I think the lawfare angle was extremely confounded. My mental model is that it pushed a meaningful but generally small number to be against Trump, but a larger group (while still being fairly small) to vote for Trump. Even more so, Trump partisans were extremely energized to vote for him, far far more than Democrat partisans to vote against him.
I think some of the early narrative could have been worse for Trump, when some of the cases were first starting up. We have since learned some background information and have seen some cases all but fall apart (and for your average voter and even a lot of fairly informed voters the details don't matter so much as the case being dismissed or endlessly delayed). We learned that Biden and Pence both had classified documents as well (but didn't get any legal trouble). The case he actually got convicted for has been tied up in appeals and is extremely weak (I doubt most people could identify what was actually supposed to be a crime there, or would not agree with it being a crime if they knew). The other NYC case is about misrepresenting the value of properties used for collateral on loans that Trump already paid back and nobody complained about. It's hard to see a there there. The Georgia case collapsed publicly due to prosecutorial misconduct (even if the case had merit the prosecutor broke ethics rules pretty bad). Even the documents case itself, which most seemed to agree was the strongest case, got tossed. No matter that it was tossed because of the nature of the prosecutor overseeing the case instead of the merits of the case - people know the government lost.
It all compounds to make it far less damaging to Trump this many months later, while doing absolutely nothing to dissuade his supporters from being aggrieved by the cases being brought in the first place.
The Democrats would have been much better off to pursue fewer and more solid cases, and doing so in ways that looked professional and impartial. This may not have been possible given the cases, except maybe the documents case. Lots of details in these cases were novel, only ever applied to Trump, and there's pretty much no doubt in anyone's mind that any other president who did the same things would never have been prosecuted. Even the Democrats seem to agree with that last line, and justify the difference by how bad Trump is/was. The optics of that simply do not work. We vote for a reason, and it's to let the people decide who leads. Trying to disqualify your opponents always looks bad, whether it's the local school board or US President.
Though I’ve voted for Trump three times, this is the first time I ever did so with relish, actively liking the guy.
Endurance!
He endured the lawfare and he endured what to me was an obvious assassination attempt (not a lone gunmen). For a lot of people the assassination attempt was the moment we started to finally respect Trump and forgive whatever his shortcomings. Many of the Silicon Valley people that flocked to him say the same thing. I’ve yet to speak to someone it a partisan dem hack who thinks it was a lone gunmen.
I think it was a lone gunman. It's possible that the Secret Service was deliberately negligent, took fewer precautions than they would have if they were really trying, but I doubt that they actively conspired with the assassin and I haven't seen any evidence that others were involved. Similarly for the second case.
I actually think it is surprising that there have not been more attempts, evidence that the Democrats don't believe their own rhetoric.
Normally I would be inclined toward the lone gunmen hypothesis, but the scale of the failure (its mind boggling the more your learn) and the ties surrounding the gunmen are just too much for me.
Note to this happened at the height of the Biden tailspin right before he dropped out and before Trump had picked a VP.
I think they found some dumb kid, sent him off in as plausibly deniable a way they could, cleared the way for him to get his shot, and then when it missed he was dead in seconds and miraculously he's the only young person in the world with no social media account, etc and we have't heard a thing about it. Very "disposable asset".
I could be wrong, but that's my gut and most people I talk to believe the same. If you changed the details I'd change my mind, but the details here are what they are.
I agree I've been surprised how few assassination attempts there have been on Trump.
The queries and replies make a couple of assumptions. First that we have a two party system rather than a uniparty composed of the democrats and the republican auxiliary. Second that folks assume the winners represent them and not monied or other interests.
If one avoids those assumptions and views this election's results as the populace picking the dark horse and those with noses not deep in the public trough in hope of major change, the results make sense.
The polling that lumps LGBT letters together is really frustrating. How many of those voters are just liberals identifying with that acronym based on the barest threads of actual same-sex attraction or gender nonconformity? Do you have any stats on how much that change was just a matter of more voters identifying as such? I'd love to see voting stats for people currently in same-sex sexual relationships, or something else that could more fairly assess Vance's claim about winning the "normal gay guy" vote. Because otherwise we're just talking about a self-id category that was basically invented by Dems in the first place, a category in which those first two letters are rapidly becoming a minority.
