The age break-downs in the polls are increasingly amazing to me. Here’s some from a recent PPP poll in Texas.
A Democratic victory in Texas this year remains a stretch but within the numbers there are signs of Democrats being positioned to become seriously competitive there in the years ahead. Trump’s lead is based entirely on his holding a 63-33 advantage among seniors. With voters under 65, Clinton leads him 49-45. And when you look just specifically at voters under 45, Clinton leads Trump 60-35.
I don’t understand why Republicans aren’t more freaked out about how badly they’re doing with younger voters. People like to say “oh young people are always lefties” but in fact the Democratic domination among younger voters from 2008 to now is completely unprecedented in modern American political history.
Elmo
Hee hee.
Ahem. Sorry.
Hee hee hee hee hee!
::clears throat:: no, really, I was just –
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
quakerinabasement
They aren’t freaked out because the numbers you cite are in their favor, at least for the near future. If Clinton leads Trump by 4 points among voters under 65 and leads by 25 points among voters under 45, one can deduce that voters between the ages of 45 and 65 skew to Trump. That’s a cohort that will continue voting for another 25-30 years.
shomi
They aren’t more worried because the fact is that they know they can change when they need to. Vast majority of voters don’t remember what happened last election. So Republicans could do a 180 in 2 years and do just fine. Only if they are forced to though….with a massive massive defeat on all fronts this election.
The biggest problem with Texas and elsewhere is that hispanics don’t vote. If they voted in the same percentage of the their population as white people, Texas would already be blue. Every election people say this year is different and more of them will vote this time. Never happens.
Trump’s clownish comments might get a few more to vote but not very many. Everyone thought Obama would bring more of them out and it never happened. They thought that stupid Arizona law that targets hispanics would get more of them to vote….never happened.
Doug!
@quakerinabasement:
But the group he dominates in is dying off.
WereBear
Some of them are. But any moves towards possible youngs will dent them seriously with the sure-thing olds.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of slime molds.
Mike J
Roger Moore
I think the lack of a Republican freakout about that is twofold:
1) They tend to focus heavily on the next election, not the next generation.
2) They have more things to freak out about than they can pay attention to simultaneously, so some of them have to be dropped.
That said, they’re already doing typical Republican outreach to the younger voters, e.g. insulting and trying to disenfranchise them, so they’re clearly working hard to cement the advantage long-term.
Mustang Bobby
If younger voters voted in the same volume as the older voters, the election would be a landslide for the Dems on a scale that makes Johnson’s in 1964 look like a squeaker. GOTV, people.
Roger Moore
@shomi:
Nonsense, or at least nonsense on a practical level. People tend to get set in their voting ways very early. If they vote for one party for several elections in a row, they tend to stick with that party for the long term. So even if they don’t remember the details of the previous election, they remember how they voted and tend to keep doing it.
Mike J
I don’t remember the last Doobie Brothers post title.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
What do you have against slime molds that you’d compare them to modern Republicans?
SamR
What everyone else said, plus the idea that Trump is an aberration and the havoc he is causing is temporary.
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
I really wish we could move more in the direction of a proper shadow cabinet. The whole business of throwing together a cabinet in the interval between the election and inauguration is a bad plan. Not to mention that having a full-fledged shadow cabinet could be beneficial from a campaign standpoint; it would definitely give some extra weight to campaign promises.
Gene108
The under 45 crowd does not vote in off-year elections. The GOP has rebounded from two bad electoral defeats in 2006 and 2008 to have a strangle hold in the House, many state legislatures, and control of the Senate by becoming extremely right-wing.
There’s no reason for them to change or care until the lose again, and again and again at all levels.
I don’t see the GOP getting drubbed that badly across the board.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: Dinesh D’Souza is tired of people reminding him about that pesky little criminal conviction
WereBear
@Roger Moore: I know. It’s hard to find a comparative form of life that not useful in SOME way.
Jeffro
@WereBear:
Here, here!
It’s interesting that they are so wedded to their positions, so wedded to their base of older, whiter folks, that they simply can’t change or adapt here.
Mike J
@SamR: Trump is the Republican party. He won because rank and file Republicans don’t want the elites telling them to shut up and hide in the shadows while they compromise. They want to be loud and proud and would rather lose as an openly bigoted party than win pretending they’re sane.
Doug!
@Gene108:
They won’t be under 45 forever
Lev
My guess is that they think that young people are always liberal, and grow older as they get conservative. That is a pervasive myth with no real factual basis–in the ’80s, most young people thought Reagan was awesome, and I recall seeing numbers saying that young people in the ’60s were evenly split politically. But it’s folk wisdom that I think is pretty widely believed, to the extent that your average older conservatives shrugs at this, because they’ll see the light once they get that first paycheck!
(The party’s professionals are another matter, but there’s little they can do.)
Trollhattan
@Mike J:
This might could be the first.
Mary G
The Koch brothers are all over this. I can’t recall the names offhand, but they have new groups working hard on both young voters and Latinox. Democrats can’t afford to do nothing assuming they will keep the current demographic advantage. The oil companies managed to stack the Air Quality Management Board here in deep blue Southern California and they are already rolling back regulations to be more “business friendly.” If they can sneak in here, they can sneak in anywhere, and they will never stop trying to find the cracks in the armor.
Regular Republicans aren’t bright enough or just figure that by the time young people start voting regularly, they will have become more conservative with age.
Jeffro
@Gene108:
Yes – they might lose the Senate, but they’ve still got the House, and they’re still doing very well in state legislatures & governorships. TONS of Koch & Co money behind that. It’ll take overturning CU, and probably some sort of state-by-state or national redistricting reform, to beat them back.
Elmo
@WereBear: Mosquitoes.
aimai
@Mike J: My god I love knowing we have such a consummate professional leading the party. I just kind of sit back and put my feet up and relax while patting my white cat and planning my evil plans. (Emotionally, I mean, not you know, literally).
The Dangerman
I think the first World Cup I watched (casual watcher here) was Golden Goal rule; too bad it was changed. Poor Brazil.
aimai
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You are shitting me.
Tokyokie
Under 45 is basically 18-45, and the upper half of that age group isn’t that young.
Trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Felon is now “cool”? I missed the memo. God, he’s an insufferable entitled prick.
Paul Wartenberg
the Republicans are thinking that the younger voters are still malleable and can change their minds as they age – the old adage that as you get older you get conservative – and that the youth vote doesn’t matter due to poor turnout.
the Republicans however keep forgetting that people build loyalty to a party over time, regardless of original ideology: if you start out as a Democrat in life you tend to stay Democrat until the party crosses a personal line. I started out Republican as a youth, but one who was open-minded and able to vote across the ballot. I stuck with the party even when it became clear to me that the RINO purges of the 1990s were wiping out moderates like myself. I’m still NPA because part of me wants to go back to being a registered Republican if and when the party regains its sanity.
So this massive number of young Democrats may not be scary now – although a big turnout from them this year would be YUGE – but they will be scary 10-20 years down the road when they’re 30-somethings and still registered as Democrats or still leaning left-center on issues… and more likely to turn up to vote.
Mike E
Damn, Sweden! The “cowards” beat host Brazil in women’s soccer in penalties
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
― George W. Bush
The all time greatest Kinsley gaffe.
