Will SCOTUS's Alabama ruling flip the House?
Will SCOTUS's Alabama ruling flip the House?
Plus: Why the GOP's large field might be 2016 redux, a look back at 1960s New York politics, America's doughnut capitals, reasons to be skeptical of the youth vote, and media's Succession obsession
No. 270 | June 9, 2023
🗳️ Elections
Nathaniel Rakich: The Supreme Court's New Ruling Could Help Democrats Flip The House In 2024 (FiveThirtyEight)
“The Supreme Court just handed Democrats a massive victory in their quest to retake the House of Representatives in 2024. In a 5-4 decision that was as surprising as it was consequential, the high court agreed with a lower court’s ruling that the Voting Rights Act requires Alabama to draw a second predominantly Black congressional district.
Not only does that mean Democrats will very likely gain a seat in Alabama next year, but the decision will probably also force other states to redraw their congressional maps as well. And with Democrats needing to flip only five House seats in 2024 to win the majority,1 this decision could be the difference between Republican and Democratic control of the House.”
David Wasserman: Surprise SCOTUS Alabama Ruling a Huge Win for Democrats, Civil Rights Groups (The Cook Political Report 🔒)
“In a somewhat unexpected move, Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh sided with the Supreme Court's three liberals in a 5-4 verdict to affirm a federal court ruling that Alabama's Republican-drawn congressional map violates the Voting Rights Act by diluting Black voting strength. The landmark decision in Allen v. Milligan could reverberate across the Deep South, leading to the creation of new Black-majority, strongly Democratic seats in multiple states.
The ruling is the culmination of a push by civil rights groups and Democrats to unpack "hyper-minority" districts in the Deep South and seek more proportional representation for Black voters (we previewed this legal push in this September 2021 deep-dive in The Atlantic).”
Nate Cohn: Do Christie and Pence Make It 2016 Again? Not Yet. (The New York Times 🔒)
“It’s been feeling a bit like 2016 lately.
Back then, the opposition to Donald J. Trump was badly divided. The party couldn’t coalesce behind one candidate, allowing Mr. Trump to win the Republican primary with well under half of the vote.
With Mike Pence and Chris Christie bringing the field up to 10 candidates this week, it’s easy to wonder whether the same conditions might be falling into place again. Despite high hopes at the start of the year, Ron DeSantis has failed to consolidate Trump-skeptic voters and donors alike. Now, the likes of Mr. Pence and Mr. Christie — as well as Tim Scott and Nikki Haley — are in the fray and threatening to leave the Trump opposition hopelessly divided, as it was seven years ago.”
Ruy Teixeira, Karlyn Bowman, and Nate Moore: Can Tim Scott or Nikki Haley Score a South Carolina Upset? (American Enterprise Institute)
“As GOP hopefuls flock to Iowa, another key 2024 primary battle is brewing in South Carolina. Two prominent Palmetto State residents, Senator Tim Scott and former Governor Nikki Haley, have joined the crowded Republican field and hope to upend the pecking order in their home state nominating contest. At the moment, the odds are slim. Both Scott and Haley have started their campaigns polling in the low single digits. But a strong showing in South Carolina could catalyze either candidate heading into Super Tuesday and beyond. Meanwhile, a poor performance in favorable territory could doom their campaigns. So, does Tim Scott or Nikki Haley have a better shot at scoring a South Carolina upset?
Let’s start with the polls. According to the RealClearPolitics national average, Haley is 4.4 percent and Scott at 1.6 percent. Haley actually clocks in as the highest-polling candidate not named Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis, though her earlier entry could account for a couple of these points. Scott, meanwhile, announced on May 22 and is playing catch up on the earned media front. Though these numbers can hardly be considered good news for either candidate, polling months before even the first scheduled debate in August has limited relevance. Most Republican primary voters simply aren’t tuned in yet—especially to the crowded non-Trump lane.”
Seth Moskowitz: Plotting the GOP’s Most Efficient Electoral College Pathways (Sabuto’s Crystal Ball)
“The 2020 presidential election was very close. It might not seem that way looking at Joe Biden’s 306 to 232 Electoral College victory, but if a few votes in a few states had swung differently, Donald Trump would have won a second term.
