2022 Senate Race

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chingon
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

Post by chingon »

FangKC wrote: Wed Aug 03, 2022 5:25 pm GOP strategist Jeff Roe will annihilate Busch-Valentine
Axiom's prowess lies mostly in the minds of the KC Star editorial board.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

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Rust belt states trending red was most definitely a thing before 2016, even if it caught the incompetent Dem establishment flatfooted. Their margins in Wisconsin were already razor thin in 2000 and 2004, their margins in Michigan and Pennsylvania shrank considerably from 1996 to 2000 and then again from 2000 to 2004, and Ohio straight up went red in 2000 and 2004 and is now a solidly red state. Obama temporarily clawed back Ohio and rebuilt the Dem margins in the other three states in 2008, but that election was an aberration -- even Indiana (only time since 1964) and North Carolina (only time since 1976) went blue that year. His margins in each of those states fell significantly in 2012 (and of course he did not win Indiana or North Carolina again). The writing was on the wall for anyone who bothered to read it, which didn't include Dem strategists who spent the 2016 campaign season looking for opportunities to run up the score in red states (because, yes, the trend of sunbelt states moving left was also already underway at that time, albeit not nearly as mature as the rightward swing of the rust belt) instead of securing their position in the states they actually needed to win. The parties didn't shift "under Trump," Trump didn't single-handedly provoke a realignment, he just took advantage of changes that were already taking place. As those changes develop and crystallize, more recent data does become more relevant than older data, but it's overreaching to say that nothing before 2016 matters at all because Trump fundamentally changed the game.

As far as Kansas is concerned, my sense is that the apparent moderation taking place there in recent years has much less to do with Trump than with a combination of these nationwide trends + reaction to Brownback's ruinous governance. Kansas might have "moved to Dems" in 2016, but not by much (Romney: +21.7, Trump: +20.6). Trump's margin fell in 2020 (+14.65), but it was still comparable to McCain's in 2008 (+14.96), which represented a notably larger drop compared to 2004 (Bush +25.38), and yet, in 2008 nobody was stringing these two data points together to announce that Kansas was becoming a purple state. JoCo is not large enough to commandeer Kansas politics, so I suspect that, although KS might continue to moderate to some extent, there is still a hard floor of support for the GOP there that will not be overcome absent major demographic shifts.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

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phuqueue wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 10:22 am n 2008 nobody was stringing these two data points together to announce that Kansas was becoming a purple state.
Because it had nothing to do with Kansas shifting, back then. EVERYWHERE shifted to the left in 2008. Traditional red states such as Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico voted for Obama. Hell, even the deep red states Indiana & North Carolina voted for Obama. The point is, Kansas shifting to 14.9% margin in 2008 wasn't remarkable because every state was shifting that far.

What is remarkable, however, is when Kansas in 2016 is shifting that quickly to the left *despite* the whole country shifting to the right in 2016.
It's also remarkable when they repeat the same *big* shift in 2020 when the country only ever so slightly moved to the left as a whole that cycle.

That's two times in a row now against the grain- all post-realignment (2016)- and it doesn't show any signs of stopping.

If my models hold, they'll be around a 10-point margin in the 2024 election for GOP. They'll be on track to be purple by 2030. The 2026 Senate race should be very tight too if it's a blue wave year. I'll say it again- this is what I do for work.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

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But Kansas didn't really shift to the left in 2016, as I already noted above. Trump ran only 1.1 points behind Romney, which is actually the most stable result Kansas has seen in consecutive election cycles since sometime before 1976, which is where I got too lazy to continue looking further back. The leftward shift in Kansas's 2020 vote compared to 2016 did outpace the country as a whole (5.95 point swing to the Dems vs. 2.3 point swing nationally), but there is historically a lot of fluctuation in Kansas's results, so any conclusions you attempt to draw from this single data point are bound to say more about you and your priors than they say about the future of Kansas.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

