11-13-2018, 08:36 AM
Analysis of the 2016 election from Bloomberg:
Now we know. Demographics explain far more than does quality of the candidate unless the opponent is offensive. McCaskill and Donnelly won in 2012 by defeating crazy Republican opponents. Their opponents in 2018 did not talk about such absurdities as "legitimate rape" this time.
Ohio is reasonably good for Democrats except in its southeast, its southeast politically much like overflows from Kentucky or West Virginia. But its urban areas, aside perhaps from Greater Columbus, are no-growth zones. Youngstown and Lima are dying. Cleveland is reputedly an urban wreck almost as bad as Detroit. Cincinnati and Dayton quite growing as urban areas years ago. Toledo? One good thing about Toledo is that it is about as easy to get around as a hick town by car. Toledo is not a hick town, but economically-vibrant areas (Detroit is no dream, but its northern and northwestern suburbs have heavy traffic on the freeways) have traffic jams. I know Toledo much better than any other city in Ohio.
The pathology of American politics relates heavily to the ill-educated part of the electorate that has an increasingly-difficult time coping with social and economic change: the "low-information voters" that Donald Trump professed to love. Such people fail to recognize that the tabloid rags at the supermarket are mind-rot, and they are full of resentment at 'urban elites'. They are under-educated and atomized. They are gullible. They used to fall for left-wing populists, but they now vote for right-wing populists. They are more likely to be fundamentalist Protestants. Have they truly changed?
Probably not. They are where they were seventy years ago. But political reality outside of their world has changed, but they have not.
Midterm elections typically have lower participation than the impending Presidential election. As I recall, the only time the Republicans did better in the Presidential election than in the preceding midterm election was 1984... but in 1982. Republicans paid an electoral price for the pain that Reagan inflicted in lowering expectations. Stagflation ended, and Reagan did spectacularly well against one of the weakest nominees for President that there ever was who was not utterly crazy.
Quote:The midterm elections reshaped the 2020 presidential campaign landscape by taking some longstanding battlegrounds off the map while adding new swing states, presenting challenges for President Donald Trump and the crowd of Democrats eager to run against him.
Perhaps the most significant shift in 2018 came in upscale, highly educated suburban areas that had voted Republican for generations and broke for Democrats this year.
College-educated whites favored Democrats by eight percentage points after preferring Trump by three points in 2016, according to national exit poll data for the 2018 election that was published by CNN. That was driven by a 20-point Democratic advantage among white women with college degrees, raising concern among Republicans about an eroding base.
.......
Exit polls show strengths and weaknesses for both parties beyond the geography.
The GOP’s strongest support came from whites without a college degree -- particularly men, who they won by 34 points nationally. That enabled the party to run up the score in rural areas across the country, leading to the defeats of Democratic incumbent senators in North Dakota, Missouri and Indiana.
Education and Voting
In Missouri and Indiana, about two-thirds of the voters lacked college degrees, according to exit polls. Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill’s 9-point lead among college-educated voters was swamped by her 13-point deficit among voters without degrees. Indiana Democrat Joe Donnelly won college graduates by 7 points, but lost non-college voters by 17 points.
Now we know. Demographics explain far more than does quality of the candidate unless the opponent is offensive. McCaskill and Donnelly won in 2012 by defeating crazy Republican opponents. Their opponents in 2018 did not talk about such absurdities as "legitimate rape" this time.
Ohio is reasonably good for Democrats except in its southeast, its southeast politically much like overflows from Kentucky or West Virginia. But its urban areas, aside perhaps from Greater Columbus, are no-growth zones. Youngstown and Lima are dying. Cleveland is reputedly an urban wreck almost as bad as Detroit. Cincinnati and Dayton quite growing as urban areas years ago. Toledo? One good thing about Toledo is that it is about as easy to get around as a hick town by car. Toledo is not a hick town, but economically-vibrant areas (Detroit is no dream, but its northern and northwestern suburbs have heavy traffic on the freeways) have traffic jams. I know Toledo much better than any other city in Ohio.
The pathology of American politics relates heavily to the ill-educated part of the electorate that has an increasingly-difficult time coping with social and economic change: the "low-information voters" that Donald Trump professed to love. Such people fail to recognize that the tabloid rags at the supermarket are mind-rot, and they are full of resentment at 'urban elites'. They are under-educated and atomized. They are gullible. They used to fall for left-wing populists, but they now vote for right-wing populists. They are more likely to be fundamentalist Protestants. Have they truly changed?
Probably not. They are where they were seventy years ago. But political reality outside of their world has changed, but they have not.
Midterm elections typically have lower participation than the impending Presidential election. As I recall, the only time the Republicans did better in the Presidential election than in the preceding midterm election was 1984... but in 1982. Republicans paid an electoral price for the pain that Reagan inflicted in lowering expectations. Stagflation ended, and Reagan did spectacularly well against one of the weakest nominees for President that there ever was who was not utterly crazy.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.