Dolly Llama
Seems like Texas turning blue has been “just an election or two away” for the last eight elections or so.
dedc79
The phrase of the day is “abbreviated language.” As in:
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
Good post by Booman on this very subject as well.
Feathers
I read somewhere a while back that if the Latina women of Texas voted in the same percentages as Black women do, the state would be solid blue. This was in the context of beginning a Black woman to Latina woman outreach to point this fact out, in order to facilitate this happy future arriving.
Patricia Kayden
@Doug!: But not dying off fast enough to make a real difference. Plus young ‘uns don’t vote as much as seniors. Texas is red for a few more decades, imho.
LAO
@dedc79: I snorted when I read that — WTF! He abbreviated language like Sanford was hiking the Appalachian Trail. At some point, can’t the media recognize “America’s Mayor” brings nothing constructive to the political discourse.
Jeffro
Someone on Twitter just suggested that Joe Biden would be a perfect stand-in for Trump as Clinton begins to think about debate prep. Joe’s probably too much of a gentleman to, even for the campaign/cause, be able to throw Monica-Lewinsky-stuff and Vince-Foster-stuff at Hillary.
However, I can actually see Joe doing a pretty good imitation of Dainty Digits’ rather moronic affect, cracking up, cracking Hillary up, and both of them not being able to get on with the prep for a considerable amount of time…=)
Cat48
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Poor Dinesh, he was on BBC attacking Hillz, saying she was a liar & made millions off govt business, blah, blah. The anchor stopped him & asked “Don’t you have a criminal record?” He said yes, but a white collar criminal, blah blah, Obama, blah. It was quite funny.
gene108
@Doug!:
But will they get into the habit of voting?
I went a good stretch of my 20’s without bothering to vote (I did vote, when I turned 18 and continued through college, after college moved out of state and didn’t bother to register to vote).
Then Bush, Jr.’s Mis-Administration jolted me out of my complacency, by the 2004 election.
I’m not sure, if every youngin’ who starts voting, even if sporadically, will have a moment that terms them into reliable voters.
Kay
I enjoy these polls way too much. It’s best when she’s over 50 though.
Roger Moore
@LAO:
When he’s too dead to give interviews. Until then, though, he’s the kind of person the media loves: well-known, opinionated, and desperate enough to get his mug on TV that he’s always available on short notice. There will always be a place on TV for people like that no matter how repugnant they are.
Waldo
Why bother freaking out? GOPers correctly assessed the party’s demographic challenges in their 2012 postmortem and then proceeded to ignore the recommended fixes. This is more of the same: there’s no point worrying about where you’re headed if you know the steering wheel is broken.
Turgidson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Bwahaha. Well he’d probably get reminded about it less if he wasn’t constantly accusing the president and the Democratic nominee for president of pretty much every crime we have a law for with no evidence. Something about a convicted criminal, peddling conspiracy theories about the imagined crimes of others, lends itself to merciless ridicule. Who woulda thunk.
He’s such a fucking clown, he probably believes that his pointless campaign finance fraud was a noble act of civil disobedience. Yes, just like Gandhi, he is.
C. Isaac
Texas turning purple would kill the GOP’s chances to ever reliably win the White House again. It’d be like forcing Democrats to campaign and spend money in California every election cycle – a huge and expensive market that is taken for granted each year as an easy win. If I’m a republican strategist with a brain (oxymoron, I know), these numbers would be deeply disturbing. That I’m only winning the biggest, most important red state by dint of a demographic that’s rapidly shrinking every day should be seriously worrying. The margin is so wide, there’s no blood left to squeeze from that stone. They’ve won all they can there, and they have to pick up margin elsewhere or watch the state slip away from them.
Add to that how much of Texas Dem’s problems are poor ability to motivate voter turnout, and you just need one good year where turnout swaps (high GOP to low GOP and vice versa for dems) and there’s a real shot at Texas flipping blue.
As a Texan, I would be pleased as punch to be punching the GOP’s ticket into national irrelevance every year when I vote. I don’t think they win Texas this year, but every dollar they spend protecting it is a dollar not spent in OH/FL/PA. I’m ok with that.
I know where I’ll be on that day in November. I’m a liberal, and I vote.
Kay
She’s only one young person, but things like this are why my daughter thinks they’re horrible:
Certain things just get her attention. She was furious when she saw the Council of Male Clerics in front of Congress. Republicans don’t seem to care how some of this stuff looks.
bystander
@dedc79: Giuliani’s inability to remember what happened yesterday may be the reason he spent millions of taxpayer dollars on an emergency command center located in the very place terrorists had attacked in 93.
Everytime somebody talks about America’s mayor, I want to puke.
dedc79
@LAO:
America has never lost a war! (Note: The abbreviated language disclaimer may apply)
Trollhattan
@Dolly Llama:
It’s the Dixie Friedman Unit.
Eric S.
@Tokyokie: This year, just a few weeks ago I stopped being UNDER 45.
Personally I have defied the concept of getting more conservative as I’ve aged. While I don’t believe I was ever as far right as our blog host I was definitely a Republican,or at least a Republican leaning voter, in the past.
Not any more. I don’t know of one fit to be elected Assistant Street Sweeper in Training, much less to an office with real authority.
NR
New Monmouth poll has Clinton +9 in Florida in the 4-way race. Johnson gets 6% and Stein gets 1%. Rubio is up by 5 in the Senate race. Oh, and this is with an R+5 sample. Bonkers.
sherparick
@WereBear: Also, Texas work very hard to keep turn out low among minorities, younger voters, and voters that actually have to work for a living. One always has to remember that when Governor Abbott says “rampant voter fraud,” he means Black and Hispanic people voting for Democrats. https://www.texastribune.org/2016/03/16/texas-still-second-last-voter-turnout/
In 2012, only 49.7% of eligible Texas voters voted. in the Off-year election of 2014 it was about 34%. Texas makes hard to register, hard to vote early, and hard to get to polls and then stand in line when you get there. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/us/voter-turnout-as-big-as-texas-not-really.html?_r= /
Arclite
@Mike J:
2009 was the last Doobie Brothers title? Although looks like Dougy fat fingered it.
aimai
They aren’t freaked out because most people are not really very aware of how the future differs from the past–it has different people in it. But they think, naively, that eventually they will return to the world of their childhood, the world “grown ups” inhabited. If you are an older white person you think all these women and black people and latinos voting is an aberration which will eventually right itself (or the country will self destruct). You see these numbers: “young people” “older voters” and you imagine that they are all white. So if white people before were reliably republican white people in the future will be reliably republican. This is a failure of historical imagination and demographic imagination. Since plenty of white people were and always have been democrats, especially after we won fucking world war two and had our greatest president (pre barack) serve three god damned terms.
Arclite
@NR: Well, those polls are skewed and the election is rigged. Doncha know.
dedc79
@bystander: Giuliani is a big Seinfeld fan. His speech was basically the “yada yada yada” episode applied to recent history.
He was an awful mayor and he remains an awful human being. Even if we accept at face value the claim that he had a few good days on and around 9/11, all the awful thins he’d done before and all the awful things he’s done since still far outweigh them.
