[In the 2022 elections, the mainstream media’s lodestar was
polling that made it seem like voters didn’t want to hear any more
about Trump and January 6th. Tuesday’s election returns confirmed a
different anti-MAGA reality.]
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THE OFF-YEAR ELECTION VARIANTS OF MAD POLL DISEASE  
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Michael Podhorzer
November 14, 2023
Weekend Reading
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_ In the 2022 elections, the mainstream media’s lodestar was
polling that made it seem like voters didn’t want to hear any more
about Trump and January 6th. Tuesday’s election returns confirmed a
different anti-MAGA reality. _

,

 

This has been a week! Last Sunday’s Weekend Reading post, “Mad
Poll Disease Redux
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picked up widely, and was seen as something of an antidote to the
truly bleak results of the _New York Times_/Siena survey released the
same day. Then, last Tuesday’s elections resulted in major wins for
Democrats and progressive ballot measures. Those results were seen by
many as not only rebutting the _Times’_ and others' grim horse
race results, but as auguring an eventual Biden re-election.

Subscribe to Weekend Reading [[link removed]]

I’m grateful for all the links and positive feedback. However, I
need to underscore that my purpose in writing about Mad Poll Disease
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not to reassure people that Biden _WILL_ be reelected. (As regular
readers know, I’m hardly a reflexive cheerleader for Democrats’
electoral prospects or strategic choices.) Rather, I sought to show
why _POLLING TODAY CANNOT TELL US ANYTHING WE DON’T ALREADY KNOW
ABOUT THE OUTCOME IN THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE_. 

Here’s what we do know: 

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The Electoral College will be decided by margins that were too narrow
to be accurately seen on Election Day 2016 or 2020 (let alone more
than a year away) in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania
and Wisconsin. 

*
Who prevails will depend on whether the majorities who turned out to
reject Trump in 2020, and his MAGA candidates in 2018 and 2022, turn
out again in those key states. 

Therefore, it is more important to pay attention to _WHAT NEEDS TO BE
DONE TO DEFEAT TRUMP AND MAGA, _because that won’t happen on its
own. That means we can’t afford to coast on overconfidence based on
Tuesday’s election results, just as we can’t afford to give into
despair based on the latest poll numbers. _EVERY ELECTION WITHIN THE
MARGIN OF ERROR IS WITHIN THE MARGIN OF OUR EFFORTS _to shape the
outcome. _ _

The _Times_ was quick to warn readers that although “Tuesday Was
Great for Democrats. It Doesn’t Change the Outlook for 2024.
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I couldn't agree more! But that’s because neither the horse race
surveys nor Tuesday’s election returns can tell us what we need to
know about the “outlook for 2024” – whether the anti-MAGA
majority in the Electoral College battleground states will turn out a
year from now.

That said, the special elections are a powerful counterargument to the
Times/Siena poll’s literal results, which suggest Biden is headed to
the most lopsided Democratic defeat since Dukakis in 1988. 

In other words, the elections last Tuesday remind us that the only
evidence that Biden is headed to a _blow-out defeat_ is
the _Times’_ and others' horse race polling. But, again,
Tuesday’s election results should not make us more sanguine about
2024 than we had reason to be before the _Times’_ survey either.

DID THE POLLS REALLY GET IT RIGHT? 

After Tuesday, many commentators seemed eager to suggest that
Democrats shouldn’t take these victories to be good news about 2024.
After all, the polls
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accurately predicted these results – and polls
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also predicting trouble for Biden in 2024! 

It’s a familiar pattern. After every election, pollsters and
political analysts will find a way to validate
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own pre-election work, whether or not that work actually gave voters
useful information. In general, analysts make two arguments about why
fielding and covering polls is important: that they can predict the
outcome, and that they can tell us what voters care about. 

Therein lies a neat trick. If polls get the point estimates wrong,
they fall back to saying that polls are still useful
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they tell us what mattered to voters in this election. And if the
polls fail to tell us in advance what people would base their votes
on, they fall back to saying the polls are accurate because the point
estimates came close. (And remember, when you read how close this or
that pollster came to the final result, that bragging depends on
comparing the polls taken closest to the election; they never report
how accurate their polling was any earlier. In other words, they’re
asking you to trust their polling a year out because their polling the
week of the election was accurate.) 

In the 50+ midterms that took place in the era before everyone began
fetishizing polling and poli-sci savviness, a blatantly criminal act
by one party – such as, say, trying to overturn the previous
election – would have dominated coverage of the next election where
that party was vying for control of the House of Representatives.
That’s what happened with Watergate in 1974. But in the 2022
elections, the mainstream media’s lodestar was poli-sci research
about thermostatic midterms and polling that made it seem like voters
didn’t want to hear any more about Trump and January 6th. 

