Democratic Electoral Correlations in 2020: Where are We Going? Where Do We Stand, Where We Are and How Do We Live

If the demographic, generational and geographic alignments within the electorate on display again this year cannot be dislodged by events as momentous as a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, or once-in-a generation inflation, or a Supreme Court decision overturning of the 50-year constitutional right to abortion, it is not clear what can reconfigure them. The real signal from this year’s election may be that American politics is fated for years to remain caught on what UCLA political scientist Lynn Vavreck calls “the knife’s edge” between two increasingly divergent, and even hostile, political coalitions.

Senate elections are rare but analysts of both parties believe that the most likely result next month will be a Senate divided between the two parties, something that has not happened in more than a century. It seems likely that the Republicans will hold a smaller majority than previously thought; if Democrats defy the odds, their margin will be historically small.

Lake came up with a simple rule: Democrats win when they can accumulate a margin of victory among women, who tend to vote for Democrats in most states.

The most comprehensive set of publicly available surveys was produced by the firms led byFabrizio Ward and Impact Research for the major Senate and governor races to be conducted in 2020. In the seven major competitive Senate races the two firms have polled, Republicans led among men in every state, and Democrats led among women in every state except Wisconsin. (The Democratic lead with women was also very narrow in Florida.)

Recent statewide polls by the non-partisan Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College likewise showed Democrats holding at least an eleven-point lead, and often much more than that, among women in the Senate races in Colorado, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Georgia. The Republicans led in all except Arizona, where the Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly is a former astronaut and Pennsylvania, where the lieutenant Governor has a brusque blue collar style. In Arizona and Nevada, both Kelly and Masto held double digit leads among women but were behind among men by a large margin. In the CNN polls, the two genders sharply divided in the Arizona and Nevada gubernatorial races as well.

Powerful forces are tearing apart the preferences of men and women. Most surveys show that the decision by the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court to revoke the nearly 50-year constitutional right to the procedure is more important as a voting issue to women than men. Inflation is more important in a recent NPR/Marist poll than any other concern.

When looking across racial lines, Democrats won more voters with a four-year college degree than they did in 2016 – roughly 60 percent of them – but less than in 2020. Democrats again drew support from almost exactly three-fifths of those college graduates in the two-party “generic” ballot test in the most recent CNN national poll, although some other generic polls have shown a narrower edge. In states like New Hampshire, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Colorado, the Democrats are close to reaching that threshold, as evidenced by the surveys by the AARP, CNN and Marist. Masto narrowly lost college graduates in Nevada according to a CNN poll.

This year, education is possibly the most important issue. “When you combine across nine different polls in battleground states, the education gap is almost 3 times the size of the age gap and ten points bigger than the gender gap, so I absolutely think it’s going to be a significant predictor in these races,” says Matt Hogan, a partner at Impact Research, the Democratic half of the bipartisan AARP polling team.

Bolger believes that White women of every age are critical swing voters, and that Lake thinks non-college educated women of every age may be the key to this election. The Democrats only won about one-third of the seats in congress in a CNN Poll, less than they showed in 2020 and much less than the strength that they showed in the last election.

The Feminist Majority Foundation released an extensive study on Monday about the gender gap and found that younger women are very upset over the court’s decision.

The equation is more complicated among older White women, particularly the large number of them without a college education, says Lake, who conducted the polling for the foundation’s study. They also tend to support abortion rights, she says, but they are less likely than younger and college-educated women to prioritize it above inflation in their vote. You cannot get non-college educated women unless you have an economic conversation with them and a debate about abortion with the older end of them.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/18/politics/demographics-political-parties-breakthroughs-fault-lines/index.html

Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Voting for a Black House Speaker: The Challenge of Inflation, Mental Health and the Health of Our Democracy

With inflation this high that seems entirely possible. But large-sample surveys of Latino voters by The Washington Post/Ipsos and the Pew Research Center have not yet found evidence of big Republican inroads: each survey found Democrats holding more than three-fifths of the two party vote among Latino voters, less than earlier in this century but almost exactly their level in 2020. Nor did the Post/Ipsos poll find evidence of GOP improvement with male or non-college Latinos. Still even small Latino shifts could threaten Democrats in closely contested states. Nevada, where many Latinos have been squeezed first by both the COVID-related shutdowns in the gambling industry and then by inflation, may be the state where economic discontent among those voters most threatens Democratic prospects.

“I want all people to feel like they can have a place in government,” the Democrat told CNN in November, prior to winning an open-seat race for Vermont’s at-large district. If my breaking the glass ceilings enables people to see themselves in those roles is really exciting to me.

Along with being Vermont’s first female member of Congress, Balint is also the first out LGBTQ person elected to Washington from the Green Mountain State.

As a result of Cindy Hyde-Smith’s appointment to the Senate, Vermont was the only state in the union that never sent a woman to Congress. Garrison Nelson, professor of political science at the University of Vermont, told CNN last year that longevity was the cause of women not being able to serve in the Congress.

The state’s at-large House seat became vacant after Democrat Peter Welch decided on an ultimately successful Senate run to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy.

She will serve as a vice chair for new members in the House Progressive Caucus. She previously told CNN that her congressional priorities will include taking action to address the housing crisis and finding more resources for mental health, especially in her home state. But “first and foremost” on her list, she said, is “the health of our democracy.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/kevin-mccarthy-voted-house-speaker-01-07-23/index.html

Reiterating the Era of Women in the House of Representatives: The First Seven Years of the Republican Presidential Nominating Process in South Carolina

Both Democrats and Republicans made strides in diversifying their congressional ranks in the November midterm elections, with several historic milestones reached and a record number of women elected.

Ms. Haley has overcome bias in the past. She became the first female governor of South Carolina because of the vicious and racist attacks she received.

