Biden Thread

[Montmorency]

The Georgia runoff will not be relevant to Senate control as Nevada's Senate race is a Democratic hold.

It appears the Republicans will only achieve a 2-seat House majority, a drastic underperformance when they were expected to gain a 10-to-15 seat majority. It's a shame, a galvanized Democratic trifecta could have produced a decent amount of necessary legislation.

Democrats did quite well at the state level, though of course Florida was disastrous.

But in 2022, not a single state legislative chamber flipped from blue to red. A party in power hasn’t achieved that result in a midterm election year since at least 1934, according to Post.

Many thanks to the incontinent malice of the Republican base for foisting Trump and rampantly-illegitimate juridical practices on the country when it only detracted from their opportunities.

[drone]

I hope someone informs the honorable Ms. Greene that during an impeachment trial, the Senate can subpoena witnesses and force testimony under oath. The Democrats could easily turn a trumped-up impeachment against Jordan and company (very publicly, and with legal force). Schumer should be able to nip any of those shenanigans in the bud with a few quiet words.

[Montmorency]

Now that we're pretty sure of the final election results in particulars, a brief examination of the House elections.

In 2020, Dems won 222 seats 50.8-47.7.
In 2022, Republicans won 222 seats 50.7-47.7.

222 seats of 435 is 51%.

So despite all the boundary inefficiences and gerrymandering, it may be that the combination of updated boundaries (population movement and changes according to the 2020 census), mutual gerrymandering, and the uptake of neutral districting in some places served to nullify most partisan bias in aggregate.

Polling was pretty good, as early results suggested. A national (across the board) 1pp vote swing in favor of Democrats would have retained their control with the same number of seats they had before: 222 (meaning Democrats would have achieved the very rare result of improving their representation in government during a midterm, accounting for the Senate and state elections). A 1pp swing in favor of Republicans would have given them 5 more seats, putting them almost on the line for the consensus House projection of ~230 seats. Interesting stuff.



Also, a reminder that despite some appearances this year, overall ticket-splitting remains at all-time lows. However, analogously to swing voters,

split-ticket voting isn’t so rare — at least today, anyway — that the actual governing outcomes of these votes produce no split results.

[Montmorency]

If Warnock does indeed win tonight, this election cycle will be the first since the direct election of senators began in 1914 in which no incumbent has lost reelection, either in a primary or a general election. And furthermore, this will be the first time since 1934 that any president, Democrat or Republican, has seen all incumbent senators of their party running for reelection win. In 1934, no Democratic incumbents lost reelection despite the president being a Democrat. Since then, every Democratic president has seen at least one Democratic senator lose reelection in each midterm, and every Republican president has seen at least one Republican senator lose per midterm. - JACOB RUBASHKIN

It's almost safe to say Warnock has won.

[Montmorency]

Told you about Sinema btw.

[Furunculus]

This seems relavent to recent major breaks in political orthodoxy - thinking of the US and UK here particularly:

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/statu...765711/photo/1

[Hooahguy]

I dont think I ever heard anyone seriously say that Russian interference was limited to twitter bots, rather it was a larger influence campaign spanning multiple platforms and methods.

Not that Glem is exactly an unbiased person to discuss such matters. He had been calling Russian interference a hoax for years now.