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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30924 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.

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.

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