Marc
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s too bad that convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza is upset about his criminal record. Convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza should have a bit more empathy towards others who have had brushes with the long arm of the law.
piratedan
@Jeffro: back in June, the SC upheld the AZ Independent redistricting commission that was brought into being by a direct state mandate. It drew up “fair” congressional districts that have made for relatively competitive districts that were drawn up with a charter to create geographically sane and balanced districts. The result, a majority Dem congressional representation. Basically, the good people of AZ thought fairness mattered and ever since they were brought into existence, the state GOP has been trying to get rid of it because they’ve done a very efficient job of gerrymandering the state districts. If SCOTUS continues to uphold this may lead to other commissions in other states if it can get passed on a statewide referendum.
NR
@Arclite: Funny thing is, this poll might actually be skewed–in the Republicans’ favor. Florida was D+2 in 2012. Hard to say though. It would be nice if we could get rid of Rubio, but the presidential electoral votes are more important in this case.
Miss Bianca
@Mike J: ah ha ha! For some reason this makes me smile. Maybe it’s because I remember how completely, off-the-hook RUDE the Berniebots were at the CO state convention when Ken Salazar took a deep breath and blurted out that HRC was the best-qualified Democratic candidate for President. Loyalty gets its reward,
Surreal American
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Looking forward to D’Souza’s inevitable book about his felony experience: “Letter from Derpingham Jail.”
Marmot
I think I can answer this! I get some variation of this from the senior men in my family. They use it to dismiss opinions and facts they can’t grapple with. And I’m middle-aged!
It’s so central to their identities and their conceptions of how the world works that questioning it is threatening on a basic level. If young people aren’t simply reflexively liberal, then their world views might have some truth to them, and deeply held convictions about tax rates could be jeopardized. It might call for some deep thought, which sacrifices economy of thought.
This is the mainstream, though, not Repub elites. Still, I think it’s a major force overall.
Tokyokie
@Eric S.: I’ve also grown more leftist as I’ve aged. Were this country had a strong socialist party, I’d be voting that way, even though I come from a family of far right Republicans.
Trollhattan
@Cat48:
LOVE it when our wingnuts go on the Beeb, expecting the usual softballs and reacharounds, only to be quizzed hard with facty questions and then openly mocked when they’re caught lying.
John Revolta
@Mike J: Thanks…………..I was trying to place that lyric. Googling is such a chore!
Jeffro
@piratedan: Wait…’sane and balanced’…what GOPer would want that? lol Seriously, thanks though, I did not know about AZ. I think NC is under some sort of court order to un-cluster-f___ their districts as well.
There was a thing in the Post not too long ago about ‘let the computer do it’, i.e., just let an algorithm ‘cluster’ voters into the most geographically compact districts possible. Personally I have no problem with that – take the people out of the process, and on a statewide & national level it sorts itself out. But it’s not hard to imagine who would oppose a sensible solution that better represents the actual population of folks in a given state…
Cat48
Political Wire,has a comedy Hulu video posted of a fake focus group to view ads that Trump might run on TV. The ads get weirder & funnier each time. If any of you need a laugh, you should check it out.
Just One More Canuck
@aimai: I hope not literally
scav
Abbreviated Science! “Gravity is optional.”
Abbreviated History. “The Civil Was wasn’t about slavery.” “Everything was perfect during the 1950s.”
Abbreviated Psychology. “Donald Trump is the sanest man that ever lived. Signed, Hiz Shrink 5¢”
Clearly, Abbreviations are running rampant. #Abbreviated Campaigning.
Miss Bianca
@dedc79: So, what exactly DOES Giuliani think 9/11 was if not a “successful radical Islamic terrorist attack inside the United States”?
That’s OK, Rudy, we can wait while you collect and de-breviate your thoughts…such as they are…
Trollhattan
@Tokyokie: Same. Can’t quantify how much has been me and how much has been the continual Republican journey into the weedpatch of history, but they made me a de facto Dem to the point I’ll never vote for a Republican again, no matter who he or she may be. They poisoned the well. .
Frankensteinbeck
The Republicans who care about getting enough votes are very upset about it. Karl Rove, for example. There’s nothing they can do. Their base hates all minorities and views young people at best with mild contempt, and will tolerate no deviation from getting their own way. They elect bigots like themselves. As a result, elected Republicans’ attempts at ‘outreach’ just insult the groups they’re trying to court more.
@dedc79: and @LAO:
No, I’m going to argue that Rudy is telling the truth here. It seems like a mistake only because we’re not looking at it from the conservative viewpoint. They don’t have to mention 9-11, because 9-11 does not count. It was the unpredicted, unthinkable catastrophe that woke up the country to the fact that Muslims are evil and trying to destroy us. The clock only begins after that, when GWB and his codpiece beat Islam into submission by overthrowing Saddam Hussein, keeping us completely safe until Obama’s cowardly retreat and anti-American sympathies destroyed all that progress and exploded things worse than ever before.
I know all of that is factually wrong. It’s what they believe, and they structure what they say accordingly. To them, bringing up 9-11 is ignoring the intent to argue about a technicality of phrasing.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Their pollsters probably are freaked out about the future, but there’s not much they can do. The only appeal of Republicans is essentially screaming “you kids with your gay marriage, and acceptance of brown people, get off my lawn!!!” That’s what attracts the voters they have. They don’t have a policy agenda that appeals to anyone other than the very wealthy, who don’t need much in the way of public services and will always take another tax cut. So if they change their appeal they lose the voters they have…or at least some of them. And they need all they got.
Technocrat
It does seem that youth is skewing more Democratic over time. Reagan actually won the 30-44 cohort (vs Carter), and tied the 18-29 vote. Clinton won 30-49 by 3 points vs Bush Elder.
Obama won that group by 6 points.
shomi
@Roger Moore: Those people don’t determine elections. The 10% of voters who will swing either way determine elections.
This election is a little different because a lot of people who would automatically vote Republican will not vote for Trump.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: What happened to HORRIBLE HILLARY IS BLOWING IT BECAUSE THAT”S HOW MUCH HORRIBLENESS SHE HAS OH THE PAIN OH THE MISERY
FlipYrWhig
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Do you ever watch those restaurant makeover shows, like Robert Irvine’s on Food Network? So often he’ll visit a dismal, gross, empty restaurant, and come up with plans for how to revitalize it, only to find a stubborn owner who doesn’t want to change anything because that’s the way his remaining regulars like it. That’s basically the Republican Party’s problem right now.
dedc79
@Miss Bianca:
I think basically what @Frankensteinbeck says above
Miss Bianca
@FlipYrWhig: Don’t tell me you MISS that!
@dedc79: I think you may be right.
FlipYrWhig
@Miss Bianca: I suppose now that you put it that way…
Peter
Off topic: Arizona police captain says his officer acted ‘appropriately’ by pointing a gun at a seven-year-old girl and threatening to shoot her father.
FlipYrWhig
@dedc79: I bet Frankensteinbeck is right, but that’s (“literally”?) like “Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”
goblue72
Voting rates are driven by SES. The more affluent the voter, the higher the voting rate in general. Cross-tab this with the socioeconomic stratification by race in the U.S., whereby statistically, whites are generally more affluent than African-Americans and Latinos – and generally by a significant amount. Cross-tab this again with the generic racial ID of the parties – whites vote GOP, non-whites vote Democrat – again, in general and in toto.
