Joe Biden leads Donald Trump in Pennsylvania and Florida, according to new Times/Siena polls taken after the first debate.
Biden leads in Pennsylvania, 49 to 42 percent among likely voters. He leads in Florida, 47 to

A lot for Democrats to like in the early voting data over the last few days, as they are now running ahead of where they stood at a similar point of the general election--thanks to a stronger Black turnout

The Black share of in-person early voters was basically identical to the general election over the first few days of voting, but that began to diverge late last week--and even more so over the weekend, which is typically a strong period for Black turnout in Georgia

As most of you know, the Black turnout in Georgia (and nationwide) was relatively weak v. other groups in the general election. That's been a matter of some consternation for progressives who wish it weren't so, but it's also the big source of upside for Democrats in this runoff

At the moment, the higher Black share of in person early voting is enough to cancel out the smaller share of mail-in absentee voters, who were overwhelmingly Democratic in the general--giving Democrats, in my view, a slightly more favorable electorate at this stage of voting

Looking ahead, we're about to lose a certain amount of clarity in our day-by-day comparison, since the holidays will dampen (and outright eliminate) turnout on GOP-friendly days. We'll probably watch the Dems expand their lead v. the general, and then the GOP try and claw it back

Some early theories on went went wrong with the pre-election polling this

Before we go into what went wrong, let's just call a spade a spade here: this was a bad polling error. It's comparable to 2016 in size, but pollsters don't have the excuses they did last time.
This year's polls would have been *way* worse than 2016 with a 2016 methodology

There are really two halves of polling: the quality of the sample you get, and the adjustments you take to improve the representativeness of your sample.
Since 2016, pollsters got better at the adjustments, but the underlying sample got worse

To my mind, the easiest way to see it: the crosstabs on white voters nationwide, particularly whites without a degree
In 2016, the polls *did* show Trump doing way better among those voters.
In 2020, they did not. And they were dead wrong.
Same story with seniors.

So what happened? How did the samples get that much worse over the last four years, especially among white voters without a degree and seniors?
At this stage, it's really just speculation. We'll know more later--it's too early for an autopsy.
But here's some early speculation

Another day of strong early voting in Georgia, with another 154k voters turning out in person yesterday. That's similar to but slightly behind the fourth day of early voting in the general, which was at 164k

Cumulatively, we're still running ahead of the general election on in-person early voting, but I don't think anyone expects that to last--and there's a very long time left for that flip to happen

As I've said, the big takeaway is that the turnout looks like it will be healthy and high, and it's not obvious who it will help v. the general. As I've mentioned, there are crosscutting patterns at play that make it difficult to sort out where we'll end up. Let's look at a few

One is that there are fewer absentee votes--and those are heavily Democratic.
This is expected: far fewer realistic opportunities for voters to request a ballot for this special than the general. And some counties may be behind

Now, of course, if in-person and election day voting drop just as much (or more), then this isn't actually an issue for Democrats at all. That would have been a very reasonable assumption before early voting. Now I'm not totally sure! We'll have to wait and see

Georgia early voting took a few days off over the holidays, like most everything else, but it was back near general election levels on Monday

As we've expected from the start, this creates a challenge for comparing where we stand now v. the general election.
Day 11-13 were fairly good days for the GOP in Oct.; they run farther behind without those days, but we have no reason to think that's for a meaningful reason

I'll offer two ways of trying to account for this. It's not perfect, but there are many circumstances in which it still permits useful analysis. 1) Remove those same days of in-person voting (not mail) from the advanced vote in October; 2) A direct day-to-day comparison

That first comparison--removing ipev from GE holiday-equiv. --will be represented with a dotted line, shown here.
This isn't perfect: one could imagine, for ex., that someone who would have voted on day 12 will now vote on day 18, boosting later tallies. But still useful context

With that in mind, it still seems Democrats continue to show a lot of strength. Yesterday, they continued to run well ahead of the general election, including excluding holiday equiv. days

1. Short thread - on the various claims we're seeing from Republican politicians over the last few days that the Democratic push for accountability is "divisive." Damn right it's divisive - that is what it has to be.

2. It is intended to enforce a clear division between those who accept and are committed to democracy and those who are willing to turn to violence when the vote doesn't turn out the way that they want it to.

3. One of the basic implications of Adam Przeworski's theoretic work is that democracy is made out of mutually reinforcing expectations, and those expectations are fragile. If some actors think they would be better off defecting from the democratic bargain, they will.

4. In other words: democracy and armed factionalism are far closer than we think, or we would like them to be. This means that it is incredibly important to police the boundaries between them. Allowing some to turn to violence can lead to expectation collapse and cascading ruin.

5. When we allow the divisions to become blurred, that means that we are running the perpetual risk of things getting fucked up. If a major faction turns to violence, and no-one responds, things can get really fucked up really, really fast.

Election Litigation Update - Gohmert.

Reply brief is in. Let's have a look. They are, mercifully, underlength. They had 50 pages available, the PDF is 43 and some of that is cover page, signatures,

Interesting table of contents. Looks like they're packing a lot in, until you realize that much of the material that's important - like their response to the "you sued the wrong person" material and "injury in fact" take up very little space.

Looks like they decided to skip the table of authorities. Presumably GoogleDocWord ate it too bad for them to fix. This will certainly further endear them to the judge.

This is going to be interesting - leading off a reply brief with a "here's what our cause is about" is certainly a strategy. It's even a bold strategy.

Shall we dig deeper, Cotton?

"We live in a democratic republic in which the Vice President, who will more often than not be a candidate in the election, has the sole and unchallengeable power to decide who wins the election" is a hellofa take.

17 / TRUMP / RED LINE / FRANCE / 21

THREAD

Trump owned France back in 2017 and never stopped since.

Q is using France as a mirror for the show.

USA Revolution 1776

[+13]

FRANCE Revolution 1989

ENJOY THE SHOW 2021 PATRIOTS

#OldestAllies 🇫🇷🇺🇸

The Republican Party is an authoritarian power structure.

For decades, it embraced greedy nihilists in order to win elections.

In the last 10+ years, a well-funded insurgency has infiltrated and captured it.

They are now threatening & purging any remaining opposition.

We can’t address the threat they pose to democracy without addressing the methods by which they maintain popular support.

This requires action across multiple fronts.

In terms of public policy, we are working on the right things:

-Bills to eliminate the GOP’s counter-majorian control (voting security, eliminating vote suppression)

-Exposing dark money networks who are funding them (forcing transparency for anonymous shell companies)

-Addressing the immediate socio-economic pain that places people in anxiety-laden debt traps, makes them feel isolated, and makes them ripe targets for disinformation/authoritarian messaging appeals (fighting Covid with a plan, financial relief, genuinely empathetic leadership)

Biden and the Dem Congress are working on all of these things already.

This is moving us in the right direction, and shows that they get what needs to be done here. This is good.

There are three areas that still concern me, that I have been trying to call attention to...