Let's let bigmouth Chris Christie take on the R party and the country club Rs. NO ONE is going to convince the true crazies MAGA base to "come back" ever...accept that, move on and concentrate on the Latino vote and the Asian vote. Getting them into our camp. GOTV more impt than ever. It is true that McAuliffe ran a terrible campaign and had the weariness of Dem voters to contend with, the Biden admin low poll numbers and the weariness of high prices for gas and groceries. I now work part-time in a grocery store and see the dismay about shortages and prices on a daily basis. As one woman said in a WaPo article.."that child care credit? Who cares when it's now eaten up by food costs and gas prices.". This is how middle class suburbanites think here in PA 06. They don't care about "infrastructure week" because it's not palpable. They WOULD care about family leave, negotiation for better drug prices, universal pre-K...get some of that done and we have a chance in 2022.
Don't forget that every registered CA voter received a ballot in the mail. For most of us, it was impossible not to know an election was happening. I think that helped CA turnout a lot.
I live in CA, and although the final two weeks' polls showed it wouldn't be close, only one poll-- two days before the recall-- showed a +20 margin. Leading up to the final month, it was dicey. However, by the time the election happened, CA mostly regained its footing on school openings, managing COVID, and the economy (employment was recovering faster than the nation, FL and TX were absolute COVID messes, so people had good baselines for comparison, and we had an $80b budget surplus). And even despite the recall attempt, Newsom was always running at a 50%+ approval rating. Of course, running against Elder may have been the biggest factor. Very different atmospheres and electorates in VA and CA. But, yes, turning out Biden voters was the key (I'm only commenting on why they probably turned out). Biden still had a 55% approval rating in CA at the time of the election. Much easier to turn them out than in VA.
I am caught up on Pod Save America and I definitely think the COVID response and the closing of schools is going to be on voters' minds in the midterms. While the schools are open, it does not make the kids okay or restore women's employment.
Parents who are concerned about learning loss or concerned about excessive mitigations are being dismissed and told learning loss is not real. I am a parent of a special needs kid and I would not have voted for Youngkin if I lived in VA, but that's because I am an informed voter who has worked on elections. If I was not, who knows how I would perceive Democrats. I am certainly angry enough to use my anger at the ballot box! Both Murphy and Northam ignored parents and deferred school mitigations to school boards and parents felt betrayed. For every story of parents being terrible at school board meetings, there is another story of school boards who are sarcastic to parents and don't return calls or emails and many are making questionable decisions on the spending their rescue funds. I think the Republican party is not going to let this go.
I think one thing would help is to have an actual education platform for the party that is attractive to voters and holds the principles we believe in. Some of the party has seemed to have moved really left compared to Obama (ex. charter schools) and like policing, it may be more left than the electorate.
As for California, it may have turned out differently if Newsom had a different opponent. You can see the poll numbers change as Elder started talking about replacing Feinstein. All of these elections have their own messes and confounding factors.
"In almost every race that matters in 2022, Democrats do not need to persuade a single person who voted for Trump in order to win." This a thousand times. 85% of 2020 Trump supporters showed up in VA while just over 70% of Biden supporters showed up, which was actually good but not good enough.
I'm not a fan of using elections in the past as a guide since we live in times that are incredibly different from those recent times. Every election from here into the future is about turnout. The GOP cult will absolutely turn out for everything, so how do we get the D base to turn out, which might drag both persuadable voters with them?
Running on filling potholes and reducing insurance premiums isn't going to cut it. I'm inclined to believe saving democracy might be the best motivator if you tie it to an unavoidable dystopian future. Without democracy, you lose EVERYTHING, your wealth, your opportunities, your dreams, and on a planet with runaway Global Warming there's a very good chance your children will even lose their lives.
I do not get the "swing" vs "Biden" voters or how McAuliffe mistakenly focused on "swing" voters (by talking about Trump?) The "thermostat" effect is exactly that the opposition is more fired up that the party in power. The Biden 2020 voters that did not turn out for McAuliff ARE swing voters.