The coverage leading up to the 2022 midterms took it as a given that a
Red Wave was coming. As I’ve written before, this narrative choice
had consequences
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arguably could have shifted
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balance of power in the House. When the Red Wave failed to materialize
as predicted, it should have triggered more intense soul-searching
about why that happened. Instead, it was treated as an interesting
surprise, and an opportunity to circle the wagons around the inherent
validity of pre-election horse race polling.   

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In post-mortem analyses, the real measure of how well the polls did
should be_ HOW WELL THEY INFORMED ELECTION COVERAGE AHEAD OF
TIME._ It’s easy to look back and crow about the point estimates
being close. It’s apparently much harder to look forward and allow
the data to challenge pre-existing narratives. If the polls were
really so good at predicting Tuesday’s results, where were all the
breathless headlines about why Republicans should be panicking or why
Democrats should be excited? If Tuesday’s election results were so
unsurprising, why didn’t the people who boosted the Times/Siena
survey on Sunday pre-but the results they “knew” would be coming
two days later? 

How to Think About Elections Since 2016

Tuesday’s election returns confirmed that the anti-MAGA majority
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still the most important, and least discussed, fact about American
politics today. 

To a very great extent, our federal elections beginning in 2016 have,
more than anything else, been about one choice: TRUMP/MAGA, OR NOT.
This is one of those rare times in our history when several successive
elections have been choices between two profound and sharply different
visions of America's future. Since the Civil War, there have been two
such times: at the end of the 19th Century, when successive elections
pitted the populist vision of William Jennings Bryan against the
corporatist vision of William McKinley, and again in the 1930’s when
the contest was over the New Deal Order. 

With that in mind, it’s crucial to approach the 2024 election
beginning with the recognition that ABOUT 178 MILLION AMERICANS HAVE
CAST AT LEAST ONE BALLOT ON THE “TRUMP/MAGA OR NOT”
QUESTION. (That’s about three quarters of those eligible to vote.)

Let’s unpack that statistic – beginning with the 2016 election,
which, in terms of turnout, seemed pretty consistent with previous
elections. Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1 points. ABOUT 110
MILLION PEOPLE WHO VOTED IN BOTH 2016 AND 2020 ARE STILL ON THE
ROLLS. While some of those who supported Clinton then have switched
to Trump, and some former Trump supporters switched to Biden,
there’s more evidence than not that this switching has been a wash.1
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SINCE 2016, TURNOUT HAS LITERALLY BEEN OFF THE CHARTS. As this chart
shows clearly, turnout rates in the last three elections have been
ahistorical. Before 2016, except during world wars and when women and
then 18 year olds were given the vote, turnout rates stayed within a
narrow 3 point range, often for decades at a time. But since 2016, AN
ADDITIONAL 68 MILLION AMERICANS HAVE CAST AT LEAST ONE
BALLOT. Nonetheless, the media spends most of its attention on the
vanishingly few numbers of voters who might change their minds when
the real story is whether this group of voters turn out out or not.

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These voters favor Biden and Democrats by about a dozen points
nationally. (I shorthand this group as “POST-2016 VOTERS,” since
they were either not registered until after 2016, or failed to turn
out that year.) In “The Emerging Anti-MAGA Majority
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I showed that in states that consistently vote for Democrats or for
Republicans, changes in turnout are unlikely to determine the winner,
since post-2016 voters are net Democratic in blue states and net
Republican in red states. BUT IN SWING STATES, WHILE 2016 VOTERS LEAN
REPUBLICAN, POST-2016 VOTERS LEAN DEMOCRAT. 

Thus, the razor-thin outcomes in those swing states are determined by
how many new anti-MAGA voters show up in November – as was the case
in 2020, according to the VoteCast post-election survey. In the five
states that Biden won by such narrow margins, he won post-2016 voters
by 8 to 16 points.2
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… BUT THIS ISN’T HOW “EXPERTS” THINK ABOUT PRESIDENTIAL
ELECTIONS

I know it sounds insultingly obvious to say that Biden’s victory
depends on turning out his supporters (or Trump’s opponents).
That’s the point. 

The media’s approach is to all but ignore what we know about voters
based on the choices they’ve already made, and instead divide the
electorate into categories defined by very broad brush demographics,
most frequently by race/ethnicity and by education. From there,
endless analyses of survey crosstabs make it seem like voters from
certain demographic groups are changing their minds en masse. In
reality, most of these apparent “trends” are just
reporters narrating statistical noise
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relying on unexamined ecological fallacies.3
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No campaign manager would ever develop a campaign plan built around
questions like, “How do I get more non-college voters to support
Biden?” In the real world, campaign plans are built around questions
like, “How do I get the people who have voted for Biden before to
stick with him, and how do I get them to vote again?” As remarkable
as it sounds, every vote counts equally on Election Day. You don’t
get bonus points for coveted demographic groups like “non-college
voters.” 

