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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   18861 thread views

USA Election Day 2022 Megathread

Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.

...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).

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Did the GOP hurt their own election chances by downplaying COVID?

This tweet claims that Lauren Boebert may lose her race by less than 100 votes, in a district with over 2,500 covid deaths. While one can certainly argue over the effectiveness of various measures, I think a combination of masking, distancing, and (of course) vaccinating could easily be worth plus or minus 8% deaths (the vote is roughly evenly split, so if there would otherwise be about 1250 dead from each group, then we have 100/1250 = about 8%). And the elderly, who were disproportionately affected by COVID, tend to vote Republican.

Note, the original tweet is now out of date; https://elections.denverpost.com/ has Boebert ahead by just over 1,000 votes. The closest House race where the Dem is currently ahead, coincidentally also in CO, unfortunately does not appear in https://geographicinsights.iq.harvard.edu/coviduscongress because it's a new district (CO 8). CA District 13 is also very close, with the Republican ahead by 267 (according to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/10/us/elections/results-house-seats-elections-congress.html, at time of writing) in a district with 945 covid deaths. If this race does flip, it could easily be by just a few hundred votes (currently only 58% counted though).

I thought you were going to say the Republicans hurt their chances because the "correct" take was to lean in hard to Covid panic and authoritarianism.

Had Trump gone all-in on Covid, the battle lines would have drawn up differently. Democrats, not Republicans, would be Covid skeptics. Early in the pandemic this was indeed the case, with the various cringey "hug an Asian" messaging being sent out by the Democrats. But then Trump chose his side, and the Democrats by necessity chose the other.

This was by far the largest mistake of Trump's career. Had he chosen Covid maximalism, he'd still be President. People still wouldn't like him - but they'd praise his Covid leadership. Most people were very panicked about Covid until early 2022. And even though this fear was largely unfounded, the politically savvy move would have been to play into the fear. Trump failed to read the room. And he lost the Presidency because of it.

No. I don't think either the hard-line liberal or conservative stances on Covid were correct, and the politicization of the topic very likely cost us a great deal of lives and money and freedom.

I have no idea what would have happened if he had embraced the original battle lines on covid, but I think he wouldn't be president any way. He was never that popular if you look at 2016 election results, and I think regardless of policy covid would have had negative economic effects that would hurt him because that's how people vote. That's just my opinion, though, I don't claim much certainty.

You need to go back to being a moron. I wouldn’t vote for a take COVID seriously person and this seems like a troll posts.

  • -10

This is uncalled for. Do not be antagonistic like this.

What's with the aggressive response? Agree or disagree, I don't see any reason to fling heated insults like that. Chill.

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