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Historic flooding in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Whole towns washed away. People retreating to their attics as water levels rise. People losing everything.
Tragic. Horrific. But this is the Culture War thread so I am going to ask the insensitive question, what does this mean for the election in <40 days?
My first thought is that there is a certain irony that these states are among those that just limited the forms of ID allowed at a voting booth. Someone who has lost their house is less likely to have all their documentation, and getting new copies will take longer than the time before the election.
Rural areas that were wiped out will have a harder time finding their polling location under the mud and timber. Mail-in voting will be difficult without a mailbox.
People are going to watch the Biden-Harris's administration to see how they respond.
Do these factors make it more likely for these swing states to turn Blue or Red? Buncombe County, one of the hardest hit, went 60% for Biden in 2020.
Can I piggyback and have a non culture war sub thread?
I'm interested in learning and pragmatics. I've looked at predictive flood maps before, but it's hard to have any sense of 'how good' they are. I'd also like to know if they are pretty off in some ways, are there any heuristics shy of literally replicating all of the work of coding up a topographic model, a precipitation model, etc., and just turning the dial up, that I could use to more easily get a sense of where is still pretty safe and where might be deceptively dangerous.
One thing that would be helpful is that if anyone knows where I can find recent observational data to compare to the old predictive maps, so preferably maps of the current major flooding with geographic detail that is somewhat close to federal predictive flood maps. Any other reasonable heuristics would be appreciated, though I am open to the answer being that there just aren't any good heuristics that can be generalized beyond detailed knowledge/modeling of a particular geographic area.
Look where past floods / natural disasters (blizzards, forrest fires, earthquakes) were?
There are services like this:
https://www.augurisk.com/risk/state/north-carolina/buncombe-county/37021
Good bet would be that insurances have the best models and risk assessments.
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Red voters in red states will not switch blue after a natural disaster. Why would they? At best the Biden administration handles this competently, at worst it's a disaster. Is Kamala Harris going to lead a public relief tour? Trump would.
Going further, does the administration even care about red voters in red areas? They haven't stopped spending money on charter flights for resettling Haitians. That's their priority. They will authorize whatever emergency funds sound good on a campaign ad.
If anything voter turnout will increase. When normal life is suspended public life becomes that much more important. Documentation will not be a problem: emergency atmosphere and community mindset will make people solve problems.
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I tentatively expect this to shift things towards Trump.
There's an old article on SSC: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/
about how right wing politics are optimized towards surviving, ie in an apocalypse, and left wing politics are optimized for thriving when there are plenty of resources. When things are tough you make tough decisions and sacrifices in order to survive, and make stable family units that can replace the people who inevitably die. Which right wing politics are optimized for. When things are great and there's plenty to go around then you can do whatever you want and be inefficient but free and happy, and anyone trying to restrict you is doing it for selfish reasons, so you should ignore them, which left wing politics are optimized for.
Maslow's Hierarchy of needs is often depicted as a pyramid, but perhaps it would be more appropriate to tip it sideways, so the lower baser needs are on the right while the higher needs are on the left, as those are their strengths.
When things are tough, people want a tough leader who does what needs to be done, who will ensure their basic necessities, security, and establish confidence and project strength. Regardless of whether Trump is actually more effective at this than Harris, he certainly appears that way superficially. I expect more swing votes to shift towards Trump compared to the counterfactual scenario where these floods did not happen, though I have no idea how strong of an effect this will be, so not sure if it will matter or even be statistically significant.
Looking back, Katrina was politically and electorally brutal for Republicans, while Sandy clinched re-election for Obama. This despite neither storm primarily impacting swing states. It's all in the optics of the president being in control or out of control.
The takes post hurricane are always hilariously stupid, the kind of weird bourgeois socialism that Trump would love. Insuring beach houses that get flooded every couple years to preserve homeowner value after the private insurance market refuses to play there. Hubristic rebuilding of stuff that'll last another few years. This is right in Trump's wheelhouse, so maybe he'll benefit more than average.
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