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That all of this isn’t painfully obvious to everyone is because
there is almost no recognition or interest in the nature of how the
electorate has changed since 2016. The proportion of the marquee
demographics in the electorate didn’t change much after 2016; _WHAT
CHANGED WAS THE PROPORTION OF THE ELECTORATE VOTING FOR THE
DEMOCRAT._ The Biden campaign doesn’t hope that the turnout fairy
brings more college voters. The Biden campaign wishes for more Biden
voters.

Once you make this mindset shift, you start dividing up those who have
voted for Biden according to _why_ they voted for him – again,
regardless of their demographics. If one of the reasons people came
out to vote for Biden is that they fear losing the right to an
abortion, you make abortion a salient issue to keep them in the fold
and turning out. The logic in the media conversation runs in reverse
– that college-educated voters turn out more reliably and care a lot
about abortion rights, so you should talk about abortion.

Speaking of which…

Abortion Isn’t Just Abortion

Especially after Tuesday, the idea that elections are now “about
abortion” is becoming a new piece of conventional wisdom. I think
there’s no question that _Dobbs _and state abortion bans have been
significantly motivating voters. But it is essential to see that
it’s about much more than one narrowly defined _ISSUE_. It’s
about a broader _STORY_, which includes all of these parts: 

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_REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM_ - The discrete issue of whether there should
be draconian limits on women’s reproductive freedom.

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_THE BUNDLE OF MAGA ISSUES_ - The _Dobbs _decision, and
Republicans’ subsequent doubling down on abortion restrictions, have
made it much clearer to voters that the wildly unpopular Republican
agenda is not just empty rhetoric for “the base,” but a clear
statement of what Republicans will do if they have power. And abortion
isn’t the only plot point in this story – as Greg Sargent pointed
out
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Democrats also had success in local elections pushing back against
MAGA “culture war” items like banning books and bullying
transgender kids. 

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_WHO THEY ARE_ - MAGA Republicans’ post-_Dobbs_ actions, including
unanimously elevating Mike Johnson to be Speaker of the House,
demonstrates their commitment to governing based on a worldview that
is wildly out of step with most Americans. 

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_THEIR DETERMINATION_ - Even if abortion rights are protected, MAGA
Republicans won’t give up on their agenda, any more than they have
given up on the belief that the 2020 election was stolen. These are
politicians who are so determined to realize their agenda that they
are willing to storm the Capitol.

Thus, while many voters have known for a long time that Republicans
want to ban abortion, few seriously believed _Roe v. Wade _would
ever be overturned. Or that, given the opportunity, Republicans really
meant what they said. That view was consistently reinforced by the
mainstream media, which, for example, routinely dismissed activists’
warnings during Supreme Court nominations. 

Even if Republicans somehow manage to discipline themselves and avoid
talking about abortion for the next 10 months, this isn’t the kind
of story that is easily changed or forgotten. We have an anti-MAGA
majority because Americans have learned the hard way what MAGA’s
story is really about: taking away our freedoms.  

The Elections that Prove American Elections Are Broken

American elections are supposed to grant “the consent of the
governed,” as the Declaration of Independence put it, to those who
win them. But somehow, our elections have become synonymous
with _democracy itself_, rather than a _tool_ we use
to _practice_ democracy. No matter how broken our tools get – and
no matter how much we complain about the obvious disrepair – we keep
using them, and we keep declaring the results to be the finest
possible workmanship. 

On Tuesday, Ohio voters chose to add the right to an abortion to their
state’s constitution, defying their state legislature’s attempts
to ban it. This was a victory for freedom. But it wasn’t an
unqualified “victory for democracy,” as many might put it. IT WAS
A VICTORY FOR _POPULAR DEMOCRACY_ THAT REVEALS HOW ROUTINELY OUR
ELECTION SYSTEM PRODUCES UNDEMOCRATIC RESULTS.

Throughout the states with Republican trifectas, further restrictions
on abortion are extremely unpopular, while raising the minimum wage
and expanding Medicaid is extremely popular. That’s why voters in
Ohio, and other states where this is allowed, have been overruling
their state legislatures. For instance: 

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_PROTECTING ABORTION - _Ohio voters approved a constitutional
amendment to protect abortion in 2023 after the Dobbs
decision reinstated
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extreme 6-week abortion ban that had passed in 2019.

