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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35167 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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So, granted the liberal/left leaning narrative that the recent wave of election integrity laws is true(which I have my doubts about), should we expect to see republicans outperform their polls in states with those laws but not necessarily states absent them?

Or to put it another way, if the real purpose of election integrity is to benefit republicans, then we should expect a pattern of polling errors benefitting republicans in states where voter ID laws already exist, particularly the recent stricter wave. And that furthermore those polling errors should be larger than the ones in place in states lacking the recent wave of election integrity laws. So it follows that if, as in the last election, we see polls as broadly accurate in the sun belt and biased in favor of democrats in the frost belt, that would constitute evidence against election integrity laws tilting the playing field, would it not?

Polling seems as much a marketing and campaigning gimmick as it does any kind of actual fact-finding. Your question depends on how much you believe pollsters are actually concerned with facts versus marketing/campaigning. I admit I have almost nothing to add on that score, beyond the observations that Democrats are oversampled and that they always miraculously poll better in the closing months of an election cycle. But your question highlights something I think important more generally that I've been wanting to comment on.

One problem with all of the discourse around "election integrity" and "voter suppression" and "Red mirages" from the left is it presupposes that there is no cheating. While it may be expected that in-group analysis would begin with such an assumption, an objective or out-group analysis would not. In fact, the more parsimonious explanation for why there are "Red mirages" or late-count Blue resurgences might be systematic electoral fraud -- that question must remain open until investigation is completed and the hypothesis properly explored.

Similarly, when trying to interpret the consequences of "Election integrity" laws, a result that shifted favorably towards Republicans is explained by both the "voter suppression" and "electoral fraud" narratives. This is why full-scale, forensic audits coupled with comprehensive investigations of elections are actually necessary. If the voter suppression narrative were true, such audits and investigations would give a solid accounting of it. Ditto for electoral fraud. Given this, it's very, very suggestive that audits and investigations are unilaterally opposed. As for polling, I think that there is enough of a "black box" phenomenon at work there, where everything is private and proprietary, so that they could engineer their efforts towards their actual goals regardless of the truth about "election integrity" -- that is, they might become more accurate, as you suggest, but they also may persist as inaccurate or false/misleading regardless; the two things seem quite untethered.

This seems seriously confounded. Personally, I would put money on the size and reach of the "shy MAGA" effect increasing, rather than decreasing this election. Further, midterm elections are always odd in terms of mobilization and turnout. Further further, the Democrats do a very good job of goosing enthusiasm in certain places at certain times through the use of pop-up NGO/activist movements. I would hesitate to draw a conclusion about the effect of voting integrity measures from this one election alone, especially given that the most recent comparator elections - 2020 - were extremely irregular in terms of voting mechanics and enthusiasm and thus not likely a useful comparator for anything

If the wave of election integrity bills have the effect that the media says they do, then we should see the Texas, Georgia, Florida, Arizona GOP outperform the polls by higher margins than the Wisconsin GOP, even in an environment where the polls are biased in favor of democrats.

This seems seriously confounded. Personally, I would put money on the size and reach of the "shy MAGA" effect increasing, rather than decreasing this election.

Saw a point on twitter that the administration openly likening right wingers to terrorists and to order Federal Investigations into right-leaning groups and of course the ongoing attempt to paint all conservatives as Nazis is only going to make it harder to detect GOP voters in the polls. You can't simultaneously threaten to bring state power to bear on your political foes and expect normal people to be willing to openly admit to being your political foe.

Nate Silver seems to doubt this is even a phenomenon and argues it wouldn't be in play this year for various reasons.

This strikes me as naive. Polarization has gotten worse, not better. If there was a 'shy Trump voter' effect when Trump was in office what do we expect to happen when he's not in power and the guy in power is actively prosecuting Trump supporters?

People who were already reluctant to admit to a Trump vote are now going to be even less likely to admit to ANY Republican vote at all, no? Of course, not having Trump on the ballot might depress turnout unless he comes out strong in favor of voting GOP.

My bet is on the GOP overperforming polls, although it will depend more than anything on the economic state of the country around voting time.

I think the reality is wildly disappointing to both sides of the argument - there just that much actual fraud, nor is there actually a large, measurable suppression effect of requiring voter IDs. I strongly side with the pro-ID side because I think the appearance of free and fair elections is incredibly important and the number of legitimate voters without IDs is a rounding error, but I don't actually think there are many people running vote scams either.

That said, I could be wrong, and agree that your suggestion is a good way of testing whether these interventions matter. One problem is that the delta wouldn't actually tell us whether large amounts of fraud had been stopped or whether there was mass suppression of legitimate votes.

Agree that that’s definitely a big problem, and that red and blue tribers would see republicans underperforming in Wisconsin and over performing in Georgia with a ‘two movies, one screen’ sort of attitude.

I tend to agree with you, but while my libertarian tendencies point toward "You shouldn't need the mark of the beast to function in society"; I tend to go a step further: there are no legitimate voters that don't have IDs. If you don't have an ID at this point, you probably aren't functioning on a level where I care if you vote or not.

A far more interesting question is what kinds of IDs can be used.

I've been making this argument for a long time. Calling Voter ID racist is absurd. If you can't save up $12 and a bus trip every 8 years to go vote (especially given Democratic "Voter Outreach" programs), I'd go beyond calling those voters illegitimate. I don't want those people participating in any democratic process at all.

If you don't have an ID at this point, you probably aren't functioning on a level where I care if you vote or not.

Yeah, my framing there was really just being careful enough to use "almost". I actually agree that it's pretty much a tautology that lacking identification in 2022 means that you're not a legitimate voter. I flatly don't believe the sob stories about how requiring identification will disenfranchise X number of totally innocent people that are completely legitimate citizens.

I believe that there is probably a very small number of senior citizens who lost their drivers license after letting it lapse and live on some kind of autopilot. That being said, previous voter ID laws didn’t suppress turnout, and there’s no actual evidence that these election laws will either.

A lot of Voter ID laws have some kind of exemption system that handles the "I just totally let my driver's license lapse" people.

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