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phuqueue wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 4:05 pm But Kansas didn't really shift to the left in 2016, as I already noted above. Trump ran only 1.1 points behind Romney, which is actually the most stable result Kansas has seen in consecutive election cycles since sometime before 1976, which is where I got too lazy to continue looking further back. The leftward shift in Kansas's 2020 vote compared to 2016 did outpace the country as a whole (5.95 point swing to the Dems vs. 2.3 point swing nationally), but there is historically a lot of fluctuation in Kansas's results, so any conclusions you attempt to draw from this single data point are bound to say more about you and your priors than they say about the future of Kansas.
Kansas was in the top 10 states with the most leftward shift in both 2016 & 2020. If they're not trending left then basically no state is.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

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That's fine, but those are only two election cycles, and the change in each of them was well within the norm of Kansas's historical fluctuations. I agree, and already acknowledged above, that KS politics seem to have moderated somewhat in recent years ("trending left" if you want, I guess), but I don't think there is much basis to extrapolate that "trend" indefinitely. It's one thing to go from deep red to slightly less red, as KS has done over these few election cycles, and something else to go from deep red to purple or blue. JoCo is not Cook County, either in terms of significance to the rest of the state or in terms of being a Dem stronghold, so it is not about to lead Dems to dominance of the state government like you seem to be envisioning. This is wishful thinking.
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AlkaliAxel
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

Post by AlkaliAxel »

phuqueue wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 12:18 pm This is wishful thinking.
It's just fact. That's what demographics are showing down the road as rural is dying out unusually fast in Kansas & the KC metro is growing at double digits rates in KS. It will eventually take over enough with Topeka to make the state purple. Kansas isn't big and therefore not hard to move quickly.

And the reason we know the trends are going to hold is because there hasn't been another realignment yet. Until that happens, no state trend anywhere is changing.
Last edited by AlkaliAxel on Tue Aug 09, 2022 12:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

Post by mean »

Combining statistics and confirmation bias is so adorable you guys.
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AlkaliAxel
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

Post by AlkaliAxel »

mean wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 12:31 pm Combining statistics and confirmation bias is so adorable you guys.
I think the bigger problem is that people have only known Kansas as "deep red" for so long that it's just unfathomable to them that it can be anything else than that.

It's kinda like all those officials in 2018 who were "shocked" and "stunned" that Johnson County voted straight Dem on every race for the first time ever.

"I never thought I'd see Johnson County turn its back on Republicans" is what one official I worked with tell me that day.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

Post by earthling »

It's just a poll that should be taken with grain of salt but PRRI claims that Kansas party identification has shifted to more DEM...

Code: Select all

KS      2013     2021
GOP      34%      30%
DEM      24%      38%
Indep    38%      23%
https://ava.prri.org/#politics/2013/Sta ... ty/m/US-KS
https://ava.prri.org/#politics/2021/Sta ... ty/m/US-KS

While MO growing more red.
Last edited by earthling on Wed Aug 10, 2022 3:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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grovester
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

Post by grovester »

I'd be happy with moderate republicans without a super majority.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

Post by phuqueue »

AlkaliAxel wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 12:35 pm
mean wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 12:31 pm Combining statistics and confirmation bias is so adorable you guys.
I think the bigger problem is that people have only known Kansas as "deep red" for so long that it's just unfathomable to them that it can be anything else than that.

It's kinda like all those officials in 2018 who were "shocked" and "stunned" that Johnson County voted straight Dem on every race for the first time ever.