The other problem is that it pools lesbians and gays. Men and women voted differently in this election so it wouldn't be surprising if gays and lesbians did.
I've been preaching that last one for a long time, this election since Harris was chosen became a three way race between "for Trump, against Trump, and against the DNC", there was no meaningful pro-Harris vote. A good example here is the bluest of blue states, Hawaii who is actually a deeply conservative red, maybe the reddest of red, state in all but color. Trump improved by 4% here and you can attribute that purely to Harris's ethnicity and lack of family values as it takes a lot to move the locals to not be agreeable or vote in their best interest.
On the lawfare thing, I don't think it cost Trump any votes, he wasn't getting those folk anyways nor did it gain him any supporters either, they didn't care. But I def think it motivated certain segments of people whom may have just sat this one out to actually go and vote, namely those whom lawfare is traditionally used against and has been for decades, men. And I think as a result you are going to see less DNC movement to restore felon rights which is sad as the GOP isn't going to pick up that mantle though they should, it's a vote they could, and should, lock up (pun not intended) for years. What black man would want to vote for a misandrist woman who spent her entire life putting them in prison frivolously anytime possible to further her career while overtly ignoring crimes committed by her fellow woman or that of her husband's people, i.e. If I'm Rosa Park's why would expect me to vote for Strom Thurmond?
Also nobody wants to admit it but both race and gender were a factor. I personally know a few traditional Democratic women who voted for Trump as a first time GOP voter simply because they felt a woman never should be President. Likewise I know a few men and women, people who voted FOR Obama, who despise Indians from having to deal with them professionally who likewise didn't vote for her simply because she's Indian. And if I know a few, so does everyone else and that adds up in the aggregate at the margins.
I use "lawfare" to mean the use of the legal system to harm or punish people. I wouldn't count a divorced woman suing for alimony or child support, even if it was unjustified and she won due to the bias of the legal system — she is suing not to harm her ex but to get money.
In that sense, do you think lawfare is traditionally used against men? Examples?
The entire criminal justice system. All arrests and prosecutions are discretionary hence arbitrary. Likewise all studies show women commit crimes at an equal rate as men and yet the prison population isn't remotely comparable hence it's lawfare as generally speaking the entire legal system is made up of alpha women (who generally dislike nearly all men by definition) or men who think they can get laid more (and do) if they "protect" women while jailing their competition.
Given public choice theory the only reason anyone is arrested (or prosecuted) is to personally benefit the acting party, i.e. cops arrest people they personally dislike or to get promoted / bonus / not fired, likewise prosecutors pressing charges and judges supporting them. Discretion just means lawfare and generally it's only leveraged against men, or extremely low class women, and the gender ratio of people with criminal records back that up. Have you ever notice for example how most metropolitan court systems have a special women's only court with an expressed public policy goal of giving them significantly less time, if any at all for the same crime? For example https://www.courts.state.hi.us/special_projects/girls_court and you can find similar programs around the country including for adulthood women too. Likewise women's prisons and jails tend to be nicer with more funding per prisoner and more positive programs, for example mother's can see their children, fathers can't.
On Trump you say some BS accounting fraud law and I agree but prisons are full of people like that. People watch too much TV, most convicted felons are of victimless crimes or even non crimes but pure statute violations,; most unconvicted felons aren't prosecuted at all hence you have to ask why those with records were and it wasn't that they got caught, it's simply lawfare.
Lena Dunham, star of the left, has openly admitting to raping her prepubescent sister numerous times, still making shows and being celebrated. Puff Daddy is sitting in jail for vastly less and facing life.
An ex of mine was picked up on a theft charge last week, was released on the scene with nothing but a ticket even though she has an open bench warrant out for her. When they frisked her, she had enough heroin and meth on her to not see sunshine for twenty years, mandatory minimum ten. The female cops took the drugs out her bag, put them in the guy's bag she was with (not excusing him, he also was carrying and theft charge), and he's sitting in jail today no bail and going to probably get 15 minimum. That's lawfare against men. And yes that's a true story, I know both of them and know someone who seen it as well including the particulars.
