What would it take to swing the election?
What would it take to swing the election?
George primary vote history revelations, unexpected dynamics, Larry Hogan's prospects, Dems turn against voter registration, online conversations are just as toxic as ever
No. 309 | April 4, 2024
🗳️ Elections
“538’s Swing-O-Matic shows what could happen in the 2024 election if President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump gains ground with different demographic groups — and if turnout shifts among others. To build it, we used data from the U.S. Census Bureau and several pollsters to estimate turnout and vote choice in the 2020 election sorted by five key demographic traits: age, education, sex, income and race. The starting map reflects vote preference and turnout levels from 2020, adjusted for demographic shifts since then.
Use the buttons below, or scroll down the page, to explore how hypothetical changes in vote choice and turnout among different groups could alter the outcome of the 2024 election. Or, click the button to create your own election scenario! (Important note: The four hypotheticals below use swings among groups for demonstration purposes and are not forecasts. These swings are iterative and additive across groups: For example, moving young voters and Black voters each 5 points to the right would move young Black voters 10 points to the right.)”
Geoffrey Skelley: See how demographic swings could impact the 2024 election (538)
“Early polling and special election results have raised many questions about how the electorate might vote come November. Will younger voters swing sharply to the right? Might President Joe Biden gain more ground among white college-educated voters? Has former President Donald Trump made significant inroads with voters of color? Could turnout plummet because of unhappiness with a Biden-Trump rematch? Any of these developments could potentially change who wins the election.
With this in mind, 538 is proud to present its 2024 Swing-O-Matic interactive! This tool engages with these questions by allowing you to play around with how different parts of the electorate might vote, altering how much a group prefers one party's candidate or the other, and just how high or low that group's turnout is. As you increase support here or decrease turnout there, the Electoral College map will adjust as some states flip to red or blue. Remember, state demographics vary quite a bit, so certain changes could help one party more in some places than others.”
Nate Cohn: New Georgia Data Gives Insight on Primaries, Polls and Possibly November (The New York Times)
“The verdict from the presidential primaries is already in, but the best data on what they mean for the general election is only now beginning to arrive.
That data is vote history: a person-by-person record of who voted and who did not. It offers a definitive account of the makeup of the electorate, and it will help answer some of the most important questions of the primary season, from whether the Nikki Haley voters already back President Biden to whether the primary results suggest Mr. Biden is better positioned than the polls suggest.
Last week, we got the first big tranche of vote history data from a place where we’ve done a recent state poll: Georgia.”
Ronald Brownstein: The unexpected dynamic that could decide the Trump-Biden rematch (CNN)
“Biden’s immediate challenges have compounded these long-term shifts. His numbers are especially weak among younger Hispanic and Black voters, a reflection of the president’s difficulty connecting with young voters of any race. Biden is ‘a poor fit generationally for a non-White electorate that skews young,’ said Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini, author of ‘Party of the People,’ a recent book on the GOP’s gains among non-White voters. ‘He’s the anti-Obama in his appeal to different segments of the Democratic electorate,’ he added.
Inflation, analysts in both parties agree, has also disproportionately hurt Biden with Black and Hispanic voters, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck. And conservative analysts believe Biden is also being hurt because many non-White voters view Democrats as too liberal on cultural issues including LGBTQ rights, crime and even control of the border – although polls make clear a majority of non-White voters side with Democrats on other marquee social issues, particularly abortion and gun control.”
Geoffrey Skelley: Could Larry Hogan turn a blue Senate seat red in Maryland? (538)
“Could a Republican win a U.S. Senate seat in Maryland? Usually, the answer would be no: The state is one of the bluest in the country, and a Republican hasn't won a Senate election there since 1980. But the last Republican to win statewide office in the Old Line State is looking to buck partisan forces again. Last month, former Gov. Larry Hogan announced a campaign for the seat held by retiring Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin, which has unexpectedly added Maryland to the list of potentially competitive Senate races in 2024.