Let's let bigmouth Chris Christie take on the R party and the country club Rs. NO ONE is going to convince the true crazies MAGA base to "come back" ever...accept that, move on and concentrate on the Latino vote and the Asian vote. Getting them into our camp. GOTV more impt than ever. It is true that McAuliffe ran a terrible campaign and had the weariness of Dem voters to contend with, the Biden admin low poll numbers and the weariness of high prices for gas and groceries. I now work part-time in a grocery store and see the dismay about shortages and prices on a daily basis. As one woman said in a WaPo article.."that child care credit? Who cares when it's now eaten up by food costs and gas prices.". This is how middle class suburbanites think here in PA 06. They don't care about "infrastructure week" because it's not palpable. They WOULD care about family leave, negotiation for better drug prices, universal pre-K...get some of that done and we have a chance in 2022.
Don't forget that every registered CA voter received a ballot in the mail. For most of us, it was impossible not to know an election was happening. I think that helped CA turnout a lot.
I live in CA, and although the final two weeks' polls showed it wouldn't be close, only one poll-- two days before the recall-- showed a +20 margin. Leading up to the final month, it was dicey. However, by the time the election happened, CA mostly regained its footing on school openings, managing COVID, and the economy (employment was recovering faster than the nation, FL and TX were absolute COVID messes, so people had good baselines for comparison, and we had an $80b budget surplus). And even despite the recall attempt, Newsom was always running at a 50%+ approval rating. Of course, running against Elder may have been the biggest factor. Very different atmospheres and electorates in VA and CA. But, yes, turning out Biden voters was the key (I'm only commenting on why they probably turned out). Biden still had a 55% approval rating in CA at the time of the election. Much easier to turn them out than in VA.
I am caught up on Pod Save America and I definitely think the COVID response and the closing of schools is going to be on voters' minds in the midterms. While the schools are open, it does not make the kids okay or restore women's employment.
Parents who are concerned about learning loss or concerned about excessive mitigations are being dismissed and told learning loss is not real. I am a parent of a special needs kid and I would not have voted for Youngkin if I lived in VA, but that's because I am an informed voter who has worked on elections. If I was not, who knows how I would perceive Democrats. I am certainly angry enough to use my anger at the ballot box! Both Murphy and Northam ignored parents and deferred school mitigations to school boards and parents felt betrayed. For every story of parents being terrible at school board meetings, there is another story of school boards who are sarcastic to parents and don't return calls or emails and many are making questionable decisions on the spending their rescue funds. I think the Republican party is not going to let this go.
I think one thing would help is to have an actual education platform for the party that is attractive to voters and holds the principles we believe in. Some of the party has seemed to have moved really left compared to Obama (ex. charter schools) and like policing, it may be more left than the electorate.
As for California, it may have turned out differently if Newsom had a different opponent. You can see the poll numbers change as Elder started talking about replacing Feinstein. All of these elections have their own messes and confounding factors.
"In almost every race that matters in 2022, Democrats do not need to persuade a single person who voted for Trump in order to win." This a thousand times. 85% of 2020 Trump supporters showed up in VA while just over 70% of Biden supporters showed up, which was actually good but not good enough.
I'm not a fan of using elections in the past as a guide since we live in times that are incredibly different from those recent times. Every election from here into the future is about turnout. The GOP cult will absolutely turn out for everything, so how do we get the D base to turn out, which might drag both persuadable voters with them?
Running on filling potholes and reducing insurance premiums isn't going to cut it. I'm inclined to believe saving democracy might be the best motivator if you tie it to an unavoidable dystopian future. Without democracy, you lose EVERYTHING, your wealth, your opportunities, your dreams, and on a planet with runaway Global Warming there's a very good chance your children will even lose their lives.
I do not get the "swing" vs "Biden" voters or how McAuliffe mistakenly focused on "swing" voters (by talking about Trump?) The "thermostat" effect is exactly that the opposition is more fired up that the party in power. The Biden 2020 voters that did not turn out for McAuliff ARE swing voters.