Put it all together and you have GOP voters (more affluent, therefore more white) turning out at more consistent rates than Democratic voters (less affluent, therefore less white).
The racial ID of the parties also plays out in the “Millenials so much more Democratic leaning” phenom. Its not entirely about their age. Its about their racial makeup. As an age cohort, Millenials are the most diverse generation – that is, a higher percentage of Millenials are non-white than prior generations. Its the racial composition of the generation that drives the political ID preference of Millenials. Amongst white Millenials, their Democratic leaning ID is not nearly so strong. (Trump is reversing that trend by his toxicity; but if you compare white Millenials voting for Obama in 2008 vs. 2012, the white Millenials actually voted FOR Romney by 7 points) The 30 and under group of voters is not necessarily voting FOR Democrats due primarily to age; they vote Democratic in significant part because they are more non-white as a generation.
dedc79
@FlipYrWhig: Yes, particularly given the prior attack on the WTC, republican criticism of clinton when he tried to get bin laden (they said he was trying to distract from the lewinsky scandal), the intelligence briefings/warnings to Bush about al qaeda and planned attacks, etc…
hovercraft
@Roger Moore:
Micheal Gerson has a column in todays Washington Post lamenting this. Even if they don’t vote this year they will forever associate Trump with the party. Most people barring a major disruption tend to stick with the party they first vote for.
shomi
There is that chart someone posted several months ago that says it all. The age group in the key 40+ area has shifted from slightly right to slightly left since 2012. I would imagine it has shifted more left since then.
If you are getting more and more old people, even if it’s just a slight shift, it has major implications long term. The 40ish age group is the canary in the coal mine….apparently. It means the country is getting more liberal.
Haydnseek
@Cat48: What makes you think that the people in the focus group were actors?
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
D’Souza compared himself to Gandhi and Mandela?
Did I actually just read that?
Lock up, mama. Reality is closed for the day.
danielx
I hate to feed the trolls, but sometimes you just can’t resist.
So which Republicans are being referred to here, exactly?
Gee, I thought that was supposed to happen after Reince Priebus came out with that postmortem after the 2012 election. So I guess that after the orange shitweasel leads them to glorious defeat this fall that they are suddenly going to going to quit being racist, fascistic pigfuckers?
Pardon me if I don’t hold my breath.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Yep. The members of my age cohort who are sticking with Trump are the ones who voted for Bush I, not the ones who voted for Dukakis.
cckids
@Jeffro:
I think Barney Frank, or Al Franken would both be great. They both can channel that off-script “winging-it” crap Trump does. Barney might be better, as he’s out of government & wouldn’t have that on his shoulders. He’s shown he can be brutally frank & outspoken, if not as full of BS as Trump. I’m sure he could channel Deadbeat Donnie quite well.
Trollhattan
@Peter:
Wowzers.
CONGRATULATIONS!
GenXer checking in. My generation was damn well not “left” on anything when they were young, and are just getting nastier and more hateful as they marinate in the toxic wine of hatred, bitterness, and self-hatred that comprises our body politic these days.
The lifeline for the GOP? These young people being spoken of do not vote in substantial numbers. Not yet. They will.
aimai
@dedc79: Yes, its a superb analysis. Spot on. Congratulations frankensteinbeck.
hovercraft
@Gene108:
Well that works until you have a situation like the one coming up in 2020, where you have a presidential election that coincides with elections to select the people who will control the next redistricting. And depending how good/bad the Gerry mandering is control of the house is pretty much set till the next re-districting. As important as it is to beat Trump, 2020 is even more important, it should not be that the party receiving the majority of the votes in states, does not get the most congressional seats from those votes.
randy khan
@NR:
One thing to keep in mind on the Florida Senate polls is that the Democratic primary hasn’t happened yet. Just like in the Presidential election, there’s going to be post-primary consolidation (not to mention more fire aimed at Little Marco), so I’d expect the race to tighten.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@NR:
I saw a poll yesterday that had Jill Stein tied with Harambe, and losing to Deez Nuts. It must be hard to be a purity scold these days.
Jeffro
@cckids: Barney Frank is an excellent choice, good pick.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mary G: Goddamn, THANK YOU. The AQMB thing is going to have not just national but worldwide consequences.
Yeah, Cali’s blue but becoming red rapidly at the local levels. As go local governments, so goes the state, after a while. Also, Dems, please stop taking Hispanics as both a given and a monolithic voting bloc. They aren’t. Thank you.
Mnemosyne
@Jeffro:
OMG. I know the perfect debate partner for Hillary, and he’d do it in a heartbeat, too:
Alec Baldwin.
Someone get him on the phone, stat!
(Yes, I know he’s a sexist asshole. THAT’S MY POINT.)
sukabi
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: pretty sure Mandela and Ghandi WEREN’T convicted of fraud or actual criminal conduct though. Something d’snooza can’t claim.
Punchy
33% of senior voters are going HRC? THAT’S the real story here. Being it’s TX, I’d expect that divide to be more like 95 to 4% in favor of the GOTP.
wjs
This is what’s happening in small towns all over America. In my home town, the population has dropped by 5,000 or more since I left high school in the late 1980s. Nowadays, the town caters to old farts and people with no money–people who, literally, will not vote for an increase in funding for schools, infrastructure, or anything because they are collecting Social Security. As soon as someone says, let’s do something to attract jobs and young people, they overreact and vote it down. Those are Trump voters. Everyone else has left town and will likely vote for Hillary. You can see how this demographic looks–they are old, everything they know comes from Fox News, they hate the culture, they like the idea of white people running things, and they don’t like anything new, shiny, or from the Democratic Party.
Oh, and fuck them. They’re dying off. It’ll be a different country ten years from now. Trust me.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: Oh, that’s a brilliant suggestion.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@sukabi:
At least D’Souza didn’t compare himself to MLK. Because I would have to go kick his ass and I hate waiting in long lines.
Cat48
@Haydnseek:
I’m not sure either way. They didn’t look like actors?
gene108
@Jeffro:
Who writes the alogrithm?
The Diebold electronic voting machines that were in use 10+ years ago did not make people feel more confident in the system, as their computer systems could be easily modified to alter vote totals.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Aww, let me run that through my wingnut translator:
Blacks are cool, and
Black are felons, therefore,
Felons are cool!
Why don’t you treat me like one of these cool felon people? I’m practically black, right, because I committed crimes, dammit! I went to a “prison” on a beach! There was sand in my ass every day and I got a sunburn!
Mike J
Bake Babies playing a free show in Boston. Gah. 2500 miles away.
The Lodger
@dedc79: Abbreviated language, eh?
Fk u, Rdy.
Mike J
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I’ll bet some googling will turn up him comparing himself to Rosa Parks.
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
One big thing in our favor is that it will be a presidential election year, not a midterm like it was in 2010. It really is easier to get people to the polls in a presidential year.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Mike J:
With Juliana and Freida?
Be still my heart.
Villago Delenda Est
All those old white “Christian” people are afraid that the new majority will treat them exactly as they treated the old group of minorities.
They need to suffer for that, tis true.
cckids
@Mnemosyne: That’s great.
