fivethirtyeight--2020-09-21--How The Post Office Became A Political Football

The post office can ’ t catch a break .
Over the summer , operational changes implemented by the U.S .
Postal Service ’ s new postmaster general raised concerns about mail delays .
This prompted congressional investigations , lawsuits , a lot of political rhetoric , and even more public worry about whether the disruptions pose a threat to what will likely be the most mail-reliant election in history .
But the Postal Service isn ’ t struggling merely because of one new postmaster general ’ s changes — decades of events out of its control have positioned the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ struck .
2020 has seen little but crisis .
COVID-19 changed a lot of things about everyday life , including how Americans use the post office .
Between March and July , the volume of first-class mail like letters , bills and legal documents dropped off a cliff as businesses sought to cut expenses .
At the same time , people isolating at home started ordering necessities ( and non-necessities ) online at a staggering rate .
While overall mail volume was lower during the spring and summer compared to the same time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ surged .
In June , 71 percent more packaging was sent than in the year prior .
“ We are at holiday levels of mail , ” said one mailcarrier , who asked not to be named because USPS employees have been advised not to speak to the media .
“ Everybody is stuck at home and they ’ re ordering online , either because they can ’ t leave the house or the local merchant isn ’ t open .
I personally deliver several hundred Amazon packages a day.
” That was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its new postmaster general started implementing sweeping changes .
But the Postal Service has been facing challenges for years , many of which stem from the idiosyncrasies of being one of the nation ’ s oldest institutions .
The Postal Service has existed in some form or another since 1775 , and it has always played a role in politics .
But it was not originally conceived as a business .
Instead , its founders wanted to make an organization that could facilitate democracy , allowing constituents to communicate with and keep tabs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pottroff , a literature professor at Boston College who researches the earliest days of the Postal Service .
That means much of the original scaffolding of the institution — parts of which are still in place today — doesn ’ t jibe with more modern expectations for the service to turn a profit .
“ If I wanted to send a letter to you in 1815 , it would be super expensive , ” Pottroff said “ But if I wanted to forward a newspaper to you , it would be super cheap @ @ @ @ @ @ @ established as a system of spreading the news to as many people as quickly as possible , and communication with elected officials in D.C .
It was , in the past , the only way that system of democracy could work.
” This mandate set up the expectation that the post office should serve every American , regardless of class or location .
That foundation permeates to this day , even as the institution has faced new financial challenges : An American living in rural Alaska doesn ’ t have to pay more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in downtown Manhattan .
This differs from a private business , which has no obligation to deliver packages to places that aren ’ t worth the cost of transportation .
But the modern era has complicated the post office ’ s lofty ideals .
In 1970 , following widespread wildcat strikes demanding better pay and safer working conditions , the post office was transformed .
In exchange for employees ’ right to collectively bargain , Congress passed an act that changed the post office from a publicly funded cabinet department to a self-funded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ post office had to function less like a public service and more like a private business , but still uphold its public service obligations — like being beholden to requirements set by Congress and having to serve every American .
This worked all right for a few decades , but then the internet happened .
The USPS has a monopoly on sending or carrying flat envelope mail , also known as first-class mail , and on delivering items to physical mailboxes .
( It ’ s actually illegal to slide something through a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ piece of paid USPS mail . )
This was great for the Postal Service until the internet made handwritten letters , invitations , physical bills , checks , bank statements , etc.
, all but obsolete .
Since its peak in 2001 , first-class mail has declined precipitously .
That year , more than 103 billion pieces of first-class mail were delivered by the Postal Service .
In 2019 , that number had dropped to just under 55 billion .
This drop in first-class and advertising mail , historically the biggest revenue earners @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ability to generate funds .
“ That market has gone into a kind of death spiral , and it ’ s not coming back , ” said Richard John , a professor of history at Columbia University and the author of “ Spreading the News : The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse.
” Right around the time the internet was eroding the post office ’ s historical cash cow , Congress enacted a new rule that has caused significant financial hardship for the agency .
Unlike any other single federal agency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been required to set aside billions of dollars every year to cover health benefits for future retired employees .
These payments amount to about $ 5 billion a year , but the USPS hasn ’ t been able to make any payments since 2011 , causing the burden to snowball — the agency is now behind on $ 119.3 billion in payments for the prefunding requirement .
But the internet did come with a silver lining : online shopping .
While first-class mail has dropped , the growth of online retailers like Amazon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Postal Service .
It doesn ’ t have a monopoly over package delivery like it does with letters , so it has to compete with private shippers like UPS and FedEx .
But it does have a centuries-old network that reaches every resident in the country .
This allows the USPS to negotiate contracts with shippers and retailers to provide last-mile service : delivering packages to addresses that wouldn ’ t be worth a FedEx trip , but that the post office has to visit anyway .
That last-mile service has helped prop @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from a Trump task force found that from 2013 through 2018 , the USPS earned enough revenue to cover its costs … if you don ’ t include the prefunding requirement .
In 2017 , for example , the USPS generated $ 69.7 billion in total revenue , enough to cover its operating expenses of $ 68.2 billion , but not to cover the roughly $ 5 billion in retiree benefits contributions it should have made that year , or chip away at the debt created by not making those payments for most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , at the end of the 2017 fiscal year , the USPS reported a net loss of $ 2.7 billion .
That ’ s why Trump ’ s claims that the Postal Service is losing money because of last-mile delivery don ’ t hold water .
But it does emphasize how crippling that prefunding requirement has been for the service .
And that has left it open to criticism that it needs to reform its operations in order to be steady going forward .
Enter Louis DeJoy .
More than a decade of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the perfect setting for a new postmaster general with a successful career in the private sector to start overhauling the system in the name of efficiency and innovation .
And when you mix DeJoy ’ s interest in overhauling the agency ’ s policies with a global pandemic and a looming election , you ’ ve got the perfect recipe for turning the country ’ s most popular government institution into a political lightning rod .
“ Right now , at this moment , there are really strange forces converging to screw everything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a communications professor at the University of Washington .
“ Losing first-class mail , where the postal service made most of its money , has been a problem for the last 25 years .
But that ’ s in the background and complicating it is this requirement to prepay retirement benefits , and then on top of that you add that Trump doesn ’ t like Amazon , and then layered on top of all of that is voting by mail.
” The Postal Service ’ s increasing dependence on package delivery to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Trump .
He already threatened to withhold federal pandemic aid unless the USPS quadrupled the rates it charges for last-mile delivery , a proposition that could make it impossible for the post office to compete .
If the USPS didn ’ t offer competitive rates for that delivery , it wouldn ’ t take long for other delivery companies — or Amazon itself , which already provides its own door-to-door delivery in many areas — to take over all but the most remote deliveries .
These very tensions came to light in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public last week .
In the short term , the worst-case scenario will be that the mail is slightly delayed , though not to the point that a vote-by-mail election is rendered impossible ( this is why experts recommend requesting and returning your ballot as early as possible ) .
A federal judge has blocked the changes DeJoy implemented that slowed the mail .
But even if that injunction gets thrown out by the Supreme Court , some delays shouldn ’ t prevent a mail-in election from otherwise running smoothly .
In fact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ response to a lawsuit seeking a court order to guarantee sufficient funding for the general election , the Postal Service pointed out that “ … even if every registered voter in the United States used a mail-in ballot in the 2020 Election , those ballots would represent only a fraction of the total mailpieces that the USPS processes each day , on average , and would pale in comparison to spikes in mail volume that the USPS handles every winter holiday season.
” But long term , the weaknesses of the Postal Service @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the election .
Even if there ’ s a new president in the White House next year , the USPS will face the same shaky ground it did at the beginning of the year .
If you care about the post office now , you ’ ll likely need to keep caring about it for months — or years — to come .

