating vote by mail? That seems to be the main thing missing here.
So the game is get re-elected? I think the main take on Manchin is that people can’t really grasp what his game is.
