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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30921 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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American midterm election predictions?

Does anyone wish to use this space to register predictions for outcomes in tomorrow's American midterm elections?

Personally, I take a kind of efficient markets approach to this stuff, so I'll defer to the betting consensus. But if you want your time-stamped judgment registered as part of the official Motte record, here's your chance!

Mods - please feel free to remove if you don't think this is a good fit for the space.

53 R - 47 D Senate. Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania Arizona all go to the GOP but New Hampshire, Colorado, Washington, etc. stay Blue. Republicans end up at 235 seats in the House (give or take). Governorships are going to be where the biggest gains are. Republicans flip Wisconsin, Oregon, Nevada, and hold Arizona. They don't get Whitmer, Zeldin loses New York. Democrats keep New Mexico but it's closer than expected. Kansas might go GOP, it's where I'm most uncertain.

The omens favor Republicans. The meaning cannot be mistaken, none other than the spiritual death and overthrow of the King! I confidently predict that the tides will rise for the right, but a price will be exacted in blood.

House: GOP win. As a matter of policy for the next two years, I don't really think the precise number of seats will matter much. Despite Dem's thin margin right now, I don't recall any crucial vote being held up by a handful of Congressmen the House over the last two years. Of course, having a larger buffer may make keeping the House easier in 2024 due to incumbent advantages, but policy-wise I expect all that matters is which party wins it and not by how much.

Senate: 70% 51 GOP, 30% Dem keep with 50-50 seats. I laugh at prediction markets that bet on 53, 54, or even more GOP seats. I mean yes, it's possible, but the realm of possible also includes 48 or 49 GOP seats. Senate control will matter tremendously for confirmations. If a SCOTUS justice dies or somehow retires before 2024, I expect a GOP Senate to refuse a hearing, unless Biden appointed a truly middle-of-the-road swing vote justice, which I expect he would not do, given he has shown very little inclination to moderation so far into his presidency. Appellate court appointees will probably get hearings, but I expect Biden would be forced to nominate center-left rather than left judges to these posts to ensure timely confirmation.

Governorship and state houses: Net gain for GOP. Besides favorable national environment, the GOP tended to invest more in state and local races. I don't have enough insight to predict how much the gain is or specifically where.

Registering a series of Texas specific predictions-

Republicans win every statewide office and every competitive local race, including federal house- 70%. I count federal house districts 15 and 34 as competitive, along with the Tarrant and Harris county judgeships. I do not count the Dallas county judge race as competitive.

Republicans have enough of a majority in the house that Dade Phelan is in serious danger of losing the speakership- 60%.

Cuellar loses reelection- 25%

No statewide Republican has less than a 9% margin of victory- 90%.

Abbott beats Beto- 99%.

Paxton beats Garza- 90%.

Democrats claim vote rigging centered around Harris county- 40%.

Harris county elections monitors do anything to justify their presence- 25%.

Republicans win a higher percentage of the Hispanic vote than 2014- 50%.

Federal investigation into Harris county elections monitoring- 20%.

Tarrant county goes red at the top of the ticket(all three of governor, county judge, and prosecutor)- 55%.

Harris county goes red in at least one statewide race- 50%.

Paxton is the lowest performing statewide Republican- 60%.

Beto wins less than 40%- 30%.

Beto wins less than 40%- 30%.

Hard to imagine him doing that bad but I guess the polls allow that in the margin of error.

That’s why it’s only 30%.

I would take the bet at those odds.

You pay 30 if above 40% I pay 70 if below.

Not saying you're incorrectly calibrated.

Notability threshold for claim of vote rigging- a statewide candidate, the statewide party, Lina Hidalgo, editorial board of a major dem-aligned newspaper(Texas monthly, Texas tribune, or Houston Chronicle), US house member from Harris County, or high ranking democrat(committee chair/former committee chair) in the state house.

Harris county elections monitors doing anything would entail a criminal complaint being filed, recount specific to a precinct or precincts, or an election-related case going to the courts that would change the outcome of at least one election.

I’ll also clarify the speakership prediction- Dade Phelan will be considered to have a serious challenger if there is a speaker candidate with support from at least 20 House of Representatives members who is a republican.

