Only thing good from this is that Casey is running far enough ahead of the top of the ticket that even if an unfriendly 2016 or 2020-style electorate shows up on November 5, he seems well-positioned to withstand it.
Only thing good from this is that Casey is running far enough ahead of the top of the ticket that even if an unfriendly 2016 or 2020-style electorate shows up on November 5, he seems well-positioned to withstand it.
Really interested to see if these Pres/Sen divergences hold up. As we know in 2020 they basically all collapsed to a few points at most, with a couple of notable exceptions. In NH Shaheen got several points ahead of Biden, but even senators like Warner (VA), Durbin (IL), and Merkley (OR) found themselves having very Biden-like coalitions. To say nothing of Gary Peters, Tina Smith, Ben Ray Lujan, and all of the GOP seats we were contesting. But this year, basically every Dem senator, and even candidates in open Dem seats, are running several points ahead of Harris. I highly doubt Casey loses but I'd be shocked if he does win by ~10 in the end.
The unusually high (of recent cycles anyway) degree of poll divergence between the Presidential race and the Senate contests has been one of the most fascinating trends this year, especially as it continues to endure post-Labor Day. I keep waiting for the races to settle but they haven't yet.
The two most intriguing examples are Arizona and Nevada. As I said yesterday, it's hard to reconcile that there are tens of thousands of Arizona voters who think Trump is acceptable but draw the line with Kari Lake, although another poster sagely pointed out that Hispanic men could account for a good share of the ticket-splitters. The Nevada situation is stranger as Jacky Rosen strikes me as being about as Generic D as they come so her continually running far ahead of Harris is confusing. I'd be surprised if the two races didn't converge substantially by November. Recall that Mark Kelly appeared to be running far ahead of Biden in 2020 polling but by election night the divergence was less than 2 points.
Another 2020 Senate race with a pretty big spread was Mississippi where Mike Espy ran 6 points closer to his challenger than Biden did.
One of the interesting things that's often missed about our narrow statewide wins in the 2022 election in AZ relates to the simple story that we won those races with a GOP leaning electorate because each of the 4 GOP losers (Kari Lake, Mark Finchem, Blake Masters, and Abe Hamadeh) was so toxic that sane Republicans couldn't support them and split their tickets. The piece that's misunderstood is that for the most part the same ticket splitters didn't vote Dem for all 4 races. Instead different Republican voters typically defected on only one or two races. The relatively narrow results hide the fact that quite a few AZ GOP voters actually split their tickets in high profile races. When considering just those 4 races, 18.7% of Maricopa County voters split their tickets. When considering all partisan races, 37.4% of Maricopa County voters split their ballots.
Interesting; thanks. Are you suggesting that AZ ticket-splitting this cycle is highly possible? And how does one of the four toxins you mentioned running again in the highest-profile downballot race figure in?
I think the pool of available split ticket voters in AZ is bigger than generally understood, and I do think Lake will underperform Trump and Trump will underperform generic GOP legislator. I'm hopeful we'll see 2022 ticket splitters consolidate more for us downballot, rather than simply increasing the number of ticket splitters who vote for both Harris and Gallego but GOP downballot. At this point Lake is damaged goods and I expect her to do relatively worse than in 2022 (thank the GOP primary voters for saving the AZ Dem Party from kicking away a U.S. Senate seat). I also expect 2024 to be bluer than 2022 in AZ simply due to demographic trend, and improved turnout due to being a presidential year.
How much of this was GOP voters pulling the lever for Trump and bailing on the rest of the ballot? Perhaps there are more low information GOP voters that bail than Dems?
Only thing good from this is that Casey is running far enough ahead of the top of the ticket that even if an unfriendly 2016 or 2020-style electorate shows up on November 5, he seems well-positioned to withstand it.
Really interested to see if these Pres/Sen divergences hold up. As we know in 2020 they basically all collapsed to a few points at most, with a couple of notable exceptions. In NH Shaheen got several points ahead of Biden, but even senators like Warner (VA), Durbin (IL), and Merkley (OR) found themselves having very Biden-like coalitions. To say nothing of Gary Peters, Tina Smith, Ben Ray Lujan, and all of the GOP seats we were contesting. But this year, basically every Dem senator, and even candidates in open Dem seats, are running several points ahead of Harris. I highly doubt Casey loses but I'd be shocked if he does win by ~10 in the end.
I wouldn't be shocked by that, but yes, it will be interesting to see.
The unusually high (of recent cycles anyway) degree of poll divergence between the Presidential race and the Senate contests has been one of the most fascinating trends this year, especially as it continues to endure post-Labor Day. I keep waiting for the races to settle but they haven't yet.
The two most intriguing examples are Arizona and Nevada. As I said yesterday, it's hard to reconcile that there are tens of thousands of Arizona voters who think Trump is acceptable but draw the line with Kari Lake, although another poster sagely pointed out that Hispanic men could account for a good share of the ticket-splitters. The Nevada situation is stranger as Jacky Rosen strikes me as being about as Generic D as they come so her continually running far ahead of Harris is confusing. I'd be surprised if the two races didn't converge substantially by November. Recall that Mark Kelly appeared to be running far ahead of Biden in 2020 polling but by election night the divergence was less than 2 points.
Another 2020 Senate race with a pretty big spread was Mississippi where Mike Espy ran 6 points closer to his challenger than Biden did.
One of the interesting things that's often missed about our narrow statewide wins in the 2022 election in AZ relates to the simple story that we won those races with a GOP leaning electorate because each of the 4 GOP losers (Kari Lake, Mark Finchem, Blake Masters, and Abe Hamadeh) was so toxic that sane Republicans couldn't support them and split their tickets. The piece that's misunderstood is that for the most part the same ticket splitters didn't vote Dem for all 4 races. Instead different Republican voters typically defected on only one or two races. The relatively narrow results hide the fact that quite a few AZ GOP voters actually split their tickets in high profile races. When considering just those 4 races, 18.7% of Maricopa County voters split their tickets. When considering all partisan races, 37.4% of Maricopa County voters split their ballots.
Interesting; thanks. Are you suggesting that AZ ticket-splitting this cycle is highly possible? And how does one of the four toxins you mentioned running again in the highest-profile downballot race figure in?
I think the pool of available split ticket voters in AZ is bigger than generally understood, and I do think Lake will underperform Trump and Trump will underperform generic GOP legislator. I'm hopeful we'll see 2022 ticket splitters consolidate more for us downballot, rather than simply increasing the number of ticket splitters who vote for both Harris and Gallego but GOP downballot. At this point Lake is damaged goods and I expect her to do relatively worse than in 2022 (thank the GOP primary voters for saving the AZ Dem Party from kicking away a U.S. Senate seat). I also expect 2024 to be bluer than 2022 in AZ simply due to demographic trend, and improved turnout due to being a presidential year.
How much of this was GOP voters pulling the lever for Trump and bailing on the rest of the ballot? Perhaps there are more low information GOP voters that bail than Dems?