Hogan has the credentials to make this race far more interesting than it would have been otherwise. The popular former governor would need to win over a meaningful share of moderate Democrats or independents who typically back Democratic candidates — a coalition critical to his successful gubernatorial bids in 2014 and 2018, and a must for any Republican to win in Maryland. Early polls suggest he could do just that, in a race against either Democratic Rep. David Trone or Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, the two leading Democratic contenders.”
David Wasserman: The Defining House Races of Every Cycle Since 1984: Part One (1984-2002) (The Cook Political Report 🔒)
“To dive into the newly digitized archives of the Cook Political Report is to be transported to political places and times that are difficult to imagine today — when local newspaper endorsements and civic affiliations (rather than social media platforms and super PACs) were key influencers of vote choice, and split-ticket voting was the norm, not the exception. That’s not to say races were any less negative or tumultuous than they are today. But the contours of the House battlefield were much broader and less predictable from year to year.
It’s jarring, for example, to be reminded that Republicans held a congressional seat in liberal Manhattan until 1993 and Democrats were competitive in one of Idaho’s House seats as recently as 2010. Or, that in 1990, mere rumors of an extramarital affair cost a six-term GOP incumbent in Minnesota reelection in a district that generally favored his party at the presidential level.”
Michael Scherer and Sabrina Rodriguez: Democrats spar over registration as worries over young and minority voters grow (The Washington Post)
“A confidential memo circulated among top Democratic donors has sparked a furious debate in Democratic circles about whether to narrow the focus of voter registration efforts to avoid signing up likely Republicans.
For decades, nonpartisan groups allied with the Democratic Party have run wide-ranging efforts aimed at increasing voter registration among people of color and young people — groups that tend to lean Democratic but have historically voted at lower rates than older and White people.”
Lakshya Jain, Giacomo Squatriti, and Leon Sit: We Polled Young Voters. Here’s What We Found. (Split Ticket)
“If you’ve followed any of the polling from this presidential election cycle, you’re probably aware of massive purported swings in the voting behavior of the youngest and oldest voters in the electorate portended by polling. Survey after survey shows Joe Biden gaining with seniors while cratering with young voters, whom many public polls have begun to portray as exceptionally Trump-curious. In fact, some recent high-quality polls have found Biden losing voters under the age of 30 outright.
A slew of commentators have posited their own explanations for this phenomenon and its validity. Some, like Nate Cohn and Nate Silver, claim that this is caused by a real (if temporary) loss of support due to factors like Biden’s advanced age and the Israel-Hamas war. Others, like Noah Rudnick from Cygnal, have publicly attributed this to statistical noise, induced by changes in how the surveys were conducted.”
🔬 Academia
@MattGrossmann: Online conversations are similarly toxic across platforms, issues, & 3 decades (Twitter)
👫 Demographics
Hansi Lo Wang: Next U.S. census will have new boxes for 'Middle Eastern or North African,' 'Latino' (NPR)
On the next U.S. census and future federal government forms, the list of checkboxes for a person's race and ethnicity is officially getting longer.
The Biden administration has approved proposals for a new response option for ‘Middle Eastern or North African’ and a ‘Hispanic or Latino’ box that appears under a reformatted question that asks: ‘What is your race and/or ethnicity?’”
📊 Public Opinion
John Sides and Michael Tesler: America is less polarized by race – but more polarized about race (Good Authority)
“The possibility that people of color could be shifting away from the Democratic Party – sometimes called a ‘racial realignment’ – is one of the hottest topics in American politics right now. A shift was evident in the 2020 presidential election, as Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans were a bit more likely to vote for Donald Trump than they had been in 2016, although most of each group voted for Biden. Current polling suggests even larger shifts heading into 2024.
To some commentators, these shifts or potential shifts mean that race is somehow becoming less important to politics or to Donald Trump’s appeal in particular.”
