The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

All better praise future Governor-elect Gillum for dragging Nelson across the finish line on election day.

Someone Should Make a Meme out of this post

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I am 20 (as you would know if you looked at my profile), and I'm very well aware of the kind of language and behavior engaged in by peers my age. That doesn't mean that I have to condone it. You would also know, from my prior comments on this board, that I have long held this position on such issues. I don't condone Hogg's profanity any more than I condone that of Trump himself.

I'm sorry; but this post is the best example of... Lib-Dem-ery (don't quite know if that term translates very well) that I have ever read.  The worst sort of snowflakery that only the finest Liberal Democrats manage to portray; a lot of virtue signalling to show that they are *respectable* while tone policing the survivors of a school shooting.

There's also the fundamental fact that there is a clear difference between an elected politician like Trump being a vulgar person and an activist using vulgar words to stress a point; and to compare the two indicates a lack of understanding of the way that the world works.  Hogg is someone who survived a school shooting; saw many of his friends shot and murdered and who was incredibly lucky to survive.  He's also seen the government do exactly nothing to prevent situations like that from happening again.    I'd say that he has a lot to be angry about and sometimes you have to let that anger out: internalising feelings like that is a good way of causing yourself harm.  Meanwhile Trump is a vulgar person: his utterances indicate his character flaws and weren't about demonstrates righteous anger.  However to someone like you who seems to have no firm principles bar being 'centrist' (which is a term that means very little; since the centre has a habit of drifting around in the breeze like a bin bag at a little used railway station) you seem to perceive the two as being the same; apparently unable to see the difference between someone who uses vulgar words to demonstrate the intensity of their views and someone who's just a vulgar person.

There's also the fact that there's a clear difference between an elected politician and a political activist.  Trump is meant to represent America on the international stage and to act as the leader of the country and clearly his vulgarity makes him very inappropriate for that job.  Its the same for all political figures; I get irrationally annoyed when you see politicians (mainly from the left although probably from all over) who use rude words as a way of looking cool and down with it - not to demonstrate intensity of feeling or many of the other reasons why a person swears but merely as another form of political messaging.  Hogg is a political activist; he's the face of a movement sure but hardly the key leadership figure that Trump his: and he's quite clearly an authentic person and his language demonstrates that really.  There's also the fact that there is something incredibly, incredibly dumb about comparing an old man who's elected to the highest office in the land and a young person who's been forced into the political world because of a very sad, sad thing that happened to him.

On a more on-topic subject: the incompetence of the way that Cruz is campaigning is rather astounding to me: and while I think that he's the favourite (and it'd take like every poll showing Beto ten points in front for me not to think that) it is possible that the Democrats pick this one up which I never thought would happen.  Does require a significant amount of work still though - and part of me wonders whether that might be what kills the Republicans in places like this: complacency can be what loses unexpectedly close elections.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I was reading a thread recently where someone remarked that the party in power is usually underestimated in the generic ballot. I looked into whether this was true and I have posted the data below from 2002-2016.

I found that if "party in power" is defined as the presidential party, the presidential party was underestimated on average by 0.8% over the eight congressional elections in this time frame. But in three of those eight elections, the presidential party was actually overestimated, so I would be hesitant to call it a rule.

The correlation is slightly stronger if we count only the four midterm elections. In that case, the presidential party was underestimated on average by 1.5%. The one exception was 2014, when the Democrats actually did 3.3% worse than RCP's average.

Interestingly, the strongest pattern occurred when "party in power" is defined not as the presidential party, but rather as the party that controls the House. Between 2002-2016, the GCB underestimated the party that controlled the House at the time of the election by an average of 2.1%. The only exception was 2012, meaning that this "rule" has held true in 7 of the 8 last congressional elections, or 88% of the time. Furthermore, it held true in all four midterm elections during that time frame.

Overall, the trend seems to be that polls typically exaggerate the size of "wave elections." Right now, Republicans control the White House. And perhaps more importantly for congressional elections, they control the House of Representatives, which historically makes them a clear favorite to overperform the polls.

