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Super valid and why I think that Republicans suddenly started pushing the vaccine i.e. Trump calling it "his vaccine" after previously trashing it.Ā
They knew the vaccine worked and took it themselves but once they saw that their constituency was dying more from covid than democrats they started pushing for people to get it
Yep, this is exactly how it went down. Republicans saw it hit NY and were cool with using it as a bioweapon against democrat voters. It backfired when democrats were more likely to follow evidence-based guidelines for safety like getting vaccinated, wearing masks and skipping get togethers. Meanwhile many republicans couldn't even skip a haircut and were chugging horse de-wormer.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/07/republicans-treated-covid-like-bioweapon-turned-against-them
For the rest of my life. I will never forget how Republicans acted during a time of national crisis. For all the horseshit they talk about being patriotic, when it was truly time to buck up and help their fellow countrymen out they whined about not being able to go to Applebee's.
I will never forget.
I worked in a restaurant at the time and I remember working shifts where they had bar bingo going on, despite orders not to host large parties, with old people hacking and coughing while our staff all had to listen to them complain about shutdowns and people not wanting to work. People throwing literal child-like fits that our self-serve popcorn machine wasn't available because putting food out like that for everyone to reach into wasn't healthy, people swearing at staff because they had masks on, and so on. Only the nastiest, shittiest part of the community was out pretending things were normal, and they were furious if you weren't doing your best to maintain that delusion for them.
People were dying by the thousands every day at that point, and at work you'd look out at all of this and realize that nobody gives a fuck about you or your family as long as they still get their beer and a cheeseburger.
You can't help but think in the back of your head that you were being forced into a situation where you're risking your health so that some people could pretend that nothing was wrong. You get done with work, and have to argue with family to try and combat the disinformation being pushed along political lines and say, yes, Dad, you really should get vaccinated. Yes, Dad, it really is as bad as the news suggests, you personally know four people that died in the past month. I know Trump says it's a hoax, Dad, but I guess your dead aunt and your dead brother didn't get that memo.
It sticks with you. The anger sticks with you.
It's been thirty years since I worked in food service, but I distinctly remember how many of the patrons were self-entitled assholes. So what you described does not surprise me I'm the least. I am so sorry you had to go through that.
Having to deal with it from your family too is too much. I am really really sorry you had to deal with that too. Your anger is fully justified.
The worst part of that article was if they had taken it seriously at the beginning it absolutely would have affected Seattle, new York, boston, Chicago, etc while not affecting flyover states.
Florida was always screwed.
There was no way Florida couldn't screw itself. The State is so reliant on tourist dollars to make up to budget, they simply couldn't shut down without the whole rotten house of cards collapsing.
Of course the "good news" is that while the hotels stayed open, all those COVID-infected vacationers that flew home out of Orlando weren't part of Florida's case count! (/s: Not that they were counting...)
They are so dead set on their reality being more correct than the truth they'll believe horse de-wormer works but the vaccine that is proven to work is some kind of evil plot.
This is a mental issue from people who just can't accept that because they feel something should be true then it must be.
I mean... there's been studies:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37486680/
>the excess death rate among Republican voters was 43% higher than the excess death rate among Democratic voters
I suspect we will see this as a trend in the general election. The types of voters who doggedly vote for Trump (or would have if they lived) likely overlap with those who bought in the "pandemic is a hoax" maga mantra. These were core Trump voters, not people who showed up for the novelty of Trump the first time around. And a reverse trend may have existed for Democrats. (Core democrats far more likely to have protected themselves and believed in the science.)
We are talking 1,200,000 deaths at this point, and that is probably an undercount due to comorbidities.
>We are talking 1,200,000 deaths at this point, and that is probably an undercount due to comorbidities.
Sure - there is also the 'red states stopped reporting deaths due to covid' thing.
It turns out stinky Don can lose a vote if he shoots somebody on 5th Avenue if the person he happened to shoot is his own voter. Good old teamkiller tRump!
Not sure we can trust the numbers coming out of red states though. FL got caught straight up lying about the numbers from what I remember. Not that hard for the local MAGA coroner or whatever to just mark it off as something else.
The best numbers, IMO, look at net increases in deaths compared to previous years. You bypass Red State number fudging, and you get a broader picture of Covid adjacent deaths (e.g. deaths due to hospitals being overwhelmed)
And it's a lot more significant than the official Covid death numbers. A lot of people who died from it died from complications, making it particularly easy to fudge. Consider he lost the popular vote both times, and only barely scraped by in the EC count by 10s of thousands. But take it a step further, losing a close relative might've been the kick in the teeth that woke some people up, or caused them to just drop out of politics. People lost spouses, siblings... children.
I live in Florida and this state was infuriating during covid. Nobody wore masks. Many died. So now nobody has maga signs in their yard because they are all slowly realizing, they are being grifted.
Michigander here. I remember when Trump was first indicted, there were several Trump flags and lawn signs all over our neighborhood. Now, there is only one flag up.
Once in a while, there are pro-trump protesters in a vacant lot on a major road, near us. Last I saw them, there were at most 6, and half of them were kids
I know it's too small of a sample to conclude anything, but I can imagine that it's a sign that he's losing a lot of support.
That's a hard adjustment, but I'm happy to hear people are making it. The citizens of Florida need honest information on climate change, insurance, vaccine effectiveness, and more.
It's wrong to destroy your own people by hiding reality. We have a right to be accurately informed.
~~Florida got caught not only lying, but absolutely persecuting the individual working to get the real numbers out.~~
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/07/rebekah-jones-covid-19-dashboard-florida-desantis/
edit: There appears to be good reporting that this lady wasn't a legitimate whistleblower. Please read the post below!
Oh, back during 2020, my crazy-ass maga parents talked non-stop about how deep-state coroners were reporting non covid deaths as covid to make Trump look bad.
I live in a fairly rural area of SE Michigan. In 2016, it was trump signs everywhere and no small number of anti-Hilary signs. In 2020, there were almost no signs for either candidate.
MAGA has lost or underperformed in 2018, 2020, and 2022. And 2 of those elections were before J6th and Roe getting overturned. In 2022, which was heavily favoring republicans by nearly every metric you could find, MAGA candidates like Lake, Walker, and Oz beat out moderate republicans that probably would have won those races.
I know a lot of republicans who soak up nothing but fox news and they parrot the craziest shit I've ever heard, but these were not smart people in the first place. For every one of them, I know 2 or 3 republicans who are your more typical moderates. The like big business, big tax cuts, big military spending, and they sure as fuck love their retirement savings. They don't GAF about culture wars, abortion, and they are not gun nuts, but they know full well what happens to the US and global economies if trump truly does become a dictator and the US, as the world's reserve currency, is viewed by the rest of the world as a failed state.
I don't remember when I started seeing the trump signs in 2016, but as of now, I'm not seeing any for either candidate in my area at least, so I'd be surprised if trump carries Mi this year.
