RIP Hal Malchow
Takeaways from GOP primary exit polls, Biden Hispanic underperformance, voter registration shifts, Trump's rising popularity, questions about ballot access, experimenting with TV ads
No. 308 | March 22, 2024
🗳️ Elections
Sasha Issenberg: Hal Malchow Is Going to Die on Thursday. He Has One Last Message for Democrats. (Politico)
“On Thursday, March 21, one of the Democratic party’s most accomplished campaign consultants will die.
In a sense, Hal Malchow has been planning for this day ever since 1987, when a genetic marker test revealed he was likely to develop Alzheimer’s. At the time, he was barely 35 years old, a hustling political operative who had recently come off managing Al Gore’s first Senate campaign while overcome with worry about his mother’s early descent into dementia. (Around her 50th birthday, she was discovered wandering lost in a parking lot in the Mississippi town where she had lived her whole life.) After his mother’s untimely death, in 1990, Malchow was intent on never letting himself endure the same thing. If he showed symptoms for Alzheimer’s, Malchow resolved at the time, he would take his life before he became too diminished — and became a burden to those around him.”
“Republican voters spoke clearly this primary season: Donald Trump is their undisputed leader. But below the surface, there’s plenty more to glean about where the party stands heading into the general election.
Entrance and exit polls taken across seven states over the course of the GOP presidential nominating fight reveal the strengths and weaknesses of Trump’s coalition, and where the priorities of the Republican base lie as the focus turns to a rematch with President Joe Biden.”
Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman: In Key Ohio Senate Primary, Republicans Go with Trump Again (Sabato’s Crystal Ball)
“Both Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) got their man in the Ohio GOP Senate primary on Tuesday night, as businessman Bernie Moreno (R) blew open what polls, in aggregate, suggested was a close race. A major Democratic outside spending group connected to Schumer effectively spent on Moreno’s behalf, continuing a common Democratic strategy of spending in the other party’s primary.
The jury’s out on how good (or bad) Moreno will be as a general election challenger to Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), but in a straight-ticket era, the Trump-backed Moreno need only consolidate the Trump vote in a state very likely to vote Republican for president.
The IL-12 Republican primary, in which Rep. Mike Bost was pushed by former state Sen. Darren Bailey, stood out as the most interesting of an otherwise fairly lopsided slate of U.S. House primaries.”
Nate Cohn: Share of Democratic Registrations Is Declining, but What Does It Mean? (The New York Times)
“Newly registered voters, who are disproportionately young and nonwhite, have tended to lean Democratic.
That’s been less and less true during the Biden era.
A majority of states ask people to select a party affiliation when they register, and last year newly registered Democrats made up only about 53 percent of those who chose a major party — beating Republican sign-ups by a narrow margin of 26 percent to 23 percent of total registrations — according to data from L2, a nonpartisan voter data vendor.”
Shanay Gracia and Hannah Hartig: About 1 in 4 Americans have unfavorable views of both Biden and Trump (Pew Research Center)
“Joe Biden and Donald Trump each have enough delegates in the 2024 presidential primaries to secure their parties’ nominations for president. However, a sizable share of Americans are not particularly fond of either one.
Roughly a quarter of Americans (26%) hold unfavorable views of both Trump and Biden. This ‘double negative’ sentiment is more common among younger adults than older adults. Those who reject partisan labels – identifying as independent or ‘something else’ and instead leaning toward a party – are also more likely to hold this combination of views.”
Christian Paz: 3 theories for why Donald Trump’s popularity is rising (Vox)
“Something confounding is happening in America: Donald Trump, once the least liked presidential officeholder and reviled by nearly two-thirds of the country by the time he left office, is getting more popular.
For the loyal Vox reader, that statement may be hard to believe. Yes, the twice-impeached, multiply indicted former president is still generally disliked: The latest New York Times/Siena poll places his favorability rating at a ‘weak’ 44 percent. But that’s still higher than his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, who is viewed favorably by just 38 percent of registered voters. As views of Biden have been getting more negative, views of Trump have also been getting more positive.
Across multiple kinds of polling and public opinion surveys, Trump’s favorability appears to have stabilized at a higher place than three years ago. Views of Trump have been modestly improving for most Americans and have actually increased significantly among Black and Latino Americans, younger voters, and working-class people.”
John Sides and Michael Tesler: How much trouble is Joe Biden really in? (Good Authority)
“A lot of people are nervous about Joe Biden’s chances of reelection. Maybe you’ve seen headlines like “Biden campaign works to ease Democratic anxiety over reelection chances” or ‘’This Is Grim,’ One Democratic Pollster Says.’ The special counsel’s report that said a jury would see Biden as ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’ only occasioned more headlines, such as “Senate Dems privately fear Biden’s age could cost him White House.” There have even been calls for Biden to step aside and Democrats to pick a new nominee at their convention this summer.