Democrats lead the generic ballot by 7.6% right now. So if we apply the historical average of the incumbent House party overperforming by 2.1%, the Democrats would win the NPV by only 5.5%. Coincidentally, that is the exact point at which 538 would consider the House a 50-50 tossup.

The past doesn't always predict the future, but I think this is something to think about.


2002: Republicans control WH & House

RCP average: R +1.7
Result: R +4.8

Outcome v. polls: R +3.1


2004: Republicans control WH & House

RCP average: R +0.0
Result: R +2.6

Outcome v. polls: R +2.6


2006: Republicans control WH & House

RCP average: D +11.5
Result: D +8.0

Outcome v. polls: R +3.5


2008: Republicans control WH, Democrats control House

RCP average: D +9.0
Result: D +10.6

Outcome v. polls: D +1.6


2010: Democrats control WH & House

RCP average: R +9.4
Result: R +6.8

Outcome v. polls: D +2.6


2012: Democrats control WH, Republicans control House

RCP average: R +0.2
Result: D +1.2

Outcome v. polls: D +1.4


2014: Democrats control WH, Republicans control House

RCP average: R +2.4
Result: R +5.7

Outcome v. polls: R +3.3


2016: Democrats control WH, Republicans control House

RCP average: D +0.6
Result: R +1.1

Outcome v. polls: R +1.7

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Still won't make a difference in the end. Cruz will win.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

So earlier this week, I decided to start taking a look at the Texas early vote on a county by county basis. I’ve been pouring over the data from places like Tarrant county, looking at past elections and at current early voting statistics. All the information I’ve seen points to one conclusion: Beto is getting the numbers he needs to win.

Now, a few caveats: Beto needs substantial swings across Texas in order to win. He doesn’t just need Democrats to turn out: he needs to win hundreds of thousands more votes from Independents and some Republicans in order to have a chance. With that in mind, the numbers suggest that Beto has done exactly that. Let me list a few preconditions needed for a Beto O’Rourke victory:

1. Phenomenal Latino, youth, and African-American turnout, far better than 2014

2. Improve on Hillary’s margin with Latino voters across Texas

3. Win Hays, Williamson, Nueces, Jefferson, and Tarrant counties

4. Run up the margin in Bexar, Travis, Dallas, and Harris counties

5. Reverse Hillary’s losses in the Rio Grande

6. Get substantial swings in Denton, Collin, Galveston, Brazoria, and Bell counties

7. Improve on Hillary’s margins in East Texas

8. Match Hillary’s performance in West Texas


(Hypothetical O'Rourke victory)

Early voting data suggests that goal 1 has been absolutely smashed. That’s a good sign. Goal 2 is very likely. Given recent data from Hidalgo and Cameron counties, the numbers look good for Beto here. In his capacity as a Congressional representative, he has earned numerous plaudits from the Latino community in Texas. There is also reason to believe that middle class, Tejano Latinos look prime to vote for Beto, too. This voting bloc usually supports Republican candidates in Texas, including people like George Bush and John Cornyn. This year, though, they appear to be much more willing to back Beto O’Rourke. While Beto may not win this group, it will improve his raw vote total substantially.


(2016 Texas Swing Map, courtesy of Dave Leip's US Election Atlas)

Onto point number 3. This is where I start speculating. If you look at the swing map in 2016, all of these counties (save for Jefferson) swung towards Hillary Clinton by a solid margin. This was especially the case in Williamson county, where Clinton improve on Obama’s raw vote total by 23,000 votes and on his margin by 5.5 points. Beto, however, will have to do even better this year to win these counties. But there’s reason to believe that it’s possible. On average, nearly 4.35% of voters in these five counties backed a third party candidate. It was even higher in Hays and Williamson counties. Secondly, most of these five counties contain exactly the kind of voters (white, college educated) that are swinging towards Democrats. Beto has also have heavy investments in all five of these counties. Combined with a differential turnout advantage, Beto has a solid shot to win here.

Sidenote: Jefferson County narrowly swung away from Clinton in 2016. This county contains the city of Beaumont. Beto should be in good shape here, though. Obama carried this county in 2012.

Goal 4 is going to happen. Beto should do extremely well in these counties and pad his raw vote total significantly. The data suggests that Dallas and Harris are going to swing towards Beto. I don’t have much to add here, other than the numbers look good. That’s it, honestly. I’m fairly certain that we’ll see this on election night.