The post office can’t catch a break. Over the summer, operational changes implemented by the U.S. Postal Service’s new postmaster general raised concerns about mail delays. This prompted congressional investigations, lawsuits, a lot of political rhetoric, and even more public worry about whether the disruptions pose a threat to what will likely be the most mail-reliant election in history.
But the Postal Service isn’t struggling merely because of one new postmaster general’s changes — decades of events out of its control have positioned the agency to be particularly vulnerable when crisis struck.
2020 has seen little but crisis. COVID-19 changed a lot of things about everyday life, including how Americans use the post office. Between March and July, the volume of first-class mail like letters, bills and legal documents dropped off a cliff as businesses sought to cut expenses. At the same time, people isolating at home started ordering necessities (and non-necessities) online at a staggering rate. While overall mail volume was lower during the spring and summer compared to the same time last year, the volume of packages surged. In June, 71 percent more packaging was sent than in the year prior.
“We are at holiday levels of mail,” said one mailcarrier, who asked not to be named because USPS employees have been advised not to speak to the media. “Everybody is stuck at home and they’re ordering online, either because they can’t leave the house or the local merchant isn’t open. I personally deliver several hundred Amazon packages a day.”
That was the state of the USPS right as its new postmaster general started implementing sweeping changes. But the Postal Service has been facing challenges for years, many of which stem from the idiosyncrasies of being one of the nation’s oldest institutions.
The Postal Service has existed in some form or another since 1775, and it has always played a role in politics. But it was not originally conceived as a business. Instead, its founders wanted to make an organization that could facilitate democracy, allowing constituents to communicate with and keep tabs on elected officials, according to Christy Pottroff, a literature professor at Boston College who researches the earliest days of the Postal Service. That means much of the original scaffolding of the institution — parts of which are still in place today — doesn’t jibe with more modern expectations for the service to turn a profit.
“If I wanted to send a letter to you in 1815, it would be super expensive,” Pottroff said “But if I wanted to forward a newspaper to you, it would be super cheap. [The Postal Service] was established as a system of spreading the news to as many people as quickly as possible, and communication with elected officials in D.C. It was, in the past, the only way that system of democracy could work.”
This mandate set up the expectation that the post office should serve every American, regardless of class or location. That foundation permeates to this day, even as the institution has faced new financial challenges: An American living in rural Alaska doesn’t have to pay more to send a postcard than someone living in downtown Manhattan. This differs from a private business, which has no obligation to deliver packages to places that aren’t worth the cost of transportation.
But the modern era has complicated the post office’s lofty ideals. In 1970, following widespread wildcat strikes demanding better pay and safer working conditions, the post office was transformed. In exchange for employees’ right to collectively bargain, Congress passed an act that changed the post office from a publicly funded cabinet department to a self-funded, independent agency. Basically, the post office had to function less like a public service and more like a private business, but still uphold its public service obligations — like being beholden to requirements set by Congress and having to serve every American. This worked all right for a few decades, but then the internet happened.
The USPS has a monopoly on sending or carrying flat envelope mail, also known as first-class mail, and on delivering items to physical mailboxes. (It’s actually illegal to slide something through a mailslot if it’s not a piece of paid USPS mail.) This was great for the Postal Service until the internet made handwritten letters, invitations, physical bills, checks, bank statements, etc., all but obsolete. Since its peak in 2001, first-class mail has declined precipitously. That year, more than 103 billion pieces of first-class mail were delivered by the Postal Service. In 2019, that number had dropped to just under 55 billion. This drop in first-class and advertising mail, historically the biggest revenue earners, has hurt the agency’s ability to generate funds.
“That market has gone into a kind of death spiral, and it’s not coming back,” said Richard John, a professor of history at Columbia University and the author of “Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse.”
Right around the time the internet was eroding the post office’s historical cash cow, Congress enacted a new rule that has caused significant financial hardship for the agency. Unlike any other single federal agency, the post office has since 2006 been required to set aside billions of dollars every year to cover health benefits for future retired employees. These payments amount to about $5 billion a year, but the USPS hasn’t been able to make any payments since 2011, causing the burden to snowball — the agency is now behind on $119.3 billion in payments for the prefunding requirement.
But the internet did come with a silver lining: online shopping. While first-class mail has dropped, the growth of online retailers like Amazon has provided a new opportunity for the Postal Service. It doesn’t have a monopoly over package delivery like it does with letters, so it has to compete with private shippers like UPS and FedEx. But it does have a centuries-old network that reaches every resident in the country. This allows the USPS to negotiate contracts with shippers and retailers to provide last-mile service: delivering packages to addresses that wouldn’t be worth a FedEx trip, but that the post office has to visit anyway.
That last-mile service has helped prop up the agency. A 2018 report from a Trump task force found that from 2013 through 2018, the USPS earned enough revenue to cover its costs … if you don’t include the prefunding requirement.
In 2017, for example, the USPS generated $69.7 billion in total revenue, enough to cover its operating expenses of $68.2 billion, but not to cover the roughly $5 billion in retiree benefits contributions it should have made that year, or chip away at the debt created by not making those payments for most of the decade. As a result, at the end of the 2017 fiscal year, the USPS reported a net loss of $2.7 billion.
That’s why Trump’s claims that the Postal Service is losing money because of last-mile delivery don’t hold water. But it does emphasize how crippling that prefunding requirement has been for the service. And that has left it open to criticism that it needs to reform its operations in order to be steady going forward.
Enter Louis DeJoy. More than a decade of financial losses and a shifting marketplace provided the perfect setting for a new postmaster general with a successful career in the private sector to start overhauling the system in the name of efficiency and innovation. And when you mix DeJoy’s interest in overhauling the agency’s policies with a global pandemic and a looming election, you’ve got the perfect recipe for turning the country’s most popular government institution into a political lightning rod.
“Right now, at this moment, there are really strange forces converging to screw everything up,” said Richard Kielbowicz, a communications professor at the University of Washington. “Losing first-class mail, where the postal service made most of its money, has been a problem for the last 25 years. But that’s in the background and complicating it is this requirement to prepay retirement benefits, and then on top of that you add that Trump doesn’t like Amazon, and then layered on top of all of that is voting by mail.”
The Postal Service’s increasing dependence on package delivery to earn revenue makes it a prime target for Trump. He already threatened to withhold federal pandemic aid unless the USPS quadrupled the rates it charges for last-mile delivery, a proposition that could make it impossible for the post office to compete. If the USPS didn’t offer competitive rates for that delivery, it wouldn’t take long for other delivery companies — or Amazon itself, which already provides its own door-to-door delivery in many areas — to take over all but the most remote deliveries. These very tensions came to light in a trove of internal USPS documents made public last week.
In the short term, the worst-case scenario will be that the mail is slightly delayed, though not to the point that a vote-by-mail election is rendered impossible (this is why experts recommend requesting and returning your ballot as early as possible). A federal judge has blocked the changes DeJoy implemented that slowed the mail. But even if that injunction gets thrown out by the Supreme Court, some delays shouldn’t prevent a mail-in election from otherwise running smoothly. In fact, in a legal brief filed in response to a lawsuit seeking a court order to guarantee sufficient funding for the general election, the Postal Service pointed out that “… even if every registered voter in the United States used a mail-in ballot in the 2020 Election, those ballots would represent only a fraction of the total mailpieces that the USPS processes each day, on average, and would pale in comparison to spikes in mail volume that the USPS handles every winter holiday season.”
But long term, the weaknesses of the Postal Service will remain, regardless of who wins the election. Even if there’s a new president in the White House next year, the USPS will face the same shaky ground it did at the beginning of the year. If you care about the post office now, you’ll likely need to keep caring about it for months — or years — to come.


fivethirtyeight--2020-09-20--The Senate’s Rural Skew Makes It Very Hard For Democrats To Win The Supreme Court

I don ’ t have a particularly strong take on how the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg will affect either the presidential election or the race for control of the U.S. Senate .
And I ’ d encourage you to avoid putting too much stock in anybody else ’ s take for now , too .
The very earliest indication is that President Trump ’ s desire to move full-speed ahead toward naming Ginsburg ’ s replacement could be unpopular , but that ’ s based on only one poll .
But here ’ s what I do know : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats given the current political coalitions , in which Democrats are dominant in cities while Republicans triumph in rural areas .
And because the Senate is responsible for confirming Supreme Court picks , that means the Supreme Court is a huge problem for Democrats too .
Sure , Democrats might win back the Senate this year — indeed , they were slight favorites to do so before the Ginsburg news .
But in the long run , they ’ re likely to lose it more often than not .
You can probably grasp @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as much representation to Wyoming ( population : 580,000 ) as California ( population : 39.5 million ) will tend to favor rural areas .
But it ’ s a bigger effect than you might realize , so let ’ s run some numbers .
At FiveThirtyEight , our favorite way to distinguish between urban and rural areas is based on using census tracts to estimate how many people live within a 5-mile radius of you .
Based on this , we can break every person in the country down into four buckets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people live within a 5-mile radius of you ; • Exurban or small town : Between 25,000 and 100,000 people within a 5-mile radius ; • Suburban or small city : Between 100,000 and 250,000 people within a 5-mile radius ; • Urban core or large city : More than 250,000 people within a 5-mile radius .
As it happens , the overall U.S. population ( including Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico ) is split almost exactly evenly between these buckets : 25 percent rural , 23 percent exurban/small town , 27 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ core/large city .
But what does representation look like in the Senate ?
Since each state has the same number of senators , this is simple to calculate .
We can take the urban/rural breakdown for each state and average the 50 states together , as in the table below : Because there are a lot of largely rural , low-population states , the average state — which reflects the composition of the Senate — has 35 percent of its population in rural areas and only 14 percent in urban core areas , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — including dense , high-population states like New York , Texas and California — has about 25 percent of the population in each group .
That ’ s a pretty serious skew .
It means that the Senate , de facto , has two or three times as much rural representation as urban core representation … even though there are actually about an equal number of voters in each bucket nationwide .
And of course , this has all sorts of other downstream consequences .
Since rural areas tend to be whiter , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ population , too .
In the U.S. as a whole , 60 percent of the population is non-Hispanic white and 40 percent of the population is nonwhite .
But in the average state , 68 percent of people are white and 32 percent are nonwhite .
It ’ s almost as if the Senate has turned the clock back by 20 years as far as the racial demographics of the country goes .
( In 2000 , around 69 percent of the U.S. population consisted of non-Hispanic whites . )
It also means @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that would be decisive in the event of a 50-50 tie in the Senate — are considerably redder than the country as a whole .
In the next table , I ’ ve arranged the states from top to bottom based on how much more or less Republican they were than the national average in the presidential elections in 2016 and 2012 .
The median falls in between Arizona and North Carolina , which are , on average , 6.6 percentage points more Republican than the country as a whole .
Democrats can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so this year , but they ’ re doing so in an overall political environment which leans Democratic by 6 to 7 percentage points based on the generic congressional ballot and national polls of the presidential race .
In a strong national environment for Democrats , in other words , the Senate can be competitive .
Generally speaking , at least .
A Democratic-leaning environment wasn ’ t enough to overcome the Senate ’ s baseline GOP-lean and a bad map in 2018 .
Democrats lost seats .
And in an average year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2014 where Republicans have the advantage — Democrats face dire prospects in the Senate .
Indeed , despite their current 47-53 deficit in the Senate , Democratic senators actually represent slightly more people than Republicans .
If you divide the U.S. population by which party represents it in the Senate — splitting credit 50-50 in the case of states such as Ohio that have one senator from each party — you wind up with 167 million Americans represented by Democratic senators and 160 million by Republicans .
Could the emerging electoral map — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Georgia becoming more purple — help Democrats in the Senate ?
Actually , while the shifting politics in those states could massively affect the Electoral College , they don ’ t help Democrats in the Senate that much because they still have only two senators each .
Rather , what Democrats really need to negate their disadvantage in the Senate is to find some small-population states that move toward them .
Other than Nevada , they haven ’ t really had any of these recently .
( Montana and Alaska are probably @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s presidential voting has actually been getting redder . )
There ’ s also the chance that the small , predominantly white working-class states of New England — such as Maine , New Hampshire and even Rhode Island — could move against Democrats , which could make their Senate problems even worse , although Maine is polling strongly for Joe Biden this year .
Democrats could also consider adding states to the union .
If both Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico became solidly Democratic states ( not necessarily a safe assumption in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Senate ’ s Republican lean would be reduced from 6.6 points to 4.5 points .
If D.C. and Puerto Rico joined and California were split into three states that ranged from Democratic-leaning to solidly blue , it would deplete further to 2.5 points .
But that also goes to show you how robust the Republicans ’ advantage is .
You could add four Democartic states ( D.C. , Puerto Rico , California/A and California/B ) and the Senate would still have a slight Republican tilt .
Obviously , political coalitions can change over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this article in 2036 and it seems incredibly silly because Mormons have become a super Democratic group and Montana , Utah and Idaho are all blue states … who knows .
But for the time being , the Senate is effectively 6 to 7 percentage points redder than the country as a whole , which means that Democrats are likely to win it only in the event of a near-landslide in their favor nationally .
That ’ s likely to make the Republican majority on the Supreme Court pretty durable .