Matt McIrvin
@Technocrat: There was a real, genuine conservative youth movement when I was a teenager. My cohort was just slightly too young to vote for Reagan (I became eligible to vote in 1986), but a lot of my classmates supported him, and the college I went to was super-Republican.
Luthe
Trump is losing New York state to Clinton 57-27. The Crazification Factor continues to hold true.
Hob
@quakerinabasement:
If by “skew to Trump” you mean “Trump is ahead of Clinton in that cohort”, that logic relies on some assumptions about population size. That is, if there are a lot more under-45 voters than 45-to-65s, then yes you would need a big Trump advantage in the older group to pull the aggregate back down to Clinton +4; but if the older group is much bigger, then Clinton could still have a slight lead, less than +4, in the older group.
But anyway, I think more importantly the numbers you’re talking about there are just from Texas. Nationally, although the lead does get more extreme the younger you go, Clinton is leading in every age group except 65+, so there’s not much good news there for the GOP even in the near term. But for things to be looking the way they do in Texas, it’s plausible that things have gone really badly wrong for them, to the point where they shouldn’t be very reassured by the thought that they still have some middle-aged support in Texas.
Jeffro
@gene108:
Um…algorithm writers? The gentleman in the WaPo article I read https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/this-computer-programmer-solved-gerrymandering-in-his-spare-time/ (my apologies, I saw it recently but it’s actually from 2014) seems to have done fine on his own and had his data available for all to see.
yes, but this isn’t (potentially or actually) switching votes – it’s taking publicly available census data and using what seems to be pretty simple software to cluster folks. Easy to verify, I’d think.
Jeffro
Dang it…in moderation for the link…I keep forgetting that…
MomSense
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m sure he now supports voting rights for convicted felons. I wonder if anyone has asked him.
Frankensteinbeck
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
How much it resonates with D’Souza I don’t know, but one part of the conservative worldview is that black role models, especially rappers, are criminals, and they think criminals are cool, and this has spread to infect all young popular culture.
@aimai:
Sometimes I feel like ‘Stewardess, I speak Asshole Bigot’ is my contribution here.
Matt McIrvin
@gene108: The algorithm would have to be a publicly available, open-source one that anybody could run and check.
jl
Two things are different.
First, I remember reading an old Peter Drucker piece that predicted them dang lefty kids would trend more conservative as they got older. A big part of the argument was that the kids would see their incomes grow as they got older, they would soon own houses in nice neighborhood and other nice stuff, have responsibility for kids, etc. The chance of our dang kids these days going through that pleasant process is very much smaller. The kids will go through the first half of their adulthood without rising incomes, good job opportunities or the nice stuff their parents had. GOP policies and attitudes have been very visibly a big factor in that. GOP policies on student debt is just one example.
Second, I remember my older peers being attracted to Reagan because they had the impression he was optimistic, seemed nice, promised a happy prosperous future, and separated himself from open bigots. I thought that impression was mistaken, but they could make a case that was not laughable. I think trying to make that case with the likes of Trump, or McConnell, or other GOPers is laughable today. Who are the faces of the GOP you see in the news interviews? Vicious goofballs like Rudy, the various Kings (both open resentful bigots and fear mongers), etc.
Edit: and corrupt thugs like Christie. And the increasingly obvious hypocrisy of the whole crew. Them dang kids don’t like unrepentant hypocrisy. They have a nose for it and can sniff it out. As if you would need to sniff it out in the GOP garbage dump.
darms
No one will see this but please look at voter turnout in TX. It’s been terrible <25% for decades which is why we elect nutjobs…
Bobby_D
Lifelong political affiliations are forged in a person’s teens to twenties, and rarely changes. The old saw that people become conservatives when they get older is, and has always been, B.S.
p.a.
@Mike J: C’mon, give din-yeesh a break; it was horrifying when they set those police dogs on him… oh… wait…
Mike J
Naming ceremony for the oiler USNS Harvey Milk this afternoon.
Calouste
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Well, convicted felon D’Souza is a Republican, and to Republicans, those brown foreigners are all the same, specially if they are convicted felons.
Belafon
@Bobby_D: The only caveat to that is if the party changes. Texas went for Democrats for the longest time because it was the conservative party. It continued to vote Democrat for a long time because most people didn’t pay enough attention to the party to see that it was changing (like you said, people tend to stay with their choice). Those that were paying a little bit of attention started changing from voting Democrat to voting Republican in the 80s and 90s.
For the most part, people stick with the party they voted for early on. If the party changes too much, as the Democrats did, a lot of people can leave, but it takes quote a bit of effort.
les
@quakerinabasement:
Fuckin’ math, how does it work?
catclub
@Waldo: There is a very good article at WaMonthly on just this topic. Romney was not that much different from Trump in terms of wanting to motivate the white resentment vote. Trump just has even worse demographics than Romney did.
Villago Delenda Est
@Calouste: Their ability to discern irony of course remains unimpeded.
catclub
@les: I was amused by someone stating that state polls trail the national polls. Intermediate value theorem, a nation turns its eyes to you.
jl
@Belafon:
” but it takes quote a bit of effort.”
The Democrats made their effort with the Civil and Voting Rights Acts. And then Nixon made his effort with the Southern Strategy. A lot people noted those.
jl
@quakerinabasement:
” one can deduce that voters between the ages of 45 and 65 skew to Trump. That’s a cohort that will continue voting for another 25-30 years. ”
No you can’t deduce that, intermediate value theorem or not. Better to look at the evidence. Will be interesting to see data on the older adult population.
catclub
@jl:
Visibly to you and me, perhaps, but if a democrat has been President 16 of the last 24 years, they might see those as Democratic policies.
RaflW
@Doug
I suspect any Republicans with brains (there are some, though few of them hold office) are in fact freaked out about this. But they have the Trumpnado ripping the entire thing apart in real-time, so they have no capacity to do anything proactive about da yout.
Relatedly, I thought the news items the past 24 hours about Trump not ‘reaching out’ to blacks were absurd. The GOP has actively alienated black and brown voters for years and years. To pretend that Trump is somehow much worse is to actively deny what has been in front of everyone’s nose all this time.
The GOP put everything on Red 19 and spun the Roulette wheel. They really thought it would work (which confirms what idiot gamblers they are).
singfoom
@gene108:
@Jeffro:
@Matt McIrvin: You open source the algorithm on github and anyone that wants to can look at it. It could be several people, a dozen or as many contributors as needed.
This is software that needs to be written by the community at large. If it is non proprietary and open source, anyone interested can read it, grok it. That way it is EASY for the community to pronounce it “valid” or “invalid”.
This is exactly how our districts should be generated. You get oversight of the code and oversight of the process. We all win. Somehow I feel like entrenched interests in both parties would be against this, but maybe I’m wrong.
cmorenc
@The Dangerman:
That would not have helped the Brazil women today; their semifinal match vs Sweden today ended in a 0-0 draw *after* both regulation + overtime were fully played out, and the match had to be settled by KFTM (kicks from the mark, often misdescribed as “penalty kicks”, which the KFTM process superficially resembles, but is actually quite different in nature).
As for the Brazilian men – they’re still alive and play their semifinal match vs Honduras tomorrow (Wed).
glory b
Off topic, but PA’s Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, first woman and first Dem in the office, resigned effective tomorrow after being found guilty of perjury and obstruction.