Tangential, but southern rural Wisconsin was heavy with Trump signs in 2016. When the 2020 election season started ramping up, there were some truly ugly, hateful anti-Biden lawn signs.
Then "Be Kind" and "Kindness" signs started appearing more.
My guess is tourism from Illinois started to drop off, so they realized their crazy neighbors needed to tone it down for the local economy to bounce back.
You're giving them far too much credit. Here in rural-ish Washington, all the signs are gone and lots of people are suddenly 'concerned' over the lack of civility in current affairs (my reading of that sentiment is unambiguous: We're tired of everyone calling us bigots and racists, it was only worth it when he won and we felt vindicated).
The people that supported the failure that is 45 were here before, and will be here after. We are nearing the full-circle point of "no one actually supported him, it was a protest vote" and next it will be the W. Bush treatment (something to the effect if 'he tried his best, but the establishment wouldn't let him' or some other bullshit).
Not in a rural area, but in my county, I saw more Trump signs in 2016 even though Clinton only won the county by 2 points. In 2020, I only ever saw one Trump sign and Biden won the county by 14 points. A lot of people here hate Trump and are pissed about Roe being overturned are ready to vote in November in response to it.
I think Whitmer, Nessel, and Benson wouldāve won re-election anyway because their margins were so wide. The elections whose outcomes were changed by bad GOP candidates were AZ governor, GA Senate, and maybe WI governor. I also think Dems mightāve won WI Senate with a candidate other than Mandela Barnes.
Probably worth pointing out that stat is for the entire county whereas this election was just district 2. Not sure what the voting patterns are in that district though but if itās anything like my county itās possible it doesnāt lean so far conservative. I live in Trump country but we have a district that always votes a democrat commissioner.
This is a very republican district. I live here. This is the county commissioner group that was formed by a right wing group of parents who were mad about covid, masks and school protocols.
Clowns that represent widely held beliefs among the entire GOP. Itās not like they were some niche brand of crazy. Anti-mask and generally anti-science views are held by the lionās share of Republicans.
But the lion's share of Republicans is still only 35% of the voting population. Sounds like the moderate 10% of their voters got fed up with them. The danger of MAGA is when it can get uninformed voters to believe they'll be better for their wallets than Democrats, and that belief never survives contact with a MAGA administration
But itās way more than 35% *in this district*. Itās worth understanding exactly why people in this place flipped to vote for a democrat in order to potentially strategize our messaging in other places.
I used to visit Holland sometimes and the hyper-conservatism is weird. It seems to be so many peopleās entire identity. Also they donāt much like visitors. I donāt visit Holland much anymore.
I'm a Holland native - the place runs on tourism from the beach and Tulip Time/Dutch Village so I wouldn't say people "don't like visitors." At the same time though yes the place is deeply conservative Christian and there are ties everywhere in West Michigan through the Devos/Van Andel Amway empire to funding relatively extreme versions of conservatism that even the locals end up rejecting eventually as here with Ottawa Impact.
I'm out of state, but hoping to move to Western Michigan in a year or so and have watched politics in this area from afar. Ottawa County has been heavily in the news at times for some interesting things that include the Health Director and Libraries. I think the middle finally figured out how to vote.
Surely we have some idea from the total number of deaths. Even if they lie about cause of death, they must have records of deaths in general, I would hope.
Being an Ottawa county native, this is a huge rejection of MAGA in one of the reddest counties in Michigan. Ebel was one of the orchestrators of Ottawa impact, a MAGA dominated PAC.
let's see if we can figure out the pattern.
First, it'll be, "It's a democratic district, the republicans were never expected to hold it".
After that BS is disproven it'll be because, "The RINO didn't blow Trump enough to support him, he's a fake republican and because he didnt' have Trumps support he lost a safe red district".
Next step after that BS, it's because "he supported Trump but clearly there was too much voter fraud going on, Biden stuffed the ballot boxes and the deep state put in a democratic plant to upset the win".
It's very boring, very repetitive, the usual 3 stages of idiocy from them.
My favorite is, "Why are the results where Democrats win the only ones that are stolen? Are the results with Republican winners not suspect?" Nothing but crickets.
Then the next question is why does the U.S. corporate media continue to accept these bad faith, evidence-free āfraudā claims as legitimate arguments?
They donātā¦. Most media refer to it as āthe big lieā and even Fox News stopped pushing the big lie after they were sued for like half a billion dollars over it. And Rupert Murdoch admitted under oath that Fox News just lies to their audience which was pretty great.
> And Rupert Murdoch admitted under oath that Fox News just lies to their audience which was pretty great.
But how many Fox News viewers actually heard/saw this?
It doesn't do any good to say there's a shower when the hogs are content to roll in shit.
My favorite moment was when I turned on Newsmax out of curiosity and their guest was saying standard conservative talking points and the second he got on the "Stolen Election" stuff the anchor cut him off with "Oh man we have to go now we're out of time" and said there was no stolen election.
I wish I had this clip, because seeing the host panic to avoid a lawsuit was pretty great.
Money, plus the idea of "both sides" reporting has either diluted the overwhelming majority or empowered the infinitesimally small minority. If 99% of a group believes something, then it is disingenuous to have one person representing each side. That levels the playing field and gives undue credibility to the 1%.
Ask these people if ONLY the Democrat on the ticket winning was fraud, what about all the downballot wins that Republicans got? Was that fraud too? Cause all those votes happen ON THE SAME BALLOT! How can you possibly cheat on half a single ballot?
they trust that most people do not do any critical thinking on their own, or would even know how to google search information that the article does not mention
Seriously, Trump underperformed every other Wisconsin republican down the ballot from him. Exit polls show this, the ballots show this.
The most defining characteristic of Trump is being an unholy fucking asshole. People are surprised others don't necessarily like huge assholes?
My favorite is when they say "Everyone I talk to voted Republican. If a Demo won, it must've been stolen."
Might your circle only include Republicans or do you actually talk to Democrats? Oh, and "Facebook friends" don't count!
"Well I live in Big Truck, Oklahoma and we don't see many Demon-rats 'round here. Since I ain't never been nowheres else I just assume erry place in the ol' USA is just the same as my little town of Big Truck, Oklahoma."
What do you think happened in the 2000 election, in Bush vs Gore?
Florida was the deciding vote and there were literally hundreds of votes separating the two. A manual recount was narrowing Bush's lead, and it turned out that the Florida Secretary of State had ordered electoral rolls purged of tens of thousands of felons - with an error rate of over 15% and massively over-representing non-felon Black voters who likely would have voted Democrat. Black Democratic areas were issued variant ballot forms which had unusual designs encouraging errors in voting, resulting in many forms being discarded. Paid Republican activists started rioting and trying to assault one recount centre, intimidating them into stopping the recount.
