These last few years, I have often found myself reflecting on America’s problem of hyperpartisanship, which is an escalating challenge for Democrats and for democracy itself. The DownBallot’s excellent Special Elections Tracker shows that Democratic candidates, in special elections this year, have overperformed by 11.1 % compared to the 2020 Presidential Election, and 15.4 % relative to the 2024 Presidential Election. That is impressive!
HOWEVER, despite this stellar overperformance, in 31 special elections, Democrats have managed to flip ONLY TWO of the 11 seats controlled by Republicans (margins: 1% and 4%). In an additional three races, our margins of loss were single-digit: –3%, –5% and –7%. It must also be acknowledged that a Republican candidate came within 0.3 % of flipping a Democratic-held post.
In hyperpartisan America, far too few political races are truly competitive – and for House races, egregious GOP gerrymanders are compounding the problem. The potential good news is that a Blue Tsunami election may well overwhelm many narrow Republican gerrymanders.
I wouldn't read too much into the lack of flips. Many of those special elections have only come about because the previous occupant either passed on, was embroiled in a scandal, or was appointed to another office. Few incumbents in genuinely competitive districts would leave partway through their term. In a general election, there will be nowhere to hide. I think November 4 will be the true litmus test, you have the New Jersey and Virginia legislatures up, plus a whole bunch of special elections in places like Mississippi, Washington, Texas, etc. in conjunction with local races.
Agreed. The districts going into special elections are not random. They are even more skewed toward the safe ends, than the overall congressional and legislative districts.
This is implicitly reflected as the office holders willing to give them up to take other opportunities, or hanging on long enough to be carried out.
It basically means people choosing to live in places whose voting patterns match their political orientation.
It's a documented fact that the number of counties that are closely divided politically (<10% margin in presidential elections) has declined significantly in the past half-century, and the number of counties won by much larger margins, for either party, has accordingly grown.
Thanks for the explanation. In this respect my wife and I are surely deviates, having moved to a highly conservative rural community where property prices were affordable, and the surrounding wilderness is magnificent.
re: the Louisiana item, it's kind of crazy how Letlow went from being a kind of accidental congresswoman after the death of her husband to the belle of the ball in state politics
It must be at least 5% of the electorate in each county who participated in the last gubernatorial election. Same amount Ohioans need to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot statewide.
What's even harder is that Republicans don't want to play fair. They'll do everything possible to keep the referendum off the ballot and/or keep it from passing. That's what they did with last year's antigerrymandering constitutional amendment and how the AR Supreme Court kept a constitutional amendment loosening their abortion ban from getting on the ballot.
But they only need 44 of 88 counties. The abortion and antigerrymandering initiative drives easily exceeded that and the percentages needed to get on the ballot.
I don't recall a single instance in American history where fringe leftists turning against progressives ever did anything beneficial, politically or otherwise.
Point of information: Quite some time ago, the DSA withdrew their endorsement of AOC and denounced her, apparently because of a topic that we cannot discuss here. This attack sounds like it’s coming from their ideological kin.
(Yes, I’m well aware that some DSA is radically different from other DSA…)
Yeah these folks came out to protest AOC when she stumped for Bowman. Incredibly counterproductive, even if your only concern is the unmentionable issue.
Lol and someone here was calling DSA "Social Democrats", they are not.
Examples of Social Democracies would be Germany, Norway and even UK or Australia to an extent. What DSA wants is a far-left Yugoslavia like fully worker-owned competitive model but with democratic rights. (In contrast, the Soviet Union had quotas and no competition) They are all for solidarity unless it's about dividing the left, dividing us over every little purity test.
We don't need anyone else joining the greens. Keep them pissing from inside the tent whenever possible. But this was all inevitable. No one is acceptable to the left. If they don't have a "centrist" dem target, they will turn on even the most pure of their own.
Being that we are for electing more and better Democrats, for the sake of civility, I would prefer that the Democratic Party at large call out anyone vandalizes any political candidate or office holder’s office. It does not accomplish anything in political discourse.
I am not going to argue anyone in the DSA supporting side should join the Green Party. However, at some point we have to draw the line and say enough is enough. We can certainly try to talk to these fools and be rational but if they want none of it, they should not be allowed to give the Democratic Party a bad name.
That is a gross over generalization. There are shades of opinion in the DSA. And thank God they aren’t like the putrid, so-called social democratic, parties in places like the UK, France, Germany and Greece.
People like that remind me of that scene in the Life of Brian where the anti-Roman groups constantly fought against themselves instead of against the Romans.
The splitting tendency among Socialists is nothing new, in fact there was a major split of Socialist Party of America around the time that movie came out. One of the three splinters is what eventually became DSA.
On that note, I had commented that opposition to bike lanes was a huge part of his campaign. An unreasonably disproportionate amount of focus was going into it.
This poll explains why, I think. Had 50% of respondents saying they think bike lanes make it slower for them to get around, with the rest split between no change, faster, and don't know.
His consultants almost certainly saw similar numbers and concluded it was the kind of divisive issue that would serve him well. I don't know the future but I cannot see that working. People might not like bike lanes but they're not going to change their vote based on it when they care far more about schools, property taxes, housing costs, policing, actions taken by the feds, etc.
These seem very bad - not that it's disturbing that the LDP lost its majority, but which party gained:
'some of the party's support had gone towards the Sanseito party - who would now be saying things which "haven't been said in public before by members of the upper house," - noting the party's pull towards "conspiracy theories, anti-foreign statements, [and] very strong revisionist views about history".'
'Sanseito rose to prominence during the pandemic, as it peddled conspiracy theories on YouTube such as the "deep state" and warned people not to wear masks or vaccinate themselves.'
Three different parties all in the 12-13% vote share range. LDP went from 34% to 22% since the 2022 elections. Sanseito is still at only 12.5% but that's the kind of percentage that can grow; hopefully they languish and do not get much more voter support in future elections.
Sanseito is getting all the press but when you look at the vote allocations a lot of opposition parties gained as much or more seats. The relatively center-right DPFP was the real big winner re: gains, not Sanseito.
We once-exported scientific progress and western values, but now we're exporting fascism. Japan is already a xenophobic and male-dominated society, but Trumpism is still resonating there somehow. They literally accept 70-hr workweeks and a stagnant economy over foreign workers and learning English.