In the most narrow sense, Trump lost the election by 42,918 votes. That number comes from totaling up the raw vote margin in the three most competitive states (Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin). Had Trump flipped these, he likely would have won the election — in the event of an Electoral College tie, the House of Representatives would have picked the president, and the GOP would have controlled that process (and very likely will control it again following the 2024 election).”
Geoffrey Skelley: Beating Biden Isn't A Priority For Republican Voters In The 2024 Primary (Yet) (FiveThirtyEight)
“Four years ago, the Democratic presidential primary was dominated by a concept nobody could clearly define but everyone could tell you was important: “electability.” Despite the challenges of measuring this amorphous trait, perceptions about who would have the best chance of winning the general election tended to boost older white male candidates at the expense of women and people of color. But regardless of whether you could quantify ‘electability,’ Democrats clearly cared a great deal about it: Poll after poll found that more Democrats cared about nominating a candidate who could defeat then-President Donald Trump than one whom they agreed with on most issues.
Today, Republicans find themselves in an analogous position to Democrats’ four years ago: facing an open nomination battle to take on an incumbent president they strongly dislike. But they aren’t necessarily repeating Democrats’ 2020 example. Limited polling suggests that GOP voters may care more about ideological purity than electability when considering the Republican field of presidential contenders. This could be frustrating news for some GOP leaders and donors who want the party to move on from Trump.”
Michael Lange: New York City's Rainbow Coalition - Part I: John Lindsay's Forgotten Urban Crusade (The Narrative Wars)
“Amidst an era defined by Reaganomics and the increasingly neoliberal orientation of the Democrat Party, Reverend Jesse Jackson’s unabashedly progressive Presidential campaign - which included calls to reverse Republican tax cuts to finance social welfare programs, cut the Department of Defense budget, create a single-payer healthcare system, provide free community college, and resurrect the Works Progress Administration to rebuild infrastructure and create jobs - supported by a left-coalition which transcended race and class, remained a clear outlier in National politics.
However, in municipal politics, left-leaning and reform-oriented coalitions - which united anti-machine liberals with working-class Blacks and Latinos - had emerged throughout the 1970’s, winning competitive Mayoral races in Los Angeles, Detroit, and Philadelphia - culminating in Harold Washington’s seminal 1983 triumph, coincidentally in Jackson’s de-facto political home of Chicago, where the South Side Congressman upset both the incumbent-Mayor and the Windy City’s infamous political machine.”
🗺️ Data Visualization
Aatish Bhatia, Josh Katz and Margot Sanger-Katz: Just How Bad Was the Pollution in New York? (The New York Times)
“The air in New York City on Wednesday wasn’t just bad by the city’s standards. It was historically bad, even compared with places around the world that generally experience much more air pollution.
Sensors measured levels of particles 2.5 microns in diameter or smaller, brought by wind from wildfires in Canada. Wednesday’s daily average was the highest since recording in New York began in 1999. (The second-highest level was on Tuesday.) Wednesday’s level of pollution was also higher than the worst daily average record in San Francisco — on Nov. 16, 2018, when wildfires were blazing in Northern California — and it approached average pollution levels recorded in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 13, 2020, during the worst of its pollution from nearby wildfires.”
Alyssa Fowers: America’s doughnut capital. Can we stop at just one? (The Washington Post)
“People all over the world eat fried dough, and nobody does doughnuts like the United States. Doughnuts can be found year-round across this great nation in a huge array of flavors, shapes and styles.
But astute reader Susan Green suspects that America may be riven by a hidden doughnut divide. She observes that some parts of the country are saturated with a single doughnut brand, while others host a profusion of independent doughnut purveyors.
On National Doughnut Day, we wondered: Is Susan right? If so, can we map the nation’s deep-fried fault lines? And where is America’s true doughnut capital?”
👫 Demographics
Ruy Teixeira: Five Reasons to be Skeptical of the Youth Vote (The Liberal Patriot)
“Nothing makes the Democratic heart beat faster than a sense that the demographic wind is at their back. They love the idea that they can safely disregard all that messy persuasion stuff to focus on rising demographics and mobilize, mobilize, mobilize.