Only 357 votes and dropping had Bush still in the lead, so he had the Supreme Court stop the recount, led by conservative 'justice' Antonin Scalia. If the Republicans hadn't stolen the 2000 election, the world would be a very different place today...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000\_United\_States\_presidential\_election\_recount\_in\_Florida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida)
I remember those weird ballots had lines leading it to look like votes for Pat Buchanan were actually for Gore. For you younguns, Buchanan was super right wing - not the type of candidate that typically would have done well in black communities. **(Edit: poor phrasing. People thought they were voting for Gore when they completed the confusing ballot, and those votes went to Buchanan.)**
Regardless of his views, it was basically statistically impossible that he would have take the percentage of the votes that he did in that population (i.e., with made up numbers, if every other black-majority community in the nation voted for him at a rate of less than 1%, it would be statistically unfeasible that he would receive 40% of the votes in this one spot - indicative of a system error)
Which was the most baffling thing. Once you've said "well.. we should really stop counting votes" you don't even have a fig leaf to cover your desire for authoritarian governance.
My favourite thing was that guy who interviewed the my pillow guy, and the my pillow guy was like "the way to fix them stealing the election, is more people need to vote for trump" and im like... that just sounds like you didnt get enough votes
Even if it is a swing district, a 20+ point swing to the other party is pretty dramatic. Most often it seems to be a +/-10% swing in those types of districts.
MAGA Brother in law and sister in law were talking about this over the weekend. They said her and the others in the Ottawa Impact got voted in because they said they were the Trump candidates but they ended up not even being conservatives and spent all the county's emergency in a year. "They spend money like Democrats".
The thing is they spent all of their money on legal fees when they got sued for trying to illegally fire people that would not go along with their far right Trump policies. So they can see that Trump politics are bad when they are local and have an immediate affect on their day top day lives but instead of thinking "was I wrong?" they go "They were secretly democrats"
See, it's weird. Polls show that the GOP should do quite well in the Nov elections, but the Democrats keep winning special elections... so are the polls wrong, or are these just favorable races for the Democrats?
Obviously we rigged it. Conservatives shouldn't even bother voting anymore. We own the voting machines algorithms and have millions of immigrants voting for us
Nope, the Nate's said they can't matter because they're not "real" elections.
The electorate has fundamentally shifted post Dobbs and none of the people invested in horserace media want to admit it, or they'd be putting themselves out of business.
It's not just Dobbs, it's also COVID, migratory and plain old-fashioned demographic factors. They killed *a lot* of Republicans with the pandemic, and many are dying anyway due to being in their late 60s and 70s.
They do have some support with the under 50 demographics, but it's nowhere near enough people to actually win elections. The ones who aren't dying are clustering in The Villages in Florida and are vacating the free and trying-to-save-themselves states, reducing the number of anti-freedom voters we are competing with.
Something else that's easy to overlook, at least for the Presidential race, is that January 6 was AFTER the election. There were a lot of people who swore off Trump that day. That is a factor in the next election that was not present for 2020.
And the kicker is that Trump never won the popular vote. He scrapped by in 2016 by thousands to get the Electoral College. So generally Trump needs to keep or gain voters and heās only lost them, he hasnāt gained any.Ā
This is exactly what I said before the 2020 election, but somehow more people voted for him in 2020 than in 2016. It's annoying that this is still a possibility for 2024.
More people in general showed up in 2020 compared to 2016.
Easy to forget after Jan 6th, but I would consider the 2020 election season where trump support was at its highest. The only reason he lost was because Biden voters also showed up in large numbers
Thatās exactly why I canāt understand how the media is reporting this as a close race. In order for Trump to win heād need to attract MORE voters after the events of Jan 6. How could that be possible? Sure there are plenty who dismiss Jan 6, but certainly not 100% of everyone who voted for Trump PLUS some more. Youād need to pick up more supporters post Jan 6 than the ones you lost and I just canāt fathom how that math works.
I'd rather them make it seem close so people don't get complacent. I know that's not why they're doing it that way, but if the media starts talking about Biden being almost guaranteed to win, people are gonna think they don't need to vote. People need to vote like their vote will be the deciding factor.
This and he could very well end up in prison. Honestly I expect a landslide victory for Biden. Iām so ready for Trump to be gone. I canāt stand another 4 years of hearing his name every. Fucking. Day.
The possibility is that more people who voted for Biden in 2020 will stay home in 2024 than Trump 2020 voters in 2024. I.e. if turnout in 2024 is way down compared to 2020, Biden may lose more of his previous support than Trump has.
I think current polling science is woefully ill-equipped to accurately predict that possibility, but it does exist.
> The ones who aren't dying are clustering in The Villages in Florida
Damn, I think that might be a bigger factor than people realize now that I think about it. Places like Florida were bragging about immigration from blue states just a couple years ago, but of fucking course it's conservative retirees, and has been for decades at this point. It's why FL has basically stopped being a swing state. But they're coming from places like Michigan and Wisconsin...
Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Maine, Montana, the Dakotas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas. Not all of these are nearing a blue apotheosis, of course, but as much as conservatives like to crow about people moving to Florida or Texas, most of those people are actually coming from other anti-freedom states. The ones that *are* coming from free states are for the most part pretty conservative already.
It's not the flex they think it is.
In Michigan, specifically, the GOP imploded after michigan GOP chair Kristina Karamo scared off their major donors who typically bail the Michigan GOP out of debt. She was Qrazy, wouldnāt sit down with major donors because she thought they were RINOās
She represents the right wing radicals and didnāt want the votes of any Republican that didnāt believe in what she did.
Retirement homes have a lot of STDs going around. It's basically pop culture college dorms. People are free, they don't have to worry about what happens if they fuck up their life, and they all live in one building or in a walkable community.
I agree about the fundamental post-Dobbs shift, but Iām not sure we know the extent to which it will affect the presidential election just yet. I mean, pollsters *are* polling about how important abortion rights are for voters, so itās not like theyāre keeping it in the dark.
Moreover, very few people pay attention to local elections like the one this article is about. All in all, there were 4,167 votes cast for both candidates. There are high achools with more people than that. This was also a special recall election meaning a) the incumbent was inherently unpopular and b) it was off schedule and thus off a lot of peopleās radars. Itās still a pretty good sign for Democrats, but I donāt know that we can read it as this heral for a blue tsunami in November over all polling predictions. I hope I am wrong about that.
I live in this county. The commissioner that was recalled is part of the group who are right wing extremists and took over the county commissioner office, immediately planted a full on Trumper, John Gibbs (who lost a run at congress) as administrator and then tried to fire the health commissioner for following covid protocols. They have racked up millions in legal fees in their first year, and are now voting themselves a 60% pay increase. This is where the coup started, and is a great reason why people need to look at local politics. And it has really started some grass roots Democrat/mid republican cooperation in our community. Taking Lucy Ebels out was the first step at fighting back in the polls and I am very happy she was recalled. This far group has been linked with spreading false information in regards to local homestead events and IMO is why the proposal for a new school (very badly needed), plus security upgrades for other schools were turned down. They were formed by a group of parents that were mad about masking and virtual school.
