Baldwin barely squeaked by this time against a California-born investment banker who also tried to run in 2012 but washed out in the primaries. Hovde spent his candidacy railing against single mothers and bashed Wisconsinites in 2016 for being too focused on sports and Hollywood. He used the word "deplorable," which outraged Republicans when Clinton said it, and in an unironic way. Talk about poor messaging. Even with all that, she only scraped by because she was a relatively popular incumbent. If she'd been vying with Hovde for an open seat, he'd have won. 

Oh, and Hovde is now following the Trump/Lake playbook of throwing a tantrum and refusing to concede the election. He blames a third party candidate for his loss.

Yeah, my biggest argument was that they do in fact support the working class, things like the IIJA/CHIPS/IRA are in many ways blue collar (construction, transportation & manufacturing) jobs programs. One issue is that these are long term investments and the results aren’t felt immediately so Biden/Harris weren’t rewarded for them.

And yes, Democrats have a much harder platform since they try to accommodate as many demographics as possible, go too far in appealing to one group and you risk alienating another. This isn’t nearly as big an issue for Republicans because they are far more homogenous.

And I think that ties into Chrkeller’s point. Democrats should focus their messaging on things that benefit everybody like investing in infrastructure, healthcare, education, housing & child/elder care. These creates jobs and bring down the cost of living for things that everybody needs regardless of their age, race, religion, sex or gender.

In other wonderful news (/s), Bob Casey (D-PA) has just lost yet another Senate seat to the Republicans.

Right now, I'm nervously watching the Arizona results. Gallego is still ahead, but that race is too close for comfort and going to be razor-thin, like many of Arizona's other elections. They're not expecting a final outcome anytime soon, either, because counting in Arizona is very slow. Maricopa County, the largest county, has a two-page ballot which is further slowing down things. And even if she loses, Kari Lake will still screech about election fraud until 2026 when she will no doubt try again to go after the governorship.

I probably should not have posted that graph until all votes have been counted.

California has currently counted 55% of the votes from what I can see.
9,7m total votes so far. Meaning it should add another 9m or so once the counting is complete?

I don't think the lack of blue votes will end up being as drastic once every vote has been counted.
Still curious to see where it ends up though.

If one of the main complaints about his failure will be the economy, then sure.
Though I think the traditional Republican tax cuts for the ultra wealthy are one of the main factors, and differs from traditional Democratic spending bills in that the money from the tax cuts are not invested into the public, but into the pockets of billionaires who just sit on a large portion of it.

I went over it a bit at the top of this post, and I think IkePoR explained it well a few pages back.
There are many million more votes left to be counted. Around 9 million more will come in from California for example, which is currently at 55% counted.

The lines should allign much closer in the end. But there will be a drop in turnout for blue.

Numerically the shift doesn't seem dramatic from previous years. But that's because the right have been very efficient at getting into any online spaces occupied by young people for the past 15-20+ years.

Rather than a notable change in numbers, I think what most of us are surprised by is how extreme they appear to be due to the things they commonly and openly say in recent years.

I think a common expectation was that younger generations will be less bigoted than their grandparents. Technology and flow of information means fewer believe in religion, etc. Presumably it would result in more progressive leanings than there currently are.
However I think the major miscalculation decades ago was that people didn't anticipate how that flow of information can be used, or misused.

I think right wing grifters are able to relate to young people, especially males, in a more effective way than leftist grifters.

With Andrew Tate, Adin Ross, etc, they feel like they will gain something tangible, relevant to their problems.
Women, money, cars. Just take an alpha male course. Even though it's bullshit, those are at least 'rewards' to aspire towards.

What would be the equivalent leftist grift? Telling them to be a better person, and don't treat women and minorities poorly?

I think that messaging is a lot less effective than prospects of a Lamborghini and a ton of money in the bank. Especially when misogyny and bigotry is portrayed in a positive light, that makes them feel like better people as well.

Only one of these people in the Top 10 is left leaning.
And if he wasnt also very attractive, I'm not sure he would have made the list, considering everyone else on it.