I'll go with slight Republican over performance against 538's predictions but not a Red tsunami. I do think abortion will cap the wave just a touch. Fundamentals point to a Republican Senate and House. Bad economy, unpopular president, mid-terms often swinging away from the governing party. Plus some unforced errors. Putting Fetterman into debate for example. Whichever aide allowed that should be fired. Ducking the debate looks bad, but his performance was worse. So they should have sucked it up, talked about how debating Oz not worth his time to give Democrat leaners an excuse to believe and moved on. He may still win but it is looks to be much closer than it should have been as Oz is not a good candidate himself.

So 53-54 seats in the Senate, 235ish in the house. But it does depend on how the pollsters have been adjusting their polls. Silver claims they have been trying to unskew the Democratic lean they had recently, but if they get that dynamic wrong (in either direction!) , with poll herding it is possible the whole thing is way off.

The betting markets diverge quite a bit from the polling aggregation / model at FiveThirtyEight, giving greater odds of Republican victories.

Some possible reasons for market divergence:

  • Shy Republican / Eager Democrat effects on pollsters. Perhaps those planning to vote Republican are more likely to hide it or decline the poll, and Dems are excited to have their politics represented in the poll.

  • Polls may be inaccurately weighting different demographic groups.

  • Betters may be overeager to see Republican victories and let that influence the bets they make.

  • Betters are using non-polling signals like early turnout figures to inform their bets.

What else could explain the divergence between the betting markets and the polls?

It's all of the above, or at least that's why the betting market is the state that it is. Problem is that there's no way to know whether the 55% or the 65% of Republicans winning is correct.

Nate Silver has a very thoughtful write up about his own uncertainties regarding his model.

Betters may be overeager to see Republican victories and let that influence the bets they make.

I can't see how this can be squared with "and smart actors see this opportunity and place bets on the other side to drive the price back towards equilibrium" if true. Someone on the other side might want to jump on their miscalculation.

Although you can definitely argue the markets aren't fully liquid or something.

Betters are using non-polling signals like early turnout figures to inform their bets.

Seems likely. Possible that some of them have studied FiveThirtyEight's model and noticed factors it doesn't capture/underweights. I dunno.

How many smart actors are in political betting, anyway. I think it's mostly wishcasting by feverent partisans. It's best used as a gauge for enthusiasm of the core base. Ceremonially igniting your cash on a bonfire to signal faith in your tribe is worth something (and if you actually win, bonus!)

I bet in antiquity, people would watch the smoke rising from the temples to gauge which Babylonian cult was on the ascendency. It's much the same here.

I think it's mostly wishcasting by feverent partisans.

Uhhh if that's true, then you'd expect it to attract smart actors who want to fleece said partisans.

You're basically suggesting that there's a giant pool of suckers betting thousands of dollars and somehow this hasn't attracted predators seeking easy money.

Like, you, yourself. If you strongly believe it's just partisans, why not throw some money in there betting against the crowd and reap some profits?

I have high confidence that I will enjoy the lunar eclipse that morning (it's visible across most of the US).

I have much less confidence that the Republicans will somewhat outperform their expectations (at least 53 Senate seats and 235 house seats). The odd thing, is I live in an area that votes 70% for one party, and typically there are a half dozen signs in my neighborhood for that party's candidates. However, this year there has only been a single election sign put up in my neighborhood and it is for the candidate in the other party.

With Milwaukee County giving other areas of the state the heads up that they're going to be reporting their final results after the rest of the state is done, I'm expecting another episode of whatever this is.

To clear, I'm not darkly hinting - I expect Milwaukee to count things up late, I expect that Milwaukee is 80% Democrat or higher, and I expect a similarly goofy looking curve to result. Republicans will look at this as obvious fraud, Democrats will look at it as a totally normal thing to happen with a large tranche of D votes dropping late at night, and it might be enough to push Evers and Barnes to victories. I don't really have a strong opinion on whether anything shady is actually happening, but I think it looks awful and should have been reformed as soon as the bizarre 2020 result happened. This isn't even difficult to do - nearby Dane County has almost as many absentee ballots, but counts them quickly because they don't centralize the process. No one familiar with Dane and Milwaukee Counties will be surprised that Dane's handling is fast and efficient while Milwaukee's is comically ridiculous and damages trust.

but I think it looks awful and should have been reformed as soon as the bizarre 2020 result happened.