Note that exit poll data for cycle comparison purposes is now suspect due to the enormous number of people shifting to early and mail-in voting. Those standing in line to vote on Election Day in the past are, by definition, representative of the voting population (with the caution that exit poll takers who look like college kids (Democrats) will be avoided by many older white voters (Republicans), thus skewing the poll results). From what I've read today's (since 2022) exit polls tend to oversample "last-minute" (disorganized and/or impulsive) voters who tend younger and (thus) more Democrat than exit poll respondents of the past.
Has anyone compared exit poll data to other sources of related data to test how reliable the polling is? The obvious thing is to use precinct level results and fit them to demographic data.
You're asking the wrong person. I'd encourage you to redirect your questions relating to the validity and value of current and future exit polling to some of the top pollsters and election analysts. You might start with Nate Silver, Nate Cohn, or Dave Wasserman.
You're well-known. Shoot one of the Nates a line and I'm sure you'll get a quick, accurate, and useful response. Why flail around in the bush trying to scare up game, when you can simply go to the supermarket?
Bingo, young men have never voted Democrat disproportionately except as a dating strategy. Now that dating is a felony, they don't even bother pretending to vote Dem anymore so now it's really a race between "vote a masculine populist, vote a third party who doesn't hate them, or sit home"
You need to delve into the stats. 52-46 Dem (ages 18-29) in 2024 presidential voting.
Note, I made no representation either way about gender tendencies in this age cohort. Younger has ALWAYS been more liberal and Democrat-leaning than older. Remember the quote attributed to Churchill: "If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.”
I think the lawfare angle was extremely confounded. My mental model is that it pushed a meaningful but generally small number to be against Trump, but a larger group (while still being fairly small) to vote for Trump. Even more so, Trump partisans were extremely energized to vote for him, far far more than Democrat partisans to vote against him.
I think some of the early narrative could have been worse for Trump, when some of the cases were first starting up. We have since learned some background information and have seen some cases all but fall apart (and for your average voter and even a lot of fairly informed voters the details don't matter so much as the case being dismissed or endlessly delayed). We learned that Biden and Pence both had classified documents as well (but didn't get any legal trouble). The case he actually got convicted for has been tied up in appeals and is extremely weak (I doubt most people could identify what was actually supposed to be a crime there, or would not agree with it being a crime if they knew). The other NYC case is about misrepresenting the value of properties used for collateral on loans that Trump already paid back and nobody complained about. It's hard to see a there there. The Georgia case collapsed publicly due to prosecutorial misconduct (even if the case had merit the prosecutor broke ethics rules pretty bad). Even the documents case itself, which most seemed to agree was the strongest case, got tossed. No matter that it was tossed because of the nature of the prosecutor overseeing the case instead of the merits of the case - people know the government lost.
It all compounds to make it far less damaging to Trump this many months later, while doing absolutely nothing to dissuade his supporters from being aggrieved by the cases being brought in the first place.
The Democrats would have been much better off to pursue fewer and more solid cases, and doing so in ways that looked professional and impartial. This may not have been possible given the cases, except maybe the documents case. Lots of details in these cases were novel, only ever applied to Trump, and there's pretty much no doubt in anyone's mind that any other president who did the same things would never have been prosecuted. Even the Democrats seem to agree with that last line, and justify the difference by how bad Trump is/was. The optics of that simply do not work. We vote for a reason, and it's to let the people decide who leads. Trying to disqualify your opponents always looks bad, whether it's the local school board or US President.
Though I’ve voted for Trump three times, this is the first time I ever did so with relish, actively liking the guy.
Endurance!
He endured the lawfare and he endured what to me was an obvious assassination attempt (not a lone gunmen). For a lot of people the assassination attempt was the moment we started to finally respect Trump and forgive whatever his shortcomings. Many of the Silicon Valley people that flocked to him say the same thing. I’ve yet to speak to someone it a partisan dem hack who thinks it was a lone gunmen.