Sanseitō is known for its ultraconservative ideology and has been called traditional conservative.[2][23] It has also been referred to as extremist, "extremely conservative", and "hardline nationalist".[24][25][26]
Sohei Kamiya, founder and secretary general of Sanseitō, said that Sanseitō has a high affinity with the conservative faction of the U.S. Republican Party, the far-right German party Alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-right French party National Rally (RN), and the right-wing populist party Reform UK.[27][28] Kamiya has said that he learned many of his "emotional button-pushing themes and norm-breaking language" from U.S. President Donald Trump and stated that he was Japan's equivalent of Trump. According to Kamiya, Japan faces threats from shady globalists ("cabal of global elites"),[29] criminal foreigners and a corrupt political establishment that is suffocating young people with taxes. His has proposed a "Japanese First" nationalist agenda. Sanseito has drawn mainly young male voters. Opponents and domestic media reports have accused him of being xenophobic, saying he is directing public anger with high prices and stagnant wages at Japan's foreign residents.[30]
So which 6 seats do we think Dems will pick up? I can only imagine that Ian Lovejoy is dead meat in the 22nd, particularly considering Trump's gutting the federal workforce which is strong in NoVa. I assume the 57th will flip as long as Dems actually defend their candidate against any BS non-scandals that Republicans try to dig up (which VA Dems didn't do last time with Susannah Gibson). The 71st, based in James City County, seems a good candidate since Harris improved on Biden's performance there. If we get good enough African-American turnout in Petersburg, we should be able to flip the 82nd.
Those seem like the most obvious ones to me. If the NoVa Democratic wave is particularly strong, we might be able to get the 30th, 64th, and/or 66th (all of which voted for Trump by 1-2%). If Dems can get out the vote at Virginia Tech, maybe they could win the 41st despite its absurd Republican gerrymander. The 73rd is rapidly trending Democratic - it's the only Trump/Harris district in the state - so it could be a dark horse flip. And if the wave is big enough, maybe we could get districts like the 75th, 86th, and 89th despite strong Republican incumbents there.
What do you all think? Which districts will Dems flip?
All the elected Rs who won by less than 5 points Bolling mentioned are likely pickups. He didn't mention congressional Rs, but I think it's bad news for MAGA rep Jen Kiggans in Virginia Beach next year as well.
The post "Given the headwinds Republicans face this year, I don’t see any of the Democrats who were elected in competitive districts in 2023 being vulnerable this year. This would include the following House districts:
* 21st District (Prince William County) – Delegate Josh Thomas (D) was elected in 2023 by a margin of 52%-48%
* 58th District (Stafford and Spotsylvania Counties) – Delegate Joshua Cole (D) was elected in 2023 by a margin of 53%-47%
* 97th District – (Virginia Beach) - Delegate Michael Feggans was elected in 2023 by a margin of 52%-48%
I just can’t see Republicans picking up any of these seats this year, although they will certainly make the effort.
However, Republicans won nine competitive districts in 2023, and all these seats could be vulnerable in 2025. This would include the following districts:
* 22nd District (Northern Virginia) – Delegate Ian Lovejoy (R) won this district by 4% in 2023.
* 41st District (Blacksburg and part of Montgomery County and Roanoke County) – Delegate Chris Obenshain (R) won this district by 1% in 2023
* 57th District (Henrico County) – Delegate David Owen (R) won this district by 2% in 2023
* 71st District – James City County and New Kent County) – Delegate Amanda Batten won this district by 1% in 2023
* 75th District – (Chesterfield, Prince George and Hopewell) – Delegate Carrie Coyner (R) won this district by 5% in 2023
* 82nd District (Petersburg, Prince George, Dinwiddie and Surry) – Delegate Kim Taylor (R) won this district by 1% n 2023)
* 86th District (Hampton) – Delegate A.C. Cordoza (R ) won this district by 7% in 2023)
* 89th District (parts of Chesapeake and Suffolk) – Delegate Baxter Ennis (R) won this district by 1% in 2023
I’m confident Democrats view all these districts as potential pick-up seats in 2025, and some of them (22nd, 31st, 57th, 71st, 82nd, 89th) are particularly vulnerable.
These are the House of Delegates campaigns to watch over the next several weeks.
My best analysis is that Democrats are likely to increase their majority in the House of Delegates this fall, with the potential to pick up 6 seats, perhaps more."
It's worth noting that Bill Bolling has been a frequent critic of Republicans for over a decade (even though he still identifies as a conservative Republican, albeit anti-MAGA and anti-Tea Party), so I don't find it surprising that he's making this prediction. I do agree, though, that Democrats will likely pick up seats this year while reelecting all incumbents running for reelection.
trump sabre rattling over getting Washington and Cleveland pro teams to go back to "Redskins" and "Indians". Says he will hold up stadium deal for Washington...but land involved is now controlled by DC and not the Fed Gov't.
More nonsense - he doesn't have the authority to use a team name as the basis for any Federal action. That may not hold him back but it will be litigated then.
I’m glad Hunter’s saying the things his dad was way too nice to say. His takedowns of the Obama consultants and his jabs at Jake Tapper and George Clooney were well deserved.
And it was a humanizing interview, he doesn’t make excuses for his past behavior or anything like that.
I mean, David Plouffe was expecting to pop out champagne to celebrate Hillary Clinton winning the presidential election in 2016 because he thought everything was assured about it. Look how that turned out.
He should have been running Clinton’s campaign instead of staying on the sidelines as opposed to Bobby Mock.
Plouffe is an idiot. I hope Ken Martin fired all those ineffective Dem consultants that badmouthed and/or forced Joe to step down. I think Joe’s choice to step down cost us the PA Senate seat.
Yeah "We finally beat Medicare" getting out is how we avoided losing the other the senate seats in AZ, NV, MI, WI. It's sad they are still this insular and delusional about Bidens standing in 2024.
Compared to what? The Biden advisors who pushed him into a debate he was completely incapable of participating in and hid him from any (read all) data showing he was going to lose in a landslide? The ones that hid him from all press while claiming his fine while they all knew he was hanging on by a thread? Those advisors are the ones who should never work in Democratic politics again.
I am just talking about Plouffe. All of what I am arguing about him is pre-2017. Anything after that is not apart of what I am arguing here.
This isn’t a criticism so much about Mook but more about Plouffe rolling up his sleeves and actually ensuring Hillary Clinton would get elected. What made him so assured Clinton was going to have this in the bag? Seems to me to be nothing more than over confidence even if he may have claimed to know more of what was happening on the ground game front. Plouffe had a good system for this back in 2008.
FYI, Mook himself had a good track record of helping Democratic Candidates win at the state level. He ran Terry McAuliffe’s successful VA Gubernatorial Campaign back in 2013. I think he was not the right campaign manager for Clinton. The lack of real investment in key states like MI that Trump narrowly won would have been better addressed with a stronger campaign manager.
My point is the Biden team screwed up far worse then any of those examples and have left us in this mess. They are the last people we should be listening to. " The lack of real investment in key states like MI that Trump narrowly won would have been better addressed with a stronger campaign manager." if they had more than 100 days and were not trying to keep a ship afloat with so many self inflicted holes from the previous incapacitated captain that might have helped too.