This is one area where conservatives have played the game very very well. They appear to have an iron grip on the young male demographic, even if they are less religious.

I don't think anyone considers it to have a correlation to neo nazism.
But it is pretty stuid.
After every investigation, including by Trump's own DOJ, concluded there was 0 evidence of large scale voter fraud.
And because it was fueld by disinformation.

Theory by Trump: "Why weren't these Republicans let in to check the votes? Proof of voter fraud!"
Answer: The location in questionan had been designated an equal number of Democratic, Republican, and independant vote counters. This is by law. They are not allowed to add more Republicans to count them.

There were many quickly debunked conspiracy theories making the rounds. 


The pandemic prompted higher tournout for obvious reasons in many countries around the globe, and more people chose to use the mail-in option, also for obvious reasons.
 
But in the US, some states chose to count mail-in ballots last, even though they can recieve them first. And long before election day.
This causes the scenario where one candidate is leading, and then "over night, all of a sudden, a bunch of votes come out of nowhere. Hmmm, very suspicious."

Democrats had always traditionally made use of mail-in to a higher degree than Republican voters.
And especially in 2020 when blue voters tried to avoid unmasked crowds, while MAGAs were adamant about not masking up and making a statement about it.

But it could also be the illuminati and deep state working with squirrels to create extra votes that no investigation could find.
That sounds just as likely.

And then they forgot to try it again in 2024 when they controlled everything.

People still had optimism that the future would be like Star Trek.  Instead, the misuse of technology is in danger of turning the future into Cyberpunk 2077.

I feel like the left has really taken young people for granted recently.

They've just assumed that Gen Z (and soon Alpha) will be more progressive than previous generations as if that's just the natural and inevitable outcome. 

As Hiku touched on though, a lot of the youth, especially men, are slipping through the left's fingers because while the left has been preaching political correctness at them, the right has been smarter at making their politics seem cool, edgy, and anti-establishment, which appeals to teens and young adults.

In 2020, just 36% of Gen Z voted for Trump; this year that grew 7 points to 43%.

For years now I've heard leftists talk about how the world will be a progressive paradise once all the conservative old people die, but people have been saying that since my parents were young lefties in the 70s, and here we are half a century later.

Gen Z is "more progressive" than previous generations. All of the data has shown us that a plurality to majority are more left-wing (especially on political-economy, but also culture) than previous generations when asked about issues that fall on the left-right spectrum. 

The issue is that there is also a large minority of Gen Z, especially males, who are socially-alienated and therefore more persuadable by far-right propaganda. This also explains things like the rise of mass-shootings, depression, and suicide in this group. 

But yes, the mainstream center and center-left do take Gen Z for granted, and that is why the majority are political independents even when they are further to the left than the Democratic Party (as most are.) 

@Bolded This margin doesn't tell us anything unless we are also including non-voting populations in this percentage for 2020 vs. 2024. This is especially the case given that Kamala seems to have lost this election by losing Biden voters, while Trump's absolute votes have remained pretty stable. 

https://www.wgbh.org/news/politics/2024-11-07/trump-gained-ground-with-young-voters-thanks-to-gender-gap-and-economy

"Youth voter turnout was down from 2020, when upwards of 55% of young people voted. This election was similar to 2016, with early estimates showing about 43% of youth having voted in this election."

Edit: 

Just for context, if only the Gen Z voters who voted in this election (a minority of Gen Z Americans in general) voted, Trump would've only won 17 states. Yes, that is up from 7 in 2020, but not something that shows us a more conservative generation than the previous ones, as he won 29 states and the population in general shifted right-ward compared to 2020, not just Gen Z. 

The remaining vote is similar in composition to what's already in (according to the NYT needle before it went offline) so Gallego is very likely winning.

Also, I don't think Harris has a shot at the popular vote anymore. California swung too hard like everyone else. Even if the outstanding mail is like 65-35 the popular vote will probably end up around 77m - 75m in his favor.

The US economy might actually make a huge growth swing if Trump cozies up to Russia and get cheap oil and starts selling arms to both sides.

Americans would feel good about it, but at what cost?

Apparently someone responded to me, but I can't see where.