These states are both historically Blue. The last VA Rep win was largely derived from multiple rapes by transgender students on school campuses, and the subsequent attempts by schools to hide them from parents. Biden's historically lousy policies were the cherry on top. Now tens of thousands of VA federal employees are without paychecks. NJ will be a bit closer, but the Rep campaign refused to hit Sherrill where it would hurt most, and will pay for that mistake.
Reps losing today hardly morphs Texas and FL suddenly purple, but many Dems will view the wins as that. Far more important than VA or NJ will be the fallout from NYC.
Mamdani is the product of electoral self sorting. Demonized Reps and moderate Dems demanding insanities like sane Covid policies, safe streets and good schools were all but personally driven out of Blue States. Progressives wanted them gone, and many obliged. The voters that would have prevented Mamdani's election are now happily relocated in FL, Texas, SC and the like. The vast majority are never coming back. That means no modern day Giuliani is riding to the rescue, anytime soon. Assuming Mamdani wins, NYC will not be an outlier, but a harbinger of the future in bright Blue States, all over the US.
Change is generally slow, but not always. Winter is just around the corner, if free buses suddenly morph into warm mobile homes for desperate NYC homeless, the policy will lose some luster. If cops depart en mass, petrified up being served up at the alter of Progressivism by Mamdani, for a split second impossible field decision, the fallout may be far greater than any potential tax increase.
It's not the victories themselves that is significant, it's the *scale*.
A lot of polling in the past week had Sherril only one or two points up over her opponent. It looks like she's going to end up winning by more than 10 points. The margins are huge in VA as well. That's down to turnout.
And that is significant, because A.) if Democrats retain even a significant fraction of this turnout differential they are highly likely to prevail in 2026 and 2028, B.) we know Trump is not going to change his current course, and will continue to provide a huge stimulus to Democratic turnout as he tries to crack down on his opponents ever harder, and C.) there is a good chance 2028 will feature an economic backdrop of either high inflation or high unemployment, and in the worst case scenario both. (Factor C being of significantly greater weight than Factor A or B)
Perhaps the greatest question now is whether attempts at voter suppression to try and fight the present backlash begin to be put into place by the executive branch. (military battalions at the polls in blue cities--where the military is already present--or perhaps some 'executive orders on voter registration', etc.)
I'm not Larry or Nate Silver, but I think 2012 to 2024 is just the beginning of a realignment. In leftist terms, legal Hispanic immigrants are becoming white, as are blacks. Hispanics are close to being finished with this process and blacks are just beginning. I think Asians are in play. Their cultural values place them on the right, but their upper-middle class success places them with educated white elites.
However, neither 2025 nor 2026 will show this because they are off-year elections and the Democrats are now the low-turnout specialists, so I expect the Democrats to win. But that might be the worst possible outcome for them. They'll take it as proof that Trump and the "far-right" is finally defeated, rather than evidence that they need to embrace God, family, and country and become a more FDR-like party with government *and* a social contract.
I'd wish for a lot more information on the Hispanic vote but I doubt I'll get it.
The Latino vote was the biggest shift towards Trump in 24. Deportations have been all over the media and have felt kind of anti Mexican/American to me, as if the media is stressing the bigotry, and even if that's not the case, I know no one likes to be targeted by ethnicity.
I have a lot of friends and neighbors who could be called Hispanic in that they are third or fourth generation immigrants, and they are old enough to remember discrimination, even if society here doesn't recognise them as anything but white, and I speak more Spanish than they do.
Complicating things is a history of low turnout in off year elections. The professional class of Hispanics votes just like other members of the college educated, and if that is predominantly who is voting, it will show a shift that might not reflect the vast majority that are after all, working class.
Polls and registration don't reflect the effects of turnout. If the polls for an election in a two-party system show, say, a narrow majority for party X, but party Y turns out 10-to-1 (because Party Y's leader has given them 1,001 reasons to) vs party X, then party Y will surely lose that election.
If turnout looks November 2024-ish, Republicans should be encouraged. If it looks like the elections since then, with lopsided Democratic engagement that hasn't been seen in decades, they should not be, and it may betoken significant future gains in the House elections, even *with* new efforts at gerrymandering. It would also send a warning for 2028--2024 was won for Trump largely on account of Democrats staying home. (and, more importantly, the GOP may have higher inflation and/or unemployment to deal with on top of that)
Trump has treated Democrats like 'the enemy' (or, as he put it, 'the party of Satan and hate') since then in a way we really haven't seen since the days of the Civil War, and thus given them 1,001 to get to the polls. It may well be the case that Trump 2.0 (and the military occupation of blue cities especially) has become a Democratic turnout machine. In a prior age, this would be mitigated by the localized nature of non-presidential elections--but social media has changed that, and now all elections are national. (for all political parties)
These states are both historically Blue. The last VA Rep win was largely derived from multiple rapes by transgender students on school campuses, and the subsequent attempts by schools to hide them from parents. Biden's historically lousy policies were the cherry on top. Now tens of thousands of VA federal employees are without paychecks. NJ will be a bit closer, but the Rep campaign refused to hit Sherrill where it would hurt most, and will pay for that mistake.