But what you are describing about 2024 is separate from what my original comment is about, which is anything related to Plouffe pre-2017. I get what you are saying.
Hunter singled out Clooney for his inept decision to do a one page ad telling Biden to step down. Like what kind of pull does George have? Clooney doesn’t have brilliant political instincts.
"David Axelrod who had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama. And that was because of Barack Obama, not because of f*ckin’ David Axelrod. And David Plouffe, and all of these guys, and the Pod Save America guys, who were junior f*ckin’ speech writers on Barack Obama’s Senate staff, who’ve been dining out on the relationship with him for years, making millions of dollars.........white millionaires that are dining out on their association with Barack Obama from 16 years ago, living in Beverly f*cking Hills, telling the rest of the world what black voters in South Carolina really want.”
Yeah those stupid fools who elected and reelected the first black president what idiots. I'm sorry but this sounds like a privileged clueless drug addled take. What nerve to run to daddy for a pardon and call other people elitist. He should look in the mirror if he wants to find someone who was a detriment to his father's campaign and the Democratic party. Good riddance the sooner we put this fool behind us the better.
They are still riding on Obama’s coattails who was generational candidate. This was absolutely based and someone needed to say this, we need young blood, new consultants and newer ideas. He is correct, Rahm Emanuel and Axelrod are the biggest grifters and experts in white appeasement politics, just another form of identity politics. Fox news is always reporting about the Bidens either way.
Yeah campaigns dont just come together. These people worked with Obama for years while Hunter was smoking crack “selling art” and having secret children. I can’t think of a worse person to make this case in any capacity. The sooner he is out of the headlines the better.
In fact, the sooner Rahm and Axelrod get out of the headlines, the better. Those corporate hacks completely failed to deliver the president's agenda and were a major cause of the 2010 tea party. Atleast Hunter was not harming the nation at large during 2004-2011, he was just harming himself. I along with others, am sick and tired of Emanuel the “Democrat” and his daily assertions.
You forgot the part where they won majorities in Congress in 06 and the White House in 08 and reelected the president and gained seats in both chambers in 12 or are they only to blame when things go wrong? What did Hunter do other then smoke crack and embarrass his VP father during those years much like he is embarrassing himself now and reminding Democrats why they need to move on from Biden.
You forgot the part where they stuffed the house with conservadems (including former Republicans) like Emanuel himself in 2006 in what was always going to be a wave election anyways leading to almost no major reform other than a stripped down ACA, stripped down stimulus and the Dodd-Frank Act being passed, with most of the time wasted in the House negotiating with the Blue Dogs and with him calling liberals the hard R. There was no use of gaining of those seats in 2012 with 2 of those Senate seats gained in deep blue Massachusetts and in Connecticut after Lieberman retired, only the Indiana one could be attributed to recruitment. Btw Axelrod and Emanuel quit in 2011 after such a marvellous tenure at the White House. Emanuel then began another spectacular tenure as the Mayor of Chicago .
They predicted Democrats would not win back the House after 2016 for a long time without running the Blue Dogs again, how did that prediction turn out?
"Yeah those stupid fools who elected and reelected the first black president what idiots."
I think it's much more offensive to credit the election of the first black president to these white mediocrities instead to said black president. Obama would have still won easily without Axelrod and Emanuel (maybe even better without the latter), and they would be nobodies without him. We all got to see what happened when Rahm Emanuel gets to run a campaign and government all on his own, and people hated it!
"The House GOP campaign arm brought in $32.3 million in the second quarter of the year, while the House Democratic campaign arm raised $29.1 million in the same period. In June alone, the NRCC raised $18.1 million and the DCCC brought in $12.7 million.
In 2025 so far, the NRCC has raised a total of $69 million, while the DCCC has raised $66 million.
However, the DCCC reported having $39.7 million in the bank, while the NRCC has $37.6 million cash-on-hand.
The NRCC’s second quarter haul is a milestone for the committee, which is normally outraised by its Democratic counterpart. The last time the NRCC outraised the DCCC in the first six months and second quarter of an election cycle was 2021. "
The big question is how many of the NRCC donations from actual small donors and how many are from people giving the max donation? If the NRCC is getting more max donations, it's coming from wealthier donors which you'll never outraise. But there are other factors to consider: the Democrats still have primaries for seats they are targeting. I'd rather look at how those individual candidate donations are going. The numbers the NRCC are outraising the DCCC right now by two to three million in their quarters. That's not insignificant but it's not impressive. But as Paleo pointed out, the money didn't save them last time and outraising, while it would still be great, doesn't guarantee anything. Especially a little over a year away from the midterms. Now I do think that with Jeffries being newer to the job and having issues with figuring out how to handle Trump, there might be a slow down but I have a feeling that's coming from the top donors.
With all of this in mind, it makes more and more sense why the DNC's autopsy is way more focused on how to spend the money than what went wrong because I have a feeling that if they want the bigger Democratic donors to pour more in, they want to see how it's being spent. Obviously, the DCCC is a separate entity but the DNC's autopsy could provide insight. It's stupid people are acting disappointed they aren't critiquing what went wrong with the 2024 election. We know the answers and having Biden drop out late and Harris only 100 days to get ready, it's kind of a waste of time to test what could've been had Biden stayed in or dropped out and what a primary would've looked like.
Not the answer you'd expect, but I'd have expected a bigger gap in their favor.
The party in power in each chamber tends to have a decent fundraising boost for the congressional committees. Similar to the party holding the presidency seeing a large boost with the national committee.
It's not great to be behind with any part of the campaign process. But, I'm not worried on the money front so long as our individual candidates stay far ahead like they have been so far.
Exactly this. The non political donations that come into whatever party is in power by businesses and wealthy people is a very large amount of money to every incumbent party. There’s a lot of companies and people who run them that want to be in the good graces of either party and have no ideology other than supporting the party in power.
I’d also bet a lot of money, this is in large part the Crypto bros flexing their fundraising muscle towards Trump and the GOP for finally making their industry legal (which they’ve fought hard for, for a very long time). We are outgunned in the money race with Crypto bros playing in politics.
It’s been my number one concern going into the 2026 elections. They have hundreds of millions to spend against Democrats, maybe billions. That’s A LOT of cash to help Republican candidates almost exclusively that we’re going to be up against next year and every election afterwards.
Yeah but Crypto Bros also get caught up not just scamming the folks who buy into it but also scamming each other. Even with the passing of The GENIUS Act, it has some guardrails but not enough to prevent these clowns from taking huge losses. What really sucks about it is they will get a bailout. Also the crypto industry gives to both parties. None of the ads the the crypto industry ran for or against candidates mentioned crypto at all. They just pour money into whatever main Republican or Democratic talking point s that work best with the voters.
