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Well, I'll toot my own horn:
I called it.
Quoth me 12 days ago:
Wasn't sure if they'd get right back to 50-50, but when there's THIS MUCH actual uncertainty (everyone has their vibes, but there simply no trustworthy, unbiased way to call the election in advance) then the 'money' has to return to baseline because very few people are willing to keep their funds at risk all the way to the final bell.
Lmao. Harris doesn't have any single advantage that Biden lacked going into 2020, and has a number of disadvantages.
My personal expectations, in order of decreasing confidence: Trump squeaker win. Kamala Squeaker win. Trump blowout.
A Kamala Blowout doesn't seem possible, and my post up there explained my thoughts:
Which demographics is she pulling in 2024 that Biden DIDN'T pull in 2020? Make the case for me because I don't see any way she pulls better numbers than Biden. I can buy that Trump might do a bit worse than he did in 2020.
The argument I've heard (I'm not a polling or campaigning expert, so I can't really gauge how true it is) is that Kamala is relying upon a massive swing among women, of a similar magnitude of the increases in turnout that the Obama candidacy relied upon among black voters. This isn't related to her own sex, but instead a combo of abortion fears and disproportionate female distaste for Trump and concern about potential authoritarianism. That kind of reasoning is the only way that ads like this make sense to me. It also explains why Kamala prefers to go on SNL (demographic overwhelmingly elderly) than Rogan (demographic primarily young and male).
I actually do expect a large gender divide this time, because yes Harris is banking on her appeal to women, mostly single ones. Their attempts to snag married women are, as you see in that ad, tone deaf.
And I expect that single males have been driven away because Harris literally cannot try appealing to them as a group with their own independent concerns without pissing off said single females and a few other groups that she relies on. There hasn't been a single aspect of the Harris campaign that has made me, a white male, feel confident she represents 'my interests' or even acknowledges what those interests or concerns are.
(my opposition to Harris is deeper than my identity, mind)
I'm also on record stating that single females are a reliable voting block who can be motivated and steered by fear. So messaging on fascism and abortion are probably good at energizing these types to get out there and vote EXACTLY how blue tribe wants. What is also does is primes them for absolutely insane freakouts if she loses, though.
So it may indeed come down to male turnout vs. female turnout.
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A much larger portion of the cemetery demographic? The non-citizen demographic?
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…even MORE women? That’s the only demo I can see since it’s A) a female president nominee, and B) abortion.
Are happily married women with children being mobilized by abortion? Are sexless 20-somethings with nose rings shitting themselves over having to carry a purely hypothetical baby to term?
What is happening with this abortion Handmaid's Tale fanfic? Why is the a-word such a powerful meme?
Are women actually afraid of losing policy advantages, or is it just posturing that goes over well in their book clubs and socially reinforces itself into a loosely-held belief? I personally know a married woman who does not want children and would happily kill 2 babies for every abortion she needed to keep her DINK lifestyle, but she is notably liberal to an extent that normal women definitely are not. Does anyone have an actual model for what's going on for this issue?
Are the Democrats really out here convincing every single woman that it's perfectly normal to find yourself needing an abortion, and it will kill you to give birth?
Democrats are quite happily lying about the actual content of abortion bans. It is literally false that Amber Thurman died because Georgia law forbade saving the mother's life when it would kill the baby- for one thing, she had a legal abortion, and for another, Georgia law allows the care that would have saved her life if she'd sought medical care before spending four days bleeding through one pad per hour. But democrats say this anyways.
It is in fact very very unpopular to require women with ectopic pregnancies to just die. There is no state which does that, but claiming that red states routinely do this is a key part of democrat's messaging, their actual ads aren't 'Women are being FORCED to GIVE BIRTH instead of living their best life'.
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Looking at "Who Gets Abortions in America?" (NYT article dated 2021)... 60% of women who have abortions already have children, although only 14% are married, so "happily married women with children" aren't getting a large percentage of all abortions. That said, about 25% of women get an abortion at some point in their life, so it's not exactly rare.