But Biden and his closest advisors don’t seem that concerned. In an interview with the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos, Biden said: ‘We won every contested race out there. In 2024, I think you’re going to see the same thing.’”
Daniel Cox: Black Men Are Rapidly Abandoning the Democratic Party, But Are Black Women? (American Storylines)
“After generations of unwavering support for the Democratic Party, black Americans appear to be reassessing their commitment to the party. John Burn-Murdoch recently wrote that ‘American politics is undergoing a racial realignment,’ showing a significant decline in Democratic affiliation, while Nate Silver suggested that Democrats are ‘hemorrhaging support with voters of color.’
Recent polls certainly show a softening of black support for Democrats, a troubling development for the party. But what’s less clear is how much the decline in Democratic affiliation reflects a fundamental shift in political orientation versus a sign of general unhappiness with current political conditions and party leadership.”
Geoffrey Skelley: Will RFK Jr. and third-party contenders even make the ballot in November? (538)
“Many Americans haven't come to terms with the reality that President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have clinched their party's nominations for the general election this November. And polls have shown that many voters are anything but happy at the prospect of a 2020 rematch.
This disenchantment could open the door for third-party and independent presidential candidates to win more votes this year than they usually do. Outside campaigns by independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the bipartisan group No Labels and progressive contender Cornel West — along with long-tenured third parties like the Libertarians and Greens — stand ready to attract voters unhappy with the two major parties' presumptive nominees. And while none of these alternative candidates has much chance of winning, their campaigns could help influence — or, as their critics might say, ‘spoil’ — the outcome of the 2024 contest.”
👫 Demographics
David Leonhardt: How Peer Pressure Affects Voting (The New York Times)
“The political scientists Chryl Laird and Ismail White used a creative strategy several years ago to study the voting patterns of Black Americans. Laird and White took advantage of the fact that some surveys are conducted through in-person interviews — and keep track of the interviewer’s race — while other surveys are done online.
In the online surveys that Laird and White examined, about 85 percent of Black respondents identified as Democrats. The share was almost identical during in-person surveys done by non-Black interviewers. But when Black interviewers conducted in-person surveys, more than 95 percent of Black respondents identified as Democrats.”
Sarah Naseer, Christopher St. Aubin, and Michael Lipka: How Hispanic Americans Get Their News (Pew Research Center)
“Just over half of U.S. Hispanic adults (54%) get their news mostly in English – far higher than the share who get their news mostly in Spanish (21%). About a quarter of Hispanic Americans (23%) say they consume news in both languages about equally.
There is an almost identical pattern on the question of preferred language for news: 51% prefer to get their news in English, 24% prefer Spanish and 23% say they do not have a preference.”
🤖 Artificial Intelligence
Ethan Mollick: Which AI should I use? Superpowers and the State of Play (One Useful Thing)
“For over a year, GPT-4 was the dominant AI model, clearly much smarter than any of the other LLM systems available. That situation has changed in the last month, there are now three GPT-4 class models, all powering their own chatbots: GPT-4 (accessible through ChatGPT Plus or Microsoft’s CoPilot), Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus, and Google’s Gemini Advanced1.
There is a lot of debate over which of these models are best, with dueling tests suggesting one or another dominates, but the answer is not clear cut. All three have different personalities and strengths, depending on whether you are coding or writing. Gemini is an excellent explainer but doesn’t let you upload files, GPT-4 has features (namely Code Interpreter and GPTs) that greatly extend what it can do, and Claude is the best writer and seems capable of surprising insight. The models all have different guardrails and biases, though those are always changing as the AI labs fine-tune their models further. But beyond the differences, there are four important similarities to know about.”
🔬 Academia
The Business of Politics Show: Experimentation Makes TV Ads More Effective
“David Broockman is an associate professor of political science at UC Berkeley. He is the co-author of a study published in the American Political Science Review last month titled ‘How Experiments Help Campaigns Persuade Voters: Evidence from a Large Archive of Campaigns’ Own Experiments.’ In our conversation, we discuss the research and learn what campaigners should do in light of the findings.”
📰 Data Journalism
Sarah Mervosh, Claire Cain Miller and Francesca Paris: What the Data Says About Pandemic School Closures, Four Years Later (The New York Times)
“Four years ago this month, schools nationwide began to shut down, igniting one of the most polarizing and partisan debates of the pandemic.
Some schools, often in Republican-led states and rural areas, reopened by fall 2020. Others, typically in large cities and states led by Democrats, would not fully reopen for another year.
A variety of data — about children’s academic outcomes and about the spread of Covid-19 — has accumulated in the time since. Today, there is broad acknowledgment among many public health and education experts that extended school closures did not significantly stop the spread of Covid, while the academic harms for children have been large and long-lasting.”