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Notes -
Who else up watching election results? As of the time of this writing Decision Desk has called all of:
The Virginia governor race in favor of Abigail Spanberger (D).
The Virginia lieutenant governor race in favor of Ghazala Hashmi (D and the first Muslim woman elected to statewide office).
The Virginia Attorney General race in favor of Jay Jones (D lmao).
The New Jersey governor race in favor of Mickie Sherrill (D).
The NYC mayoral race for Zohran Mamdani (D, projecting a majority of the vote too lmao).
Both statewide Georgia Public Service Commissioner races for the Democratic candidates.
Polls are still open in California so no word yet there on the redistricting ballot measure. In other Jay Jones news the house delegate who leaked his texts is on track to lose her re-election, as part of dems winning a trifecta in the Virginia government.
The county by county level results I've seen show pretty much all of the above running ahead of Harris and Spanberger even running ahead of Biden in 2020. Is this indicative of what we might see going forward? Dems had previously overperformed in special elections this year but this is the closest to a general until next years actual federal elections. If these trends hold up not a good sign for Republicans!
That "IF" is doing absurd amounts of work here.
Anyway, literally none of these outcomes was too surprising or even concerning to me. I have managed to studiously avoid caring too much about these elections since my state has mostly just been a beneficiary of other states self-immolating.
The outcome that was ALSO unsurprising but I think has some really noticeable import is the Young Female Vote*:
and on the male side:
*Exit polling, so the real margins might look different.
Dems can pull a basic majority with young men, but still have 40+% going republican even in a good year. But are pulling huge majorities with the young women.
So there's a sizeable gendered political gap even in blue-leaning states.
If you're a young conservative dude in any of those states, good freaking luck finding a romantic partner. For the <20% of women who might partially agree with your politics, your competition is your 'fellow' conservatives, who overall outnumber the available pool of women.
Oh and then there's the recent research that "Male students show more tolerance for political enemies than females show for their own allies"
So in terms of 'trends,' What do you think eventually happens if young women continue voting for Democrats/lefties in droves... and have extreme intolerance for anyone who doesn't, while young men tack further right?
Your takeaway from these numbers is 'but who will the male conservatives bang?'. I think the more valid question would be 'why are the large majority of young women voting D instead of R?'.
The short version of that is that the Democratic policies are based on strong appeals to emotions, be it general anxiety, sympathy, or outright fear of vaguely specified catastrophes happening in the future.
Women are generally more susceptible to pure emotional appeals:
(I plucked this study at random, but there are MANY like it.)
Women also tend to be conform more to 'public' pressure. than men so it'd be unsurprising they'd follow each other's lead and cluster around the same parties/candidates if they think all the other girls are doing so.
THUS if you build your coalition largely around those groups that respond most strongly to emotional rhetoric, it will end up having an outsize amount of women in it.
Simple as.
The slightly longer version:
Women are just way more neurotic now.
So many of them are in a constant state of anxiety.
(Fun research I read recently: there's been a noticeable rise in young females' "Solo" alcohol consumption.)
This all means they are extra sensitive to fear-based messaging.
Which political actors are keen on exploiting. Make your voters believe that the sky is falling, the climate is overheating, the KKK is about to arise and re-instate segregation, children are dying en masse in some random country, that measles is making a comeback, whatever.
Make your voters believe the other party/tribe is the reason for these occurrence, or at least the main obstacle stopping them from fixing them.
And then propose that the crisis can be fixed (and your anxieties relieved) by voting the 'correct' way. And now you've got a motivated, easily controlled, almost fanatical voter based to mobilize around election time.
But, of course, voting never actually fixes the anxiety issue, because the source of the anxiety wasn't actually what they said it was. So you can exploit those anxious tendencies indefinitely.
Which is why liberals, especially 'extreme' liberals, have much, much higher rates of mental illness diagnoses than moderates and conservatives.
So the political message is simple. "You should be afraid. You should fear [external thing]. Republicans are causing [external thing]. Vote for us to make [external thing] go away."
Add in that Women have more student loan debt than men.
Add in that Women Consume more healthcare and spend more on prescription drugs.
Add in that Women are by and large more likely to be receiving welfare benefits from the state although THAT is strongly mediated by race (scroll down and click the "Filter by Characteristics - Individuals" tab).
And you can see why they would tend to cluster towards the party that promises to forgive student debt, make healthcare free, and preserve or increase various welfare benefits.
So it all seems pretty straightforward.
Notice that the women who buck this trend are the married ones. They're happier, less mentally ill (not less stressed necessarily), and more likely to vote Republican.
But there are fewer women getting married, so whichever way the causal arrow points, its not too surprising there's a large pool of single women that are more likely to vote Democrat.
So in conclusion:
There's one party that caters to the most insecure, anxious, fearful and conformist subsets of the population.
And there's an increasing pool of insecure, anxious, fearful, relatively conformist women for them to cater to.
2 + 2 = 4.
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