Oh yes, the whole entire industry is a pyramid scam meant to dupe the gullible in making the top holders millionaires and billionaires while they bilk money from the rubes. I’m not at all saying they’re on the up and up, but they do have a lot of cash that mostly goes to the GOP. Just because they endorse some Democrats doesn’t make their money giving is 50/50 equal between parties.
Of course, these guys aren’t stupid, pouring money into a pro crypto ad campaign blanketing a state can invite backlash from voters. It’s a waste of money that doesn’t do anything to help their goals. So they back whoever is pro-Crypto, of which the elected representatives in office for the Republicans who are such, far outnumber the few Democrats.
Does that total count donations made directly to candidates or through ActBlue? Sorry, Canadian here, your campaign finance laws are somewhat baffling.
No, this is a completely separate federal party organization from the candidates themselves. So no WinRed or ActBlue donations have been included in those numbers. Each organization is dedicated to holding or flipping House seats for each party, so they help with recruiting, money, ads etc.
They functionally do act as an arm of the campaigns themselves, trying to lift candidates and vulnerable incumbents, but there’s laws regarding what they can or can’t do in elections whereas a campaign legally speaking can pretty much do anything short of a crime with their time/money.
Absolutely, maybe Democrats are just switching their donations to individuals and not organizations. We don’t know that for sure. But we need to wait for more data to determine if that is happening in the 3rd quarter (and I suspect TDB crew will make note of prior campaign fundraising in these districts previously, when those fundraising reports come), which is usually a very big month for people starting election campaigns to run the next year.
Glass half full or glass half empty. Or maybe just funky money accounting to make things look good for their party. Up to you how you view it.
In June NRCC raised $18.1m, but that means they only raised $14.2m in April and May.
In June DCCC raised just $12.7m, but that means they beat Republicans in April and May with $16.4m raised.
I’d much rather have a higher later month fundraising then earlier month in the quarter as the donations usually build up to election day, but we also have to consider this is when their big ugly bill was being debated and created.
A TON of industries desperately donated to stop the cuts or save their incomes, so it makes sense the GOP had a massive windfall as corporations tried to protect their bottom lines as much as possible.
In all honesty: it’s as clear as mud. We’ll have to wait for 3rd quarter numbers to see if it was a flash in the pan or something more structural that the GOP has backing them in the money race (like I fear crypto is).
Unsurprising. I never really bought into the hype that my generation (Gen Z) was suddenly becoming far-right -- for example, I know almost no far-right people at my college.
I wonder what the difference in voting frequency is between college and non-college 18-24 years olds. If I had to guess I would say those attending college would be twice a likely to vote than those not attending college.
Does this mean that every single postelection turnout modelling by Pew Research, David Shor-Future Forward, CNN, Nate Silver and Nate Cohn were wrong? They literally claimed that Trump would have won a landslide victory with higher turnout. Or are these voters on the younger side or are they POCs which could be the reason why so many of them may have swung their opinions on Trump and now disapprove?
I don't think the poll and those other claims are contradictory. Doesn't mean both have to be true, but they are not in conflict with each other.
Non-voters are, not quite by definition but not far from it, low information. They will get the least amount of information about the election and have an opinion that is the most reliant on "vibes." Before inauguration, the low info vibes were pro-Trump, as people felt he would bring back the pre-covid economy. Post inauguration, the low info vibes are anti-Trump as things have not gotten better.
These last few years, I have often found myself reflecting on America’s problem of hyperpartisanship, which is an escalating challenge for Democrats and for democracy itself. The DownBallot’s excellent Special Elections Tracker shows that Democratic candidates, in special elections this year, have overperformed by 11.1 % compared to the 2020 Presidential Election, and 15.4 % relative to the 2024 Presidential Election. That is impressive!
Thedocs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JGk1r1VXnxBrAIVHz1C5HTB5jxCO6Zw4QNPivdhyWHw/edit?gid=415249345#gid=415249345
HOWEVER, despite this stellar overperformance, in 31 special elections, Democrats have managed to flip ONLY TWO of the 11 seats controlled by Republicans (margins: 1% and 4%). In an additional three races, our margins of loss were single-digit: –3%, –5% and –7%. It must also be acknowledged that a Republican candidate came within 0.3 % of flipping a Democratic-held post.
In hyperpartisan America, far too few political races are truly competitive – and for House races, egregious GOP gerrymanders are compounding the problem. The potential good news is that a Blue Tsunami election may well overwhelm many narrow Republican gerrymanders.
I wouldn't read too much into the lack of flips. Many of those special elections have only come about because the previous occupant either passed on, was embroiled in a scandal, or was appointed to another office. Few incumbents in genuinely competitive districts would leave partway through their term. In a general election, there will be nowhere to hide. I think November 4 will be the true litmus test, you have the New Jersey and Virginia legislatures up, plus a whole bunch of special elections in places like Mississippi, Washington, Texas, etc. in conjunction with local races.
Agreed. The districts going into special elections are not random. They are even more skewed toward the safe ends, than the overall congressional and legislative districts.
This is implicitly reflected as the office holders willing to give them up to take other opportunities, or hanging on long enough to be carried out.
It's not just about gerrymandering. The Big Sort is a very real phenomenon, and it's had a big impact in reducing the number of competitive districts.
I had to look up "The Big Sort", as it’s a term with which I was not familiar.
It basically means people choosing to live in places whose voting patterns match their political orientation.
It's a documented fact that the number of counties that are closely divided politically (<10% margin in presidential elections) has declined significantly in the past half-century, and the number of counties won by much larger margins, for either party, has accordingly grown.
Thanks for the explanation. In this respect my wife and I are surely deviates, having moved to a highly conservative rural community where property prices were affordable, and the surrounding wilderness is magnificent.
re: the Louisiana item, it's kind of crazy how Letlow went from being a kind of accidental congresswoman after the death of her husband to the belle of the ball in state politics
IOKIYAR
248k signatures?! What % of the Ohio electorate is that? Tough hill to climb.
It must be at least 5% of the electorate in each county who participated in the last gubernatorial election. Same amount Ohioans need to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot statewide.
What's even harder is that Republicans don't want to play fair. They'll do everything possible to keep the referendum off the ballot and/or keep it from passing. That's what they did with last year's antigerrymandering constitutional amendment and how the AR Supreme Court kept a constitutional amendment loosening their abortion ban from getting on the ballot.
"must be at least 5% of the electorate in each county who participated in the last gubernatorial election."
That's insane.
