“But that is mostly just because the election was so close — determined by only 537 votes in Florida. A fair number of Nader voters actually had Bush as their second choice.”
Not to belittle your point about a three way race: I mostly agree. However, Bush did not win the 2000 presidency. The recount was stopped by SCOTUS with over 100,000 votes to count, not including the 10,000 undercounts with hanging chads, that clearly should have counted for Gore. An audit after the election in Miami Dade and West Palm Peach, the two Democratic counties that hadn’t completed the recount, would prove that Gore won by over 10,000 votes.
As for the three way race, it just goes to show the “dumbing down” of America is real and scary.
Kennedy is a guy who spent his entire formidable years on drugs, including heroin. He had the best schooling and wasted it. He got into Harvard because he was a legacy, and Harvard Law School for the same reason.
His only job after Law School was as an appointed Assistant Boston DA. He didn’t earn the job. And he was fired six months later for failing the Massachusetts’ Bar. Not to mention being arrested for heroin possession and pleading guilty.
Now this man thinks he has a medical degree. Clearly, he soiled the family name, and is an embarrassment. He’s the poor man’s JFK Jr..
He failed at law, thinks he’s a doctor peddling lies and misinformation, and even called mask mandates worse than anything the Nazi’s did. He said even Anne Frank had an attic to hide in; as though, wearing a mask outside is equivalent to gas chambers, starvation and death camps and hiding in a cramped attic, shitting and pissing into a bucket for 20 hours a day.
The man is a fraud on the scale of Trump and Musk. A rich man without a moral compass and clearly invested too much alcohol and drugs; having no semblance of reality.
“[Substack] really does seem to attract a more politically diverse audience than my old stomping grounds at FiveThirtyEight.”
You may or may not be reading these comments, but in case you are: the audience was very ideologically diverse at 538 for a long time (we were all nerds together), but at some point there seemed to be an internal coup. The tenor of the site's articles shifted dramatically towards social progressivism. (I read rumours at the time that your staff had staged an intervention struggle session at which they denounced your both-sides-ism and made you agree to back their politics.) More relevantly for this discussion, the site's moderation policies also became radically progressive. One by one I watched as commenters with views that weren't PC/woke were banned from the site. So by the end the comments had become a progressive echo chamber (and far less active).
Also these effects seem larger if you take into account that many voters don't recognise kennedy - when they do, more republicans like him and more democrats dislike him.
Regarding RFK Jr. having higher favorables among Republicans, I think the perception is that that's just because he's a stalking horse to hurt Biden. Republican megadonors backing RFK Jr. may not say anything about who he *actually* hurts, but it may say something about who Republicans *think* he hurts. Republicans aren't going to go abandoning Trump for RFK Jr, because the Republicans who support him think he's bringing the Trump agenda to the Democrat(ic) Party; they aren't Never Trumpers looking for an off-ramp without having to vote for Biden.
I have to say, you can’t look at favorable/unfavorable polls and extrapolate that into vote for/vote against. Republicans have a favorable view of RFK because he speaks honestly rather than blindly backing the ridiculous positions of Democrats, like their support for men competing in women’s sports. I doubt that if Trump is the candidate, Republicans that voted for Desantis, Scott, Haley, or Ramaswamy are going to vote for Independent RFK. Maybe they might pull the lever for a No Labels candidate? I see a 3rd Party RFK candidate as pulling some left leaning Independents or even Democrats that believe Biden is too old. Even if it’s only 1-3% that won’t be helpful for Biden.
Biden lacks the political gifts that Obama and Clinton enjoyed. With his doubling down on immigtation in the face of blue cities opposing and displaying the disastrous results and a VP whose greatest accomplishment is word salad, Biden looks vulnerable
As long as we're being pedan-er, nuanced, the issue with a 3-way election is what happens when none of the presidential candidates reach 270 electoral college votes.
The whole "popular" election is thrown out, and the house decides on a per state basis.
It has happened before, and some serious political horse trading was made.
This is a nightmare scenario that may or may not benefit Biden.
As a former editor-in-chief of a website named after the electoral college vote count, you may want to learn the rules of the electoral college.
