I think I have to accept one of these two propositions and I’m not sure which:
1) without COVID Trump was going to get re-elected in 2020
2) the electoral penalty for a woman running for President is about three points margin
1) without COVID Trump was going to get re-elected in 2020
2) the electoral penalty for a woman running for President is about three points margin
Comments
* It’s generally a hard lift to unseat an incumbent.
* Donald tapped a chaos vote that has been dormant since Perot, which is good for millions of votes.
* Donald captured enough of the traditional R vote to win in 16, and all the traditional R vote in 20 and 24.
* VPs simply don’t have the name recognition and visibility that Presidents have.
Just too much ingrained sexism remains in far too many minds.
I read an argument today that Harris over performed with respect to her percentage of the pop. vote vs her approval rating, which is apparently an anomaly for POTUS candidates.
On 2., the penalty is a lot more. About 3% is just among white women.
2. Globally, incumbents polled just fine in 2020. They only cratered once the 2021+ pandemic inflation hit.
Given how close 2016 also was, I’m more confident, but by no means certain, that a female candidate without HRC’s baggage could have won.
2 is what the best evidence suggests, but that evidence is an on-average effect calculated from decade+ old House election results and IMO it's unlikely to apply (at least in full) to the 2024 presidential election.
It's just that they have to find the "right" GOP candidate and not the run we had of Lake, Bachmann, Palin, and some others I'm forgetting.
If it had been a male equivalent of Kamala, would enough GOP voters flipped their vote?
His government was such a trainwreck that a repeat of 2008 was guaranteed had COVID not happened.
2 is absolutely true.
A whole bunch of voters got activated by their disagreement with COVID policies
I’d even argue that COVID spike in winter ‘21-22 is what sunk Biden. That was the point that I think Trump nostalgia picked up
( This is IMO the most suspect of the three, in pundit's fallacy terms; but still, worth considering.)
There's just a lot of people for whom "the guy from before COVID, or some woman?" Does not require deep thought.
His problem was he spent too much time online reading conspiracies, then got jealous Fauci was receiving all the attention and started crashing news conferences.
I don't know if we can entirely blame misogyny, I just know we're probably not going to take the chance likely for the remainder of my life.
2. 🤷♂️
1 I am less sure of.
I think he would have lost 2024 without Covid as an excuse for his shit show
At this point idek if it'll be in my lifetime, but I have a strong suspicion that if the woman-penalty is about 3 points, you can counteract that with a +3 "but she's a Repub!" bonus.
Like, the BDP lost a 57 year majority.
The MSM went from a super-majority in Mauritius in 2019 to 1 seat in Parliament this year.
2) Yeah. Sucks but yeah.
take that as you may
But for me at least it feels more likely that COVID hurt both Trump and Biden. Trump, deservedly. Biden, thanks to the media.
The people who don't read the news have friends who might. Some of those (dumb) friends might have took stock in the headlines.
So, no.
We won the presidency but down ballot we underperformed.
A) Hillary was historically unlikeable. Hard to draw conclusions there.
B) 2024 saw incumbent parties losing globally where the dems tended to overperform relative to mean.
Definitely think there's something to (2) but I don't think it's explicitly well known/documented.