I don’t have a particularly strong take on how the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg will affect either the presidential election or the race for control of the U.S. Senate. And I’d encourage you to avoid putting too much stock in anybody else’s take for now, too. The very earliest indication is that President Trump’s desire to move full-speed ahead toward naming Ginsburg’s replacement could be unpopular, but that’s based on only one poll.
But here’s what I do know: the Senate is an enormous problem for Democrats given the current political coalitions, in which Democrats are dominant in cities while Republicans triumph in rural areas. And because the Senate is responsible for confirming Supreme Court picks, that means the Supreme Court is a huge problem for Democrats too. Sure, Democrats might win back the Senate this year — indeed, they were slight favorites to do so before the Ginsburg news. But in the long run, they’re likely to lose it more often than not.
Emergency Podcast: The SCOTUS vacancy | FiveThirtyEight
You can probably grasp intuitively that a legislative body which provides as much representation to Wyoming (population: 580,000) as California (population: 39.5 million) will tend to favor rural areas. But it’s a bigger effect than you might realize, so let’s run some numbers. At FiveThirtyEight, our favorite way to distinguish between urban and rural areas is based on using census tracts to estimate how many people live within a 5-mile radius of you. Based on this, we can break every person in the country down into four buckets:
Rural: Less than 25,000 people live within a 5-mile radius of you;
Exurban or small town: Between 25,000 and 100,000 people within a 5-mile radius;
Suburban or small city: Between 100,000 and 250,000 people within a 5-mile radius;
Urban core or large city: More than 250,000 people within a 5-mile radius.
As it happens, the overall U.S. population (including Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico) is split almost exactly evenly between these buckets: 25 percent rural, 23 percent exurban/small town, 27 percent suburban/small city, and 25 percent urban core/large city.
But what does representation look like in the Senate? Since each state has the same number of senators, this is simple to calculate. We can take the urban/rural breakdown for each state and average the 50 states together, as in the table below:
The Senate has a major skew towards rural voters Proportion of population by area across the U.S. as a whole, in each individual state and in the average state (i.e. as reflected in the Senate) State Rural Exurban /Small Town Suburban /Small City Urban Core /Big City U.S. population total* 25% 23% 27% 25% Average state 35 26 25 14 State Rural Exurban /Small Town Suburban /Small City Urban Core /Big City Alaska 53% 18% 28% 0% Alabama 51 33 16 0 Arkansas 58 36 6 0 Arizona 17 19 29 35 California 8 13 26 54 Colorado 21 18 30 31 Connecticut 8 35 45 11 Delaware 24 27 49 0 Florida 13 27 35 26 Georgia 31 29 32 7 Hawaii 23 22 35 19 Iowa 52 29 19 0 Idaho 42 36 22 0 Illinois 19 15 28 38 Indiana 37 27 33 2 Kansas 41 25 31 3 Kentucky 52 20 23 5 Louisiana 41 30 20 9 Massachusetts 6 32 35 27 Maryland 13 22 29 36 Maine 69 25 6 0 Michigan 30 23 28 19 Minnesota 36 19 25 20 Missouri 41 19 31 9 Mississippi 65 29 6 0 Montana 59 41 1 0 North Carolina 37 36 25 1 North Dakota 49 39 12 0 Nebraska 36 17 39 8 New Hampshire 39 42 18 0 New Jersey 5 18 33 44 New Mexico 41 28 26 5 Nevada 13 9 25 53 New York 14 14 15 57 Ohio 26 29 33 12 Oklahoma 44 23 32 1 Oregon 29 21 24 26 Pennsylvania 23 31 25 21 Rhode Island 8 31 22 39 South Carolina 40 41 18 0 South Dakota 65 19 16 0 Tennessee 41 31 28 0 Texas 21 17 34 27 Utah 21 19 41 19 Virginia 28 22 34 17 Vermont 79 21 0 0 Washington 20 22 39 19 Wisconsin 41 27 19 13 West Virginia 64 36 0 0 Wyoming 66 34 0 0 *Totals for the U.S. as a whole include Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico
Because there are a lot of largely rural, low-population states, the average state — which reflects the composition of the Senate — has 35 percent of its population in rural areas and only 14 percent in urban core areas, even though the country as a whole — including dense, high-population states like New York, Texas and California — has about 25 percent of the population in each group. That’s a pretty serious skew. It means that the Senate, de facto, has two or three times as much rural representation as urban core representation … even though there are actually about an equal number of voters in each bucket nationwide.
And of course, this has all sorts of other downstream consequences. Since rural areas tend to be whiter, it means the Senate represents a whiter population, too. In the U.S. as a whole, 60 percent of the population is non-Hispanic white and 40 percent of the population is nonwhite. But in the average state, 68 percent of people are white and 32 percent are nonwhite. It’s almost as if the Senate has turned the clock back by 20 years as far as the racial demographics of the country goes. (In 2000, around 69 percent of the U.S. population consisted of non-Hispanic whites.)
It also means that the median states — the ones that would be decisive in the event of a 50-50 tie in the Senate — are considerably redder than the country as a whole. In the next table, I’ve arranged the states from top to bottom based on how much more or less Republican they were than the national average in the presidential elections in 2016 and 2012.
A red state is most likely to decide the Senate Republican margin or deficit in the last two presidential elections relative to national average by state and a blended average (representing current partisan lean) Rank State 2016 2012 Blended* 1 Wyoming +48.4 +44.7 +47.5 2 West Virginia +43.8 +30.5 +40.5 3 Oklahoma +38.5 +37.4 +38.2 4 Idaho +33.9 +35.5 +34.3 5 North Dakota +37.8 +23.5 +34.2 6 Kentucky +31.9 +26.5 +30.6 7 South Dakota +31.9 +21.9 +29.4 8 Alabama +29.8 +26.0 +28.9 9 Arkansas +29.0 +27.5 +28.6 10 Utah +20.0 +51.7 +27.9 11 Tennessee +28.1 +24.2 +27.1 12 Nebraska +27.1 +25.6 +26.8 13 Kansas +22.5 +25.4 +23.2 14 Louisiana +21.7 +21.1 +21.6 15 Montana +22.3 +17.5 +21.1 16 Indiana +21.1 +14.1 +19.3 17 Mississippi +19.9 +15.4 +18.8 18 Missouri +20.6 +13.2 +18.8 19 Alaska +16.8 +17.8 +17.1 20 South Carolina +16.4 +14.3 +15.9 21 Texas +11.1 +19.6 +13.2 22 Georgia +7.2 +11.7 +8.3 23 Iowa +11.5 -2.0 +8.1 24 Ohio +10.2 +0.9 +7.8 25 Arizona +5.6 +12.9 +7.4 MEDIAN +6.6 26 North Carolina +5.7 +5.9 +5.8 27 Florida +3.3 +3.0 +3.2 28 Pennsylvania +2.8 -1.5 +1.7 29 Wisconsin +2.9 -3.1 +1.4 30 New Hampshire +1.7 -1.7 +0.9 31 Michigan +2.3 -5.6 +0.3 32 Minnesota +0.6 -3.8 -0.5 33 Nevada -0.3 -2.8 -1.0 34 Virginia -3.2 -0.0 -2.4 35 Colorado -2.8 -1.5 -2.5 36 Maine -0.9 -11.4 -3.5 37 New Mexico -6.1 -6.3 -6.2 38 Oregon -8.9 -8.2 -8.7 39 Delaware -9.3 -14.8 -10.7 40 Connecticut -11.5 -13.5 -12.0 41 New Jersey -11.9 -13.9 -12.4 42 Washington -13.6 -10.9 -12.9 43 Illinois -14.8 -13.0 -14.3 44 Rhode Island -13.4 -23.6 -16.0 45 New York -20.4 -24.3 -21.4 46 Massachusetts -25.1 -19.3 -23.7 47 Maryland -24.3 -22.2 -23.8 48 California -27.9 -19.2 -25.7 49 Vermont -24.3 -31.7 -26.2 50 Hawaii -30.1 -38.8 -32.3 * Based on a combination of 75 percent 2016 and 25 percent 2012. This is a simplified version of how FiveThirtyEight’s partisan lean index is calculated.
The median falls in between Arizona and North Carolina, which are, on average, 6.6 percentage points more Republican than the country as a whole. Democrats can compete in these states and are doing so this year, but they’re doing so in an overall political environment which leans Democratic by 6 to 7 percentage points based on the generic congressional ballot and national polls of the presidential race.
In a strong national environment for Democrats, in other words, the Senate can be competitive. Generally speaking, at least. A Democratic-leaning environment wasn’t enough to overcome the Senate’s baseline GOP-lean and a bad map in 2018. Democrats lost seats. And in an average year — and certainly in a year like 2014 where Republicans have the advantage — Democrats face dire prospects in the Senate.
Indeed, despite their current 47-53 deficit in the Senate, Democratic senators actually represent slightly more people than Republicans. If you divide the U.S. population by which party represents it in the Senate — splitting credit 50-50 in the case of states such as Ohio that have one senator from each party — you wind up with 167 million Americans represented by Democratic senators and 160 million by Republicans.
Could the emerging electoral map — with states such as Texas, Arizona and Georgia becoming more purple — help Democrats in the Senate? Actually, while the shifting politics in those states could massively affect the Electoral College, they don’t help Democrats in the Senate that much because they still have only two senators each.
Rather, what Democrats really need to negate their disadvantage in the Senate is to find some small-population states that move toward them. Other than Nevada, they haven’t really had any of these recently. (Montana and Alaska are probably the least-implausible candidates, although Montana’s presidential voting has actually been getting redder.) There’s also the chance that the small, predominantly white working-class states of New England — such as Maine, New Hampshire and even Rhode Island — could move against Democrats, which could make their Senate problems even worse, although Maine is polling strongly for Joe Biden this year.
Democrats could also consider adding states to the union. If both Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico became solidly Democratic states (not necessarily a safe assumption in the case of Puerto Rico), the Senate’s Republican lean would be reduced from 6.6 points to 4.5 points. If D.C. and Puerto Rico joined and California were split into three states that ranged from Democratic-leaning to solidly blue, it would deplete further to 2.5 points. But that also goes to show you how robust the Republicans’ advantage is. You could add four Democartic states (D.C., Puerto Rico, California/A and California/B) and the Senate would still have a slight Republican tilt.
Obviously, political coalitions can change over time. Maybe you’re reading this article in 2036 and it seems incredibly silly because Mormons have become a super Democratic group and Montana, Utah and Idaho are all blue states … who knows. But for the time being, the Senate is effectively 6 to 7 percentage points redder than the country as a whole, which means that Democrats are likely to win it only in the event of a near-landslide in their favor nationally. That’s likely to make the Republican majority on the Supreme Court pretty durable.


