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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?'.
Republicans are the party of "your body my choice" and Democrats... aren't. It's not complicated.
Wasn't the pro-life/pro-choice gender gap formerly pretty small? That is, there used to be a similar amount of pro-life women as pro-choice up until the last decade or so?
Even more recently than that! The big split was only really post-Dobbs. It turns out that once you have skin in the game (abortion can actually be criminalized) people change their mind. I know the phrase arises in the abortion context but I think it is also a synecdoche for a certain kind of politics towards women generally. How many Democrats are talking about how women shouldn't be working outside the home? That we should repeal the 19th amendment? That women's participation in the economy or public life has been bad for society? There is a certain kind of politics that believes women ought to be in positions of legal, social, and economic subordination to men and it is heavily concentrated among Republicans.
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