This is the first time in seven years that Republican voters will see a female candidate for the presidential nomination. Mr. Trump used sexist language when he attacked the ex-chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. he mocked. Before winning a general election, do you think anyone would vote for that?

Noem is a former member of Congress who has served two terms as governor of South Dakota and has spoken out on a variety of national issues, including abortion and immigration.

The first voting events of the next GOP nominating process are just a year away and she is not the only woman from the ranks of well-known current and former officials.

Like Haley, Noem has said in the past she would support Trump if he sought the party’s nomination a third time. Like Haley, she did not endorse him when he declared in November. Instead, Noem told The New York Times that Trump “does not offer the best chance” for the GOP in 2024.

When she co-chaired the House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack on the Capitol, Liz Cheney fell out of favor with her Republican colleagues. Cheney was the most prominent member of that panel who spoke out against Trump and declared she would do “whatever it takes” to prevent him from being president.

There was a move towards a challenge of the former president in 2024. Cheney lost her primary in August, which made her future prospects nearly impossible because she had previously served in the party with her father.

Among the women with conservative credentials, there are other women who would be interested in being the nation’s highest office. This past week when a congressional panel had a hearing on how the Biden administration was “weaponizing” federal agencies against citizens, one witness getting a lot of attention was Tulsi Gabbard.

Gabbard is a former major in the National Guard who fought in Iraq, served four terms as a member of Congress from Hawaii and ran for president as a Democrat in 2020.

After being vice president, some political observers think the first woman president will become president. Harris personifies wherever she goes, because that could happen at any time.

Like Hillary Clinton’s climb to the presidential nomination in 2016, Harris’ ascent to her current position represents a long step toward making women’s full political equality a reality in both parties.

For a century after the first woman declared herself a protest candidate for the White House in 1872 (before women’s right to vote was added to the Constitution in 1920), when women ran for the White House it was more to make a point than to win an office. The first woman to receive votes in primaries and at the national convention was Margaret Chase Smith, a senator from Maine, in 1964.

But in recent decades, women have been running not just to make a showing but to get on the ticket. Surely Elizabeth Dole, a senator from North Carolina, thought that was possible when she ran in the 1999-2000 cycle. The California businesswoman ran for president in 2016 but was replaced by Ted Cruz as his running mate.

Neither could change the underlying dynamics of the races or supply what was lacking in the party’s presidential nominees. People who thought these gender changes would help women voters were disappointed.

The role of Trump is a complicating factor for women who are contemplating the future. Haley is the first official challenger and no one expects her to be the last. His failure to “clear the field” as a two time nominee and former president has been well-known.

It is thought that DeSantis is the closest challenger to Trump in polls and raise money. But New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu has been “testing the waters” as well, and there could be others such as Maryland’s popular former Gov. Larry Hogan, who just retired due to term limits.

The congressman has been participating in the states early in the primary, but he hasn’t done well in the polls. Trump’s true believers see him as disloyal, yet Pence seems part of the Trump legacy to those who want the party to move on.

If opposing him in the primaries were to happen, what chance would he have of being his running mate? Taking on Biden in the early Democratic debates did not kill Harris’ chances. On the other hand, Harris did drop out before the primaries actually began and endorsed Biden early in March.

Sarah Huckabee, the new Arkansas secretary of state, was elected to the Senate in February, 2016 during her campaign to defend Biden’s State of the Union

There is an awkwardness in all this posturing, some of which may have been at work when Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave the official Republican response to Biden’s State of the Union on Feb. 7. That speaking slot has often been seen as an audition for statewide politicians with national ambitions. It was used to send a strong message of condemnation against the Biden administration and the Democrats in general.

She referred to her role as a White House press secretary going to Iraq to visit troops with the president and the first lady, but without mentioning her name, because she included lots of personal information. She was criticized by both conservatives and Trump supporters.

Sanders has not broken with Trump. But she may be seeking a safe distance not unlike that sought by her father, Mike Huckabee, who once also served as Arkansas’ governor. Huckabee was a presidential candidate in 2008 and again in 2016 but didn’t work in the Trump administration, instead spending time on his talk show and speaking engagements.

Other well-known Republican women may be torn between their gratitude for the help of Trump and desire to be part of the new generation of Republican leaders.

It might be too close to Trump to have other options, such as congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. But someone such as Elise Stefanik, the New York congresswoman who replaced Cheney as the House GOP’s third-ranking leader, might have maneuvering room in either direction.

There is the chance that a resurgence of Trump, with his penchant for “stolen election” and mediagenic appeal, could look for a running mate who is willing to embrace his obsession with 2020 to match his own.

It’s not hard to see how that kind of devotion was shown by the person who lost the race for governor of Arizona. Lake has been mentioned as a Senate candidate next year, but this weekend she will be visiting Iowa, the site of the first Republican caucuses a year from now.

If Alaskans hadn’t adopted a weird voting system just a year before her defeat in 2022, she would be their elected member of Congress right now.

The campaign declined to comment on some of the attacks she has faced, including from Mr. Trump, but she has made clear she is wary of anything that could be seen as claiming victimhood.

“In a free country like ours, we are not victims unless we choose to be,” Ms. Haley wrote in her recent book, “If You Want Something Done: Leadership Lessons From Bold Women.” “We shouldn’t fall into a trap of thinking that a woman’s way to empowerment is through someone else’s work.”

While it may be difficult for Republican women to accuse another Republican of sexism, perceived derogatory comments from Democrats or the news media are another matter. On Thursday, Ms. Haley was unambiguous in her criticism of Don Lemon of CNN, calling him a “sexist middle-aged” anchor after he suggested she was past her “prime.” (He later expressed regret for the comment.).

Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, said the former president had advocated for the advancement of women throughout his life.