fivethirtyeight--2020-09-22--There’s No Such Thing As The ‘Latino Vote’

With only 42 days left until the election , Joe Biden has his work cut out for him with Latino voters .
That ’ s according to his senior adviser Symone Sanders , who has had to answer for why Biden appears to be losing ground among Latinos .
According to a recent Latino Decisions/National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials poll , 65 percent of Latinos plan to vote for Biden or lean toward him , but this is still 14 percentage points lower than the 79 percent of Latino voters who said they supported Clinton in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2016 .
It ’ s true that Latino voters do , as a whole , tend to be more Democratic than Republican , a trend that has only accelerated in recent years .
But they don ’ t vote as a single bloc ( in 2016 , at least 1 in 5 Latino voters still backed Trump ) : How Latinos vote in Florida , for instance , can be very different from how Latinos in the Southwest or Northeast vote .
These differences especially matter due to the size of the Latino @ @ @ @ @ @ @ states .
The size and diversity of this group make it even more difficult for any candidate — even a Democrat — to take Latino voters for granted .
On the one hand , many of the political divides we see play out among Latino voters — along lines of gender , age and religion — are similar to what we observe in other big groups in the electorate , but there are unique considerations here , too , like how long Latino voters have lived in the U.S. or their specific place @ @ @ @ @ @ @ depending on how some of these divides within the Latino community manifest , the “ Latino vote ” could end up splitting in a number of key states — with Biden benefiting in some instances , and Trump benefiting in others .
One of the biggest factors in a Hispanic voter ’ s political identity is how long his or her family has been in the United States .
For instance , foreign-born Latinos and the U.S.-born children of Latino immigrants tend to be more Democratic than Latinos whose families have been in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
According to Latino Decisions ’ s election-eve poll , first-generation Hispanic Americans were 12 percentage points more likely than third- or higher-generation Hispanic Americans to support Clinton in 2016 ( 84 percent vs. 72 percent ) , although both groups strongly supported her over Trump .
“ Many Latino Americans can trace their family history to before the United States was the United States , ” says Melissa Michelson , a professor at Menlo College who studies Latino politics .
( Specifically , 32 percent of Latino registered voters are third generation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Center ’ s 2019 National Survey of Latinos . )
“ And they have a very different perspective from folks who are closer to the immigration experience.
” Gary Segura , a co-founder and senior partner at Latino Decisions , sees both economic and cultural factors at play .
First , higher-generation Hispanic Americans are likelier to be higher income , which nudges them toward the Republican side of the aisle .
But their Hispanic identity also tends to be weaker .
For instance , a 2017 Pew report found that only about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been in the U.S. for at least three generations had parents who took them to Hispanic cultural celebrations or who spoke often about their heritage while growing up , and relatively few live in predominantly Hispanic or Latino neighborhoods .
According to that Pew report , Latinos are more likely than white or Black people to marry people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds — which means that Latinos with deeper family roots in the U.S. are also more likely to be of mixed ancestry .
Simply put , the longer a Hispanic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the likelier they are to have assimilated — and vote more like white Americans , who lean toward the Republican Party .
On the flip side , foreign-born Latinos and their U.S.-born children — groups that make up about one-third of Latino registered voters each , per Pew — tend to have stronger identities as Latinos or immigrants .
That , in turn , makes them likelier to be turned off by President Trump ’ s anti-immigrant rhetoric , which political scientist Betina Cutaia Wilkinson told FiveThirtyEight “ has definitely brought together Latinos @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the past.
” In a survey of the same group of first-generation immigrants conducted before and after the 2016 election , political scientists Michael Jones-Correa and James McCann found that respondents ’ fear about the deportation of friends or family members rose after Trump became president , regardless of whether they were personally at risk of being removed from the country .
And first- and second-generation Hispanic Americans may be especially likely to have a close friend or family member who is not a citizen , or even undocumented .
That said , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can be overstated .
In that Latino Decisions/NALEO poll , immigration was tied as the sixth most important issue Latinos wanted the next president to address ( that said , “ addressing racism and discrimination ” ranked third ) .
Instead , Latinos ’ priorities tend to mirror the general population ’ s : The coronavirus ranked first , followed by health care .
Relatedly , Latinos who speak Spanish as their primary language are likelier to vote Democratic than those who primarily speak English .
It ’ s possible that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immigrant generation — Spanish speakers are also likely closer to the immigration experience .
Mark Hugo Lopez , Pew ’ s director of global migration and demography research , conducted a multivariable analysis and found that , once generation was controlled for , language was not a statistically significant determinant of Hispanic partisanship .
But Michelson noted that language is intimately tied to assimilation — and media consumption .
Spanish-language news , in particular , encourages viewers to think of themselves as part of a pan-ethnic Latino group living in the United States @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coverage can shape the way people think about issues like immigration , even if they haven ’ t been personally affected .
Latinos tend to identify with their specific nationality first , and as Latino second .
The Hispanic experience can be very different depending on one ’ s place of origin .
Puerto Ricans may not have all that much in common with Mexican Americans , who may find it hard to relate to Cuban Americans .
This , in turn , can affect how and why they vote .
Take Cuban @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the national Latino population , they don ’ t seem like an influential group at first blush — but they are disproportionately concentrated in the crucial swing state of Florida , where they make up a plurality ( 29 percent ) of the Hispanic population .
After Fidel Castro and his communist regime came to power in 1959 , Cuban Americans began fleeing to the U.S. in droves and embraced the Republican Party , which was perceived as tougher on communism throughout most of the Cold War ; in addition , many Cuban @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 .
But Cuban Americans have been drifting toward Democrats in recent elections — they basically split their support between the two candidates in 2016 .
That , it turns out , is due to generational changes : According to an analysis by EquisLabs , a data firm that focuses on the Latino vote , voters who personally fled Cuba are still strongly Republican , while the growing share of Cuban Americans born in the U.S. actually lean Democratic .
However , there ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comeback of sorts with Cuban Americans this year .
“ Trump has reversed Obama ’ s policies on Cuba and taken a hardened stance on Venezuela , ” whose socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro is seen as a modern-day Castro , said political scientist Dario Moreno .
“ That has improved his standing with Cubans.
” Indeed , a recent EquisLabs poll of Florida found Trump leading Biden among Cuban Americans , 54 percent to 37 percent .
Other Latino origin groups lean toward Democrats to varying degrees .
Mexican Americans — who , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent to 15 percent in 2016 — basically singlehandedly drive the narrative that Latinos are core Democratic voters thanks to their overwhelming numbers : 63 percent of the national Latino population is of Mexican descent , and that figure is even higher in swing states like Arizona , Nevada and Texas .
According to Florida International University Professor Eduardo Gamarra , the group has trended toward Democrats in large part because of the clear contrast between the parties on racial and immigration issues .
Like Mexican Americans , Puerto Ricans are solidly Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 79 percent to 19 percent .
However , there is a sense that Puerto Ricans have yet to live up to their potential for Democrats .
“ Puerto Rican political participation on the island is above 80 percent , ” Segura said , but “ Puerto Rican turnout on the mainland is lower than any other subgroup of Latinos.
” And according to Moreno , Puerto Ricans in Florida ( where they make up 21 percent of the Hispanic population , as opposed to just under 10 percent nationally ) are less Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ While Trump has a fraught relationship with the commonwealth , Moreno says that might not matter much to Florida ’ s Puerto Ricans because many left the island precisely because they have a negative view of the Puerto Rican government .
There is little research on the political leanings of the remaining Latino nationalities — mostly because they are too small to poll easily .
However , combined , they may have small but significant voting power : For example , Central American origin groups like Salvadoran Americans , Guatemalan Americans , Honduran @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up a decent share of the national ( 9 percent ) and Floridian ( 11 percent ) Hispanic population .
Clinton won 82 percent of Central American voters in 2016 , per Latino Decisions , and Biden could do even better this year .
Central Americans “ have really been damaged by the president ’ s immigration policy , ” such as his efforts to end Temporary Protected Status , explained Moreno .
“ This is where Democrats will have some opportunities.
” Finally , several experts told FiveThirtyEight that Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ endearing him to Venezuelan American voters , but they also cautioned against making too much of it .
According to Gamarra ’ s polling , Trump is still under 50 percent with Venezuelan Americans .
More importantly , they represent a mere drop in the bucket of the broader electorate : They make up just 3.7 percent of the Hispanic population in Florida and 0.7 percent of the Hispanic population nationally .
Religion is another fissure within the Latino community that often matters a lot politically — although not in the ways you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pew Research Center shows that slightly less than half ( 47 percent ) of Hispanic adults identified as Catholic in 2018 , while 24 percent were Protestant and 23 percent were religiously unaffiliated .
That means Latinos are about as likely to be nonreligious as the American population as a whole — and the uptick in the share of religiously unaffiliated people is largely coming at the expense of the Catholic population , which has been losing ground in the past 10 years .
The fact that Latino Catholics make up a smaller @ @ @ @ @ @ @ downside for Biden , since Hispanic Catholic voters are one of the most Democratic religious groups around , and Biden ’ s Catholicism might be a motivator for some Catholic voters this year .
In general , though , the fact that Catholic voters mostly seem to be heading into the nonreligious — rather than the Protestant — column isn ’ t a bad thing for Democrats , since nonreligious voters are moving steadily into the Democratic camp with no real outreach from the party or the candidate , and Latinos are no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Latinos are identifying as liberals , and that ’ s being driven by the growth of the ‘ nones , ’ ” said Juhem Navarro-Rivera , the political research director at Socioanalítica Research , a consulting firm that specializes in Latino and Hispanic politics .
But the group among which Biden is most liable to struggle — and where Trump may have the most success picking up or maintaining support — is among evangelicals , who make up the vast majority of Latino Protestants .
Navarro-Rivera and other experts told us that Latino @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Catholic or nonreligious Latinos , although they ’ re nowhere near as conservative as white evangelical Protestants .
According to Latino Decisions ’ s 2016 election-eve poll , 60 percent of Latinos who identify as born-again Christians ( a group that overlaps heavily with evangelicals ) supported Clinton , while 37 percent supported Trump .
By contrast , 82 percent of Hispanic Catholics supported Clinton and only 15 percent supported Trump .
“ Latino evangelicals are more conservative , but they ’ re not heavily Republican — really , they ’ re a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Navarro-Rivera .
It ’ s been difficult , though , for Republicans to make more inroads with this group as the share of Latinos who are Protestant has held steady for at least the past decade .
Not to mention , the party has largely stood behind Trump ’ s anti-immigrant rhetoric , and that might give some Latino evangelicals pause .
“ Immigration is a complicated issue for [ Latino evangelicals ] , because they are more conservative generally but many are immigrants or work with immigrants , ” Navarro-Rivera said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ complicate the way they approach these issues.
” Latinos are also divided by age and gender The rising share of Latinos who are nonreligious highlights another cleavage that could matter a lot electorally : age .
Like religiously unaffiliated Americans overall , nonreligious Latinos are overwhelmingly likely to be young .
And the population as a whole is young , too : According to a Pew analysis from 2018 , 61 percent of Latinos were under the age of 35 .
Most young Latinos are also U.S. born , which means they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tend to be more liberal — but less loyal to the Democratic Party — than older generations .
But it ’ s hard to untangle how much of these differences are unique to Latinos or just a reflection of broader divisions within the electorate .
“ I think a lot of younger Latinos ’ worldview is shaped by a sense of the Democratic Party ’ s failures , ” said Bernard Fraga , a political science professor at Emory University who studies Latino politics .
“ In their lifetimes they ’ ve seen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and a lot of compromising and settling for second best.
” That , according to Fraga , helps explain why young Latinos are more dissatisfied with mainstream Democratic candidates than their parents or grandparents .
And it emphasizes why why this might be a difficult group for Biden to reach .
As we wrote during the Democratic primary , Sanders benefited from his campaign ’ s extensive outreach to Latinos — particularly young Latinos — in states like Nevada and California , while Biden struggled to connect with this group .
Gender @ @ @ @ @ @ @ matters for Latinos — but maybe not in a way that ’ s so different from Americans as a whole .
Over the past few years , turnout among Hispanic women has risen , and they ’ ve simultaneously become an even more reliable Democratic voting bloc .
Lopez noted that education could be at least partially driving this shift : The share of Hispanic women with a four-year college degree has risen to 22 percent , up from only 14 percent about a decade ago .
Hispanic men are also increasingly likely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but not at the same rate as women .
But he also noted that these trends don ’ t significantly differ from those seen in female voters overall .
And most of the experts we talked with agreed that this is probably an area where Latinos are largely being influenced by the same forces that are shaping the entire American electorate .
The diversity of the Latino community not only shows why many voters still vote Republican , but also highlights the need for campaign mobilization efforts tailored to different corners of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like Biden who are pretty much guaranteed a solid majority of the Hispanic vote .
Arguably , with efforts like his cultivation of Cuban American voters , Trump has done this more effectively than Biden , who has been criticized for months for his lack of a comprehensive plan to reach Latino voters .
It almost certainly won ’ t be enough for Trump to win the Latino vote outright , but he may be able to hold onto a greater share of the Latino vote as a result .