Once again, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover up.
cokane
Yeah, GOP has definitely failed to appreciate how the chain of W. Bush then Obama then Trump is going to shape a certain generation’s view of the parties
RaflW
@Bobby_D: I sort of agree. I think many voters do become a bit more personally conservative as they age (though some do not!). What I think happens is that once party ID is set, one moves within that range.
Younger Democrats help push the party towards more progressive ideas, and older Dems help keep some of the wackier ideas in check. Or maybe that’s just my ex post facto reasoning.
Roger Moore
@shomi:
Yes, they do. There are two big reasons why they’re so important:
1) Even voters who are solid voters for one party don’t necessarily vote in every election. A lot of the swing in elections these days depends on turnout. When Democrats win the turnout battle you get elections like 2006, 2008, and 2012; when Republicans win, you get elections like 2010 and 2014. Those swings were a result of differences in turnout by committed voters, not by classic swing voters.
2) Even given equal turnout, the election depends on the relative numbers of committed voters for each party. If the number of committed voters from each party is equal, the outcome will depend purely on the swing voters. But if one party has an advantage in committed voters, it takes a bigger swing by the swing voters to turn things against them. If they have a moderate advantage in committed voters, they’ll win more often than not. If they have a big advantage in committed voters, they’ll win whenever they don’t have a huge fuck-up that turns all the swing voters against them.
mike in dc
It’s not about flipping Texas once. It’s about flipping Texas permanently.
burnspbesq
@Mary G:
Nine of the 12 members of the SCAQMD board are elected officials (county supervisors and city council members), and none of Orange, Riverside, or San Bernardino Counties are “deep blue.” If progressives want a more responsive AQMD, they might consider showing up.
Tokyokie
@Trollhattan: I used to try to find at least one Republican for whom I could vote (which was easier back when my friend’s father was a district court judge who switched parties solely to retain office), but I haven’t done that in a while now, because I think they’re all horrible.
burnspbesq
@glory b:
In this case, the crime (leaking grand jury information) was pretty heinous.
tarragon
@Tokyokie:
I moved from full on libtard in my 20s to strong socialist in my 40s. Practically it means I vote donate and vote dem.
burnspbesq
@Mike J:
And the first ship of the new class of fleet oilers is the John Lewis.
Pretty stinkin’ cool.
Turgidson
@catclub:
Willard Mitt “Mittens” Romney kept his raw appeals to racial grievance [mostly] implicit and properly coded for plausible deniability. Trump dispenses (dispells, as Lil Marco might say) with the codes.
I know that the conventional wisdom has affixed a halo to Mittens in hindsight because he’s not a barking mad dullard like Trumpenfuhrer. But it’s rarely mentioned that Mittens was an extremely casual and frequent liar himself, until Trump came along and made him look like Honest Abe by comparison. Poor Steve Benen has never been quite the same since he nearly collapsed in exhaustion keeping his “Chronicling Mitt’s Mendacity” records current – I don’t read the Maddow blog as religiously as I did then, but I don’t think he’s even bothering to do the same for Trump, probably as a matter of self-preservation. Again, the only real difference is that Mittens typically slid an arguably-true factoid or an accurate but misleading statistic into his lies to keep the fact-checkers at bay, and [barely] had enough self-respect to be shamed out of repeating his real whoppers. Trump doesn’t bother with this formality either, and we know quite well that he has no shame whatsoever.
Trollhattan
O/T This SI Cover should create a few smiles.
BillCinSD
@singfoom: this. Since the Gerrymandered districts were done by algorithms using the data that would be used to un-Gerrymander the districts this is critical. Unfortunately the recent American way has been to pay a private corporation (like Diebold) to develop the software and then say the program is proprietary so it is nigh impossible to check
cmorenc
@Paul Wartenberg:
I was actually quite a right-wingnut in my political beliefs in high school through about sophomore year in college in 1968, when my views began to evolve in a more progressive direction. However, my full evolution took awhile – in the first Presidential election I was eligible to vote in (voting age was 21 back then, not 18) – I voted for Richard Nixon, even while voting for Democrats down-ballot. Nixon was the last GOP presidential candidate I ever voted for, or ever will, barring unexpected sudden cataclysmic ideological reversals of the current major parties.
Now in my mid-60s, I had a chance encounter about six years ago that revealed quite concretely to me just how vast my political perspective had changed since I was about 18. By chance, down at the beach, I encountered one of my very best childhood friends whom I’d lost touch with a couple of years after we both went away to college, We had some beers together and mainly caught up with what we’d been up to the past several decades and people we both knew, with no political discussion at all that day. We exchanged email addresses. Well, my childhood friend promptly added me to several right-wing chain email lists, including some emails that crossed into clear racist territory (this was midway through Obama’s first term). It dawned on me that because he and I used to have lots of political discussions back in high school, usually in agreement, that he presumed I was still of similar mind (we grew up in eastern North Carolina). That mirror into my long-ago former self was, to say the least, very uncomfortable to someone like my present-day self who spent several days leading up to the 2008 election pounding the pavement canvassing for Obama.
So yes, many people can evolve from their early political inclinations while e.g. in college – but OTOH perhaps as in my case, that’s because this semi-permanent hardening of orientation doesn’t really set in for most people until sometime in their 20s or even around 30.
Technocrat
@singfoom:
One problem is that such an algorithm doesn’t have a well-defined “best” solution. Equal population districts can be drawn in a large number of ways. All the algorithm would do is define the “how to optimize”, while partisan foodfights raged over the “what do optimize” part. Do you go for maximally-heterogenous districts, or maximally homogenous ones?
Scamp Dog
@Tokyokie: Yup. Started off voting for Reagan (to my shame), and every Republican administration moved me farther left. The next one will probably turn me into a bomb-throwing socialist.
That’s why I’m volunteering for the campaign. Bombs are dangerous, I don’t want to have resort to that sort of thing! :)
catclub
@Turgidson: I also saw June polls that Kevin Drum shows, they make it look like Trump is simply a much worse candidate than Romney all around. No better than Romney in ANY demographic group.
J R in WV
@WereBear:
I always thought slime-molds were really cool.
I mean, a mold that can crawl away if things get tough? Cool!
That does sound a little Republican-like, now that you mention it….
singfoom
@Technocrat: Indeed, the problems with this approach are less technology or conceptual and more-so how do you overcome the partisan foodfights? In my opinion that I’m sure would be better informed by political scientists / statisticians, etc…. I think that what you would want (for a given state since I’m thinking of this on the state level) is a number of districts with as close as possible equivalent populations that are a mix of demographics.
So I guess I fall on the maximally-heterogenous side. Regardless of the specific strategy, I think most rational people would agree that it’s best for humans to NOT draw the maps, given our biases. But I can already hear the “What about the bias of the people who write the code?” cries already, which is dealt with by open source so that if biases can’t be eliminated from the code, they can be minimized and noted.
Cheers
Turgidson
@cmorenc:
I think it’s some combination of growing older and political events that creates “hardened” partisans. A certain George W. Bush took office when I was 20, so most of my 20s was spent during his Reign of Error. I was a very apathetic but generally liberal-ish non-voter when he got [s]elected in 2000 (I was an IL voter living in CA, so I could not have voted in a swing state, but I still feel guilty for not bothering to vote).