But they only need 44 of 88 counties. The abortion and antigerrymandering initiative drives easily exceeded that and the percentages needed to get on the ballot.
NY-14: AOC's campaign office was vandalized overnight, and not by a group of right-wingers.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/aoc-s-campaign-office-vandalized-with-red-paint-in-nyc/ar-AA1IZHyM?ocid=BingNewsSerp
I don't recall a single instance in American history where fringe leftists turning against progressives ever did anything beneficial, politically or otherwise.
What the fuck? Luckily the progressives I see on Bluesky are still very pro-AOC (I know I am), so this really is some fringe wackos.
Point of information: Quite some time ago, the DSA withdrew their endorsement of AOC and denounced her, apparently because of a topic that we cannot discuss here. This attack sounds like it’s coming from their ideological kin.
(Yes, I’m well aware that some DSA is radically different from other DSA…)
Yeah these folks came out to protest AOC when she stumped for Bowman. Incredibly counterproductive, even if your only concern is the unmentionable issue.
Lol and someone here was calling DSA "Social Democrats", they are not.
Examples of Social Democracies would be Germany, Norway and even UK or Australia to an extent. What DSA wants is a far-left Yugoslavia like fully worker-owned competitive model but with democratic rights. (In contrast, the Soviet Union had quotas and no competition) They are all for solidarity unless it's about dividing the left, dividing us over every little purity test.
DSA and these vandalizes should just become Green Party members at this point.
We don't need anyone else joining the greens. Keep them pissing from inside the tent whenever possible. But this was all inevitable. No one is acceptable to the left. If they don't have a "centrist" dem target, they will turn on even the most pure of their own.
Not that I want to give them any ideas, but there are a bunch of other members of Congress representing New York City...
Being that we are for electing more and better Democrats, for the sake of civility, I would prefer that the Democratic Party at large call out anyone vandalizes any political candidate or office holder’s office. It does not accomplish anything in political discourse.
I am not going to argue anyone in the DSA supporting side should join the Green Party. However, at some point we have to draw the line and say enough is enough. We can certainly try to talk to these fools and be rational but if they want none of it, they should not be allowed to give the Democratic Party a bad name.
Jill Stein is a destructive and Putinesque force in American politics.
That is a gross over generalization. There are shades of opinion in the DSA. And thank God they aren’t like the putrid, so-called social democratic, parties in places like the UK, France, Germany and Greece.
Point taken. Then the DSA should get it’s crap together.
It will not.
The people's flag is palest pink...
People like that remind me of that scene in the Life of Brian where the anti-Roman groups constantly fought against themselves instead of against the Romans.
The only people we hate more than the Romans are the f*cking Judean People's Front!
Splitters!
The splitting tendency among Socialists is nothing new, in fact there was a major split of Socialist Party of America around the time that movie came out. One of the three splinters is what eventually became DSA.
There was talk over the weekend about Boston's mayoral election. I noted that we hadn't had a poll there in a while. Right on cue we got a new poll today. Has Wu up 60-30 against Kraft. https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/research-at-suffolk/political-research-center/polls/cityview-polls
Unsurprising. I’ve heard Kraft has little to run on, and Wu has been a good mayor.
On that note, I had commented that opposition to bike lanes was a huge part of his campaign. An unreasonably disproportionate amount of focus was going into it.
This poll explains why, I think. Had 50% of respondents saying they think bike lanes make it slower for them to get around, with the rest split between no change, faster, and don't know.
His consultants almost certainly saw similar numbers and concluded it was the kind of divisive issue that would serve him well. I don't know the future but I cannot see that working. People might not like bike lanes but they're not going to change their vote based on it when they care far more about schools, property taxes, housing costs, policing, actions taken by the feds, etc.
Japanese election results: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xvn90yr8go
These seem very bad - not that it's disturbing that the LDP lost its majority, but which party gained:
'some of the party's support had gone towards the Sanseito party - who would now be saying things which "haven't been said in public before by members of the upper house," - noting the party's pull towards "conspiracy theories, anti-foreign statements, [and] very strong revisionist views about history".'
'Sanseito rose to prominence during the pandemic, as it peddled conspiracy theories on YouTube such as the "deep state" and warned people not to wear masks or vaccinate themselves.'
Three different parties all in the 12-13% vote share range. LDP went from 34% to 22% since the 2022 elections. Sanseito is still at only 12.5% but that's the kind of percentage that can grow; hopefully they languish and do not get much more voter support in future elections.
Shades of AfD in Germany
Sanseito is getting all the press but when you look at the vote allocations a lot of opposition parties gained as much or more seats. The relatively center-right DPFP was the real big winner re: gains, not Sanseito.
We once-exported scientific progress and western values, but now we're exporting fascism. Japan is already a xenophobic and male-dominated society, but Trumpism is still resonating there somehow. They literally accept 70-hr workweeks and a stagnant economy over foreign workers and learning English.
Sanseitō is known for its ultraconservative ideology and has been called traditional conservative.[2][23] It has also been referred to as extremist, "extremely conservative", and "hardline nationalist".[24][25][26]
Sohei Kamiya, founder and secretary general of Sanseitō, said that Sanseitō has a high affinity with the conservative faction of the U.S. Republican Party, the far-right German party Alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-right French party National Rally (RN), and the right-wing populist party Reform UK.[27][28] Kamiya has said that he learned many of his "emotional button-pushing themes and norm-breaking language" from U.S. President Donald Trump and stated that he was Japan's equivalent of Trump. According to Kamiya, Japan faces threats from shady globalists ("cabal of global elites"),[29] criminal foreigners and a corrupt political establishment that is suffocating young people with taxes. His has proposed a "Japanese First" nationalist agenda. Sanseito has drawn mainly young male voters. Opponents and domestic media reports have accused him of being xenophobic, saying he is directing public anger with high prices and stagnant wages at Japan's foreign residents.[30]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanseit%C5%8D#Ideology_and_policies
Former Virginia LG Bill Bolling thinks Dems will pick up at least 6 seats (likely more) in the House of Delegates this November.
https://bluevirginia.us/2025/07/fmr-va-lg-bill-bolling-a-trump-supporting-republican-says-dems-likely-to-pick-up-6-seats-perhaps-more-in-the-house-of-delegates-this-november/
So which 6 seats do we think Dems will pick up? I can only imagine that Ian Lovejoy is dead meat in the 22nd, particularly considering Trump's gutting the federal workforce which is strong in NoVa. I assume the 57th will flip as long as Dems actually defend their candidate against any BS non-scandals that Republicans try to dig up (which VA Dems didn't do last time with Susannah Gibson). The 71st, based in James City County, seems a good candidate since Harris improved on Biden's performance there. If we get good enough African-American turnout in Petersburg, we should be able to flip the 82nd.
