At 538 Carl Bialik points out something interesting. Although early voter turnout rose in 2016, fewer voters cast votes as a percentage of those eligible particularly in states carried by Hillary Clinton:
The raw number of votes rose: About 1.4 million more Americans voted in this year’s election than in 2012, a total which itself was down from 2008. But the electorate was growing in the meantime: About 57 percent of eligible voters cast ballots this year, down from 58.6 percent in 2012 and 61.6 percent in 2008, which was the highest mark in 40 years. Turnout still remained well above levels for most presidential election years from 1972 to 2000.
The drop in turnout was uneven. On average, turnout was unchanged in states that voted for Trump, while it fell by an average of 2.3 percentage points in states that voted for Clinton. Relatedly, turnout was higher in competitive states — most of which Trump won. In the 14 swing states — those where either the winning party in the presidential race switched from 2012 or where the margin was within 5 percentage points — an average of 65.3 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. In the other 36 states and Washington, D.C., turnout averaged just 56.3 percent.1 That gap exacerbates a tendency for turnout to be higher in the places where candidates concentrate their travel, advertising and other get-out-the-vote efforts.
There’s clearly more than a single explanation for that. But it does throw cold water on any voter suppression hypothesis and adds credence to the explanation I suggested yesterday. So, for example, turnout fell in California and increased in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
It may be that there just weren’t as many voters to turn out as they thought there were.
Speaking of continuity the usual suspects are complaining bitterly about Donald Trump’s statements on his priorities with respect to immigration. The New York Times reports:
On immigration, he said the wall that he has been promising to build on the nation’s southern border might end up being a fence in places. But he said his priority was to deport two million to three million immigrants he characterized as dangerous or as having criminal records, a change from his original position that he would deport all of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country. President Obama has deported more than two million undocumented immigrants during his time in office.
It has apparently escaped those complaining that what Trump said (about deporting immigrants with criminal records) is the stated policy of the Obama Administration. I think that Trump will be disappointed with the actual numbers. I think they’re probably closer to a half million than 3 million.
When I read this article at the Wall Street Journal on how the number of cases of diabetes in China has increased ten-fold over the period of the last thirty years three thoughts occurred to me.
Can you really believe official Chinese statistics from 30 years ago? They probably had quotas for the number of cases of diabetes they could report.
Is the incidence of diabetes increasing or is there just more detection of diabetes?
Is a predisposition to diabetes an adaptation to circumstances of frequent intermittent famine?
Just as an aside a lot of the earlier research on the benefits of a low fat diet relied on statistics from China.
You might find this article at Forbes entertaining. In it you will learn of the many California public employees with salaries of more than $200K per year. I can only speculate on their benefit and expense budgets.
Just to give one egregious example the city of Morgan Hill is an affluent community of 40,000 people. Its city manager earns about $325,000 a year. The salaries of 171 assistant city managers average $201,550.
The Trump administration will put an end to the 100 years of U.S. global leadership that began in 1918. It will rend the NATO alliance, cede Eurasia to Russia and the Pacific to China, and adopt as the United States’ best friends populist and authoritarian regimes that despise immigrants and globalization.
Or, after a few early scrapes, its foreign policy will slowly devolve into a somewhat ruder version of President Obama’s. It will bomb terrorists while trying to extract the United States from the Middle East; mix negotiations with Russia and China with pushback against their aggressions; and berate European and Asian allies about their inadequate defense spending without breaking the U.S. commitment to defend them. It will downplay human rights and may even look for deals with rogue regimes, such as North Korea.
The most amazing think about American foreign policy is not its changeability but its continuity through different presidents and different political parties. President Obama’s foreign policy, at least during his first term, was much like George W. Bush’s during his second.
There are limits to what presidents can do on their own. Don’t be surprised if when the dust has settled we’re still in NATO, we’re still in the UN, and the agreement with Iran is still in place in some form. Since most of the benefits to Iran were front-loaded the incentive for us is to stay the course.