Goal 5 looks very probable, too. I have a hard time believing that places like Hidalgo County are going to trend towards Cruz this year. The amount of enthusiasm and early voters make it likely that Beto will achieve this goal. His margin here will grow, relative to Clinton’s 2016 performance in the Rio Grande basin.

Now, for point 6, I can’t offer substantive evidence here. This is something that we’ll only be able to confirm in the election postmortem. I don’t dispute that Republican turnout in the early vote here is strong. But crucially, Republican turnout is still below its 2016 peak. While the percentages haven’t changed, the raw vote totals have. This helps Beto out a bit. In addition, a cursory glance at the swing map for 2016 vs 2012 suggests that these counties should swing towards Beto, at least marginally.

Goal number 7 is where I’m a bit pessimistic. I don’t see Beto getting better margins here than Hillary. His GOTV effort may yield some new voters, but this is also a very rural and white area of Texas. I don’t see Beto improving much over Hillary. It’s just not in the cards for rural East Texas.

West Texas is a similar story...sort of. The data suggests that Democrats can break 20% in Randall County and will likely break 30% in Lubbock and Potter counties. But it’s a similar story in the rural counties here. O’Rourke really needs to run up the margins in Dallas, Bexar, Harris, and Travis.

(Courtesy of the Texas Tribune)

Just thirty counties in Texas make up over 78% of the total number of registered voters. The Texas Tribune estimates that these counties exceeded total early vote turnout in 2012 by nearly 1%. 40% of registered voters have cast a ballot. In 2014, total voter turnout was an abysmal 33.5%. This year, it’ll likely top 54%. These numbers are good news for Beto. Maybe not enough to win, but definitely enough to give Ted Cruz the fight of his life.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

35+ seats in the house
At least a 7% popular vote victory
Net loss in senate of 2, maybe even 1 depending on Florida despite the worst possible map
7 governors mansions gained
This is a wave my friends

As soon as the words "net loss" appear, the "wave" argument becomes problematic. 

Normally, the party that doesn't control the presidency loses. This is within the normal range. It is not as strong as the shifts in 1994, 2010, both in terms gains and total numbers of seats.  The gain was a bit better than 2006, by one seat, but the total seats are much lower; in that one the winning party gained 6 Senate seats. 

Going from the numbers on atlas's results page for the Senate, Democrats won the popular vote in Senate races Nationwide by 10 million votes and 10 percentage points. Granted, a large chunk of that has to do with California being a top 2 race between a pair of Democrats, but even if one were to give every single one of De Leon's votes to the Republican column - - which I believe we can all agree is completely ludicrous, but just for sake of argument - - Democrats still won by over 4 million votes and more than five percentage points Nationwide. In reality, only assessing the appropriate share of de Leon votes, and some Feinstein votes as well I assume, to the Republican column and there was at least as big wave in terms of percentage points in raw boats as in the house.

If the house was a wave, then the Senate was too. The results were obviously not as good for Democrats because of the increasingly undemocratic shift towards hard-core Republican rural States and strongly democratic Urban States, but then again if the house wasn't so damn gerrymandered oh, it would have easily been over a 60 seat pickup for the Democrats as well.

So yeah, Republicans we're safe from a complete f****** in the house by gerrymandering, and our saved by the fact places of North Dakota and Wyoming have as many senators as New York and California. But in terms of which way the wind is blowing, this was a disastrous year for the Republicans. Institutional and structural advantages save them. They will probably need to do much better for the Electoral College save Trump again in 2020.

One more point about the Senate. It's undemocratic nature was not particularly a problem in the good old days of just 20 to 30 years ago when places like The Dakotas would elect Democrats to the Senate and places like New York or California would elect Republicans. However, that only versus Urban / Suburban divide now makes the Senate essentially a nationwide gerrymander. Add the filibuster in with it, and it just shows how f***** up our system of government is.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

The entire point is still to protect small states from the laws of a small number of mega states. The states have some independence of one another and the senate is the chamber of Congress meant to represent their interests. The people’s house is meant to represent the interests of the large states. Our constitution is set up that way purposefully and just because one party or the other has a disadvantage in that chamber for a time doesn’t mean you should abolish it.