"I never thought I'd see Johnson County turn its back on Republicans" is what one official I worked with tell me that day.
"Unfathomable" is a pretty strong word, I'm just skeptical that the change from just a single election cycle to the next definitively shows a trend that can safely be extrapolated out for years to come. You see what you want to see, and I want to see the same thing, so I actually hope that you're right, but I don't think there's enough evidence to conclude that you are. It seems mathematically implausible that JoCo is going to turn the rest of the state purple or blue in such a short period of time. In the rest of the state outside of JoCo, Trump beat Biden by 229,711 votes. For JoCo alone to have made up that gap, Biden would have needed a margin of nearly +66 (making it one of the most Democratic counties in the country), or, alternatively, JoCo would have needed about 8x as many voters at its actual +8.2 margin (about 57% of JoCo's total population voted in 2020, so 8x as many voters would roughly correspond to a population of ~4.9 million). You can also mix and match -- with 4x as many voters, you only need a +16.4 margin, but with 2x as many voters, you still need a nearly +33 margin. In any case, the combination of population and partisan makeup leaves JoCo currently far away from turning Kansas purple or blue. At its 2020 growth rate, JoCo is a little more than 60 years away from doubling in population. I think more data points are necessary to reliably estimate how rapidly JoCo is turning Democratic.

Admittedly, this is overly simplistic, mainly because I don't care/am too lazy to get deeper in the weeds with it. At a high level, I can say that the rest of the state outside of JoCo 1) voted slightly more for Trump in 2020 than in 2016 and 2) grew slightly in the 2020 census, so in the short term, I don't know how much we can rely on either shifting voter preferences or rural depopulation to aid the supposed JoCo takeover. Granted, those two facts obscure a lot of granular detail that could suggest a shift really is underway or at least plausible (for instance: if you take out the five counties that went blue in 2020, Kansas shrank very slightly), but they also show that the state still has a long way to go before JoCo can turn it purple. If you're quoting this post back to me in eight years as CNN is calling the KS state House and Senate (where, incidentally, Dems' margins in 2020 were far worse than in the pres race) for Dems, I'll be thrilled to have been wrong and will gladly eat shit for it, but I just don't see it happening.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

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Fountains wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:44 pm
phuqueue wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 12:18 pm That's fine, but those are only two election cycles, and the change in each of them was well within the norm of Kansas's historical fluctuations. I agree, and already acknowledged above, that KS politics seem to have moderated somewhat in recent years ("trending left" if you want, I guess), but I don't think there is much basis to extrapolate that "trend" indefinitely. It's one thing to go from deep red to slightly less red, as KS has done over these few election cycles, and something else to go from deep red to purple or blue. JoCo is not Cook County, either in terms of significance to the rest of the state or in terms of being a Dem stronghold, so it is not about to lead Dems to dominance of the state government like you seem to be envisioning. This is wishful thinking.
Exactly. One of the most disliked if not most disliked president in the modern era won the state by 15% and this is following Sam Brownbacks leadership as governor. To claim KS is leaning left is a bunch of hooey.
It's not left leaning but it's not the super conservative stalwart many people think it is. If that was true, Vote Yes probably would have prevailed. Grid hit the nail on the head a while back in this thread. Kansas is more urbanized than many of the ultraconservative states. It has large rural areas but most of those counties have very low population densities. I remember watching the election returns for Kansas last Tuesday. The entire western third of the state did not have a vote tallied and Johnson County was reporting 70% of its vote but Johnson County still had more remaining votes than the western counties that had not reported yet. Kansas has two pretty large metros plus a couple of somewhat smaller but democratic leaning cities like Topeka and Lawrence. Contrast that with the Dakotas that do not have any large metros leaving a very high percentage of their population rural and hence very conservative. Or compare with extremely conservative Missouri where one of the large metros has mostly working class and conservative suburbs (KC's more liberal burbs are in Kansas) and another is a bastion of conservatism (Springfield) not to mention a higher rural population density than Kansas. I doubt if an abortion vote similar to Kansas' would do well in Missouri. It's all in the details of the demographics and the political divide in the US is generally urban/rural.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

Post by AlkaliAxel »

Fountains wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 6:27 pm
*8 years on current trends & JoCo is left-leaning now. This is just reality for KS- it's not 2004 anymore. Hell it's not even 2012 anymore. Let me guess- you still think JoCo is Republican too? Lol
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