Of course, that's not counting "spontaneous abortion" (better known as miscarriage). I was having trouble finding statistics for how many women will ever have a miscarriage, probably partially because it's tricky to define since well, I'll let Wikipedia explain:
I bring up miscarriage because some of the concern over abortion bans has been over healthcare for miscarriages getting lumped in with abortions.
Well yes, because democrats lie constantly about the actual content of abortion bans. Women denied a D&C invariably turn out to have been kicked out of the hospital before it was apparent they needed one because they were uninsured(=hospital had to eat the cost for her being there), or primarily victims of their own terrible decisions(Amber Nicole Thurman should have gone to the emergency room four days before she actually did).
I mean you're also not going to get statistics on miscarriages because no one, except the women who experience them, care very much and lots of them don't get or need any medical care. The whole miscarriage issue is a distraction driven mostly by democrats lying.
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Oh please, this is like calling death by accudent, illness, or natural causes "spontaneous murder". It has nothing to do with the issue of abortion.
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As best I can tell yes. And they aren't perfectly sexless. There is some hypothetical possibility that someday they would want an abortion. They could easily obtain one of course.
But yes fear mongering about a hypothetical national abortion ban forcing them to carry a hypothetical baby to term seems popular.
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That phrase describes an increasingly-shrinking minority of women these days. And ones with teenage and older female children may well vote on vicarious fears/worries about abortion access.
Young people are low-propensity voters, and overwhelmingly progressive for other reasons. The abortion talk is aimed at 35+ women, who are much higher-propensity voters.
Sure, women find the idea of not being able to even have the option of terminating a pregnancy intolerable, even if they might otherwise want to keep the kid. Also, our culture denigrates devotion to family and unpaid child-raising as a life-style.
More like, "it's perfectly normal to find yourself needing an abortion, and banning "normal" abortion care will kill you." Of course, these stories are complete and total BS, not attributable to abortion restrictions. But most people don't look behind the screaming media spin.
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Coworker and I were discussing election betting market when a woman on the team asked how concerned she should be about Trump winning. She’s married, has a young child, and, if not outright smarter than me, definitely has better math chops. She’s the best product forecaster we have. I asked her what she was most worried about. Her answer: birth control getting banned.
In case someone doesn't know, birth control is literally the least controversial political issues there is.
People who are smart in one area aren't always smart in another, especially when values, tribes, and deep-set fears come into play. There are vanishingly few people I trust to provide level-headed insights into politics, even people I respect in other areas. It requires an extreme level of intellectual humility to look at such emotionally-fraught issues even-handedly -- something that, understandably, very smart and insightful people often struggle with.
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Yes, among actual voters, sure.
But, Republican's voted against various pro-birth control bills on both the state and local level.
Then, you've got members of The Heritage Foundation, who wrote Project 2025 talking about returning consequentiality to sex - https://x.com/Heritage/status/1662534135762624520
Project 2025 also says the morning after bill is an abortion bill and the coverage of it should be eliminated and there's also been talk about the Comstock Act.
Republicans voting against free birth control because some money would go to planned parenthood is what actually happened there and the uberconservative wishcasting to ban the morning after pill was walked back by the Louisiana state legislature, let alone by the national GOP(and aside from a few deep southern states there has not been a case where republicans had a realistic path to getting the morning after pill banned- in all cases they chose not to do it).
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Yes, that's what the Heritage Foundation believes. That's also what the Catholic Church believes. Those organizations are not the Republican party or the Trump administration.
If Trump is elected, there will not be a national ban on birth control. Despite the idle wishing by the Heritage Foundation.
I stand by this prediction and discount anyone who goes against it as having lost touch with reality.
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Yes. Young women are genuinely terrified about the possibility of being raped and forced to carry the baby to term, or having a hookup and [...], or even just accidentally/intentionally conceiving a baby with their husband and having their life threatened by some malady an abortion could fix. Three of the women in my close circle have of their own volition brought up fears about maternal mortality rates/abortion restriction... Despite the fact that all three were on birth control and additionally one also mentioned that she would personally never get an abortion (though she's pro-choice in general.)