The current demographic darling is the youth vote, which did indeed perform well for the Democrats in 2022. But much commentary has gone beyond that simple, true observation to portray the youth vote as a tsunami about to overwhelm the Republican Party. To understand why that’s an over-reading of the evidence and what a more balanced perspective on the youth vote should be, here are five things to keep in mind.”
📰 Media Habits
Sara Fischer: Media's "Succession" obsession (Axios)
“The media's obsession with HBO's hit series "Succession" drew outsized coverage of the show that was disproportionate to reader interest, according to new data.
While there's no question "Succession" was a huge hit, the countless spoilers, cast interviews and interpretations of the series may have been driven more by the media's obsession with its own industry rather than consumer interest.
Data from Memo, a media analysis firm that uses artificial intelligence to monitor online article engagement, found that the "Succession" series finale drew a disproportionate amount of media coverage relative to its readership and compared to other major TV series whose season finales occurred in the last month.”
📊 Public Opinion
Matthew Yglesias: Are young men conservative now? (Slow Boring 🔒)
“Last week, Richard Reeves noted polling data that shows ‘fewer than half of Gen Z men think that feminism has made the world a better place,’ a finding that he says ‘we should all take pretty seriously.’ Brad Wilcox of the Institute for Family Studies called it ‘striking new evidence young men in America are moving Right.’
It’s certainly an interesting finding. At the same time, one difficulty with polling interesting or novel questions is that it can be difficult to contextualize the results. Here, it’s not really clear what people mean by ‘feminism’ or to what extent different people mean different things. I doubt someone like Nikki Haley would describe herself as a feminist. But from the vantage point of the ‘Mad Men’ era, I think the idea of a married mother running for state legislature, winning, becoming governor, becoming UN Ambassador, and then running for president would very much seem like a feminist success story.
Drilling down into more specific questions about attitudes toward gender roles, the youngest cohort of men actually looks like it’s the most egalitarian.”
The Politics of Gender, Pronouns, and Public Education (Public Religion Research Institute)
“Political debates about gender identity have become heated in recent years, as some state legislatures have increasingly sought to restrict transgender rights. Battles over how — or even if — sexual orientation and gender identity should be discussed in public schools are also erupting at school boards nationally, amid larger frustrations with public education that have emerged in the wake of the pandemic and other social tumult.
This new study of more than 5,000 Americans takes a closer look at Americans’ views on gender identity and what is appropriate to teach in public schools with respect to sexual orientation and gender identity. We also gauge Americans’ comfort levels with the idea of a friend using gender-neutral pronouns or pronouns that may not match the respondent’s perception of their friend’s gender. We also ask Americans their thoughts about the age at which children should receive sex education in public schools and what content is appropriate.”
Jeffrey M. Jones: Social Conservatism in U.S. Highest in About a Decade (Gallup)
“More Americans this year (38%) say they are very conservative or conservative on social issues than said so in 2022 (33%) and 2021 (30%). At the same time, the percentage saying their social views are very liberal or liberal has dipped to 29% from 34% in each of the past two years, while the portion identifying as moderate (31%) remains near a third.
The last time this many Americans said they were socially conservative was 2012, during a period when consistently more U.S. adults identified as conservative rather than liberal on social issues.”
🤖 Artificial Intelligence
Marc Andreessen: Why AI Will Save the World (a16z)
“The most validated core conclusion of social science across many decades and thousands of studies is that human intelligence makes a very broad range of life outcomes better. Smarter people have better outcomes in almost every domain of activity: academic achievement, job performance, occupational status, income, creativity, physical health, longevity, learning new skills, managing complex tasks, leadership, entrepreneurial success, conflict resolution, reading comprehension, financial decision making, understanding others’ perspectives, creative arts, parenting outcomes, and life satisfaction.
Further, human intelligence is the lever that we have used for millennia to create the world we live in today: science, technology, math, physics, chemistry, medicine, energy, construction, transportation, communication, art, music, culture, philosophy, ethics, morality. Without the application of intelligence on all these domains, we would all still be living in mud huts, scratching out a meager existence of subsistence farming. Instead we have used our intelligence to raise our standard of living on the order of 10,000X over the last 4,000 years.”