In any event, I wasn’t a huge fan of Clinton or Gore and having grown up in Illinois, I had no particular ill will towards Republicans at that point. Jim Edgar was a good man and popular governor, and Jim Thompson before him was non-threatening. So it did not occur to me that voting GOP for anything above dog catcher was utterly out of the question – imagine a Jim Edgar vs. Blago governor’s race, for example. I didn’t pay enough attention to national politics at that point to realize how much of a worthless piece of shit Newt was, or how retrograde his fellow 1994-era “revolutionaries” were, or maybe that would have gotten the point across. But George W. f’ing Bush drove that message home unmistakably. By 2004 I had come to realize that I was almost certainly never going to vote for a Republican in my adult life unless there was a hard-to-imagine realignment of the parties. And the GOP has only gotten much, much crazier since then. The fact that Bush happened at a particularly impressionable time for me politically probably accelerated my shift into solid-D-for-life camp.
Now, when I see liberal pundits declaring “sure, I’d vote for Romney over a Democratic version of Donald Trump”, I have to admit I’m not totally sure I would do the same. First, it’s an absurd premise. But second, in 2016, I found every single Republican candidate for president (the vaunted “deep bench”), EVERY.SINGLE.ONE, to be terrifying. Utterly terrifying. The only one I thought would stand a chance of not being a historic catastrophe was Kasich, and only barely. They were proposing ruinous nonsense as serious policy. They lived in alternate reality fantasy lands constructed by Fox News and its ilk. They accused Obama, with varying degrees of malice, of being an enemy of the state. Trump has since emerged as uniquely dangerous and loathsome due to his breathtaking ignorance and open lust for being a dictator, it is true. But they were all, every damn one of them, dangerous. I’d take a dim-witted celebrity blowhard Democrat over any of them, right up to the point that Democrat proved him/herself to be more dangerous than any Republican is almost certain to be. And these days, that’s an extremely high bar for a Democrat to clear. Extremely high.
Bobby_D
SCAQMD is a disaster anyway you cut it (they do have a nice HQ building though, down in Diamond Bar, cool atrium). I ran the env dept of a military installation in SoCal, and dealt with them all the time due to our Reclaim and Title V permits. The regs themselves are overly complex, they have inspectors/regulators who don’t know wtf they’re doing and don’t know their own regs, they’ve lost our payments multiple times and assigned our permit fee to a different branch of DoD once, causing me no shortage of headaches. They continually try to assert authority they don’t actually have, and try to put requirements on us that are not required under law. Smog in SoCal is radically better than the 60s, 70s, or 80s. But the AQMD model is fked.
I lived in the IE for a long time, and it’s not as blue as people might think. Get a little further east into the desert, and it’s really red. Yucca Valley, Barstow, 29 Palms are all blood red.
J R in WV
@srv:
I happen to fall into the categories you mention. All of them. Retired as a succcessful software designer/developer. Former Hippy, Deadhead…
And lifelong Democratic party member and voter.
And you’re reduced to trolling people on a liberal blog… so sad, too bad.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Remember the NYT interactive map of the electoral college. Ferret Head’s ways to win go down to ONE if Hillary wins Florida
Roger Moore
@Jeffro:
The big answer to this question is “somebody who doesn’t have access to the census data that will be used to generate the districts”. That way, it’s impossible to cleverly tweak the algorithm to give you the results you want while looking clean. You also need to have the source code available to anyone who wants to inspect it, so suspicious people can verify that there’s no tricky business.
The way this has to work is to write the algorithm before the census, verify that it works, and then keep it around in source code form until after the census. After the census, you compile it and feed it the census and map data, stripped of any data that you’ve decided is impermissible. Since the code and the census data are publicly available, anyone who wants to confirm that you haven’t pulled any shenanigans can do the same thing and look at the districts.
Jeffro
@tarragon:
You too?
At the rate I’m going, by the time I’m 70, even Marx will be like, “DANG, that guy needs to lighten up on the redistribution thing”
rikyrah
@Trollhattan:
Can’t wait to buy it.
danielx
Eh. I voted for Richard Lugar because I thought (still think for that matter) the country owed him a debt for sponsorship of the Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act of 1991, better known as the Nunn-Lugar Act. That was back in the days when Democrats and Republicans actually co-sponsored (!!!) legislation deemed to be good for the country as a whole, hard though such things are to imagine now. It was either that or vote libertarian or for an independent, since in his last election campaign the Dems didn’t bother putting up an opponent.
Naturally, he got primaried by a Tea Party candidate. Richard Mourdock*, who was/is notable for his lunacy even by Tea Party standards.
*Famous in particular for his position on pregnancy due to rape, though his belief that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are unconstitutional is also noteworthy.
Jeffro
@singfoom:
Yes – a new convert to the cause! (j/k singfoom)
Seriously though, a 21st-century solution to a long-time problem. Simple, transparent, democratic. And yes, entrenched interests would be against this, but I have a feeling that most of those entrenched interests are also the most ossified parts of each party…what could be more fun to run against? ;)
Jeffro
@Technocrat:
Neither – you just go for the most geographically compact ones, and let the chips fall where they may.
Roger Moore
@Technocrat:
You go for geographically compact ones. Compactness could be defined by the total perimeter of all districts. If you want to make the districts obey existing geographical boundaries, you could count district lines that follow existing lines at less than their full value, e.g. district lines that follow county lines count 1/4 their actual distance, ones that follow city city limits count 1/2 their actual distance, and ones that follow census tract lines count 3/4 their actual distance.
Roger Moore
@singfoom:
I think the real answer to homogeneous/heterogeneous is not to make it a criterion at all. Define in advance exactly what kind of data the algorithm is allowed to use, and then remove any other information from the data that’s fed in. So you could just forbid the algorithm from having access to any data except for how many people live in each census tract and then enforce it by removing any other data before running.
singfoom
@Roger Moore:
Don’t really follow how you can develop the algorithm without the census data set. Or a data set that’s representative of the census date set. I think if both the census data AND the algorithm code are open source then you can be sure of no bias.
Plus, developing against a non real world data set (in my experience) often introduces translation errors. Better to code against the actual data set to get real world results than code it against a fake data set, get results you think are what you want and then get weird results when the data is different.
YMMV, Cheers
J R in WV
@Marc:
Yes, in fact Dinesh D’Souza IS a convicted felon, convicted of election fund raising fraud, far worse than voter fraud.
Dinesh D’Souza’s kind of felony can affect far more than a single vote, which is all a single voter could get away with.
He shouldn’t be asked his opinion of election activity, as he has shown, proven really, that he has no ethics regarding elections, and feels no obligation to be truthful about events surrounding an election.
It isn’t a question, does Dinesh D’Souza have any election-related ethics… it’s a proven fact that he does not. Felon D’Souza should find another line of work. Perhaps three-card monte, or the shell game, three shells and a dried pea, near Times Square in NYC.
Or selling Rolex watches on the sidewalk from a briefcase… something more honest than any of his former elections.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@Trollhattan: I ad the pleasure of watching John Bolton get torn into little tiny bits by Simon Schama, with just his mustache remaining identifiable, on the Beeb’s 2008 US election night coverage. He finally reached the point of offering to meet Schama in the parking lot, with the anchors snickering as they watched, and only then realized no one was going to step in and save him and they were going to let that awful man continue to belittle him!
