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Look at that. Young people excited to vote. It's almost as though all the party needed to do was run a better candidate.
I am always very cautious about leaning on the “youth vote“ too much because as much as we can rightfully blame the Democrats for putting their thumb on the scale against Bernie, he also thought the youth vote was going to save his ass and they simply did not show up in the numbers people expected, not by a large margin. Especially in 2020.
Also people tend to think Gen Z should save us from our mistakes when only about 75% of them are even age-eligible to vote this election. If was less than half in 2020 IIRC. Millennials and Gen X need to grab the reins and invite Gen Z along.
My GenX ass will be taking my Z’s to the polls with me!
Same here on both counts!
Agreed. And us old folks have it easier on election day because we are either a) retired or b) have a good job that doesn't care if we take a long lunch, come or go early.
One thing I've always hated about these articles (and by extension, this whole topic) is all the factors that are left out of the discussion. Like when people talked about Millennials not protesting like they did in the 60s, they conveniently ignore how things have changed for Gen X and younger - how more economically tenuous and unstable living conditions are, how senior jobs are still filled with Baby Boomers that would've retired a decade earlier had they been their parent's generation, how job benefits have declined (like time off), etc. Older people vote more not just because "young people are lazy," as so many of these discussions insinuate, but because they have better economic security, more time either through retirement or better job benefits, and more knowledge of the process. We won't see major shifts in Gen X and younger voting turnouts until we can improve work/life balance, because the Boomers pulled the ladder up after them and left the rest of us to slave away for 50 hours a week with no vacation time.
For someone who hasn't voted before, showing up in a primary with a random date is a lot harder than showing up on a single, nation-wide election day.
Let's see if they actually do. I'm not holding my breath.
Also Texas youth voter turnout has only gone up since 2016, and was instrumental of the purpling of Texas during both 2020 and the previous midterm elections. You're pulling the classic of blaming the younger generation for something that is not their fault.
Eat some avocado toast while educating yourself maybe.
You're right. Fuck 'em. The only people who we should ever attempt to appeal to are decrepit conservative fossils. No one else will ever matter and boomers are immortal so we'll never need anyone else, so earning the resentment of multiple generations is something we can get away with.
Ngl if Texas and Florida go blue, it will be
If, and that is a huge if, Texas goes blue, Abbott and Paxton will 100% call it fraud and make Texas send Trump electors. There is 0 doubt in my mind on this. Things will get bad very quickly, because if Ttump loses Cruz lost in a blowout and a dem senator from Texas is paramount to heresy
Oh yes. Guaranteed constitutional crisis, I think. Which is wild to say about what should be the world's leading democracy.
United States democracy fell on Jan 7th, 2021 which is when the filthy fascist traitor should have been immediately arrested and tried.
2000, checking in. Dubya didn't win.
I think it's when we put a shitty actor in the oval office on Jan 20, 1981.
I think there is a history or something...
"Interesting times"
IDK, every time I've thought the GOP was done, it clawed it's way back out of the still open grave.
You are right on one thing, it has been done. That is, it's not the same party as before. If MAGA types had come up during Reagan, you better believe that the GOP would have denounced them. That party is dead, something new is here now. The question is really how long the party that uses the name GOP will survive.
It's a nice dream but sadly I don't think one that will happen this election. Gerrymandering and vote suppression has already seen to that.
Gerrymandering doesn't apply to most state's presidential elections, it applies to congressional house maps, not electoral votes
* technically Maine and Nebraska split votes by congressional district but they are kind of the exception here
Other forms of voter suppression in the presidential election though are certainty going on there to be fair
Fair, though there is more being voted on this election than just the president. A lot of other political offices and referendums are up for vote and gerrymandering contributes to the widespread mentality that minority votes in a given district don't matter, even for the presidential election.
2020 had the highest voter turnout in US history, but that was still only 2/3 of eligible voters showing up at the polls, so 1 in 3 people (and usually it's more than that) decided it wasn't worth it likely because of that sense of futility caused by gerrymandering taking their political voice away.
This is precisely why I felt the need to clarify what specifically gerrymandering impacts because people often use it as a reason to feel hopeless, but we need to remind ourselves that there are still winnable fights out there if we fight them
Gerrymandering
Gerrymandering can be pretty brittle. It relies on accurate models of who will vote and for whom. If the underlying assumptions are either wrong or change, then it can backfire. Here's an extreme napkin-math example to illustrate the point:
You have 3 districts. Candidate A is extremely unpopular. You split the voters to get 2 out of 3 districts for candidate A.