With only 42 days left until the election, Joe Biden has his work cut out for him with Latino voters. That’s according to his senior adviser Symone Sanders, who has had to answer for why Biden appears to be losing ground among Latinos. According to a recent Latino Decisions/National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials poll, 65 percent of Latinos plan to vote for Biden or lean toward him, but this is still 14 percentage points lower than the 79 percent of Latino voters who said they supported Clinton in the pollster’s national election-eve poll in 2016.
It’s true that Latino voters do, as a whole, tend to be more Democratic than Republican, a trend that has only accelerated in recent years. But they don’t vote as a single bloc (in 2016, at least 1 in 5 Latino voters still backed Trump): How Latinos vote in Florida, for instance, can be very different from how Latinos in the Southwest or Northeast vote. These differences especially matter due to the size of the Latino population in a number of key swing states.
Top 10 states by share of the citizen voting age population that is Hispanic or Latino State Hispanic share of CVAP New Mexico 42.2% Texas 29.4 California 29.2 Arizona 22.7 Florida 19.4 Nevada 18.4 Colorado 15.2 New Jersey 14.4 New York 14.3 Connecticut 11.6 Shaded states are those with a greater than 1 percent chance of deciding the 2020 presidential election, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast as of 4 p.m. on Sept. 21. Source: American Community Survey
The size and diversity of this group make it even more difficult for any candidate — even a Democrat — to take Latino voters for granted. On the one hand, many of the political divides we see play out among Latino voters — along lines of gender, age and religion — are similar to what we observe in other big groups in the electorate, but there are unique considerations here, too, like how long Latino voters have lived in the U.S. or their specific place of origin. And this year, depending on how some of these divides within the Latino community manifest, the “Latino vote” could end up splitting in a number of key states — with Biden benefiting in some instances, and Trump benefiting in others.
Distance from the immigration experience matters
One of the biggest factors in a Hispanic voter’s political identity is how long his or her family has been in the United States. For instance, foreign-born Latinos and the U.S.-born children of Latino immigrants tend to be more Democratic than Latinos whose families have been in the U.S. for at least three generations. According to Latino Decisions’s election-eve poll, first-generation Hispanic Americans were 12 percentage points more likely than third- or higher-generation Hispanic Americans to support Clinton in 2016 (84 percent vs. 72 percent), although both groups strongly supported her over Trump.
“Many Latino Americans can trace their family history to before the United States was the United States,” says Melissa Michelson, a professor at Menlo College who studies Latino politics. (Specifically, 32 percent of Latino registered voters are third generation or higher, according to Pew Research Center’s 2019 National Survey of Latinos.) “And they have a very different perspective from folks who are closer to the immigration experience.”
Gary Segura, a co-founder and senior partner at Latino Decisions, sees both economic and cultural factors at play. First, higher-generation Hispanic Americans are likelier to be higher income, which nudges them toward the Republican side of the aisle. But their Hispanic identity also tends to be weaker. For instance, a 2017 Pew report found that only about one-third of self-identified Hispanics whose families have been in the U.S. for at least three generations had parents who took them to Hispanic cultural celebrations or who spoke often about their heritage while growing up, and relatively few live in predominantly Hispanic or Latino neighborhoods. According to that Pew report, Latinos are more likely than white or Black people to marry people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds — which means that Latinos with deeper family roots in the U.S. are also more likely to be of mixed ancestry. Simply put, the longer a Hispanic family has lived in the U.S., the likelier they are to have assimilated — and vote more like white Americans, who lean toward the Republican Party.
On the flip side, foreign-born Latinos and their U.S.-born children — groups that make up about one-third of Latino registered voters each, per Pew — tend to have stronger identities as Latinos or immigrants. That, in turn, makes them likelier to be turned off by President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, which political scientist Betina Cutaia Wilkinson told FiveThirtyEight “has definitely brought together Latinos more than we would have seen in the past.”
In a survey of the same group of first-generation immigrants conducted before and after the 2016 election, political scientists Michael Jones-Correa and James McCann found that respondents’ fear about the deportation of friends or family members rose after Trump became president, regardless of whether they were personally at risk of being removed from the country. And first- and second-generation Hispanic Americans may be especially likely to have a close friend or family member who is not a citizen, or even undocumented.
Share of poll respondents saying each issue is most important for the next president to address Issue Share of Respondents Coronavirus 49% Health care costs 30 Racism/discrimination 26 Jobs/wages 21 Criminal justice reform 17 Stopping Trump 16 Immigration reform 16 Anti-Latino/anti-immigrant discrimination 15 Climate change 15 Lower taxes 10 Mass shootings/gun policy 8 Stopping Biden 7 Border security 7 Reducing crime 6 Improving education 6 Affordable housing 6 Terrorism 5 College costs 4 Women’s reproductive health 4 Lower government spending 3 Limiting abortion 2 Other 3 Respondents could give up to three answers. Source: Latino Decisions/National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials
That said, the importance of immigration to Hispanic voters can be overstated. In that Latino Decisions/NALEO poll, immigration was tied as the sixth most important issue Latinos wanted the next president to address (that said, “addressing racism and discrimination” ranked third). Instead, Latinos’ priorities tend to mirror the general population’s: The coronavirus ranked first, followed by health care.
Relatedly, Latinos who speak Spanish as their primary language are likelier to vote Democratic than those who primarily speak English. It’s possible that’s just a byproduct of the divide by immigrant generation — Spanish speakers are also likely closer to the immigration experience. Mark Hugo Lopez, Pew’s director of global migration and demography research, conducted a multivariable analysis and found that, once generation was controlled for, language was not a statistically significant determinant of Hispanic partisanship.
But Michelson noted that language is intimately tied to assimilation — and media consumption. Spanish-language news, in particular, encourages viewers to think of themselves as part of a pan-ethnic Latino group living in the United States, Michelson said. That kind of coverage can shape the way people think about issues like immigration, even if they haven’t been personally affected.
Ethnicity also factors into partisanship
Latinos tend to identify with their specific nationality first, and as Latino second. The Hispanic experience can be very different depending on one’s place of origin. Puerto Ricans may not have all that much in common with Mexican Americans, who may find it hard to relate to Cuban Americans. This, in turn, can affect how and why they vote.
Take Cuban Americans. At only 4 percent of the national Latino population, they don’t seem like an influential group at first blush — but they are disproportionately concentrated in the crucial swing state of Florida, where they make up a plurality (29 percent) of the Hispanic population. After Fidel Castro and his communist regime came to power in 1959, Cuban Americans began fleeing to the U.S. in droves and embraced the Republican Party, which was perceived as tougher on communism throughout most of the Cold War; in addition, many Cuban Americans blamed Democratic President John F. Kennedy for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
But Cuban Americans have been drifting toward Democrats in recent elections — they basically split their support between the two candidates in 2016. That, it turns out, is due to generational changes: According to an analysis by EquisLabs, a data firm that focuses on the Latino vote, voters who personally fled Cuba are still strongly Republican, while the growing share of Cuban Americans born in the U.S. actually lean Democratic.