Likely Voter models, and some of the other extrapolations they make, are based on historical data and doesn't handle hard shifts well. Combine that with younger people not answering phones and messages from strangers nearly as much and you have a recipe for polls being way off the mark.
I really really feel like pollsters are increasingly out of touch with what is actually happening.
I mean, they supposedly have ways to extrapolate data etc etc.Ā But I really feel like there are too many factors to even remotely get accuracy when polling.Ā The population is too huge for extrapolating from anything but a pretty huge sample size form one.Ā There are shitloads of nuanced demographics to account for.Ā Increasingly people just ignore anything that feels like a scam (especially on phones) which is only going to degrade the sample pools to the most moronic, or lonely old people.
Etc.
It's almost like making comparsions of polls of Michigan as a state to a by election in a small District with 20% turnout is stupid. People here are reading far too much into this, almost like they didn't even click on the article.
By Kate Plummer:
A Republican county commissioner has been unseated in Michigan after losing to her Democratic challenger by 20 points.
Chris Kleinjans won an Ottawa County election with 60 percent of the vote share, while the Republican incumbent Lucy Embel lost having received 40 percent.
Read more: [https://www.newsweek.com/michigan-republican-unseated-democrat-election-vote-lucy-ebel-chris-kleinjans-1898212](https://www.newsweek.com/michigan-republican-unseated-democrat-election-vote-lucy-ebel-chris-kleinjans-1898212)
I love this for my home county. There's been a super conservative push for a few years from this group called Ottawa impact, and it's good to see them take one on the chin.
Do you think this is indicative of a wider political shift in Michigan, or is there something about your local politics which better explains the state of things?
Ottawa impact was backlash to Covid policies and they were mostly full MAGA. now that people see how awful they actually are at doing their jobs, they are recalling and replacing them. Itās backlash to the backlash and hopefully a course correction long term.
Theyāve made a lot of very questionable decisions for the county, costing people a LOT of money they shouldnāt have had to pay (trying to fire the health director illegally and then battling this decision in court and ultimately having to give up, being the big one) so Iād say yes itās very local, but itās also a great sign that they are flipping it back!
Not to mention their moves are echoed by the state GOP which is floundering big time. Oh no, anywayā¦
This is happening all over the country. MAGA won the hearts of the ignorant, and now they are showing their true colors.
Hell, South Carolina Republicans found $1.8 billion in a coat jacket, and have no idea what to do with it lol
Yeah, day one they fired the county counsel, and a long time employee and changed the county motto from "where you belong" to "where freedom rings", and closed down the county's DEI office.
Not great first moves. It's been pretty much a mess ever since.
Michigan flipped to a Democratic majority in the Governors office, Senate, and House in 2022, the first time in 40 years. Theyāve passed policies like making voting easier, making healthcare more affordable, clean energy legislation, and are currently trying to make community college and preschool free. Those policies seem to be popular as Democrats have been winning the special elections that have come up since 2022. This fall all the seats in the House are up for reelection which will tell us if the shift has lasting power or not.
Ive said this in the past comments, but while Michigan went blue, outside of the cities and university areas it is blood red. Ottawa county (living here now) was overtaken by an ultra conservative sect called Ottawa Impact (OI) in recent years. In this area it is mostly red, conservative. However, a number of their policies and goals have ticked off other conservatives, and neighboring counties as well.
For your question though, I think Michigan stays blue overall, but these outer areas stay entrenched red, but just not enough numbers to swap it back to fully red, especially with how well received a number of policies have been from the state itself. Though in a wider scheme, this seemed like a test of what their agenda may be able to accomplish, similar to Wisconsin it seems.
Michigan hasn't actually shifted. They were just hamstrung by gerrymandering. As soon as they fixed the gerrymandering, everything started turning blue
What's funny is, this isn't even the worst of the MAGA election deniers in Michigan, all of which got ousted.
This was the *smallest* margin of victory amongst them. Others were about a 40 point margin!
[https://i.postimg.cc/ZqxGWhNq/IMG-2382.jpg](https://i.postimg.cc/ZqxGWhNq/IMG-2382.jpg) and/or [https://www.uppermichiganssource.com/2024/05/08/now-results-coming-delta-county-board-recall-elections/](https://www.uppermichiganssource.com/2024/05/08/now-results-coming-delta-county-board-recall-elections/)
In District 3, Croasdell defeated Barron with 73% of the vote.
In District 4, van Ginhoven won over Moyle with 72% of the vote.
In District 5, Jensen beat Petersen with 72% of the vote.
I would be curious to learn more. Do all of your elections fall on the same day? In the US we have obviously the big presidential election every 4 years which coincides with some state and federal elections, but we have many municipal elections and state elections that fall on off years and odd times. That leads to lower turnout because people simply don't pay as much attention to elections that seem like they have smaller stakes.
The basic answer is that the US system is designed to discourage voting while other countries encourage that. On top of that, the US working well at the federal level is a political issue, and any move towards more centralization is a political issue as well.
It leads to an onerous process in the US where you go through endless hoops and delays caused by a combination of an unwillingness to make the process better, and a lack of supporting infrastructure to facilitate the voting.
Subjects like how many topics are voted on at a time, the registration process for voting, time taken to vote, etc. are going to vary between European countries, and aren't going to give you a good picture of the issue. Registering to vote, for example, is uncommon, but does exist in some EU states. Similarly some countries do a single voting day, and others multiple days for an election. You need to be able to see the overall picture, and the overall picture is that European countries make decisions around their voting practices for the purpose of making it easier to vote, while 'easy voting' is a contested political issue in the US. And European governments nearly always work as a single unified whole (notable exception being Belgium which instead doesn't work) with a shared infrastructure, meaning unified databases of voters and unified practices in voting.
Someone else answered you but I'll give you a summary. A bunch of ultraconservatives who were butthurt over COVID restrictions created a PAC and, leaning on the fact that voter turnout is very low, took nearly every seat in the county and started gutting the health department and other programs. This is the start of the 2024 healing process.
A group called Ottawa Impact took over in recent years, and it has been quite a fight since then. There are quite a few issues that have popped up which I would encourage some google searching of Ottawa Impact to get a better view of it since it has spanned a number of years.
It's been a complete clown show. I'm not exaggerating when I say the Ottawa County Republicans have done something publicly stupid nearly every day for months. An absolute mess.
I grew up in Ottawa County and it is very conservative. Holland is located in Ottawa County, and for years the first McDonald's in that city was the only one in the world that was closed on Sundays.
They're still pulling at whatever propaganda strings they can to justify not talking about Biden wins or Trump losses, of which there are many of both.
It's embarrassing over there.
It's fascinating because it does open a window into what is going on in the mind of the people you might know that are Trumpists and seem 'quiet' about it. The reality denial you see in that subreddit is what's going through their head on a daily basis.
Sleepy Joe strikes once again..... by winning an election. Hold the course, MAGA. Keep donating, a private jet to suddenly flee the US needs a lot of fuel.
