SinglePayer

Thought experiment: Imagine a swing voter weighing whether to vote D or R. They're given this chart of about ~50 issues. They're asked to pick the top 5 issues for why they'd choose D over R. Then pick another top 5 for why they'd choose R over D. Which issues would they choose?

This might be useful for some people over the next few days:

NYT/Siena is really putting a lot on the line here. Which is more than I can say about a lot of other pollsters right or wrong.

Disliking Haley Stevens since her 2022 primary of Andy Levin (aided by AIPAC money!) was the right choice.

I can see El-Sayed hemorrhaging Jewish support but saying he lacks black support doesn’t make any sense to me. The data really doesn’t support it.

The Virginia early vote looks to be about as blue as it was in 2025. Considering Chaz’s predictions you’d have to think: A. Eday vote will be much bluer than in 2025 or B. Persuasion in favor of democrats will be much better than in 2025

Just looking at oil prices and the general lag time between oil price increases and gas price increases, it looks like Iran is trying to turn the screws on Trump and the GOP right before the midterms.

I think Trump is going to be the last staunchly pro-Israel president. Israel’s position and image is deteriorating way too fast for pro-Israel politics to have any future here.

For the record I don’t think Blakeman is performing particularly well. Sure NY polls are close but all the NY polls that also poll the generic ballot have him performing about in line with generic R vs generic D. If his race is close I’d also expect down-ballot Dems to collapse.

It seems clear to me that Zohran has made a conscious decision to concede on several crime issues and turn his focus on other things.

One thing underrated about the difficulty of Oregon governance is the 2/3 quorum rules.

Gas prices have been falling lately. Down 10 cents from the recent peak.

I do think it’s under-appreciated how crazy difficult it for the out-party in midterm years to pick up senate seats that are +10 partisan lean in favor of the incumbent party. Even in less polarized eras it didn’t happen much. Dems have to do it twice minimum to get the senate.

In my mind I feel like attention and money needs to be redirected towards Jackson. El-Sayed looks like he’s taking care of business for the most part and I’m not worried anymore about Michigan.

The most impactful things Zohran can do for the left and American socialism is: 1. Stay popular in NYC 2. Generate a consistent and continuous stream of small, material and popular wins that demonstrate your own competence and ability to improve things even if only marginally.

When people talk about how good/bad EV is for Democrats or Republicans, the most important thing to pay attention to is which years are they comparing it to. Are they comparing 2026 to 2022, 2024, and/or 2025? Each year has different voting method dynamics by partisanship.

Was looking at some stuff and stumbled on this 2024 ballot initiative in South Dakota. It was defeated but it did better than Harris and abortion.

One good thing about dems getting a trifecta in Virginia in 2019 is how easier it is to vote now. I sat at home. I got a mail-in ballot. I filled it out in a few minutes and I shipped it out. Now I don’t have to worry about voting for the rest of the cycle.

I'm not convinced of significant electoral benefits for dems from being right wing on trans issues (because it's so low salience). But we're going to find out how some of these red state dems do (Talarico, Turek, Sand, etc), vs others (Peltola, Brown, etc).

I've said this before but I think the model of the Overton Window specifically as it relates to how public opinion changes is mostly fake.

There's a good chance that if gas keeps getting worse along with inflation, the environment could get worse than what even polls, primary turnout, or special elections are saying right now. There's no guarantee of any coming home moment for the GOP. The floor could just collapse.