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Goodguy  10d ago (text post)   Edited 10d ago   11331 thread views

Midterms Megathread

Cause otherwise midterms discussion will be scattered around a bunch of separate Culture War thread posts. And it's nice to have more off-the-cuff rapid reactions in a dedicated megathread.

The first thing I've noticed so far: if the exit polls are correct, Americans are very pessimistic about AI.

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The Gateway Pundit is reporting that there is a legibly fraudulent pattern of statistical anomalies in this election’s results. They posted the math for anyone to see. The original reporting comes from TruthIsFreedom on X.

Like any good epistemologist, they basically call it predictive: pick a county, apply their formula, and see that the result matches.

Although I’m a minarchist libertarian Republican, I’m probably one of the few remaining advocates for Trump on The Motte, from what I see in these threads. I’m not here to argue that point, FYI. I’m here to ask people not to simply disregard it out of hand because Trump reposted it or because it has LLM speech hallmarks. The allegation is so monstrous that, for the sake of the perceived legitimacy of our democratic republic, the mechanism needs to be explained by literally anything besides malfeasance.

Excerpts posted here from GWP so you don’t have to give them ad revenue if you don’t want:

One formula fits all of it: Republican 2026 = 0.85 × Trump 2024 Democrat 2026 = Harris 2024 + 0.15 × Trump 2024

For every 1,000 Trump points, 850 stayed Republican. 150 landed on the Democratic side. The numbers: Senate: Republicans kept 85% of Trump’s share Governor: 86% Variation explained: 88%

What makes it strange: It didn’t matter how red the state was. Wyoming, Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts: same 15% (p = 0.69). The Democratic gain was sized by Trump’s vote, not Harris’s. The Harris part is zero.

The 0.85 beat both standard election-swing models in every set of races. Drop any single state and the multiplier stays between 0.846 and 0.853.

Why seats flipped: At 0.85, any state where Trump got under about 58.5% falls below 50%. Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, South Carolina, North Carolina: all under that line. All flipped.

What this means: Midterms are messy. This one isn’t. Two sets of races, different candidates, different campaigns, and the same 15% decrease almost everywhere.

A pattern this even demands answers at the ballot level: paper ballot hand counts, poll-book check-ins against votes counted, and voter files showing who actually turned out.

So, what’s the benign mechanism that explains this?

So, what’s the benign mechanism that explains this?

I think this result is pretty clearly not consistent with fraud.

What happened is that a big chunk of 2024 Trump voters, young men in particular, wanted no new wars and a focus on domestic issues, particularly affordability.

Susie Wiles has been keeping things focussed on the Middle East and corporate interests. R Senate leadership has been focussed on maintaining their power within the party as opposed to delivering on 2024 promises.

A case in point is Texas. Politically it's dominated by the Bush family patronage network. Voters keep rejecting their candidates but leadership is out of touch with reality.

Their plan was to torpedo the Paxton campaign to teach voters a lesson about voting for the wrong primary candidate.

Instead voters taught them a lesson, and now even Abbott lost.

Hypothetical: Would you say the same thing if every Republican who lost had lost by exactly 20,398 votes?

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