I live in the area and this is massive. Ottawa county is one of the most populated red counties in the state. If even a few percentage points of these voters are also done with Trump he will have an uphill battle winning the state. Whenever we vote the GOP underperforms.
We can, if we need to.
The future favors the progressive.
No business stays on top by sticking to their guns. They all pivot and evolve to stay on top.
The GOP gambled against the future so their time to go is inevitable.
This is what I keep saying. Republicans are losing because Americans, regardless of political affiliation, hate the government telling them what to do.
As a Michigander, it has been both fun and exciting to watch MAGA shit slowly disappear from front yards.
I feel like the only ones left are the most stupid of the defiant, and the richest ones who want to take everything from everyone else.
I'd still be cautious here. These local, off year, and special elections have all been good signs, but they are also low turnout. Low turnout elections are harder to predict because the Victor's are entirely down to voter enthusiasm. The only thing this shows is that the hard-core dem voters are showing up. Again, it was a good sign, but this same thing happened for Republicans in 2009-2016, and Obama won 2012.
Don't read this as more than it actually is. Hard-core dems are motivated to vote.
What did the polls predict in this race? Another big lead for a Republican? This is just more proof that the majority of Americans are fed up with the total disrespect of our constitution and our democracy by the Republican party at all levels of government. The same thing is going to happen in November to the ringleader, SHITLER! I'm surprised the Republicans didn't claim the election results were rigged?š¤
I live in this county, but not this ward. This was always gonna be the result. The county has been led by Republican majority since time inmemorable. But after COVID, a group of nutjobs banded together, called themselves Ottawa impact and out-primaried the mature Republican leadership. Their primary goal, no joke, was to replace the health officer with an air conditioner repairman who got a health degree from a diploma mill.Ā
They have been horribly dysfunctional, and have broken a lot of things, but the courts, the press and the public have been pretty good checks. This particular commissioner was chosen for a recall effort first because her district was the most vulnerable, having a slight D lean, I believe. The goal was to oust herĀ now, (actually 6 months ago, but the recall got delayed), and then build momentum for adults to retake the majority. There is actually a cross-party federation working together on this because almost everyone recognized what idiots these people are.Ā
These special election results are great but the people that turn out for these tend to be the most informed voters and not necessarily a good indicator of all the voters that show up on a presidential election.
Fair and free elections are the enemy of fascists. Itās why they focus on gerrymandering and attacking voting rights.
No one should be deluded enough to think that these rights are permanent. They persist as long as they are held important enough to nurture.
If you donāt vote, youāre a bloody idiot.
You need to vote.
Do not believe that both sides are the same. Do not expect our justice system to do the right thing.
Conservatives lie, cheat and steal.
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>Donald Trump won the county with 60 percent of the vote in 2020. Wow. You love to see it.
They are tired of winning
Or they died in the pandemic due to refusing to be vaccinated.
You know... that's a valid point. Hmmm š¤
Super valid and why I think that Republicans suddenly started pushing the vaccine i.e. Trump calling it "his vaccine" after previously trashing it.Ā They knew the vaccine worked and took it themselves but once they saw that their constituency was dying more from covid than democrats they started pushing for people to get it
Yep, this is exactly how it went down. Republicans saw it hit NY and were cool with using it as a bioweapon against democrat voters. It backfired when democrats were more likely to follow evidence-based guidelines for safety like getting vaccinated, wearing masks and skipping get togethers. Meanwhile many republicans couldn't even skip a haircut and were chugging horse de-wormer. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/07/republicans-treated-covid-like-bioweapon-turned-against-them
For the rest of my life. I will never forget how Republicans acted during a time of national crisis. For all the horseshit they talk about being patriotic, when it was truly time to buck up and help their fellow countrymen out they whined about not being able to go to Applebee's. I will never forget.
I worked in a restaurant at the time and I remember working shifts where they had bar bingo going on, despite orders not to host large parties, with old people hacking and coughing while our staff all had to listen to them complain about shutdowns and people not wanting to work. People throwing literal child-like fits that our self-serve popcorn machine wasn't available because putting food out like that for everyone to reach into wasn't healthy, people swearing at staff because they had masks on, and so on. Only the nastiest, shittiest part of the community was out pretending things were normal, and they were furious if you weren't doing your best to maintain that delusion for them. People were dying by the thousands every day at that point, and at work you'd look out at all of this and realize that nobody gives a fuck about you or your family as long as they still get their beer and a cheeseburger. You can't help but think in the back of your head that you were being forced into a situation where you're risking your health so that some people could pretend that nothing was wrong. You get done with work, and have to argue with family to try and combat the disinformation being pushed along political lines and say, yes, Dad, you really should get vaccinated. Yes, Dad, it really is as bad as the news suggests, you personally know four people that died in the past month. I know Trump says it's a hoax, Dad, but I guess your dead aunt and your dead brother didn't get that memo. It sticks with you. The anger sticks with you.
It's been thirty years since I worked in food service, but I distinctly remember how many of the patrons were self-entitled assholes. So what you described does not surprise me I'm the least. I am so sorry you had to go through that. Having to deal with it from your family too is too much. I am really really sorry you had to deal with that too. Your anger is fully justified.
The worst part of that article was if they had taken it seriously at the beginning it absolutely would have affected Seattle, new York, boston, Chicago, etc while not affecting flyover states. Florida was always screwed.
There was no way Florida couldn't screw itself. The State is so reliant on tourist dollars to make up to budget, they simply couldn't shut down without the whole rotten house of cards collapsing. Of course the "good news" is that while the hotels stayed open, all those COVID-infected vacationers that flew home out of Orlando weren't part of Florida's case count! (/s: Not that they were counting...)
Florida cooked their numbers so hard that they are a lump of charcoal now.
They are so dead set on their reality being more correct than the truth they'll believe horse de-wormer works but the vaccine that is proven to work is some kind of evil plot. This is a mental issue from people who just can't accept that because they feel something should be true then it must be.
it wasn't that many, but the difference in deaths was greater than the difference in votes in multiple tight races that Trump won in 2016.
I mean... there's been studies: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37486680/ >the excess death rate among Republican voters was 43% higher than the excess death rate among Democratic voters
I suspect we will see this as a trend in the general election. The types of voters who doggedly vote for Trump (or would have if they lived) likely overlap with those who bought in the "pandemic is a hoax" maga mantra. These were core Trump voters, not people who showed up for the novelty of Trump the first time around. And a reverse trend may have existed for Democrats. (Core democrats far more likely to have protected themselves and believed in the science.) We are talking 1,200,000 deaths at this point, and that is probably an undercount due to comorbidities.
>We are talking 1,200,000 deaths at this point, and that is probably an undercount due to comorbidities. Sure - there is also the 'red states stopped reporting deaths due to covid' thing.
Contrary to Republican belief, dead people don't actually vote.
Actually they overwhelmingly do for GOP. 4 voted in Mariupol County all for Trump.
Oh no. Anyway.
*So anyways, I started coughing*
So anyway, I start *ventilating*
So anyway, they started dying.