I give zero weight to any head-to-head polls now, whether they show Trump or Biden ahead, or a tie. Reagan was tied with Mondale this far ahead of his 1984 landslide. I'm not saying Trump couldn't win, just that people are not making hard choices about who they will vote for in these polls, they are more visceral feelings. I think that the real swing voters now are mostly undecided anyway. Note that tied polls are not 50-50, they are 43-43 or 45-45. Swing voters won't make hard choices this early.
I’m somewhat persuaded by Nick Catoggio’s column at The Dispatch yesterday that Trump voters want Trump and only Trump, and if he is on the ballot, why would you waste your vote on someone Trump-like but who won’t win? I think there will be very few reluctant Trump voters this election -- everyone who votes for him is going to be all-in on what he represents.
Yep, that vaccine loving, never ending war supporting , open borders and LGBTQ supporting African American demographic will definitely stick with vivacious Joe Biden
The fears around third-party runs tend to reinforce my belief (and who doesn't love a little confirmation bias?) that we as a nation are engaged in voting less *for* one candidate and more voting *against* another. If the idea of the other guy winning wasn't so unpalatable, we'd have the chutzpah to vote for the candidate/party that we actually want. Like, in a capitalist market, signals are sent by what people do and don't buy (among other things); voting for a third party should send a signal to the two major parties that they need to do more to win voters at these margins, but because we're so afraid of spoilers, we don't send those signals.
Anyway, this has little to do with what Nate was really getting at, and as always I deeply appreciate the insight from these newsletters. Thanks for what you do, Nate.
It's touched on in the "Anti-Biden Democrats" section, but does RFK potentially help with the age issue? While your points a few weeks ago about the age difference between Trump & Biden were valid, they were also reasonably subtle, and so it feels like for voters seriously concerned with Biden's age, they may be more likely to go to RFK than Trump.
Of course, having a much younger option might make more likely to abandon Biden than otherwise, so he may lose more than Trump anyway.
“But that is mostly just because the election was so close — determined by only 537 votes in Florida. A fair number of Nader voters actually had Bush as their second choice.”
Not to belittle your point about a three way race: I mostly agree. However, Bush did not win the 2000 presidency. The recount was stopped by SCOTUS with over 100,000 votes to count, not including the 10,000 undercounts with hanging chads, that clearly should have counted for Gore. An audit after the election in Miami Dade and West Palm Peach, the two Democratic counties that hadn’t completed the recount, would prove that Gore won by over 10,000 votes.
As for the three way race, it just goes to show the “dumbing down” of America is real and scary.
Kennedy is a guy who spent his entire formidable years on drugs, including heroin. He had the best schooling and wasted it. He got into Harvard because he was a legacy, and Harvard Law School for the same reason.
His only job after Law School was as an appointed Assistant Boston DA. He didn’t earn the job. And he was fired six months later for failing the Massachusetts’ Bar. Not to mention being arrested for heroin possession and pleading guilty.
Now this man thinks he has a medical degree. Clearly, he soiled the family name, and is an embarrassment. He’s the poor man’s JFK Jr..
He failed at law, thinks he’s a doctor peddling lies and misinformation, and even called mask mandates worse than anything the Nazi’s did. He said even Anne Frank had an attic to hide in; as though, wearing a mask outside is equivalent to gas chambers, starvation and death camps and hiding in a cramped attic, shitting and pissing into a bucket for 20 hours a day.
The man is a fraud on the scale of Trump and Musk. A rich man without a moral compass and clearly invested too much alcohol and drugs; having no semblance of reality.
Good riddance!
“[Substack] really does seem to attract a more politically diverse audience than my old stomping grounds at FiveThirtyEight.”
You may or may not be reading these comments, but in case you are: the audience was very ideologically diverse at 538 for a long time (we were all nerds together), but at some point there seemed to be an internal coup. The tenor of the site's articles shifted dramatically towards social progressivism. (I read rumours at the time that your staff had staged an intervention struggle session at which they denounced your both-sides-ism and made you agree to back their politics.) More relevantly for this discussion, the site's moderation policies also became radically progressive. One by one I watched as commenters with views that weren't PC/woke were banned from the site. So by the end the comments had become a progressive echo chamber (and far less active).
Also these effects seem larger if you take into account that many voters don't recognise kennedy - when they do, more republicans like him and more democrats dislike him.