Trump will appoint interventionists to his foreign policy positions for the simple reason that he won’t be able to find anyone else. Positions of influence are so dominated by interventionists the only way he could find an alternative is by thinking way outside the box and I wouldn’t expect that. That practically ensures continuity.
As to RF President Putin, I hope that Mr. Trump curtails the cult of personality and demonization of Putin that dominates U. S. foreign policy thinking. It isn’t helping. Something a little more neutral would be a pleasant change but I have no illusions that will actually happen.
We geniuses in the news media spent only the last month telling you how Donald Trump was losing this election. We spent the last year telling you how the Republican Party was unraveling.
And here we are, with the Democrats in tatters. You might want to think twice about our Oscar and Super Bowl predictions.
Despite all the discussion of demographic forces that doomed the G.O.P., it will soon control the presidency as well as both chambers of Congress and two of every three governor’s offices. And that’s not just a function of James Comey, Julian Assange and misogyny. Democrats who believe so are dangerously mistaken.
Far too many are apparently stuck in denial, trying to figure out ways to undo the election. Anger is being displayed on the streets. I haven’t seen much bargaining yet but I’m sure it will come.
I think that Mr. Bruni has it about right. It’s an excellent column. Read the whole thing.
Over the weekend the contours of the coming Trump Administration began to be revealed and to the amazement of some President-Elect Trump is beginning to act like a typical politician. He appointed RNC Chairman Reince Priebus as his Chief of Staff and Steve Bannon as his Chief Strategist (whatever that means). The New York Times reports:
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump on Sunday chose Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee and a loyal campaign adviser, to be his White House chief of staff, turning to a Washington insider whose friendship with the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, could help secure early legislative victories.
In selecting Mr. Priebus, Mr. Trump passed over Stephen K. Bannon, a right-wing media provocateur. But the president-elect named Mr. Bannon his senior counselor and chief West Wing strategist, signaling an embrace of the fringe ideology long advanced by Mr. Bannon and of a continuing disdain for the Republican establishment.
You don’t get more establishment than Reince Priebus so I disagree with the NYT’s assessment. Quite to the contrary I think that Mr. Trump is consolidating his base and like it or that “fringe ideology” is part of his base. It’s better that Mr. Bannon be named to a position without impact or visibility rather than the powerful Chief of Staff position.
Trump is also taking a little heat for naming lobbyists to his transition team in apparent contradiction of his pledge to “drain the swamp” in Washington. Again, I think that was a foregone conclusion. You’ve got to have some experienced people around and under our present system a large proportion of those with experience have become lobbyists. The test will be whether Trump can do anything to change the system rather than his acknowledging it exists. I’m not sanguine about it but who knows?
When I looked out at the night sky last night I was treated to a beautiful view of the moon. As it turns out we are in what’s called “perigee-syzygy”—when the earth and moon are in nearest proximity and the moon is full.
Perigee-syzygy. I like the phrase. An astrologer apparently called it a “supermoon” and the media have picked up on that. They say that this is the closest perigee-syzygy we’ve had since 1948 so my impression that I couldn’t remember a more beautiful moon may well be right.
Some are blaming the earthquake in New Zealand on the perigee-syzygy. The orthodox scientific belief is that the moon at perigee-syzygy has little more measurable effect on the tides, earth, or animal behavior than an ordinary full moon does. However, I haven’t been able to locate a scientific study of that.
The universe isn’t linear. Sometimes very small differences can have outsize results.
At any rate tonight is supposed to be the peak viewing time. Enjoy.
In his interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week program, in response to Mr. Stephanopoulos’s question about strategies that Democrats might use for improving the lot of middle class Americans, Rep. Ellison, a candidate for the next head of the Democratic National Committee, immediately turned to an increase in the minimum wage.
That’s misdirection. He changed the subject. Definitionally, the minimum wage has nothing to do with middle income Americans. No middle income American earns the minimum wage.
How in the heck are you going to address the concerns of middle income Americans if you don’t know who they are?