I think it was a lone gunman. It's possible that the Secret Service was deliberately negligent, took fewer precautions than they would have if they were really trying, but I doubt that they actively conspired with the assassin and I haven't seen any evidence that others were involved. Similarly for the second case.
I actually think it is surprising that there have not been more attempts, evidence that the Democrats don't believe their own rhetoric.
Normally I would be inclined toward the lone gunmen hypothesis, but the scale of the failure (its mind boggling the more your learn) and the ties surrounding the gunmen are just too much for me.
Note to this happened at the height of the Biden tailspin right before he dropped out and before Trump had picked a VP.
I think they found some dumb kid, sent him off in as plausibly deniable a way they could, cleared the way for him to get his shot, and then when it missed he was dead in seconds and miraculously he's the only young person in the world with no social media account, etc and we have't heard a thing about it. Very "disposable asset".
I could be wrong, but that's my gut and most people I talk to believe the same. If you changed the details I'd change my mind, but the details here are what they are.
I agree I've been surprised how few assassination attempts there have been on Trump.
Is "they" here the Secret Service? The Democrats conspiring with the Secret Service?
The queries and replies make a couple of assumptions. First that we have a two party system rather than a uniparty composed of the democrats and the republican auxiliary. Second that folks assume the winners represent them and not monied or other interests.
If one avoids those assumptions and views this election's results as the populace picking the dark horse and those with noses not deep in the public trough in hope of major change, the results make sense.
The polling that lumps LGBT letters together is really frustrating. How many of those voters are just liberals identifying with that acronym based on the barest threads of actual same-sex attraction or gender nonconformity? Do you have any stats on how much that change was just a matter of more voters identifying as such? I'd love to see voting stats for people currently in same-sex sexual relationships, or something else that could more fairly assess Vance's claim about winning the "normal gay guy" vote. Because otherwise we're just talking about a self-id category that was basically invented by Dems in the first place, a category in which those first two letters are rapidly becoming a minority.
The other problem is that it pools lesbians and gays. Men and women voted differently in this election so it wouldn't be surprising if gays and lesbians did.
I've been preaching that last one for a long time, this election since Harris was chosen became a three way race between "for Trump, against Trump, and against the DNC", there was no meaningful pro-Harris vote. A good example here is the bluest of blue states, Hawaii who is actually a deeply conservative red, maybe the reddest of red, state in all but color. Trump improved by 4% here and you can attribute that purely to Harris's ethnicity and lack of family values as it takes a lot to move the locals to not be agreeable or vote in their best interest.
On the lawfare thing, I don't think it cost Trump any votes, he wasn't getting those folk anyways nor did it gain him any supporters either, they didn't care. But I def think it motivated certain segments of people whom may have just sat this one out to actually go and vote, namely those whom lawfare is traditionally used against and has been for decades, men. And I think as a result you are going to see less DNC movement to restore felon rights which is sad as the GOP isn't going to pick up that mantle though they should, it's a vote they could, and should, lock up (pun not intended) for years. What black man would want to vote for a misandrist woman who spent her entire life putting them in prison frivolously anytime possible to further her career while overtly ignoring crimes committed by her fellow woman or that of her husband's people, i.e. If I'm Rosa Park's why would expect me to vote for Strom Thurmond?
Also nobody wants to admit it but both race and gender were a factor. I personally know a few traditional Democratic women who voted for Trump as a first time GOP voter simply because they felt a woman never should be President. Likewise I know a few men and women, people who voted FOR Obama, who despise Indians from having to deal with them professionally who likewise didn't vote for her simply because she's Indian. And if I know a few, so does everyone else and that adds up in the aggregate at the margins.
I use "lawfare" to mean the use of the legal system to harm or punish people. I wouldn't count a divorced woman suing for alimony or child support, even if it was unjustified and she won due to the bias of the legal system — she is suing not to harm her ex but to get money.
In that sense, do you think lawfare is traditionally used against men? Examples?