But gl pushing that as a policy platform in...senate races. Lol.

Any argument that considers states as meaningful and independent entities is still colossally stupid. We're at a point with mass communication, mass culture, nationalized politics, etc. that there's no reason to consider states as truly independent collections of constituencies rather than some arbitrarily binned groupings of people. Put another way: we're at a point where most states have a large amount of variance within their constituencies, to the point that the differences among states are becoming meaningless so long as you know a person's education level, race, and gender. There isn't much difference in the political leanings or the between Rock Island, Illinois and Davenport Iowa, or between Fairfax County, VA and Prince George's County, MD, between Wendover, Nevada and West Wendover, Utah, etc. But the current representation system we have treats ridiculously them as totally separate political entities. So, any type of system which tries to do some fair weighting of "states" as if they had some sort of meaningful political identity is trying to weight something which isn't well defined enough to be meaningful. Keeping a system of political representation which is based on trying to balance out some weird political variables that don't really exist is horrible and indefensible when it creates massive inequalities in other ways, e.g., giving the 40 million people of California as much political representation in a major body of Congress as a state that's almost 1/80th its size.

I don't really care about the Connecticut Compromise. It's a product of a bygone era with incredibly different political needs and realities, and its mere existence isn't a sufficient argument for why it should continue to be followed. It's telling that all arguments in favor of incredibly biased systems of proportionment are justified by arguments that are ultimately "this is the way it is", or "this is the way it was", without ever giving an argument for why that is right or desirable.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I think the important thing to keep in mind here are the trends. Trends of Virginia are quite reliable since they take swings but adjust for national swing. I also think Kamala’s logo of being for the people is a very good one for most states. Virginia being a state means that they will also like her logo. Referring back to my point about trends being swings adjusted for the national swing, I can conclude using data from useelectionatlas.org that the state of Virginia has in fact trended for Dems a lot. This type of trend is curious as it would imply that Kamala Harris would do better in Virginia. We must wisely sit back and realize that this is not the full picture. Now going back to Kamala’s logo of being for the people: does this apply to Virginia? One must ask oneself if it does, so does it? After thorough research I have concluded that Virginia does indeed have people occupying inside of it. Given this fact, Virginia will like kamala’s Logo. Liking a logo doesn’t necessarily mean that one will get votes though. We must then consider just who exactly votes in the state of Virginia. According to Wikipedia, people in a given state that are registered to vote do indeed have the capacity to vote. Virginia as we mentioned earlier is a state in the US. Using logical deduction we can conclude that people in Virginia do vote. So now that we have that established, will these Virginia voters vote for Harris? Well this is where things get exciting. Kamala Harris is running as a Democrat and not a Republican. I like this. But before we can proceed, it must be stated that Ralph Northam is a black man trapped inside a white girl’s body. I have deduced this logically using my study of phrenology and examine Ralph Northam’s skull that this is indeed the case. As we now know, Kamala Harris is a black woman via genetic sciencism. Therefore if it is indeed the case that Virginia voters do not like black men trapped inside white girls bodies then Kamala Harris will be helped by blackface in Virginia.

There are a number of stupid points in this incoherent post. So lets start breaking it down by talking about superposition. Two different states can be superimposed and this will create another quantum state. By using my quantum computer (a metaphor for my mind), I can create a scientific model that evaluates the effects of Northam's blackface. Blackface is when you paint your face black. This is a very bad thing to do because many black people were stereotyped in horribly offensive movies. One stereotype I find very harmful is "guido" because I am an Italian who wears jewlery and obsesses over my body. Italians are a bloc that shifted massively to Trump, but are open to voting for "one of them" (e.g Andrew Cuomo, Max Rose). Kamala Harris has alienated many potential voters - one statistical study shows that people who wear black face actually start voting more democratic because they start identifying with the color of their face and start voting more democratic. This is incredibly racist but is a way that dems can gain more votes. Is it racist to encourage black face if it creates enough democratic votes to the point where they can beat a white supremacist (Donald Trump) in 2020?