I maintain, the best way around this trying to glean information out of vote totals almost minute by minute is simply that no vote tallies are released anywhere until all counting is complete. There is too much noise for anyone watching externally to know whether something is legitimate, fraudulent or just weird. All it creates is the opportunity for narratives to be fitted (either way!) We can do reveal parties with Red or Blue cakes or balloons or whatever.

The switch over doesn't happen for months. There is no need to actually know on the night who wins what.

I would also advocate mandatory free federal government IDs for all citizens, mandatory ID checking for voting and mandatory voting. Massively reduces opportunities for fraud AND boosts democratic legitimacy because everyone has to vote. Hits the Republican "make it more secure" AND the Democrat "Don't disenfranchise people" buttons. Then we can really see how America would vote as a whole.

mandatory voting.

I have reservations about mandatory voting, but if implemented, I think it might have the effect of improving the quality of the national political conversation.

Basically, I get the sense that, at some point around the late '90s, national political campaigns came to understand that changing someone's vote from R to D (or vice versa!) is actually really hard, and it's more effective for the D campaign to encourage high D turnout. Driving D turnout requires impressing upon D voters that the upcoming election is crucially important, which means convincing D voters that an R victory will be a total catastrophe (the end of democracy).

Mandatory voting would change campaigns' incentives to reward actually changing voters' minds, which could help lower the temperature in the country.

Mandatory voting would permit massive law enforcement harassment, particularly if the mandatory voting is only in person (as insinuated by your id-check requirement). With that said, I think the free government ID and mandatory ID check to vote, plus "make election day a federal holiday" and "standardizing election days" would all be good ideas.

Mandatory voting is probably unconstitutional and is in any event likely to be hugely unpopular with Republicans, since conventional wisdom is that Republican demos usually have better turnout.

Likewise, free federal voter IDs are likely to be opposed on pragmatic grounds (e.g. NC voter id laws, which were targeting at obstructing Democratic demos) and on ideological grounds (federal voter ID means federal voter ID database).

I know, that's why I had both in there. Things both sides want as well as things both sides don't want.

Almost certainly will never happen of course. If you want really good security when voting that means a Federal database. One pulling from the IRS and other things so that people who move are properly tracked. It's pretty much how it works in the UK when updating the electoral register we could pull directly from death registrations, Council Tax info, the equivalent of Section 8 (housing benefit records) and the like. If you want to be sure someone is eligible to vote in place A and cannot vote in place B, then you need to track where they are and when.

It would be a bitter pill for both parties to swallow, but also gives them something they want. Higher turnout for Democrats and Increased security for Republicans. Whether it is unconstitutional wouldn't be a problem because in whatever world we were in where both parties agreed the compromise they would have the ability to make an amendment or just kludge it at the Supreme Court level. That world just to be clear is not this world though.

It seems to me that this could be accomplished without compelling states to do anything - create a federal database, assign federal IDs, allow states to participate on a voluntary basis. I would certainly advocate that my state sign up for it, and by participating in such a system, you could increase confidence that your state isn't getting illegitimate voters.

I am vigorously against compulsory voting because I think the marginal non-voter is (to be blunt) an absolute moron. I would generally prefer driving down participation in any way that doesn't seem likely to cause social upheaval. Of course, at some point we're bumping into the more basic question of what the point of democracy is in the first place, but none of the answers that I come up with make true universal voting sound appealing to me.

I am vigorously against compulsory voting because I think the marginal non-voter is (to be blunt) an absolute moron.

Morons are citizens too. Smart productive citizens can navigate whatever setup happens. Morons should have a say in making sure their society is set up for them. Democracy isn't about getting the best answers in my opinion. It's about getting the answers that work for the majority of your people. And those may be stupid and counterproductive. And that is ok.

I've heard an alternative take, which is: "Democracy is how we get different groups of people with widely-varying value systems to live in the same place without violent conflict." It's like, every N years, we have a mini civil war, except instead of actually shooting/stabbing/punching each other, we just line up everybody's troops on opposite sides of the battlefield, and whoever brings the biggest army wins, and we all agree to go home without bloodshed until the next regularly-scheduled civil war.