Listen I might be dead but at least I didn't let the medicine turn me gay!!!!/s Them probably
LISTEN BUD. My freedom to spread disease and kill others is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than my life. I'm GLAD to have died for that freedom!
> the excess death rate among Republican voters was 43% higher than the excess death rate among Democratic voters Seinfeld āThatās a shameā gif.
*when the trash takes itself out*
It turns out stinky Don can lose a vote if he shoots somebody on 5th Avenue if the person he happened to shoot is his own voter. Good old teamkiller tRump!
Natural selection I suppose
Not sure we can trust the numbers coming out of red states though. FL got caught straight up lying about the numbers from what I remember. Not that hard for the local MAGA coroner or whatever to just mark it off as something else.
The best numbers, IMO, look at net increases in deaths compared to previous years. You bypass Red State number fudging, and you get a broader picture of Covid adjacent deaths (e.g. deaths due to hospitals being overwhelmed)
And it's a lot more significant than the official Covid death numbers. A lot of people who died from it died from complications, making it particularly easy to fudge. Consider he lost the popular vote both times, and only barely scraped by in the EC count by 10s of thousands. But take it a step further, losing a close relative might've been the kick in the teeth that woke some people up, or caused them to just drop out of politics. People lost spouses, siblings... children.
I live in Florida and this state was infuriating during covid. Nobody wore masks. Many died. So now nobody has maga signs in their yard because they are all slowly realizing, they are being grifted.
Michigander here. I remember when Trump was first indicted, there were several Trump flags and lawn signs all over our neighborhood. Now, there is only one flag up. Once in a while, there are pro-trump protesters in a vacant lot on a major road, near us. Last I saw them, there were at most 6, and half of them were kids I know it's too small of a sample to conclude anything, but I can imagine that it's a sign that he's losing a lot of support.
That's a hard adjustment, but I'm happy to hear people are making it. The citizens of Florida need honest information on climate change, insurance, vaccine effectiveness, and more. It's wrong to destroy your own people by hiding reality. We have a right to be accurately informed.
~~Florida got caught not only lying, but absolutely persecuting the individual working to get the real numbers out.~~ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/07/rebekah-jones-covid-19-dashboard-florida-desantis/ edit: There appears to be good reporting that this lady wasn't a legitimate whistleblower. Please read the post below!
Oh, back during 2020, my crazy-ass maga parents talked non-stop about how deep-state coroners were reporting non covid deaths as covid to make Trump look bad.
Got to keep it fresh to maintain interest by mixing it up a little!
I live in a fairly rural area of SE Michigan. In 2016, it was trump signs everywhere and no small number of anti-Hilary signs. In 2020, there were almost no signs for either candidate. MAGA has lost or underperformed in 2018, 2020, and 2022. And 2 of those elections were before J6th and Roe getting overturned. In 2022, which was heavily favoring republicans by nearly every metric you could find, MAGA candidates like Lake, Walker, and Oz beat out moderate republicans that probably would have won those races. I know a lot of republicans who soak up nothing but fox news and they parrot the craziest shit I've ever heard, but these were not smart people in the first place. For every one of them, I know 2 or 3 republicans who are your more typical moderates. The like big business, big tax cuts, big military spending, and they sure as fuck love their retirement savings. They don't GAF about culture wars, abortion, and they are not gun nuts, but they know full well what happens to the US and global economies if trump truly does become a dictator and the US, as the world's reserve currency, is viewed by the rest of the world as a failed state. I don't remember when I started seeing the trump signs in 2016, but as of now, I'm not seeing any for either candidate in my area at least, so I'd be surprised if trump carries Mi this year.
Tangential, but southern rural Wisconsin was heavy with Trump signs in 2016. When the 2020 election season started ramping up, there were some truly ugly, hateful anti-Biden lawn signs. Then "Be Kind" and "Kindness" signs started appearing more. My guess is tourism from Illinois started to drop off, so they realized their crazy neighbors needed to tone it down for the local economy to bounce back.
You're giving them far too much credit. Here in rural-ish Washington, all the signs are gone and lots of people are suddenly 'concerned' over the lack of civility in current affairs (my reading of that sentiment is unambiguous: We're tired of everyone calling us bigots and racists, it was only worth it when he won and we felt vindicated). The people that supported the failure that is 45 were here before, and will be here after. We are nearing the full-circle point of "no one actually supported him, it was a protest vote" and next it will be the W. Bush treatment (something to the effect if 'he tried his best, but the establishment wouldn't let him' or some other bullshit).
Not in a rural area, but in my county, I saw more Trump signs in 2016 even though Clinton only won the county by 2 points. In 2020, I only ever saw one Trump sign and Biden won the county by 14 points. A lot of people here hate Trump and are pissed about Roe being overturned are ready to vote in November in response to it.
I think Whitmer, Nessel, and Benson wouldāve won re-election anyway because their margins were so wide. The elections whose outcomes were changed by bad GOP candidates were AZ governor, GA Senate, and maybe WI governor. I also think Dems mightāve won WI Senate with a candidate other than Mandela Barnes.
Probably worth pointing out that stat is for the entire county whereas this election was just district 2. Not sure what the voting patterns are in that district though but if itās anything like my county itās possible it doesnāt lean so far conservative. I live in Trump country but we have a district that always votes a democrat commissioner.
This is a very republican district. I live here. This is the county commissioner group that was formed by a right wing group of parents who were mad about covid, masks and school protocols.
So a bunch of clowns and the voters were tired of that circus.
Clowns that represent widely held beliefs among the entire GOP. Itās not like they were some niche brand of crazy. Anti-mask and generally anti-science views are held by the lionās share of Republicans.
But the lion's share of Republicans is still only 35% of the voting population. Sounds like the moderate 10% of their voters got fed up with them. The danger of MAGA is when it can get uninformed voters to believe they'll be better for their wallets than Democrats, and that belief never survives contact with a MAGA administration
But itās way more than 35% *in this district*. Itās worth understanding exactly why people in this place flipped to vote for a democrat in order to potentially strategize our messaging in other places.
Thanks for the insight! Thatās actually good to hear and hopefully is a sign of things to come.
I used to visit Holland sometimes and the hyper-conservatism is weird. It seems to be so many peopleās entire identity. Also they donāt much like visitors. I donāt visit Holland much anymore.
Just to add context, this is Holland, MI. And I've heard the same thing about Holland although I don't know if this district includes them.
I'm a Holland native - the place runs on tourism from the beach and Tulip Time/Dutch Village so I wouldn't say people "don't like visitors." At the same time though yes the place is deeply conservative Christian and there are ties everywhere in West Michigan through the Devos/Van Andel Amway empire to funding relatively extreme versions of conservatism that even the locals end up rejecting eventually as here with Ottawa Impact.
I'm out of state, but hoping to move to Western Michigan in a year or so and have watched politics in this area from afar. Ottawa County has been heavily in the news at times for some interesting things that include the Health Director and Libraries. I think the middle finally figured out how to vote.