Or at least that's what this seems to show: https://echeloninsights.com/in-the-news/which-kennedy-is-it/
Regarding RFK Jr. having higher favorables among Republicans, I think the perception is that that's just because he's a stalking horse to hurt Biden. Republican megadonors backing RFK Jr. may not say anything about who he *actually* hurts, but it may say something about who Republicans *think* he hurts. Republicans aren't going to go abandoning Trump for RFK Jr, because the Republicans who support him think he's bringing the Trump agenda to the Democrat(ic) Party; they aren't Never Trumpers looking for an off-ramp without having to vote for Biden.
I have to say, you can’t look at favorable/unfavorable polls and extrapolate that into vote for/vote against. Republicans have a favorable view of RFK because he speaks honestly rather than blindly backing the ridiculous positions of Democrats, like their support for men competing in women’s sports. I doubt that if Trump is the candidate, Republicans that voted for Desantis, Scott, Haley, or Ramaswamy are going to vote for Independent RFK. Maybe they might pull the lever for a No Labels candidate? I see a 3rd Party RFK candidate as pulling some left leaning Independents or even Democrats that believe Biden is too old. Even if it’s only 1-3% that won’t be helpful for Biden.
Looks like you lost a footnote in the formatting or something?
> However, a strong1 scholarly consensus
Biden lacks the political gifts that Obama and Clinton enjoyed. With his doubling down on immigtation in the face of blue cities opposing and displaying the disastrous results and a VP whose greatest accomplishment is word salad, Biden looks vulnerable
As long as we're being pedan-er, nuanced, the issue with a 3-way election is what happens when none of the presidential candidates reach 270 electoral college votes.
The whole "popular" election is thrown out, and the house decides on a per state basis.
It has happened before, and some serious political horse trading was made.
This is a nightmare scenario that may or may not benefit Biden.
As a former editor-in-chief of a website named after the electoral college vote count, you may want to learn the rules of the electoral college.
I give zero weight to any head-to-head polls now, whether they show Trump or Biden ahead, or a tie. Reagan was tied with Mondale this far ahead of his 1984 landslide. I'm not saying Trump couldn't win, just that people are not making hard choices about who they will vote for in these polls, they are more visceral feelings. I think that the real swing voters now are mostly undecided anyway. Note that tied polls are not 50-50, they are 43-43 or 45-45. Swing voters won't make hard choices this early.
I’m somewhat persuaded by Nick Catoggio’s column at The Dispatch yesterday that Trump voters want Trump and only Trump, and if he is on the ballot, why would you waste your vote on someone Trump-like but who won’t win? I think there will be very few reluctant Trump voters this election -- everyone who votes for him is going to be all-in on what he represents.
Hi Nate,
I think you're showing that RFK running would be a little more likely to help Biden than hurt him (based on the way things stand currently).
However, if things stay as they are currently I assume Biden would very likely lose if RFK ran or not.
My question is if Biden turns things around in the way he needs to to have a chance of winning, would RFK running hurt him then?
Yep, that vaccine loving, never ending war supporting , open borders and LGBTQ supporting African American demographic will definitely stick with vivacious Joe Biden
The fears around third-party runs tend to reinforce my belief (and who doesn't love a little confirmation bias?) that we as a nation are engaged in voting less *for* one candidate and more voting *against* another. If the idea of the other guy winning wasn't so unpalatable, we'd have the chutzpah to vote for the candidate/party that we actually want. Like, in a capitalist market, signals are sent by what people do and don't buy (among other things); voting for a third party should send a signal to the two major parties that they need to do more to win voters at these margins, but because we're so afraid of spoilers, we don't send those signals.
Anyway, this has little to do with what Nate was really getting at, and as always I deeply appreciate the insight from these newsletters. Thanks for what you do, Nate.
It's touched on in the "Anti-Biden Democrats" section, but does RFK potentially help with the age issue? While your points a few weeks ago about the age difference between Trump & Biden were valid, they were also reasonably subtle, and so it feels like for voters seriously concerned with Biden's age, they may be more likely to go to RFK than Trump.
Of course, having a much younger option might make more likely to abandon Biden than otherwise, so he may lose more than Trump anyway.
The exact quote from Kennedy, as quoted in the linked article, was, "There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted".
Could you correct your quote above to reflect that?
Thank you. Good analysis.