One can argue that there's no point in including people who are indifferent to politics in this process, because they're not the ones likely to start an actual war over anything.

On the other hand, one can argue that if we did make everybody show up, the issues being discussed would be more mainstream and less fringe. Wedge issues like trans rights, gun control, and abortion might be much less salient.

That definitely is another consideration, agreed. I think though that people's level of disengagement of politics can be a warning sign. They might not start a war, but they may very well opt out of the social contract entirely, if they feel they are not represented.

I read /u/walterodim as saying something like “Whether or not anything shady is happening, it’s going to look like it is. My point is that this appearance is bad in itself. However, I don’t want to get sidetracked into an object-level debate about whether anything actually shady is happening, so I’ll refrain from expressing a view on this” (probably because they have neither time nor inclination, something I can empathise with).

That was more or less my feeling, but here I am, getting sidetracked anyway! That anyone looks at that 2020 graph and thinks, "yeah, probably a good plan, let's run it back with no changes" is wild to me.

The 2020 election had quite a few actual irregularities in addition to the aesthetic I presented, such as a quarter million people doing an end-run around normal ID procedures by claiming to be indefinitely confined. The sitting governor has consistently vetoed bills targeted at reducing fraud; in some cases, I think the pretexts for doing so are incredibly thin and it mostly just comes down to oppositional defiance. Edit - In other cases, I think the bills are pretty stupid, I'm not saying these are all good measures.

If you want me to state my best guess, it's that I don't think there is very much actual vote fraud in Wisconsin. My reason for saying that I don't feel strongly about that position is that while I don't see great evidence for there being widespread vote fraud, I don't think it's great that we have a system that plausibly could be exploited and actual results that are pretty weird looking. In my dream world, we'd knock it off with the adoption of mass mail voting, or at least knock it off with the loophole that allows avoiding identification. Given the current procedures, I have no idea how you'd go about detecting many types of fraud; if I moved out of Wisconsin next year, it seems like I'd have zero trouble continuing to vote in Wisconsin and the governor opposes measures that would prevent that.

So again, I don't personally think there's actually widespread fraud, but I think we're going to have shaky optics and plausible reasons for Republicans to be pissed off.

That's one example, which almost certainly was (IMO) people saying "I'm staying at home due to COVID, so that's me being confined due to illness, sure."

I agree. I don't think that was actually legal and I'm highly skeptical that these people actually confined themselves to their homes indefinitely, but I will absolutely grant that this is both the mostly likely reason for the spike and could reasonably be tolerated in 2020. My complaint isn't that it was tolerated in 2020, but that this loophole wasn't closed in 2022, which gives the appearance of bad faith and allowing avoidance of IDs.

Wisconsin's election results don't have any of those weird patterns.

They actually did. There probably is some cogent explanation for the weird patterns there, but they are actually are weird!

Again though, I really don't need to relitigate 2020, I would just strongly prefer that we stop using a system that's more or less guaranteed to get results that have terrible optics when it's pretty easy to just not do that. The refusal to correct these sorts of things is actually more suspicious to me than anything that I see in 2020.

It was a recent switch. Note that the other two counties in the initial picture that were still counting (Brown and Kenosha) are also on the list of counties that switched. I'm sure there is a logistical reason that they wanted to do so and it probably simplified something, but it seems more like it should be, "we tried that and it worked poorly" than something that has to be maintained for historical reasons.

Blake Masters has had shocking overperformance despite Mitch McConnel and the GOP establishment basically withdrawing all support from him (its a 50-50 race and they're spending nothing on it)

If there was anywhere I'd expect the republican leaning polsters to be systematically undercounting out of ideological affiliation and to demoralize it'd be there... Predictit has it at 47-53 odds against masters, so its already neck and neck and any ideological thumb on the scale of the polls would mean masters is positioned to win

Didn't Thiel spend $14M or something on Masters' campaign? Fair to note that establishment has abandoned him, but he certainly isn't unfunded.

Kelly had spent more than twice that by July. Masters is extremely underfunded for a competitive Senate candidate.