The entire criminal justice system. All arrests and prosecutions are discretionary hence arbitrary. Likewise all studies show women commit crimes at an equal rate as men and yet the prison population isn't remotely comparable hence it's lawfare as generally speaking the entire legal system is made up of alpha women (who generally dislike nearly all men by definition) or men who think they can get laid more (and do) if they "protect" women while jailing their competition.
Given public choice theory the only reason anyone is arrested (or prosecuted) is to personally benefit the acting party, i.e. cops arrest people they personally dislike or to get promoted / bonus / not fired, likewise prosecutors pressing charges and judges supporting them. Discretion just means lawfare and generally it's only leveraged against men, or extremely low class women, and the gender ratio of people with criminal records back that up. Have you ever notice for example how most metropolitan court systems have a special women's only court with an expressed public policy goal of giving them significantly less time, if any at all for the same crime? For example https://www.courts.state.hi.us/special_projects/girls_court and you can find similar programs around the country including for adulthood women too. Likewise women's prisons and jails tend to be nicer with more funding per prisoner and more positive programs, for example mother's can see their children, fathers can't.
On Trump you say some BS accounting fraud law and I agree but prisons are full of people like that. People watch too much TV, most convicted felons are of victimless crimes or even non crimes but pure statute violations,; most unconvicted felons aren't prosecuted at all hence you have to ask why those with records were and it wasn't that they got caught, it's simply lawfare.
Lena Dunham, star of the left, has openly admitting to raping her prepubescent sister numerous times, still making shows and being celebrated. Puff Daddy is sitting in jail for vastly less and facing life.
An ex of mine was picked up on a theft charge last week, was released on the scene with nothing but a ticket even though she has an open bench warrant out for her. When they frisked her, she had enough heroin and meth on her to not see sunshine for twenty years, mandatory minimum ten. The female cops took the drugs out her bag, put them in the guy's bag she was with (not excusing him, he also was carrying and theft charge), and he's sitting in jail today no bail and going to probably get 15 minimum. That's lawfare against men. And yes that's a true story, I know both of them and know someone who seen it as well including the particulars.
https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/a-graveyard-of-bad-election-narratives
Note that exit poll data for cycle comparison purposes is now suspect due to the enormous number of people shifting to early and mail-in voting. Those standing in line to vote on Election Day in the past are, by definition, representative of the voting population (with the caution that exit poll takers who look like college kids (Democrats) will be avoided by many older white voters (Republicans), thus skewing the poll results). From what I've read today's (since 2022) exit polls tend to oversample "last-minute" (disorganized and/or impulsive) voters who tend younger and (thus) more Democrat than exit poll respondents of the past.
Has anyone compared exit poll data to other sources of related data to test how reliable the polling is? The obvious thing is to use precinct level results and fit them to demographic data.
You're asking the wrong person. I'd encourage you to redirect your questions relating to the validity and value of current and future exit polling to some of the top pollsters and election analysts. You might start with Nate Silver, Nate Cohn, or Dave Wasserman.
As far as I know, none of them comment on my Substack.
I'm not looking for someone here who has done the research but for someone who has come across such research done by someone else.
You're well-known. Shoot one of the Nates a line and I'm sure you'll get a quick, accurate, and useful response. Why flail around in the bush trying to scare up game, when you can simply go to the supermarket?
I don't have email addresses for any of them, am trying to get in touch with two of them in other ways. Thanks for the suggestion.
"Younger and (thus) more Democrat" doesn't seem to be a borne-out inference from any of the recent data.
Bingo, young men have never voted Democrat disproportionately except as a dating strategy. Now that dating is a felony, they don't even bother pretending to vote Dem anymore so now it's really a race between "vote a masculine populist, vote a third party who doesn't hate them, or sit home"
You need to delve into the stats. 52-46 Dem (ages 18-29) in 2024 presidential voting.
Note, I made no representation either way about gender tendencies in this age cohort. Younger has ALWAYS been more liberal and Democrat-leaning than older. Remember the quote attributed to Churchill: "If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.”
52-46 is nowhere near older differences, unless I'm missing something.