However, there’s mounting evidence that Trump is making a comeback of sorts with Cuban Americans this year. “Trump has reversed Obama’s policies on Cuba and taken a hardened stance on Venezuela,” whose socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro is seen as a modern-day Castro, said political scientist Dario Moreno. “That has improved his standing with Cubans.” Indeed, a recent EquisLabs poll of Florida found Trump leading Biden among Cuban Americans, 54 percent to 37 percent.
Other Latino origin groups lean toward Democrats to varying degrees. Mexican Americans — who, per Latino Decisions, supported Clinton 81 percent to 15 percent in 2016 — basically singlehandedly drive the narrative that Latinos are core Democratic voters thanks to their overwhelming numbers: 63 percent of the national Latino population is of Mexican descent, and that figure is even higher in swing states like Arizona, Nevada and Texas. According to Florida International University Professor Eduardo Gamarra, the group has trended toward Democrats in large part because of the clear contrast between the parties on racial and immigration issues.
Like Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans are solidly Democratic: Latino Decisions found they supported Clinton 79 percent to 19 percent. However, there is a sense that Puerto Ricans have yet to live up to their potential for Democrats. “Puerto Rican political participation on the island is above 80 percent,” Segura said, but “Puerto Rican turnout on the mainland is lower than any other subgroup of Latinos.” And according to Moreno, Puerto Ricans in Florida (where they make up 21 percent of the Hispanic population, as opposed to just under 10 percent nationally) are less Democratic than their counterparts in the Northeast. While Trump has a fraught relationship with the commonwealth, Moreno says that might not matter much to Florida’s Puerto Ricans because many left the island precisely because they have a negative view of the Puerto Rican government.
There is little research on the political leanings of the remaining Latino nationalities — mostly because they are too small to poll easily. However, combined, they may have small but significant voting power: For example, Central American origin groups like Salvadoran Americans, Guatemalan Americans, Honduran Americans and Nicaraguan Americans combine to make up a decent share of the national (9 percent) and Floridian (11 percent) Hispanic population. Clinton won 82 percent of Central American voters in 2016, per Latino Decisions, and Biden could do even better this year. Central Americans “have really been damaged by the president’s immigration policy,” such as his efforts to end Temporary Protected Status, explained Moreno. “This is where Democrats will have some opportunities.”
Finally, several experts told FiveThirtyEight that Trump’s hardline stance toward Venezuela appears to be endearing him to Venezuelan American voters, but they also cautioned against making too much of it. According to Gamarra’s polling, Trump is still under 50 percent with Venezuelan Americans. More importantly, they represent a mere drop in the bucket of the broader electorate: They make up just 3.7 percent of the Hispanic population in Florida and 0.7 percent of the Hispanic population nationally.
Latino evangelicals are a swing group
Religion is another fissure within the Latino community that often matters a lot politically — although not in the ways you might expect. Recent data from the Pew Research Center shows that slightly less than half (47 percent) of Hispanic adults identified as Catholic in 2018, while 24 percent were Protestant and 23 percent were religiously unaffiliated. That means Latinos are about as likely to be nonreligious as the American population as a whole — and the uptick in the share of religiously unaffiliated people is largely coming at the expense of the Catholic population, which has been losing ground in the past 10 years.
The fact that Latino Catholics make up a smaller share of the population is a potential downside for Biden, since Hispanic Catholic voters are one of the most Democratic religious groups around, and Biden’s Catholicism might be a motivator for some Catholic voters this year. In general, though, the fact that Catholic voters mostly seem to be heading into the nonreligious — rather than the Protestant — column isn’t a bad thing for Democrats, since nonreligious voters are moving steadily into the Democratic camp with no real outreach from the party or the candidate, and Latinos are no exception. “An increasing share of Latinos are identifying as liberals, and that’s being driven by the growth of the ‘nones,’” said Juhem Navarro-Rivera, the political research director at Socioanalítica Research, a consulting firm that specializes in Latino and Hispanic politics.
But the group among which Biden is most liable to struggle — and where Trump may have the most success picking up or maintaining support — is among evangelicals, who make up the vast majority of Latino Protestants. Navarro-Rivera and other experts told us that Latino evangelicals tend to be more right-leaning than Catholic or nonreligious Latinos, although they’re nowhere near as conservative as white evangelical Protestants. According to Latino Decisions’s 2016 election-eve poll, 60 percent of Latinos who identify as born-again Christians (a group that overlaps heavily with evangelicals) supported Clinton, while 37 percent supported Trump. By contrast, 82 percent of Hispanic Catholics supported Clinton and only 15 percent supported Trump.
“Latino evangelicals are more conservative, but they’re not heavily Republican — really, they’re a kind of swing group,” said Navarro-Rivera.
It’s been difficult, though, for Republicans to make more inroads with this group as the share of Latinos who are Protestant has held steady for at least the past decade. Not to mention, the party has largely stood behind Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, and that might give some Latino evangelicals pause. “Immigration is a complicated issue for [Latino evangelicals], because they are more conservative generally but many are immigrants or work with immigrants,” Navarro-Rivera said. “So there are these cross-pressures that complicate the way they approach these issues.”
Latinos are also divided by age and gender
The rising share of Latinos who are nonreligious highlights another cleavage that could matter a lot electorally: age. Like religiously unaffiliated Americans overall, nonreligious Latinos are overwhelmingly likely to be young. And the population as a whole is young, too: According to a Pew analysis from 2018, 61 percent of Latinos were under the age of 35. Most young Latinos are also U.S. born, which means they’re eligible to vote.
Young Latinos tend to be more liberal — but less loyal to the Democratic Party — than older generations. But it’s hard to untangle how much of these differences are unique to Latinos or just a reflection of broader divisions within the electorate. “I think a lot of younger Latinos’ worldview is shaped by a sense of the Democratic Party’s failures,” said Bernard Fraga, a political science professor at Emory University who studies Latino politics. “In their lifetimes they’ve seen a failure to deliver on immigration reform, and a lot of compromising and settling for second best.” That, according to Fraga, helps explain why young Latinos are more dissatisfied with mainstream Democratic candidates than their parents or grandparents. And it emphasizes why why this might be a difficult group for Biden to reach. As we wrote during the Democratic primary, Sanders benefited from his campaign’s extensive outreach to Latinos — particularly young Latinos — in states like Nevada and California, while Biden struggled to connect with this group.
Gender is an example of another division that matters for Latinos — but maybe not in a way that’s so different from Americans as a whole. Over the past few years, turnout among Hispanic women has risen, and they’ve simultaneously become an even more reliable Democratic voting bloc. Lopez noted that education could be at least partially driving this shift: The share of Hispanic women with a four-year college degree has risen to 22 percent, up from only 14 percent about a decade ago. Hispanic men are also increasingly likely to go to college, Lopez said, but not at the same rate as women. But he also noted that these trends don’t significantly differ from those seen in female voters overall. And most of the experts we talked with agreed that this is probably an area where Latinos are largely being influenced by the same forces that are shaping the entire American electorate.
The diversity of the Latino community not only shows why many voters still vote Republican, but also highlights the need for campaign mobilization efforts tailored to different corners of the Latino community, even for candidates like Biden who are pretty much guaranteed a solid majority of the Hispanic vote. Arguably, with efforts like his cultivation of Cuban American voters, Trump has done this more effectively than Biden, who has been criticized for months for his lack of a comprehensive plan to reach Latino voters. It almost certainly won’t be enough for Trump to win the Latino vote outright, but he may be able to hold onto a greater share of the Latino vote as a result.