Reps losing today hardly morphs Texas and FL suddenly purple, but many Dems will view the wins as that. Far more important than VA or NJ will be the fallout from NYC.
Mamdani is the product of electoral self sorting. Demonized Reps and moderate Dems demanding insanities like sane Covid policies, safe streets and good schools were all but personally driven out of Blue States. Progressives wanted them gone, and many obliged. The voters that would have prevented Mamdani's election are now happily relocated in FL, Texas, SC and the like. The vast majority are never coming back. That means no modern day Giuliani is riding to the rescue, anytime soon. Assuming Mamdani wins, NYC will not be an outlier, but a harbinger of the future in bright Blue States, all over the US.
Change is generally slow, but not always. Winter is just around the corner, if free buses suddenly morph into warm mobile homes for desperate NYC homeless, the policy will lose some luster. If cops depart en mass, petrified up being served up at the alter of Progressivism by Mamdani, for a split second impossible field decision, the fallout may be far greater than any potential tax increase.
It's not the victories themselves that is significant, it's the *scale*.
A lot of polling in the past week had Sherril only one or two points up over her opponent. It looks like she's going to end up winning by more than 10 points. The margins are huge in VA as well. That's down to turnout.
And that is significant, because A.) if Democrats retain even a significant fraction of this turnout differential they are highly likely to prevail in 2026 and 2028, B.) we know Trump is not going to change his current course, and will continue to provide a huge stimulus to Democratic turnout as he tries to crack down on his opponents ever harder, and C.) there is a good chance 2028 will feature an economic backdrop of either high inflation or high unemployment, and in the worst case scenario both. (Factor C being of significantly greater weight than Factor A or B)
Perhaps the greatest question now is whether attempts at voter suppression to try and fight the present backlash begin to be put into place by the executive branch. (military battalions at the polls in blue cities--where the military is already present--or perhaps some 'executive orders on voter registration', etc.)
I'm not Larry or Nate Silver, but I think 2012 to 2024 is just the beginning of a realignment. In leftist terms, legal Hispanic immigrants are becoming white, as are blacks. Hispanics are close to being finished with this process and blacks are just beginning. I think Asians are in play. Their cultural values place them on the right, but their upper-middle class success places them with educated white elites.
However, neither 2025 nor 2026 will show this because they are off-year elections and the Democrats are now the low-turnout specialists, so I expect the Democrats to win. But that might be the worst possible outcome for them. They'll take it as proof that Trump and the "far-right" is finally defeated, rather than evidence that they need to embrace God, family, and country and become a more FDR-like party with government *and* a social contract.
I'd wish for a lot more information on the Hispanic vote but I doubt I'll get it.
The Latino vote was the biggest shift towards Trump in 24. Deportations have been all over the media and have felt kind of anti Mexican/American to me, as if the media is stressing the bigotry, and even if that's not the case, I know no one likes to be targeted by ethnicity.
I have a lot of friends and neighbors who could be called Hispanic in that they are third or fourth generation immigrants, and they are old enough to remember discrimination, even if society here doesn't recognise them as anything but white, and I speak more Spanish than they do.
Complicating things is a history of low turnout in off year elections. The professional class of Hispanics votes just like other members of the college educated, and if that is predominantly who is voting, it will show a shift that might not reflect the vast majority that are after all, working class.
As I've been saying, watch the scale of turnout.
Polls and registration don't reflect the effects of turnout. If the polls for an election in a two-party system show, say, a narrow majority for party X, but party Y turns out 10-to-1 (because Party Y's leader has given them 1,001 reasons to) vs party X, then party Y will surely lose that election.
If turnout looks November 2024-ish, Republicans should be encouraged. If it looks like the elections since then, with lopsided Democratic engagement that hasn't been seen in decades, they should not be, and it may betoken significant future gains in the House elections, even *with* new efforts at gerrymandering. It would also send a warning for 2028--2024 was won for Trump largely on account of Democrats staying home. (and, more importantly, the GOP may have higher inflation and/or unemployment to deal with on top of that)
Trump has treated Democrats like 'the enemy' (or, as he put it, 'the party of Satan and hate') since then in a way we really haven't seen since the days of the Civil War, and thus given them 1,001 to get to the polls. It may well be the case that Trump 2.0 (and the military occupation of blue cities especially) has become a Democratic turnout machine. In a prior age, this would be mitigated by the localized nature of non-presidential elections--but social media has changed that, and now all elections are national. (for all political parties)
Or not. Watch turnout.