I would say the fear is out of proportion to the actual probability of potential negative events, but that doesn't stop them from genuinely feeling it. It's just what women-centric filter bubbles bring up. It's like how men are irrationally terrified of false rape accusations.
Don't forget irrationally terrified of being seen as a creep because they asked a woman out in the wrong way/in the wrong place.
Or women's fear that their date will turn out to be a creep. Or worse, a Trump supporter.
Something in the water supply's just trying to get men and women to fear each other. And what we fear we often end up resenting, even hating. Women are convinced that men have it easy and waste their privilege playing video games and jacking off while doing things to hurt women ("patriarchy theory"), while men are convinced that women have it easy and waste their privilege
eating hot chip and lyingputting on makeup and getting railed by Chads ("gynocentrism theory"). These two sides aren't completely symmetrical, and one may have a point in some connection where the other doesn't, but they do reflect growing resentment by normie men and women towards each other.In that sense, it's no wonder so many people are going, "wow, it must be so much greener on the other side!" and gender-transitioning.
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Yeah, I do expect the gender split to be significant.
Because I'm also sure a lot of guys will peel off because holy SHIT the Harris campaign has been horrible at marketing to males, in particular white ones. Not sure if that means they'll come out for Trump, though.
There's certainly an argument that higher female turnout relative to male could tilt it for her.
Women do tend to be more likely to vote than men, especially young women.
Yep. I don't know what is most likely to motivate otherwise detached males enough to get them to the polls, so this might be what tilts it for her, honestly.
Although... it is entirely possible that males are motivated to vote because of how horrible the Harris messaging towards them has been. It might be enough for them to realize there's nothing good for them coming if she wins.
https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1852849659347124434
AtlasIntel CEO confirms that if white male turnout is high, Trump wins. That’s a big if! But also still plausible
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Yes, I'm certain it's going to come down to turnout, and that's where the Democrat machine has an unbeatable advantage. They've got people going door to door making sure the right people's ballots are collected here, in a place where turnout literally doesn't matter because half the Democrats are running unopposed or against 5 different permutations of the People's Socialist Environmental Indigenous Justice Party For Killing Whitey.
If they're doing organization like that just for fun in a blue state, I doubt there'll be a single ballot unharvested in swing states.
On the other hand, that's a deep blue state where democrats have a massive advantage in personnel and they have to do something.
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Fascinating.
Had you heard that the GOP has tightened the voter registration gap in PA by about 300k?
Do we recall that Biden won PA by 70k in 2020., and the GOP has gained support since then.
Do we think the Dems were more or less efficient at ballot harvesting that year?
Do we think the GOP might be more or less organized at getting out the vote in 2024?
Just thinking out loud. Like I said, Kamala has no advantage that Biden lacked, and some apparent disadvantages.
Seems absurd to expect her to do better than 2020 Biden.
I don't see any reason their ballot harvesting ops would be less effective now. They've had four more years to organize and consolidate power, how could they have lost any capacity?
Because they don't have the advantage of an ongoing pandemic to motivate against in-person voting and creating cover for a sizeable increase in absentee ballots.
I think there's just going to be fewer ballots out there to that are ripe for harvest, ultimately.
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Except what Curtis Yarvin dubs "Moore's Law of election 'fortification.'"
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There are rumors, stemming from the boss himself, that Republicans found some “secret” to help improve turnout. I’m skeptical, but you never know.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/28/us/politics/trump-secret-house-republicans-panic.html
Elon musk lottery?
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Might be the efforts of Scott Pressler in PA. The guy exhudes weirdo, cult leader energy and if someone could turn it around for the GOP there, I think it's him.
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My guess is Republicans are just using the same election 'tech' that Democrats used last cycle. Shady stuff like vote harvesting.
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