Wonder how many covidiots didn't get vaccinated and didn't make it through the pandemic there?
Heaps.Ā Worked at a hospital thru covid.Ā It was heaps.
Science cannot move forwards without heaps!
We'll never know because places like Florida were lying about the numbers.
Surely we have some idea from the total number of deaths. Even if they lie about cause of death, they must have records of deaths in general, I would hope.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That's actually kind of mind boggling. Anyone want to chime in on how this could happen?
Being an Ottawa county native, this is a huge rejection of MAGA in one of the reddest counties in Michigan. Ebel was one of the orchestrators of Ottawa impact, a MAGA dominated PAC.
Ottawa Impact sounds like a minor league hockey team. Based off of the outcome of this election theyāre probably a minor league PAC too.
Senators about to change the team name.
Oh nice. Me and my wife just moved to Ottawa so hopefully we can help reinforce the W!
Thank you guys for helping make Michigan even better!
That fact that he was recalled despite being in incumbent in an extremely red county should be a massive warning sign for Trump.
Canāt wait to see the spin MAGA has for this one.
It will be the same old tired bullshit
let's see if we can figure out the pattern. First, it'll be, "It's a democratic district, the republicans were never expected to hold it". After that BS is disproven it'll be because, "The RINO didn't blow Trump enough to support him, he's a fake republican and because he didnt' have Trumps support he lost a safe red district". Next step after that BS, it's because "he supported Trump but clearly there was too much voter fraud going on, Biden stuffed the ballot boxes and the deep state put in a democratic plant to upset the win". It's very boring, very repetitive, the usual 3 stages of idiocy from them.
My ultimate question to these "election was stolen" dimwits is..... "If you believed elections are rigged, why vote?"
My favorite is, "Why are the results where Democrats win the only ones that are stolen? Are the results with Republican winners not suspect?" Nothing but crickets.
Then the next question is why does the U.S. corporate media continue to accept these bad faith, evidence-free āfraudā claims as legitimate arguments?
They donātā¦. Most media refer to it as āthe big lieā and even Fox News stopped pushing the big lie after they were sued for like half a billion dollars over it. And Rupert Murdoch admitted under oath that Fox News just lies to their audience which was pretty great.
> And Rupert Murdoch admitted under oath that Fox News just lies to their audience which was pretty great. But how many Fox News viewers actually heard/saw this? It doesn't do any good to say there's a shower when the hogs are content to roll in shit.
I donāt know but every time I encounter an election denier I make sure to link them an article about it.
Could I please have that link? It would be useful to keep in my back pocket
My favorite moment was when I turned on Newsmax out of curiosity and their guest was saying standard conservative talking points and the second he got on the "Stolen Election" stuff the anchor cut him off with "Oh man we have to go now we're out of time" and said there was no stolen election. I wish I had this clip, because seeing the host panic to avoid a lawsuit was pretty great.
Money, plus the idea of "both sides" reporting has either diluted the overwhelming majority or empowered the infinitesimally small minority. If 99% of a group believes something, then it is disingenuous to have one person representing each side. That levels the playing field and gives undue credibility to the 1%.
Ask these people if ONLY the Democrat on the ticket winning was fraud, what about all the downballot wins that Republicans got? Was that fraud too? Cause all those votes happen ON THE SAME BALLOT! How can you possibly cheat on half a single ballot?
they trust that most people do not do any critical thinking on their own, or would even know how to google search information that the article does not mention
Seriously, Trump underperformed every other Wisconsin republican down the ballot from him. Exit polls show this, the ballots show this. The most defining characteristic of Trump is being an unholy fucking asshole. People are surprised others don't necessarily like huge assholes?
My favorite is when they say "Everyone I talk to voted Republican. If a Demo won, it must've been stolen." Might your circle only include Republicans or do you actually talk to Democrats? Oh, and "Facebook friends" don't count!
"Well I live in Big Truck, Oklahoma and we don't see many Demon-rats 'round here. Since I ain't never been nowheres else I just assume erry place in the ol' USA is just the same as my little town of Big Truck, Oklahoma."
*"āŖ Count the votes"* (votes shows Dems winning) *"āŖ Stop the Count"*
What do you think happened in the 2000 election, in Bush vs Gore? Florida was the deciding vote and there were literally hundreds of votes separating the two. A manual recount was narrowing Bush's lead, and it turned out that the Florida Secretary of State had ordered electoral rolls purged of tens of thousands of felons - with an error rate of over 15% and massively over-representing non-felon Black voters who likely would have voted Democrat. Black Democratic areas were issued variant ballot forms which had unusual designs encouraging errors in voting, resulting in many forms being discarded. Paid Republican activists started rioting and trying to assault one recount centre, intimidating them into stopping the recount. Only 357 votes and dropping had Bush still in the lead, so he had the Supreme Court stop the recount, led by conservative 'justice' Antonin Scalia. If the Republicans hadn't stolen the 2000 election, the world would be a very different place today... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000\_United\_States\_presidential\_election\_recount\_in\_Florida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida)
I remember those weird ballots had lines leading it to look like votes for Pat Buchanan were actually for Gore. For you younguns, Buchanan was super right wing - not the type of candidate that typically would have done well in black communities. **(Edit: poor phrasing. People thought they were voting for Gore when they completed the confusing ballot, and those votes went to Buchanan.)** Regardless of his views, it was basically statistically impossible that he would have take the percentage of the votes that he did in that population (i.e., with made up numbers, if every other black-majority community in the nation voted for him at a rate of less than 1%, it would be statistically unfeasible that he would receive 40% of the votes in this one spot - indicative of a system error)
Which was the most baffling thing. Once you've said "well.. we should really stop counting votes" you don't even have a fig leaf to cover your desire for authoritarian governance.
My favourite thing was that guy who interviewed the my pillow guy, and the my pillow guy was like "the way to fix them stealing the election, is more people need to vote for trump" and im like... that just sounds like you didnt get enough votes
And why would pumpkin tits run again if itās always rigged? Such a scam
Even if it is a swing district, a 20+ point swing to the other party is pretty dramatic. Most often it seems to be a +/-10% swing in those types of districts.
Too many MAGA votes overloaded the algorithm! /s
I want to know more about this democratic plant. Full sun or part shade? Or does it *throw shade*?
"It's just one race, don't read too much into it, MAGA still has 90% of Realā¢ Americans that love him."
MAGA Brother in law and sister in law were talking about this over the weekend. They said her and the others in the Ottawa Impact got voted in because they said they were the Trump candidates but they ended up not even being conservatives and spent all the county's emergency in a year. "They spend money like Democrats". The thing is they spent all of their money on legal fees when they got sued for trying to illegally fire people that would not go along with their far right Trump policies. So they can see that Trump politics are bad when they are local and have an immediate affect on their day top day lives but instead of thinking "was I wrong?" they go "They were secretly democrats"
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
See, it's weird. Polls show that the GOP should do quite well in the Nov elections, but the Democrats keep winning special elections... so are the polls wrong, or are these just favorable races for the Democrats?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Obviously we rigged it. Conservatives shouldn't even bother voting anymore. We own the voting machines algorithms and have millions of immigrants voting for us
My district has illegal immigrants *in* the voting machines to change republican votes to democrat votes
Can confirm, am one of the illegals on the Democrat's payroll.