fivethirtyeight--2020-09-22--What The Supreme Court’s Unusually Big Jump To The Right Might Look Like

With the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , President Trump will have his third opportunity to nominate a justice to the country ’ s highest court .
This nomination , however , has the highest stakes yet for Trump , the Republican Party and the conservative legal movement .
If successful , it may cement a 6-3 conservative majority on the court that could fundamentally push law in the United States to the right .
Of course , Trump hasn ’ t yet announced who his nominee will be , although he ’ s pledged to appoint @ @ @ @ @ @ @ possibilities somewhat .
But it ’ s hard to predict how any given candidate ’ s ideology will compare to the current justices — let alone how she will rule once she joins the court .
If we assume that Trump will nominate one of a handful of people who have repeatedly appeared in reports about his short list , though , Ginsburg ’ s replacement will almost certainly represent one of the three biggest ideological shifts on the court since 1953 : It ’ s really , really rare for presidents to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s center of gravity with a single nomination .
But that ’ s exactly what Trump ’ s replacement for Ginsburg is poised to do .
There are only two other moments in modern Supreme Court history that are comparable to this one : the replacement of Justice Thurgood Marshall with Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991 and the replacement of Chief Justice Earl Warren with Chief Justice Warren Burger in 1969 .
Of course , it ’ s important to underscore that the data we have for Ginsburg ’ s potential replacement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thing , we are relying on Judicial Common Space scores , which are based on the ideology of the senators who were instrumental in getting these judges appointed or the nominating president , and not based on the judges ’ actual words or actions once they got there .
We looked at the JCS scores for four federal judges who have all floated to the top of short-lists for the nomination : Amy Coney Barrett , Barbara Lagoa , Allison Jones Rushing and Joan Larsen .
Each of these judges would bring something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ speaking , the effect is the same no matter who Trump chooses : All of these nominations would result in a far more conservative justice taking the place of the court ’ s second-most liberal justice .
According to their JCS scores , all four fall between Justice Neil Gorsuch and Thomas ideologically — that is , somewhere in the vicinity of Justice Samuel Alito , who is currently the second-most conservative justice on the court .
This is a pivotal moment for the court , but it ’ s not unprecedented .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ this juncture might share a number of similarities with the other two huge swings that have occurred since 1953 .
For example , when Marshall retired , he was one of the most liberal justices on the court .
But with his departure , President George H.W .
Bush was able to replace the first Black Supreme Court justice with Thomas , another Black legal star who was Marshall ’ s polar opposite in every other respect — and has consistently been the most conservative justice on the court since he joined .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ginsburg ’ s replacement will be , but it ’ s likely to be a woman who ’ s the inverse of Ginsburg in many ways — including her stalwart support for abortion rights .
Additionally , when President Richard Nixon nominated Warren Burger to replace Earl Warren as chief justice , he effectively ended the 15-year liberal era that came to define Warren ’ s tenure .
Similarly , the Roberts court might be about to undergo its own transformation , as any of the potential nominees on Trump ’ s short @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right of Chief Justice John Roberts , knocking him out of the ideological center of the court and limiting his ability to serve as a moderating force .
A judge like Barrett or Lagoa , who appear to be the front-runners , could end up being even more staunchly conservative than Justice Gorsuch — who has flipped to the liberals a handful of times during his three years on the court — or Justice Brett Kavanaugh .
In fact , even if Trump ’ s nominee is on the less conservative end of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have a much bigger impact on the makeup of the court than either Gorsuch or Kavanaugh , who have brought their own distinctive way of thinking about the law to the Supreme Court but didn ’ t differ that dramaticatically from their the justices who previously filled their seats .
Part of Gorsuch ’ s appeal when he was appointed to the court in 2017 was in his judicial similarities to his predecessor , Justice Antonin Scalia .
And while the replacement of Justice Anthony Kennedy with Kavanaugh in 2018 got a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s swing vote with a reliably conservative one , the two were not actually that ideologically far apart .
And that ’ s why this Supreme Court nomination fight will be such a big deal .
It ’ s hard to figure out exactly how conservative or liberal a given person actually is before they join the court , and it ’ s also hard to predict how they ’ ll rule once they get there .
And there ’ s always the possibility that judges could drift to the left or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the nation ’ s highest court .
But we can see from this analysis that whoever the nominee is , they ’ re likely to change the court in ways that we ’ ve only seen a handful of times in modern history .
Almost no president gets that kind of opportunity .
And that ’ s why Trump — and the Republican-controlled Senate — may be willing to risk a lot to make it happen .

With the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Trump will have his third opportunity to nominate a justice to the country’s highest court. This nomination, however, has the highest stakes yet for Trump, the Republican Party and the conservative legal movement. If successful, it may cement a 6-3 conservative majority on the court that could fundamentally push law in the United States to the right.
Of course, Trump hasn’t yet announced who his nominee will be, although he’s pledged to appoint a woman, which does narrow the possibilities somewhat. But it’s hard to predict how any given candidate’s ideology will compare to the current justices — let alone how she will rule once she joins the court. If we assume that Trump will nominate one of a handful of people who have repeatedly appeared in reports about his short list, though, Ginsburg’s replacement will almost certainly represent one of the three biggest ideological shifts on the court since 1953:
It’s really, really rare for presidents to be able to seismically shift the court’s center of gravity with a single nomination. But that’s exactly what Trump’s replacement for Ginsburg is poised to do. There are only two other moments in modern Supreme Court history that are comparable to this one: the replacement of Justice Thurgood Marshall with Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991 and the replacement of Chief Justice Earl Warren with Chief Justice Warren Burger in 1969.
Big swings in the court’s make-up are rare Supreme Court justice replacements by the biggest changes in ideological rank, where 1 is most liberal and 9 is most conservative the Seven biggest shifts on the supreme Court term Justice Rank Replacement rank change 1991 Marshall 1 Thomas 9 +8 1969 Warren 2 Burger 9 +7 2020 Ginsburg 2 Trump nominee ? +5/+6* 1969 Fortas 3 Blackmun 8 +5 1990 Brennan 2 Souter 5 +3 1962 Frankfurter 8 Goldberg 5 -3 1965 Goldberg 5 Fortas 2 -3 *Estimated change
When there were more than nine justices in a term, we dropped the justice(s) who voted in the fewest cases (e.g. O’Connor in 2005, Douglas in 1975). Source: Martin-Quinn scores
Of course, it’s important to underscore that the data we have for Ginsburg’s potential replacement isn’t perfect. For one thing, we are relying on Judicial Common Space scores, which are based on the ideology of the senators who were instrumental in getting these judges appointed or the nominating president, and not based on the judges’ actual words or actions once they got there.
We looked at the JCS scores for four federal judges who have all floated to the top of short-lists for the nomination: Amy Coney Barrett, Barbara Lagoa, Allison Jones Rushing and Joan Larsen. Each of these judges would bring something different to the court, but broadly speaking, the effect is the same no matter who Trump chooses: All of these nominations would result in a far more conservative justice taking the place of the court’s second-most liberal justice. According to their JCS scores, all four fall between Justice Neil Gorsuch and Thomas ideologically — that is, somewhere in the vicinity of Justice Samuel Alito, who is currently the second-most conservative justice on the court.
This is a pivotal moment for the court, but it’s not unprecedented. In fact, it looks as if this juncture might share a number of similarities with the other two huge swings that have occurred since 1953. For example, when Marshall retired, he was one of the most liberal justices on the court. But with his departure, President George H.W. Bush was able to replace the first Black Supreme Court justice with Thomas, another Black legal star who was Marshall’s polar opposite in every other respect — and has consistently been the most conservative justice on the court since he joined. We don’t yet know who Ginsburg’s replacement will be, but it’s likely to be a woman who’s the inverse of Ginsburg in many ways — including her stalwart support for abortion rights.
Additionally, when President Richard Nixon nominated Warren Burger to replace Earl Warren as chief justice, he effectively ended the 15-year liberal era that came to define Warren’s tenure. Similarly, the Roberts court might be about to undergo its own transformation, as any of the potential nominees on Trump’s short lists would almost certainly land to the right of Chief Justice John Roberts, knocking him out of the ideological center of the court and limiting his ability to serve as a moderating force. A judge like Barrett or Lagoa, who appear to be the front-runners, could end up being even more staunchly conservative than Justice Gorsuch — who has flipped to the liberals a handful of times during his three years on the court — or Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
In fact, even if Trump’s nominee is on the less conservative end of our estimated range, she will likely have a much bigger impact on the makeup of the court than either Gorsuch or Kavanaugh, who have brought their own distinctive way of thinking about the law to the Supreme Court but didn’t differ that dramatically from the justices who previously filled their seats. Part of Gorsuch’s appeal when he was appointed to the court in 2017 was in his judicial similarities to his predecessor, Justice Antonin Scalia. And while the replacement of Justice Anthony Kennedy with Kavanaugh in 2018 got a lot of attention for supposedly replacing the court’s swing vote with a reliably conservative one, the two were not actually that ideologically far apart.
And that’s why this Supreme Court nomination fight will be such a big deal. It’s hard to figure out exactly how conservative or liberal a given person actually is before they join the court, and it’s also hard to predict how they’ll rule once they get there. And there’s always the possibility that judges could drift to the left or right once they have a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court. But we can see from this analysis that whoever the nominee is, they’re likely to change the court in ways that we’ve only seen a handful of times in modern history. Almost no president gets that kind of opportunity. And that’s why Trump — and the Republican-controlled Senate — may be willing to risk a lot to make it happen.
What comes next in the fight to fill Ginsburgâs seat: FiveThirtyEight


fivethirtyeight--2020-09-22--Election Update: The Senate Races The Supreme Court Fight May (Or May Not) Affect