Those seem like the most obvious ones to me. If the NoVa Democratic wave is particularly strong, we might be able to get the 30th, 64th, and/or 66th (all of which voted for Trump by 1-2%). If Dems can get out the vote at Virginia Tech, maybe they could win the 41st despite its absurd Republican gerrymander. The 73rd is rapidly trending Democratic - it's the only Trump/Harris district in the state - so it could be a dark horse flip. And if the wave is big enough, maybe we could get districts like the 75th, 86th, and 89th despite strong Republican incumbents there.
What do you all think? Which districts will Dems flip?
All the elected Rs who won by less than 5 points Bolling mentioned are likely pickups. He didn't mention congressional Rs, but I think it's bad news for MAGA rep Jen Kiggans in Virginia Beach next year as well.
The post "Given the headwinds Republicans face this year, I don’t see any of the Democrats who were elected in competitive districts in 2023 being vulnerable this year. This would include the following House districts:
* 21st District (Prince William County) – Delegate Josh Thomas (D) was elected in 2023 by a margin of 52%-48%
* 58th District (Stafford and Spotsylvania Counties) – Delegate Joshua Cole (D) was elected in 2023 by a margin of 53%-47%
* 97th District – (Virginia Beach) - Delegate Michael Feggans was elected in 2023 by a margin of 52%-48%
I just can’t see Republicans picking up any of these seats this year, although they will certainly make the effort.
However, Republicans won nine competitive districts in 2023, and all these seats could be vulnerable in 2025. This would include the following districts:
* 22nd District (Northern Virginia) – Delegate Ian Lovejoy (R) won this district by 4% in 2023.
* 41st District (Blacksburg and part of Montgomery County and Roanoke County) – Delegate Chris Obenshain (R) won this district by 1% in 2023
* 57th District (Henrico County) – Delegate David Owen (R) won this district by 2% in 2023
* 71st District – James City County and New Kent County) – Delegate Amanda Batten won this district by 1% in 2023
* 75th District – (Chesterfield, Prince George and Hopewell) – Delegate Carrie Coyner (R) won this district by 5% in 2023
* 82nd District (Petersburg, Prince George, Dinwiddie and Surry) – Delegate Kim Taylor (R) won this district by 1% n 2023)
* 86th District (Hampton) – Delegate A.C. Cordoza (R ) won this district by 7% in 2023)
* 89th District (parts of Chesapeake and Suffolk) – Delegate Baxter Ennis (R) won this district by 1% in 2023
I’m confident Democrats view all these districts as potential pick-up seats in 2025, and some of them (22nd, 31st, 57th, 71st, 82nd, 89th) are particularly vulnerable.
These are the House of Delegates campaigns to watch over the next several weeks.
My best analysis is that Democrats are likely to increase their majority in the House of Delegates this fall, with the potential to pick up 6 seats, perhaps more."
It's worth noting that Bill Bolling has been a frequent critic of Republicans for over a decade (even though he still identifies as a conservative Republican, albeit anti-MAGA and anti-Tea Party), so I don't find it surprising that he's making this prediction. I do agree, though, that Democrats will likely pick up seats this year while reelecting all incumbents running for reelection.
Just how much worse can the GOP make Ohio's gerrymander? Is this a possible dummymander situation?
They can make Kaptur and Sykes districts much harder
With Kaptur, I assume they would just attach Lucas county to a bunch of blood red rurals to the West and Southwest?
For Sykes, I guess they’d just attach Summit county to counties to the West rather than Canton to the south?
Presumably yes
trump sabre rattling over getting Washington and Cleveland pro teams to go back to "Redskins" and "Indians". Says he will hold up stadium deal for Washington...but land involved is now controlled by DC and not the Fed Gov't.
I can't see this bit of progress being reversed.
More nonsense - he doesn't have the authority to use a team name as the basis for any Federal action. That may not hold him back but it will be litigated then.
I think Trump would prefer people talk about race (which is red meat to his base) than Epstein, which is starting to fade from the public discourse.
Orangeskin wants Redskins!
They don’t need a new stadium anyway.
They actually do need a new stadium. However, the taxpayers should not be paying for it.
What's so wrong with the existing stadium? And how old is it?
It’s all of 28 years old.
https://x.com/covie_93/status/1947366989405597913
Hunter Biden on Obama alumni, I mean he's not wrong on this point even though I don't agree with his Biden defense.
I’m glad Hunter’s saying the things his dad was way too nice to say. His takedowns of the Obama consultants and his jabs at Jake Tapper and George Clooney were well deserved.
And it was a humanizing interview, he doesn’t make excuses for his past behavior or anything like that.
I mean, David Plouffe was expecting to pop out champagne to celebrate Hillary Clinton winning the presidential election in 2016 because he thought everything was assured about it. Look how that turned out.
He should have been running Clinton’s campaign instead of staying on the sidelines as opposed to Bobby Mock.
Plouffe is an idiot. I hope Ken Martin fired all those ineffective Dem consultants that badmouthed and/or forced Joe to step down. I think Joe’s choice to step down cost us the PA Senate seat.
Yeah "We finally beat Medicare" getting out is how we avoided losing the other the senate seats in AZ, NV, MI, WI. It's sad they are still this insular and delusional about Bidens standing in 2024.
Lest we forget, Hillary won – just not in the Electoral College.
True!
Compared to what? The Biden advisors who pushed him into a debate he was completely incapable of participating in and hid him from any (read all) data showing he was going to lose in a landslide? The ones that hid him from all press while claiming his fine while they all knew he was hanging on by a thread? Those advisors are the ones who should never work in Democratic politics again.
I am just talking about Plouffe. All of what I am arguing about him is pre-2017. Anything after that is not apart of what I am arguing here.
This isn’t a criticism so much about Mook but more about Plouffe rolling up his sleeves and actually ensuring Hillary Clinton would get elected. What made him so assured Clinton was going to have this in the bag? Seems to me to be nothing more than over confidence even if he may have claimed to know more of what was happening on the ground game front. Plouffe had a good system for this back in 2008.
FYI, Mook himself had a good track record of helping Democratic Candidates win at the state level. He ran Terry McAuliffe’s successful VA Gubernatorial Campaign back in 2013. I think he was not the right campaign manager for Clinton. The lack of real investment in key states like MI that Trump narrowly won would have been better addressed with a stronger campaign manager.
My point is the Biden team screwed up far worse then any of those examples and have left us in this mess. They are the last people we should be listening to. " The lack of real investment in key states like MI that Trump narrowly won would have been better addressed with a stronger campaign manager." if they had more than 100 days and were not trying to keep a ship afloat with so many self inflicted holes from the previous incapacitated captain that might have helped too.