It remains the one of my fondest memories of that night, of all the conservative meltdowns I saw.
Roger Moore
@singfoom:
You use population data from a previous census, ideally a couple of censuses ago. The goal is to prevent somebody who has access to the actual census data from tweaking the algorithm until it produces gerrymandered results.
For example, getting an exact solution to an optimization problem like this is probably going to be computationally intractable, so the final program will probably give only an approximate answer. In a lot of cases, doing something like that involves a pseudo-random element. To make the program deterministic, so that everyone winds up with the same solution, which is an important check on the results, you’d use a pseudorandom number generator with a fixed seed value. A nefarious programmer who had access to the actual census data might try generating a huge number of maps with different seed values, find a map that had a “natural” gerrymander they liked, and slip that seed value into the final program. Denying them access to the actual data cuts off that kind of attack.
Robert Sneddon
@1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet): Long time back I was listening to BBC Radio 4 when the interviewer was grilling the German ambassador live about something the German government were doing which they had been dead set against Britain doing in the past. The interviewer used the word “schadenfreude” with some delight.
scav
@Roger Moore: Also, I think the algorithm would likely be embedded in a larger decision context, possibly even several algorithms / heuristic techniques. They’d be used to generate a pool of optimized (but not optimal solutions) according to a given set of criteria (say, simple compactness, or perhaps alternative definitions of compactness). The pool would be weeded down possibly by automated evaluation of old and new criteria (this might be where solutions that followed “natural” boundaries might get a higher rating than really random ones). This second phase of evaluating possibilities has also been studied so it doesn’t have to automatically and entirely be thrown to people / committees with all those biases. But it can’t really be avoided, just grabbing a single result from any heuristically derived algorithm is rather dicey.
The workflow (both phases) and criteria / measures would clearly have to be agreed upon prior to any real-world runs.
Procopius
@href=”#comment-5963102″>shomi:
Heck, the vast majority of voters don’t remember what happened last Tuesday. That’s why one of the Rules of Journalism is that you have to explain in your lede what happened before this event. That’s why wossername, Trump spokesperson, can get away with saying, “Obama got us into Afghanistan. That’s when we got in there,” and Trump voters will scratch their heads and say, “Hey, that’s right, how could I have forgotten that?”
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Jeffro: Another strong socialist here. I blame it on exposure to Europeans from the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden back when I was in grad school. People who had no problem with high tax rates because they felt that the government services they got in return exceeded the personal cost.
ThresherK
@1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet): Simon Schama v. John Bolton?
That’s a fight that’s over at the weigh-in.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
“I don’t understand why Republicans aren’t more freaked out about how badly they’re doing with younger voters.”
Their deep red district will remain that way for the remander of their careers. It’s like Californian Republicans; it don’t matter they are a non factor is state goverment as long as they still get the job and the wealthy elders to grift.
Doug!
@Surreal American:
I like it
redshirt
I too was a Reagan Youth that is now super-ultra liberal.
Feels good.
Turgidson
@Enhanced Voting Techinques:
Yep. There’s a disconnect between the officeholders who win by catering to the old white voters and their “economic anxiety” vs. the bigger picture consultants, strategists, state and national level party officials who despair at what’s going to happen once those “economically anxious” voters die off and are replaced in the electorate by tolerant, sockulism-curious millenials. The officeholder has no incentive to change in the near term and actually has some incentive to double down on the dipshittery to ward off primary challengers. The state and national party knows this will be long-term suicide but can’t coerce the officeholders into going against their own interests for the sake of the party’s health in 20 years. This is a big reason why immigration reform was snuffed out in the House, of course. Boner didn’t have the sack to piss off all those teabaggers even though he knew killing it was a bad idea longer term. I wish he’d just brought it to the floor after he announced he was leaving, but he didn’t bother. Probably too wasted.
tybee
@Jeffro:
i did not realize there were so many of us.
Truegster
The local Austin Texas right-wing talk radio were going over these polls today and all the callers were trying to “unskew” the poll by calling in saying “all the guys I know like Trump and we’re all under 40”. The hosts were having none of it – “so you’re part of the percentage in the poll, I didn’t say 100%” The callers were pissed at the idea that any demographic would actually favor Hillary.
Technocrat
@Roger Moore:
I know this is a late reply, but I think the above misses the point.
Compactness could be defined by the total perimeter of all districts. Or it could be defined as “where people have the lowest average distance to the center of their district” (which is how it’s defined in Jeffro’s link). Or we could district by partisan composition, or even some other social function.
I’m not really looking for a way it could be done, there are likely dozens of ways. What would be impressive is a rock-solid justification for doing it one way versus all the others, and a way to get broad agreement on that justification.
I maintain that the algorithm itself is essentially irrelevant. It’s the process by which we arrive at the algorithm that’s the hard part.
Roger Moore
@scav:
I think the practical solution is to have the algorithms spit out a few plausible redistricting plans and then let the legislature pick between them- without amendments. The goal is not to take away all decision making from people, but to give them a constrained set of plausible and fair choices.
Technocrat
@Roger Moore:
This makes sense.
redshirt
@Truegster: This is often a white person problem, maybe with reason: If all you know is other white people like you, who all generally share the same viewpoints, then it must be somewhat shocking to learn there’s other people who think differently.
Roger Moore
@Technocrat:
I agree that the exact solution is not important, but I think the really hard part is getting people- especially the legislature- to give up on the current one. Letting legislators draw their own districts has always been a terrible idea, and the newer ways of tweaking the gerrymandering just make it worse. But our representatives benefit too much from the power to pick their own constituents to give it up easily. I honestly think that any plausible alternative would be enough better that we’re just quibbling over details.
Matt McIrvin
@singfoom: Open-source methods to test for unfair districts might be more important than neutral algorithms for drawing them. Sam Wang and others have been working on that.
Matt McIrvin
@redshirt: I was not a Reagan Youth, but I spent my whole childhood and adolescence getting used to the idea that the vast majority of people did not agree with me about politics, and in fact found my ideology to be an evil aberration and would get upset if I spoke my mind. And I’ve never quite shaken that.
scav
@Roger Moore: Decision support is pretty much that, but there are tools and techniques that can be used to systematically help with the second phase of choosing from among options, rather than leaving it all up to the whims of people. But people being able to juggle compromise and unquantifiable goals are absolutely a requirement in the process.
doofus
Why aren´t they more freaked out? Because most of them are dumb. They know in their gut that Trump will win, because…..reasons. This is from a Maine hate radio host:
Statistics and polls don´t matter – they know in their gut that heretofore unregistered and nonvoting masses – waves! – of white people will turn up for Trump.
James
@Roger Moore: Giuliani basically acknowledged that they only look at the current election in his convention speech.
louc
@danielx: Don’t forget that Sally Bradshaw, the woman who actually conducted that post-mortem has left the Republican party out of disgust over Donald Trump.
Stan
@singfoom: ” So I guess I fall on the maximally-heterogenous side. ”
So you’re against districts being drawn to maximize the potential to elect a person of color?
Maximum heterogeneity will produce results that always favor the dominant group.
Jinzang
Republicans start favoring the legalization of marijuana in 3, 2, 1 …