Ya Theil will basically have his own private senator if masters wins... which we'd expect anyway, given Masters was the one who wrote his book

Red Congress. GOP wins 52 Senate seats and 232 House seats. I'm basically going by Fivethirtyeight aggregations with an estimation of slight GOP overperformance.

I expect mild Republican 'overperformance' (defined here as 'winning a few races that were considered likely Dem wins). I don't think we see any surprise Dem victories at the federal level.

I officially expect the GOP to control the Senate. I will not be terribly surprised if they get 54 votes total. I'm with you as to believing the markets are correct. Indeed, I suspect the markets are a little underconfident. If they've priced in the risk of fraud and recounts then it's hard to see how we get any scenario other than GOP house and Senate, with small possibility of Dem Senate.

The two races I am particularly interested in as 'bellwethers' are New York and Arizona Governor. If Kari Lake wins I think that's proof positive of a 'red wave.' If Hochul loses... we're in a red tsunami scenario. I expect Lake to win. 60% confidence.

I also expect Herschel Walker to win by an unexpectedly large margin. Anyone showing up on election day that is undecided will be likely to go with him. He's got more name positive name recognition in Georgia than any other person I could try to name.

Oh, I am also officially predicting that Florida will get it's count done (i.e. able to definitely declare victory in all state and federal-level races) on election day or shortly thereafter (before noon the next day), there won't be a need for a recount, and there will be no major voter fraud (defined at 1000 or more 'false' votes in any given county) detected. 90% confidence on all of the above as a group.

PLEASE call me out on this if I'm wrong, I'm feeling extremely confident in my calibration, which is weird for me.

I'm going to guess that certain other states will have a harder time getting done on day of.

I don't necessarily believe in "if this happens, it's definitely a blowout" with regards to the NY governor race. I agree Hochul is likely to win but NY, like the rest of New England in a more exaggerated way, has interesting local political dynamics and because of the distribution of the city/suburbs/upstate split a relatively modest discontentment with the (perceived) weak-on-crime policies of the Democrats in the city and even moreso the suburbs could put a Republican in the governor's mansion.

Alls I'm saying is that I expect a Hochul loss to strongly correlate with a "GOP wins 54 senate seats" scenario.

I have paid virtually zero attention to the ground-level politics in New York.

This is largely a prediction that the races in Florida won't be very close.

Yes.

I've been saying this for literal months.

https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2021/11/17/milestone-moment-republicans-officially-overtake-democrats-in-florida-1394072

Late calls require both a level of slow counting and a very close election. FL won't have any of the latter, and therefore they almost surely won't have late calls.

All you're telling me is that I'm being under confident at 90%.

Which sucks for FL voters who don't get a meaningful say in their government.

I literally don't understand this, even reading your clarifications below. Does no voter get a meaningful say unless an election is close?

I live in Oregon, which is (usually) heavily weighted against my interests, and it does usually seem to not matter whether or not I vote. But that doesn't mean that the majority of progressives who win almost everything here didn't get a meaningful say, it just means I'm in the minority (hopefully not this time).

Which sucks for FL voters who don't get a meaningful say in their government.

I find your addition of these little barbs to be mildly amusing.

Florida has, under Desantis, an absolutely insane amounts of economic growth, with generally minimal government intervention. Find me a single 'objective' metric under which Florida has gotten worse since 2018 and I might, MIGHT cede you a point.

The recovery from Hurricane Ian (ONE MONTH AGO) has been mindbogglingly fast considering the damage it did.

The Democrats haven't been able to put up anybody who could possibly pose a reasonable alternative to what Florida currently has. They're rerunning an old, formerly republican governor as their candidate.

I genuinely think you're bemoaning the fact that the population of a state actually likes their political representatives and is, therefore, rewarding them.

Which in my book means that most of the people feel like they have quite the meaningful say indeed.

More damning for the Dems, this appears to cross racial lines as well.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/floridas-hispanic-voters-back-desantis-crist-support-marthas-vineyard-rcna53493

https://news.yahoo.com/poll-florida-gov-desantis-approval-234111941.html

I don't think you have a leg to stand on in arguing that a GOP sweep is somehow not representative of Florida voter's political preferences.

It's not like some people in Florida don't support Democrats.