Post by shinatoo »

Kansas is going to depend on hiw each party does with the Hispanic vote. That demo is up for grabs.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

Post by Highlander »

Fountains wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 6:27 pm
Highlander wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 4:06 pm
Fountains wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:44 pm

Exactly. One of the most disliked if not most disliked president in the modern era won the state by 15% and this is following Sam Brownbacks leadership as governor. To claim KS is leaning left is a bunch of hooey.
It's not left leaning but it's not the super conservative stalwart many people think it is. If that was true, Vote Yes probably would have prevailed. Grid hit the nail on the head a while back in this thread. Kansas is more urbanized than many of the ultraconservative states. It has large rural areas but most of those counties have very low population densities. I remember watching the election returns for Kansas last Tuesday. The entire western third of the state did not have a vote tallied and Johnson County was reporting 70% of its vote but Johnson County still had more remaining votes than the western counties that had not reported yet. Kansas has two pretty large metros plus a couple of somewhat smaller but democratic leaning cities like Topeka and Lawrence. Contrast that with the Dakotas that do not have any large metros leaving a very high percentage of their population rural and hence very conservative. Or compare with extremely conservative Missouri where one of the large metros has mostly working class and conservative suburbs (KC's more liberal burbs are in Kansas) and another is a bastion of conservatism (Springfield) not to mention a higher rural population density than Kansas. I doubt if an abortion vote similar to Kansas' would do well in Missouri. It's all in the details of the demographics and the political divide in the US is generally urban/rural.
Inside the loop of JoCo is certainly more moderate but the claim KS is turning purple and JoCo will be like KC in 6 years simply isn't reality.
I'm not saying Kansas is going blue anytime soon (although it may in time). It's just not the ultra-conservative state people think it is. They think that because Kansas has so much rural space in the west, but a higher percentage of Kansans live in cities than in most of the surrounding states. Much of the nation was shocked by the Kansas vote in last week's election. It did not surprise me for the reasons I've already stated. I'd also add that I live outside the loop in Johnson County. I kept track of the yards with vote Yes and No signs in my neighborhood and the No's prevailed by a huge margin. Scientific? No, but it was reflected in the vote as Johnson County was heavy in the No camp.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

Post by grovester »

it's also not just Johnson County.

There are at least 4 populous counties that are trending similar to Johnson.

Anecdotally, there was a story about some pro life republicans who saw the advance voting for Johnson County come in and knew immediately that the election was over.

The rural areas are not 100% republican, it's all about margins.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

Post by AlkaliAxel »

grovester wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 8:24 pm it's also not just Johnson County.

There are at least 4 populous counties that are trending similar to Johnson.

Anecdotally, there was a story about some pro life republicans who saw the advance voting for Johnson County come in and knew immediately that the election was over.

The rural areas are not 100% republican, it's all about margins.
Of course. But all the ignorant/biased know is "JoCo!" or "rural". There's no in between to people. That's why it's annoying to talk about trends with casual observers.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

Post by FangKC »

Missouri isn't entirely conservative. Voters used the referendum to increase the minimum wage, expand Medicaid, protect unions, and change marijuana laws, which is not something conservative voters normally do. Some of these addressed things the state legislature failed to do. We will see if Missouri voters approve the legalization of possession and personal use of marijuana this November.
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Re: 2022 Senate Race

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Voters in general aren't nearly as far to the right as their representatives, but we end up with this awful government because low turnout primaries are dominated by the most invested (i.e., extreme) voters, who send maniacs on to the general election, where most people just compulsively pull the lever for whoever has the right party affiliation. The NYT took a look after the KS vote at which other states would likely vote to protect abortion rights if the question were put directly to voters and estimated only seven would have voted against abortion (Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama). And the vote would be pretty close in most of those, except for the three Gulf Coast states. They estimated it would pass almost as easily in MO as it did in KS.
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