After carefully deliberating with the thoughts in my incredibly powerful mind, I have decided that I will not engage with your petty insults head on. I believe that this would be both demeaning to myself and to the proud posters and viewers uselectionatlas.org. I have considered reporting your post for violating the Terms of service but unfortunately my mother informed me that snitches get stitches. With that being said, it would be pathetic to me to not respond to such a disgustingly barbaric shortsighted ridiculous ignorant post. Regarding the idea of state superimposition, this was a basic stateological fact for most of American history. The unraveling of state superimposition came during the American Revolutionary War when West Virginia and Virgin brokeup since the western part fought for the cowboys and the Virgin part fought for the Crown. The lack of basic history lessons presented to you amazes me and everyone here. Furthermore the concept of being able to superimpose states back together after they have been deconstructed via the process to fragmentization is beyond preposteorus. The only time this has ever occurred is when the lake of Tahoe in California was lost by Nevada Chieftan Slapahoe to William Tahoe of California. Why would a single isolated historical event ever repeat itself like that? Furthermore it’s crystal clear that blackface is indeed a type of religious ritual. Governor John Northam did not engage in a racist act since a racist act would violate his first amendment right to practice his religious ritiual. I am unaware of any type of behavior that has led to somebody named Kamala Harris cresting a time fracturing using transcendental robot mutant bots to win over more Virgin state voters. If this were the case, how would it have created an Italian like yourself? I do not believe in Italians since I have an Irish Y chromosome. This indicates that I am short in height, short in temper, and short in member length. I do not view these things as appropriate forms of discussion on this website so I will refrain from commenting further about my ancestral being. The art of winning more voters via the process of skin morphing is one not seen since Eric Bana’s wonderful performance in Ang Lee’s 2003 film Hulk. In the film, the Hulk becomes green whenever he’s angry as a means of fighting bad guys. I believe that this is a 16 year analogy leading to the climate of 2019 where we have black lives matter and Rachel dolezal skin morphing the Chicano youth into voting for their sports team known as the Democratic Patty. The Patty is in reference to the fact that Irish ancestry fought and died to create the Party and subsequently got to rename the Party after their most infamous Saint, Saint Paddicus. Will the Saint Paddicus Dems be capable of defeating Orange County skin tone Donaldo Trumpez wannabe King Donald I in 2020 of November? I do not know but neither do you. We shall see.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

If you're a Republican and you care about the border then you should be absolutely furious, seething with rage at your own party.

You had the bill in your hands.  You had a solution, or at least massive progress, for the border crisis.  You had Democrats willing to go along because it's become such a political liability.  This is victory.  This is what a policy victory looks like.

And what did your dumbass congressmen, your idiot politicians do?  They decided they care more about their own re-election prospects than actually solving the problem they profess to care about.  They care more about lining their own pockets than they do about this country.  They want to keep fundraising and giving speeches about this issue, which they can't do if they actually win.  So they decided to lose instead!

Remember how furious Democrats got at people like Sinema and Manchin and Lieberman and Gottheimer when they tanked bills that would have scored big policy victories and given us what we wanted, so that they could play politics instead?  We were absolutely furious!  There were huge debates on this forum that went on for dozens of pages!

And now what?  The same thing happens to Republicans and the blue avatars have no smoke whatsoever for their traitor congressmen.  You're all busy trying to delude yourselves that this bill was garbage that you didn't really want anyway.  Imagine if, after Manchin killed Build Back Better, Democrats had said "awesome this is great that bill wasn't good enough anyway Manchin is a hero."  That's the equivalent of what Republicans are doing right now.

It's unbelievably pathetic.  You guys are weak submissive bitches who bow and scrape to your politicians.  You'd lick dirt up off the floor if a career politician told you to do it.  You'll literally change your political positions and opinions on a whim if a career politician tells you to do it.  You have absolutely no mind of your own.  You have no free will whatsoever.  You're just a puppet for conservative commentators who are themselves puppets for Republican career politicians.  And the sickest thing is that you know, not even that deep down, that I'm right, but you're ok with it because it's more comfortable to just say "GeneralMacArthur is a jackass I hate that guy he's so wrong" than to compromise the identity you've built for yourself by admitting it.