And they will have their representatives and they will have their local governments composed of dem-friendly candidates.

It would make no sense for them to have a majority if they aren't representing a majority of the voters.

It's bad when elections don't matter, and incumbents just get put back in office with no competition.

Hmm. I wonder what I'd find if I looked at those Dem-leaning districts and checked incumbent win rates, especially at local levels.

Your point is fine, but you're aiming it at a state where it might apply less than average. Florida was considered 'purple' for decades.

I don't think I need to make a point about the current makeup of the Federal Congress and incumbency advantages.

Oh, I am also officially predicting that Florida will get it's count done (i.e. able to definitely declare victory in all state and federal-level races) on election day or shortly thereafter (before noon the next day), there won't be a need for a recount, and there will be no major voter fraud (defined at 1000 or more 'false' votes in any given county) detected. 90% confidence on all of the above/

They did exactly that in 2020, because they allow counting of mail-in votes early. States which didn't allow such counting took several days. Apparently this was evidence of fraud despite being pointed out by 538 at least a week before the election.

Welllll they (which is to say, specifically, Desantis) also booted the Election Officials in Broward and Palm Beach County that made 2018 more fucky than it should have been.

https://www.flgov.com/2019/01/18/governor-ron-desantis-issues-executive-orders-suspending-palm-beach-county-supervisor-of-elections-susan-bucher-and-accepting-resignation-of-dr-brenda-snipes/

I'm not going to repeat my arguments around that, feel free to read the context here:

https://www.themotte.org/post/133/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/19658?context=8#context

Also, this is the first election year that the FDLE's Elections Crimes Unit has been active, so I can't see any way that attempting to cheat this year will be worth the risk.

When I say it was evidence of fraud, I meant it was asserted to be evidence of fraud in other states that went for Biden. One example can be seen here since the original was deleted.

AFAICT whether or not someone claims an election was valid or secure or whatever, is pretty much 100% determined by whether their preferred candidate one. It's just blatantly obvious confirmation bias from every corner, to the point where legitimate concerns probably end up overlooked. I don't have time to read your whole other post now, but "the governor instituted a bunch of election reforms right after almost losing an election" probably doesn't sound like the defense you think it does.

If polling aggregators are a thing you find interesting, here are links to 538's 2022 Election Forecast page and RealClearPolitics' Election Central 2022 page.

If you're going to be glued to the television/internet tomorrow evening, and want to know what races to watch as early indicators, here's an hour-by-hour breakdown from Decision Desk HQ, and their General Results homepage. The night will begin at 7 PM EST with a trio of key Congressional races in Virginia, and the Governor and Senate statewide races in Georgia. At 7:30, start looking for returns from North Carolina and Ohio.

One of the reasons DDHQ is one of the best locations for US election returns is that their analysis pays particular attention to margins of victory, not just winners and losers, in forecasting outcomes on election night. Sure, a particular county might always vote Republican, but if the margin is R+5 on the night in question, that's very bad news for Republicans if the county was R+15 in 2016. You'll also see a lot of "if this race is called early for the Democrat, that's good news for the D party; but if the call is delayed, that's good news for Rs" or vice versa, depending on the race in question.

If you're going to be glued to the television/internet tomorrow evening,

BWAHAHA nope. I'm going to find a way to enjoy the nice weather and literally not think about it. I'm also pretty confidence it won't have a major impact on my life either way. Besides, I teach a class at the gym and I like my students better.

Not passing judgment on anyone who enjoys it as a spectator sport, with the understanding they have no influence on outcome though.

If you're going to be glued to the television/internet tomorrow evening, and want to know what races to watch as early indicators,

My plan is to turn off TV/devices in the early evening and review the results when I wake up on Wednesday morning. If experience is any guide, though, I'll be refreshing the standard real-time update feeds compulsively until 2 am.

I'll make the relatively tame, if potentially controversial here, prediction that we get a split congress just barely, 60% confidence. I think the incentive of pollsters has become to slightly favor the republicans because if they favor the democrats and the republicans win it's much worse for them than the alternative. Seems most places are giving R a slight edge so I'll give D a slight edge. I probably wouldn't stake more than a hundred bucks on this though.

edited:lose->win

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