Of all the massively consequential questions raised by the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , one of the more callous — but nevertheless important — is , “ How does it affect the 2020 election ?
” The short answer is that nobody knows ; it ’ s simply too early to tell .
But we can use the FiveThirtyEight forecast to lay down a marker and advance a few plausible theories .
As of 3 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday , Sept. 22 , Joe Biden has a 77 in 100 chance of winning the presidential election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 22 in 100 chance .
Despite the fact that polling has been telling the same old story , Biden ’ s chances have ticked up in recent weeks , largely because we are getting closer to the election and Biden is continuing to get some good state polls .
But could the Supreme Court opening shake up the race ?
Preliminary evidence suggests probably not .
In a SurveyMonkey/Insider poll conducted immediately after Ginsburg ’ s death , only 5 percent of registered voters said the vacant seat made them less certain of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ poll , 30 percent ( most of them Democrats ) said it made them more likely to vote for Biden , about the same as the 25 percent ( most of them Republicans ) who said it made them more likely to vote for Trump .
A plurality ( 38 percent ) said it would have no impact on their presidential vote .
However , the Senate — where Democrats have a 60 in 100 chance of taking control — may be a different story .
Several vulnerable members of that chamber are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of whether to vote to confirm Trump ’ s soon-to-be-announced Supreme Court nominee .
We still don ’ t know what effect — if any — that development could have on Senate races , but one plausible theory is that the Supreme Court vacancy will make partisanship — as expressed by a person ’ s presidential vote — an even more important consideration .
This may have been the case in the 2018 elections , when now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh ’ s confirmation vote appeared to consolidate Republican support in red states and Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course , this “ coming home to the base ” might have happened regardless . )
If that happens in 2020 , how might it change the Senate landscape ?
I used our forecast ’ s projected vote margins to see which competitive Senate races were most out of sync with the expected presidential results in that state .
If the “ Kavanaugh effect ” theory is true , then these are the states where we ’ d expect it to have the most impact .
The biggest gap between the forecasted Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Alabama , where Democratic Sen. Doug Jones is only a minor underdog despite the state being a conservative bastion .
But the Supreme Court vacancy may put Jones in an even tougher spot : Alabama is one of the most anti-abortion states in the nation , so it wouldn ’ t be surprising if putting a pro-life judge on the Supreme Court is a top priority for many voters there .
And if Jones votes against Trump ’ s nominee ( he has already said he believes the next president should choose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has the potential to really hurt his reelection prospects .
The Supreme Court confirmation battle could also make life more difficult for Republican Sen. Susan Collins , who is in a toss-up race in a state ( Maine ) that we forecast will vote for Biden by 12 points .
Collins ’ s vote to confirm Kavanaugh in 2018 was already a major factor in shifting Collins ’ s image from a moderate to a more partisan figure , so any reminder of her Supreme Court voting record is unlikely to help her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democratic support to win reelection ) .
That said , Collins is one of the few Republican senators who has already come out against filling Ginsburg ’ s seat before the election ( although that hasn ’ t stopped her Democratic opponent from dinging her on judicial appointments ) .
The Supreme Court issue could also help vulnerable Republican incumbents .
For instance , Sen. Steve Daines is only a slight favorite over Democratic Gov .
Steve Bullock despite Trump ’ s forecasted 10-point lead in Montana .
Bullock has made the race @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but Daines is already trying to use the Supreme Court issue to his advantage .
Daines has called for a vote on a new justice now , saying Trump will nominate “ the type of justice Montanans want on the Supreme Court.
” But , he added , “ If Joe Biden is elected , he will nominate , with the support of Steve Bullock , a liberal activist justice who will threaten our Montana way of life.
” That said , there aren ’ t a lot of other Senate seats where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polarization — Kansas and Minnesota , perhaps , being notable exceptions .
And perhaps contrary to instinct , polarization would actually benefit Democrats in the light red states of Georgia ( at least in the special election ) and Texas , where the presidential race is actually quite close but the Senate races are not , implying there is room for Democrats to grow .
Finally , in South Carolina , there is a lot of speculation about how Supreme Court hearings could affect Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham ’ s reelection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might be “ they won ’ t. ” The forecasted result of the Senate race almost exactly matches the forecasted result of the presidential race there , implying voters aren ’ t casting their Senate ballots with the unique attributes of Graham ( or his Democratic opponent ) in mind — more so that they are just voting a straight-ticket ballot .
All told , if the theory that the Supreme Court fight will increase partisan polarization is correct , Democrats stand to gain in some races , while Republicans stand to gain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we were already expecting a repeat of what happened in 2016 — that every Senate seat would go the same way as the presidential race in that state .
So it ’ s entirely possible that Ginsburg ’ s death won ’ t change the odds of Senate control that much .

Of all the massively consequential questions raised by the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the more callous — but nevertheless important — is, “How does it affect the 2020 election?” The short answer is that nobody knows; it’s simply too early to tell. But we can use the FiveThirtyEight forecast to lay down a marker and advance a few plausible theories.
As of 3 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, Sept. 22, Joe Biden has a 77 in 100 chance of winning the presidential election, while President Trump still has a 22 in 100 chance. Despite the fact that polling has been telling the same old story, Biden’s chances have ticked up in recent weeks, largely because we are getting closer to the election and Biden is continuing to get some good state polls.
But could the Supreme Court opening shake up the race? Preliminary evidence suggests probably not. In a SurveyMonkey/Insider poll conducted immediately after Ginsburg’s death, only 5 percent of registered voters said the vacant seat made them less certain of their vote. And in a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 30 percent (most of them Democrats) said it made them more likely to vote for Biden, about the same as the 25 percent (most of them Republicans) who said it made them more likely to vote for Trump. A plurality (38 percent) said it would have no impact on their presidential vote.
However, the Senate — where Democrats have a 60 in 100 chance of taking control — may be a different story. Several vulnerable members of that chamber are now faced with the politically difficult choice of whether to vote to confirm Trump’s soon-to-be-announced Supreme Court nominee.
We still don’t know what effect — if any — that development could have on Senate races, but one plausible theory is that the Supreme Court vacancy will make partisanship — as expressed by a person’s presidential vote — an even more important consideration. This may have been the case in the 2018 elections, when now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote appeared to consolidate Republican support in red states and Democratic support in blue states. (Of course, this “coming home to the base” might have happened regardless.)
If that happens in 2020, how might it change the Senate landscape? I used our forecast’s projected vote margins to see which competitive Senate races were most out of sync with the expected presidential results in that state. If the “Kavanaugh effect” theory is true, then these are the states where we’d expect it to have the most impact.
Not all Senate races line up with the presidential race Forecasted margin in competitive Senate races, compared with the forecasted margin of the presidential race in those states, according to the FiveThirtyEight model at 3 p.m. Eastern on Sept. 22 State Forecasted Senate Margin Forecasted Presidential Margin Difference Alabama R+7 R+18 R+11 Maine D+2 D+12 D+10 Montana R+3 R+10 R+7 Georgia* R+8 R+2 D+6 Texas R+10 R+3 D+6 Colorado D+4 D+9 D+5 Kansas R+7 R+12 R+5 Minnesota D+13 D+8 R+5 Arizona* D+6 D+4 R+2 Mississippi R+13 R+12 D+2 Georgia R+4 R+2 D+2 North Carolina D+3 D+1 R+2 New Mexico D+15 D+13 R+1 Iowa R+1 R+3 R+1 Alaska R+10 R+8 D+1 Michigan D+7 D+8 D+1 South Carolina R+7 R+8 R+1 Competitive Senate races are defined as those where both parties have at least a 5 percent chance of winning in the FiveThirtyEight model. *Special election. In the Georgia special election, the forecasted margin is the difference between the total forecasted Republican vote share and the total forecasted Democratic vote share.
The biggest gap between the forecasted Senate result and the forecasted presidential result comes in Alabama, where Democratic Sen. Doug Jones is only a minor underdog despite the state being a conservative bastion. But the Supreme Court vacancy may put Jones in an even tougher spot: Alabama is one of the most anti-abortion states in the nation, so it wouldn’t be surprising if putting a pro-life judge on the Supreme Court is a top priority for many voters there. And if Jones votes against Trump’s nominee (he has already said he believes the next president should choose Ginsburg’s replacement), it has the potential to really hurt his reelection prospects.
The Supreme Court confirmation battle could also make life more difficult for Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is in a toss-up race in a state (Maine) that we forecast will vote for Biden by 12 points. Collins’s vote to confirm Kavanaugh in 2018 was already a major factor in shifting Collins’s image from a moderate to a more partisan figure, so any reminder of her Supreme Court voting record is unlikely to help her (especially since she needs some crossover Democratic support to win reelection). That said, Collins is one of the few Republican senators who has already come out against filling Ginsburg’s seat before the election (although that hasn’t stopped her Democratic opponent from dinging her on judicial appointments).
The Supreme Court issue could also help vulnerable Republican incumbents. For instance, Sen. Steve Daines is only a slight favorite over Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock despite Trump’s forecasted 10-point lead in Montana. Bullock has made the race close thanks to his personal popularity, but Daines is already trying to use the Supreme Court issue to his advantage. Daines has called for a vote on a new justice now, saying Trump will nominate “the type of justice Montanans want on the Supreme Court.” But, he added, “If Joe Biden is elected, he will nominate, with the support of Steve Bullock, a liberal activist justice who will threaten our Montana way of life.”
That said, there aren’t a lot of other Senate seats where Republicans stand to gain from deeper partisan polarization — Kansas and Minnesota, perhaps, being notable exceptions.
And perhaps contrary to instinct, polarization would actually benefit Democrats in the light red states of Georgia (at least in the special election) and Texas, where the presidential race is actually quite close but the Senate races are not, implying there is room for Democrats to grow. Finally, in South Carolina, there is a lot of speculation about how Supreme Court hearings could affect Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham’s reelection campaign. However, the safest answer might be “they won’t.” The forecasted result of the Senate race almost exactly matches the forecasted result of the presidential race there, implying voters aren’t casting their Senate ballots with the unique attributes of Graham (or his Democratic opponent) in mind — more so that they are just voting a straight-ticket ballot.
All told, if the theory that the Supreme Court fight will increase partisan polarization is correct, Democrats stand to gain in some races, while Republicans stand to gain in others. Notably, though, we were already expecting a repeat of what happened in 2016 — that every Senate seat would go the same way as the presidential race in that state. So it’s entirely possible that Ginsburg’s death won’t change the odds of Senate control that much.


fivethirtyeight--2020-09-22--The Potential Pitfalls In Rushing To Confirm A New Supreme Court Justice

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast , the crew discusses the political calculations for both Republicans and Democrats @ @ @ @ @ replacing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg .

The Potential Pitfalls In Rushing To Confirm A New Supreme Court Justice
In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses the political calculations for both Republicans and Democrats over how to proceed in replacing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.