District 1:
Candidate A: 5%
Candidate B: 50%
Not Voting: 45%
District 2:
Candidate A: 20%
Candidate B: 15%
Not Voting: 65%
District 3:
Candidate A: 25%
Candidate B: 20%
Not Voting: 55%
As you can see, even though if you add up all the voters for candidate B they heavily outnumber candidate A's voters, by siloing them into one district you can win. But look at the margins for the other 2 districts. It doesn't take many new voters who you assumed wouldn't vote to upset your scheme. Depending on exactly how unpopular your candidate is, the margins for this might be pretty tight. It only takes an extra 10% of the voters moving from not voting to candidate B to cause a landslide 3 district sweep in this example.
After Trump's meltdown over not winning Georgia I would pay good money to see him react to Blexas.
Texas oblast will be correct and vote for best candidate Trump!
I'll say it again Harris needs to really campaign harder in Texas. If she beats Bidens last vote total (in Texas) by a million votes I think she'll take the state and that's basically a guarantee to win the whole thing. I think state leadership is also overconfident in our "leans red" status and they aren't trying nearly as hard as other states to suppress votes. If the gap gets close but Trump still wins Texas I guarantee they'll make the next four years about stomping out blue opposition.
Making the gop spend resources to defend Texas is a win even if you lose the state.
I think it is possible both Texas and Florida are actually in play come the election. Conventional wisdom focuses on the battleground states, but conventional wisdom would have picked Shapiro over Walz and we see how that went. I think you are right, and I hope the Harris campaign is bold and ambitious here.
Now bear in mind - actually flipping Texas sounds like an almost guaranteed constitutional crisis. But that's a problem for the future.
We Floridians voted for Obama twice and we're driving youth and women to the polling booths with abortion and weed on the ballot.
Given the above comments about the possible/likely constitutional crisis, it would be better to win those states but not rely on winning them to take the race. Best to assume that they are going to try pulling out all of the stops they can to steal this election and Florida and Texas are two states that are most likely to lean into that.
So she should try to win them but not at the expense of anywhere else.
even if doesn't flip, i'm all for turning red states into a bluer shade of purple, it delivers its own message
Thank you! People think their vote doesn't count if they lose. Even the dumbest politician can read an Excel sheet and see the gap closing in on them.
This is great momentum; especially if it helps down ballot Colin Allred defeat Ted Cruz for the senate. Some polling has him within 5 points (or even tied in a few polls earlier this year). It's a bit of a stretch; but Texas is notorious for it's low voter turnout. Moving a few % of this non-voting population to feel like their vote matters & get them to show up would be enough to shift these races!
Why vote for rino Cruz when you can vote Allred!
Don't do this to me. Don't give me hope. I've learned to live without it. Adding it back in now could be dangerous to my body.
If I had a nickel for every time someone said Texas was going to turn blue.
I'll believe it when I see it.
It's sad when this is the general vibe of some ppl, but I get it, I'm there too. Still voting, just not getting too excited until I see some actual numbers.
Yeah I feel the same. There's just a lot of ways this could turn out.
The polls could be inaccurate or we could have issues with turnout. It's great to see the Dems being as popular as they are on socials right now but it makes me anxious that this could just be a trend that doesn't lead into voter participation.
Me every time someone with some decent backing runs against Abbott, Cruz, Cornyn, and the rest.
Technically 53% of eligible people cast a vote in 2020, which was 66% of registered voters.
The difference between a red and blue TX in 2020 was less than 5% of registered voters going to the polls for Biden.
Polls will be open Oct 21-Nov 1, with one final day to vote on Nov 5. If you procrastinate and go on the last day, there will be a line. If you go during the first 2 weeks of voting, there will be a 10 minute wait tops historically speaking. Polls will be open at leat 9 hours the first week and at least 12 hours during the second week and final day of voting (typically 7AM-7PM, though times will vary). Check your voter registration status, eligibility for ballot by mail, Election Dates, polling locations and hours (might not be up until October), and more at this site.
I've been really excited for the hypothetical gerrymander backfire. If young people come out in enough numbers, they could turn all those counties blue.