I agree with your argument.
But what you are describing about 2024 is separate from what my original comment is about, which is anything related to Plouffe pre-2017. I get what you are saying.
What is the jab at Clooney? For being honest?
Hunter singled out Clooney for his inept decision to do a one page ad telling Biden to step down. Like what kind of pull does George have? Clooney doesn’t have brilliant political instincts.
Instincts are better than Hunter Biden’s clearly
George Clooney saved our asses. He prevented a much worse rout for the Presidency, Senate and House. As far as I am concerned, he's a hero.
Clooney didn't endorse Kamala either.
Screw him.
Great. "Hunter Biden’s expletive-laced interview “caused a feeding frenzy on Fox News, where the network’s primetime hosts were thrilled to change the subject away from President Trump’s Epstein trainwreck,” Status reports." Please go away. https://politicalwire.com/2025/07/21/hunter-biden-helps-trump-change-the-subject/
"David Axelrod who had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama. And that was because of Barack Obama, not because of f*ckin’ David Axelrod. And David Plouffe, and all of these guys, and the Pod Save America guys, who were junior f*ckin’ speech writers on Barack Obama’s Senate staff, who’ve been dining out on the relationship with him for years, making millions of dollars.........white millionaires that are dining out on their association with Barack Obama from 16 years ago, living in Beverly f*cking Hills, telling the rest of the world what black voters in South Carolina really want.”
Yeah those stupid fools who elected and reelected the first black president what idiots. I'm sorry but this sounds like a privileged clueless drug addled take. What nerve to run to daddy for a pardon and call other people elitist. He should look in the mirror if he wants to find someone who was a detriment to his father's campaign and the Democratic party. Good riddance the sooner we put this fool behind us the better.
They are still riding on Obama’s coattails who was generational candidate. This was absolutely based and someone needed to say this, we need young blood, new consultants and newer ideas. He is correct, Rahm Emanuel and Axelrod are the biggest grifters and experts in white appeasement politics, just another form of identity politics. Fox news is always reporting about the Bidens either way.
Yeah campaigns dont just come together. These people worked with Obama for years while Hunter was smoking crack “selling art” and having secret children. I can’t think of a worse person to make this case in any capacity. The sooner he is out of the headlines the better.
In fact, the sooner Rahm and Axelrod get out of the headlines, the better. Those corporate hacks completely failed to deliver the president's agenda and were a major cause of the 2010 tea party. Atleast Hunter was not harming the nation at large during 2004-2011, he was just harming himself. I along with others, am sick and tired of Emanuel the “Democrat” and his daily assertions.
You forgot the part where they won majorities in Congress in 06 and the White House in 08 and reelected the president and gained seats in both chambers in 12 or are they only to blame when things go wrong? What did Hunter do other then smoke crack and embarrass his VP father during those years much like he is embarrassing himself now and reminding Democrats why they need to move on from Biden.
You forgot the part where they stuffed the house with conservadems (including former Republicans) like Emanuel himself in 2006 in what was always going to be a wave election anyways leading to almost no major reform other than a stripped down ACA, stripped down stimulus and the Dodd-Frank Act being passed, with most of the time wasted in the House negotiating with the Blue Dogs and with him calling liberals the hard R. There was no use of gaining of those seats in 2012 with 2 of those Senate seats gained in deep blue Massachusetts and in Connecticut after Lieberman retired, only the Indiana one could be attributed to recruitment. Btw Axelrod and Emanuel quit in 2011 after such a marvellous tenure at the White House. Emanuel then began another spectacular tenure as the Mayor of Chicago .
They predicted Democrats would not win back the House after 2016 for a long time without running the Blue Dogs again, how did that prediction turn out?
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/magazine/14emanuel-t.html
And apparently, Rahm was against the ACA too, advising Obama repeatedly against it.
"Yeah those stupid fools who elected and reelected the first black president what idiots."
I think it's much more offensive to credit the election of the first black president to these white mediocrities instead to said black president. Obama would have still won easily without Axelrod and Emanuel (maybe even better without the latter), and they would be nobodies without him. We all got to see what happened when Rahm Emanuel gets to run a campaign and government all on his own, and people hated it!
“White mediocrities” seems like the right label for Hunter not the people who worked with Obama for years in some cases decades.
This is not at all what I would have thought: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5411777-nrcc-second-quarter-2025-fundraising/
"The House GOP campaign arm brought in $32.3 million in the second quarter of the year, while the House Democratic campaign arm raised $29.1 million in the same period. In June alone, the NRCC raised $18.1 million and the DCCC brought in $12.7 million.
In 2025 so far, the NRCC has raised a total of $69 million, while the DCCC has raised $66 million.
However, the DCCC reported having $39.7 million in the bank, while the NRCC has $37.6 million cash-on-hand.
The NRCC’s second quarter haul is a milestone for the committee, which is normally outraised by its Democratic counterpart. The last time the NRCC outraised the DCCC in the first six months and second quarter of an election cycle was 2021. "
How concerned should we be?
We keep hearing about how our voters aren't happy with us. Not surprised that it translates into smaller donations. But, also, Jefferies ain't Pelosi.
Don't forget max donations. For all we know, a good chunk of the NRCC fundraising could be from max donations from wealthier donors.
No, but I thought Pelosi was still involved in fundraising.
Money didn’t save them last time.
The big question is how many of the NRCC donations from actual small donors and how many are from people giving the max donation? If the NRCC is getting more max donations, it's coming from wealthier donors which you'll never outraise. But there are other factors to consider: the Democrats still have primaries for seats they are targeting. I'd rather look at how those individual candidate donations are going. The numbers the NRCC are outraising the DCCC right now by two to three million in their quarters. That's not insignificant but it's not impressive. But as Paleo pointed out, the money didn't save them last time and outraising, while it would still be great, doesn't guarantee anything. Especially a little over a year away from the midterms. Now I do think that with Jeffries being newer to the job and having issues with figuring out how to handle Trump, there might be a slow down but I have a feeling that's coming from the top donors.
With all of this in mind, it makes more and more sense why the DNC's autopsy is way more focused on how to spend the money than what went wrong because I have a feeling that if they want the bigger Democratic donors to pour more in, they want to see how it's being spent. Obviously, the DCCC is a separate entity but the DNC's autopsy could provide insight. It's stupid people are acting disappointed they aren't critiquing what went wrong with the 2024 election. We know the answers and having Biden drop out late and Harris only 100 days to get ready, it's kind of a waste of time to test what could've been had Biden stayed in or dropped out and what a primary would've looked like.
Not the answer you'd expect, but I'd have expected a bigger gap in their favor.
