Tuesday, September 8, 2020
so, what directions are key swing demographics likely to move in this election?
i'm going to create a collection of partial orderings. if obama > clinton, that means obama did better with that demographic than clinton. an equal means they should be about the same.
blacks, north & south:
obama > clinton > biden. so, expect biden to continue, and perhaps even accelerate, the bleed of blacks out of the party. they probably won't vote republican, they'll probably stay home, thereby skewing the numbers to make it look like they shifted right.
latinos, north & south:
obama > clinton > biden. likewise, biden should accelerate the movement of latinos out of the party that started with clinton (with obama, really; why does everybody ignore the deporter-in-chief thing?). some of them might swing republican, on social issues. sadly.
northern white liberals:
(obama = biden) > clinton. biden appears to be likely to regain much of the ground with northern white liberals that clinton lost. this doesn't appear to be rational, but it's happening, nonetheless. and, he needs to be careful he doesn't fuck it up.
southern white conservatives:
(obama = biden) < clinton. biden appears likely to lose the increase in support amongst southern white voters that clinton generated and that made states like texas a little closer than they had been in some time. biden wouldn't be expected to outperform clinton in this region, given her history there. clinton should have won missouri.
white moderates, north & south:
(obama = biden) > clinton. biden, however, appears likely to regain obama's stronger support amongst white moderates.
why is my analysis so drastically different?
because i'm looking at the actual data, not projecting my feelings about race on to it, as appears to be common in "progressive" circles that want the democrats to be the "black party", and overthrow republican white supremacy, or some silly thing such as that. as facile as that narrative is on it's face, the numbers just don't exist to support it...
clinton probably would have been more likely to win in the south than in the north, and i may be the person that suggested that, but it would have been on the back of white conservatives, who would have repelled young liberals. that makes that strategy very hard for the democrats - if you're trying to win the south by running on the right, like clinton & biden have been, you have to throw away the young voters that were supposed to be the reason you're targeting the region in the first place. and, then you're outrepublicaning the republicans, which is exactly what's happening.
if they were to run a liberal in the south, they'd have to rely entirely on young people, who vote in lower numbers - a strategy we saw bernie fail at (but that may work better in like 20 years, if the often more market-oriented asians don't walk in and blow the whole thing up). but, if they just ran a damned liberal, they'd sweep the north, and wouldn't need to worry about winning in the south.
i hope i'm clarifying this a little.
but, my main point is this: please, people....call a statistician. don't wing it. polls are tricky.
at 14:54