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_MEDICAID EXPANSION - _Voters chose to overrule their states’
decisions to reject Medicaid expansion in Idaho, 2018; Missouri, 2020;
Nebraska, 2018; Oklahoma, 2020; and South Dakota, 2022.

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_MINIMUM WAGE INCREASES - _Voters passed minimum wage increases via
ballot initiative in Alaska, 2015; Arizona, 2016; Arkansas, 2018;
Florida, 2020; Missouri, 2018; Nebraska, 2022; South Dakota, 2014.

If the outcome of state legislative elections truly represented the
consent of the governed, we wouldn’t be seeing so many instances of
a majority voting for something that directly contradicts the laws
enacted by their state representatives. And keep in mind that even if
people in every MAGA-governed state feel this poorly represented, we
don’t see the evidence of it unless that state allows people to push
back via ballot initiatives (which many don’t). 

Of course, initiatives on health care or minimum wage could be written
off as a truly representative legislative body being out of step on
just one or two isolated issues. But Michigan’s recent experience
shows us how democratic elections can be used to legitimize imposing a
comprehensive anti-democratic regime on the citizens of the state. 

As the following table makes clear, _IN NEARLY EVERY ELECTION FROM
2006 THROUGH 2020, DEMOCRATS WON A MAJORITY OF THE VOTES FOR THE STATE
HOUSE  _in Michigan_. _But losing in 2010 swept into power _A MAGA
TRIFECTA THAT REDREW STATE LEGISLATIVE LINES TO GUARANTEE MAGA
MAJORITIES FOR THE REST OF THE DECADE, CONTRARY TO WHAT THE MAJORITY
OF MICHIGAN VOTERS CHOSE_. 

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Once in power, those gerrymandered majorities enacted everything
from union-killing
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to work” laws and the notorious emergency manager bill
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led to the Flint water crisis, to barbaric “rape Insurance” laws
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They passed six restrictions on abortion, delayed opting into ACA’s
Medicaid expansion until 2014, and made voting more difficult,
especially for Black voters.4
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However, in 2018 Michigan used the initiative process to pass
several democracy-bolstering measures
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including Proposition 2, which dictates that both congressional and
legislative districts will be drawn via an independent citizen
commission. The result was not only a complete reversal – a
Democratic trifecta – but the repeal of many of the most damaging
policies of the MAGA years. 

Voters in similar states, like Wisconsin, aren’t so lucky. They are
still living daily under an anti-democratic regime that they cannot
realistically hold accountable in the same way the voters of Michigan
have. While Michigan voters could vote to redraw the lines more
democratically, Wisconsin voters can’t insist on fair lines, because
in Wisconsin there is no legal provision
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voters to bring initiatives or referendums to the ballot. 

This trend is also in line with a broader pattern I documented a few
weeks ago – the white Christian nationalist movement hacking our
democracy by exploiting its advantage in low turnout primaries in safe
Republican districts
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implement a regressive agenda that most Americans don’t want. With
enough interest group power concentrated in one place, it can be
frighteningly easy to “hack” legislative districts to subvert the
will of most voters.

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1
[[link removed]] In
the recent Times/Siena survey, only 3 percent of 2020 definite Biden
voters and <1 percent of 2020 definite Trump voters say they will
definitely vote for the other candidate. That’s not the best sign
for Biden, but it’s not catastrophic. 

2
[[link removed]] If
it seems a contradiction to see polling results cited as evidence in a
piece that is critical of polling, my point is that horse race polling
is not reliable with respect to very small margins – but these
margins are huge. For example, Biden won post-2016 voters by 8 points
in Wisconsin, which he won by 0.6 points; he won post-2016 voters by
16 points in both Arizona, which he won by 0.3 points, and Georgia,
which he won by 0.2 points.

3
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ecological fallacy is believing that what is true for a group is true
for the individuals in a group. In this context, the problem arises
when, for example, it’s stated that based on two surveys, Latino
voters are trending away from Biden. We have no way of knowing the
extent to which that reflects individual Latino voters who had
supported Biden now supporting Trump, or the extent to which the
original sample randomly included more Biden supporters than the
second sample (which would mean that no individuals had switched
sides). I expand on this idea more here
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4
[[link removed]] The
devastating consequences of a decade of anti-democratic rule in
Michigan are best understood in comparison with two other Great Lakes
states: Wisconsin (where a similar story played out) and Minnesota
(where that decade looked entirely different). While in 2010 the three
states were similar in many respects, by 2020 gerrymander-enforced GOP
majorities had made MI and WI significantly less free, democratic,
prosperous, and safe relative to MN. I wrote about that story here
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