The party in power in each chamber tends to have a decent fundraising boost for the congressional committees. Similar to the party holding the presidency seeing a large boost with the national committee.
It's not great to be behind with any part of the campaign process. But, I'm not worried on the money front so long as our individual candidates stay far ahead like they have been so far.
Exactly this. The non political donations that come into whatever party is in power by businesses and wealthy people is a very large amount of money to every incumbent party. There’s a lot of companies and people who run them that want to be in the good graces of either party and have no ideology other than supporting the party in power.
I’d also bet a lot of money, this is in large part the Crypto bros flexing their fundraising muscle towards Trump and the GOP for finally making their industry legal (which they’ve fought hard for, for a very long time). We are outgunned in the money race with Crypto bros playing in politics.
It’s been my number one concern going into the 2026 elections. They have hundreds of millions to spend against Democrats, maybe billions. That’s A LOT of cash to help Republican candidates almost exclusively that we’re going to be up against next year and every election afterwards.
Yeah but Crypto Bros also get caught up not just scamming the folks who buy into it but also scamming each other. Even with the passing of The GENIUS Act, it has some guardrails but not enough to prevent these clowns from taking huge losses. What really sucks about it is they will get a bailout. Also the crypto industry gives to both parties. None of the ads the the crypto industry ran for or against candidates mentioned crypto at all. They just pour money into whatever main Republican or Democratic talking point s that work best with the voters.
Oh yes, the whole entire industry is a pyramid scam meant to dupe the gullible in making the top holders millionaires and billionaires while they bilk money from the rubes. I’m not at all saying they’re on the up and up, but they do have a lot of cash that mostly goes to the GOP. Just because they endorse some Democrats doesn’t make their money giving is 50/50 equal between parties.
Of course, these guys aren’t stupid, pouring money into a pro crypto ad campaign blanketing a state can invite backlash from voters. It’s a waste of money that doesn’t do anything to help their goals. So they back whoever is pro-Crypto, of which the elected representatives in office for the Republicans who are such, far outnumber the few Democrats.
In other words, legal bribery.
Sadly, yes. Welcome to post Citizens United with a Trump Supreme Court. It’s not right or fair, but it’s deemed legal, so it is legal unfortunately.
They just passed the OBBB, it's their time eat the carrots now.
Does that total count donations made directly to candidates or through ActBlue? Sorry, Canadian here, your campaign finance laws are somewhat baffling.
No, this is a completely separate federal party organization from the candidates themselves. So no WinRed or ActBlue donations have been included in those numbers. Each organization is dedicated to holding or flipping House seats for each party, so they help with recruiting, money, ads etc.
They functionally do act as an arm of the campaigns themselves, trying to lift candidates and vulnerable incumbents, but there’s laws regarding what they can or can’t do in elections whereas a campaign legally speaking can pretty much do anything short of a crime with their time/money.
I would think ActBlue and WinRed contributions would be important to know because I would assume they would be indicators of grassroots support.
To me, that's more important than who larger donors are giving to.
Absolutely, maybe Democrats are just switching their donations to individuals and not organizations. We don’t know that for sure. But we need to wait for more data to determine if that is happening in the 3rd quarter (and I suspect TDB crew will make note of prior campaign fundraising in these districts previously, when those fundraising reports come), which is usually a very big month for people starting election campaigns to run the next year.
Anyone have info on the total money flowing through ActBlue and WinRed? I am very curious. Or is that not reported in a tidy fashion?
ActBlue on their blog gives out updates to how much is raised each quarter. I don’t think WinRed does at all though.
Noise. All noise at this point.
Tipped, but if the Democrats were leading, wouldn't we be happier with that?
Glass half full or glass half empty. Or maybe just funky money accounting to make things look good for their party. Up to you how you view it.
In June NRCC raised $18.1m, but that means they only raised $14.2m in April and May.
In June DCCC raised just $12.7m, but that means they beat Republicans in April and May with $16.4m raised.
I’d much rather have a higher later month fundraising then earlier month in the quarter as the donations usually build up to election day, but we also have to consider this is when their big ugly bill was being debated and created.
A TON of industries desperately donated to stop the cuts or save their incomes, so it makes sense the GOP had a massive windfall as corporations tried to protect their bottom lines as much as possible.
In all honesty: it’s as clear as mud. We’ll have to wait for 3rd quarter numbers to see if it was a flash in the pan or something more structural that the GOP has backing them in the money race (like I fear crypto is).
CBS NEWS POLL: Trump's approval trends among ages 18-29
Early February
🟢 Approve: 55% (+10)
🟤 Disapprove: 45%
JULY
🟢 Approve: 28% (-44)
🟤 Disapprove: 72%
Net 54-point negative swing
https://x.com/IAPolls2022/status/1947397923999830321
Unsurprising. I never really bought into the hype that my generation (Gen Z) was suddenly becoming far-right -- for example, I know almost no far-right people at my college.
Not all young people go to college.
Good point, but the polling still points towards a swing against Trump.
Right, but I'm just saying that your circle is not representative.
I wonder what the difference in voting frequency is between college and non-college 18-24 years olds. If I had to guess I would say those attending college would be twice a likely to vote than those not attending college.
I don't know. Definitely interesting.
No I get that. I agree with you, for the record.
🚨Trump Approval Poll🚨
🗳️Among 2024 Non-Voters🗳️
🔴 Disapprove - 83%
🟢 Approve - 10%
Atlasintel
Registered Voters
7/18
Does this mean that every single postelection turnout modelling by Pew Research, David Shor-Future Forward, CNN, Nate Silver and Nate Cohn were wrong? They literally claimed that Trump would have won a landslide victory with higher turnout. Or are these voters on the younger side or are they POCs which could be the reason why so many of them may have swung their opinions on Trump and now disapprove?
I don't think the poll and those other claims are contradictory. Doesn't mean both have to be true, but they are not in conflict with each other.
Non-voters are, not quite by definition but not far from it, low information. They will get the least amount of information about the election and have an opinion that is the most reliant on "vibes." Before inauguration, the low info vibes were pro-Trump, as people felt he would bring back the pre-covid economy. Post inauguration, the low info vibes are anti-Trump as things have not gotten better.
Non-voters hate all politicians. There's a reason why they don't vote.
If Harris had won, I doubt her approval among non-voters would be much better.
They're registered but didn't vote? They're irrelevant and will probably never vote.
MN state Senator Bruce Anderson, a Republican, suddenly passed away today.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/07/21/republican-state-senator-bruce-anderson-has-died
Is his seat flippable in a special election?
Anderson won in 2022 by a 68-32 margin according to Ballotpedia, so it seems unlikely. Best result might be a loss by single digits.