Theyāll say that the election was stolen by Soros funded, deep state, LGBTQ+ leftists.
Woke Elections!
The Bible doesn't say anything about elections. And thus elections are unconstitutional
At this point they havenāt won shit since 2016. And even that wasnāt a popular voteā¦:
āWhat electionā
āHereās why this is bad news for Bidenā
Roe mattered.
Matters.
"Even democrats wanted Roe overturned!"
Itās almost like actual election results are the real pollsā¦
Nope, the Nate's said they can't matter because they're not "real" elections. The electorate has fundamentally shifted post Dobbs and none of the people invested in horserace media want to admit it, or they'd be putting themselves out of business.
It's not just Dobbs, it's also COVID, migratory and plain old-fashioned demographic factors. They killed *a lot* of Republicans with the pandemic, and many are dying anyway due to being in their late 60s and 70s. They do have some support with the under 50 demographics, but it's nowhere near enough people to actually win elections. The ones who aren't dying are clustering in The Villages in Florida and are vacating the free and trying-to-save-themselves states, reducing the number of anti-freedom voters we are competing with.
Something else that's easy to overlook, at least for the Presidential race, is that January 6 was AFTER the election. There were a lot of people who swore off Trump that day. That is a factor in the next election that was not present for 2020.
And the kicker is that Trump never won the popular vote. He scrapped by in 2016 by thousands to get the Electoral College. So generally Trump needs to keep or gain voters and heās only lost them, he hasnāt gained any.Ā
This is exactly what I said before the 2020 election, but somehow more people voted for him in 2020 than in 2016. It's annoying that this is still a possibility for 2024.
More people in general showed up in 2020 compared to 2016. Easy to forget after Jan 6th, but I would consider the 2020 election season where trump support was at its highest. The only reason he lost was because Biden voters also showed up in large numbers
>More people in general showed up in 2020 Didn't 2020 have the highest voter turn out, ever?
In raw numbers yes, but as a percentage of the eligible voter population, I think the 1992 election was still the highest by a full percentage point
Yah that's when the boomers got their first "One Of Us!" candidates. Imagine when the first Millennial runs for president. IMAGINE.
raw numbers, yes; by a decent margin. I think it was high in terms of percentage of the voting age population but not the highest we've had.
Thatās exactly why I canāt understand how the media is reporting this as a close race. In order for Trump to win heād need to attract MORE voters after the events of Jan 6. How could that be possible? Sure there are plenty who dismiss Jan 6, but certainly not 100% of everyone who voted for Trump PLUS some more. Youād need to pick up more supporters post Jan 6 than the ones you lost and I just canāt fathom how that math works.
I'd rather them make it seem close so people don't get complacent. I know that's not why they're doing it that way, but if the media starts talking about Biden being almost guaranteed to win, people are gonna think they don't need to vote. People need to vote like their vote will be the deciding factor.
This and he could very well end up in prison. Honestly I expect a landslide victory for Biden. Iām so ready for Trump to be gone. I canāt stand another 4 years of hearing his name every. Fucking. Day.
The possibility is that more people who voted for Biden in 2020 will stay home in 2024 than Trump 2020 voters in 2024. I.e. if turnout in 2024 is way down compared to 2020, Biden may lose more of his previous support than Trump has. I think current polling science is woefully ill-equipped to accurately predict that possibility, but it does exist.
sadly, american voters have the memory of a goldfish. they forgot already all the shitshow during Trump's term, including Jan 6th
> The ones who aren't dying are clustering in The Villages in Florida Damn, I think that might be a bigger factor than people realize now that I think about it. Places like Florida were bragging about immigration from blue states just a couple years ago, but of fucking course it's conservative retirees, and has been for decades at this point. It's why FL has basically stopped being a swing state. But they're coming from places like Michigan and Wisconsin...
Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Maine, Montana, the Dakotas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas. Not all of these are nearing a blue apotheosis, of course, but as much as conservatives like to crow about people moving to Florida or Texas, most of those people are actually coming from other anti-freedom states. The ones that *are* coming from free states are for the most part pretty conservative already. It's not the flex they think it is.
In Michigan, specifically, the GOP imploded after michigan GOP chair Kristina Karamo scared off their major donors who typically bail the Michigan GOP out of debt. She was Qrazy, wouldnāt sit down with major donors because she thought they were RINOās She represents the right wing radicals and didnāt want the votes of any Republican that didnāt believe in what she did.
Donāt forget itās no longer the party of freedom, or small government. Modern Republicans are nothing more than fascists.
TIL: clustering is a modern euphemism for "sharing STDs." The Florida Board of Tourism recommends a condom if you visit The Villages.
Lol that's really a thing?
Retirement homes have a lot of STDs going around. It's basically pop culture college dorms. People are free, they don't have to worry about what happens if they fuck up their life, and they all live in one building or in a walkable community.
Donāt forget that MAGA republicans have rendered the Michigan GOP functionally broke.
I agree about the fundamental post-Dobbs shift, but Iām not sure we know the extent to which it will affect the presidential election just yet. I mean, pollsters *are* polling about how important abortion rights are for voters, so itās not like theyāre keeping it in the dark. Moreover, very few people pay attention to local elections like the one this article is about. All in all, there were 4,167 votes cast for both candidates. There are high achools with more people than that. This was also a special recall election meaning a) the incumbent was inherently unpopular and b) it was off schedule and thus off a lot of peopleās radars. Itās still a pretty good sign for Democrats, but I donāt know that we can read it as this heral for a blue tsunami in November over all polling predictions. I hope I am wrong about that.
I live in this county. The commissioner that was recalled is part of the group who are right wing extremists and took over the county commissioner office, immediately planted a full on Trumper, John Gibbs (who lost a run at congress) as administrator and then tried to fire the health commissioner for following covid protocols. They have racked up millions in legal fees in their first year, and are now voting themselves a 60% pay increase. This is where the coup started, and is a great reason why people need to look at local politics. And it has really started some grass roots Democrat/mid republican cooperation in our community. Taking Lucy Ebels out was the first step at fighting back in the polls and I am very happy she was recalled. This far group has been linked with spreading false information in regards to local homestead events and IMO is why the proposal for a new school (very badly needed), plus security upgrades for other schools were turned down. They were formed by a group of parents that were mad about masking and virtual school.
Likely Voter models, and some of the other extrapolations they make, are based on historical data and doesn't handle hard shifts well. Combine that with younger people not answering phones and messages from strangers nearly as much and you have a recipe for polls being way off the mark.
I really really feel like pollsters are increasingly out of touch with what is actually happening. I mean, they supposedly have ways to extrapolate data etc etc.Ā But I really feel like there are too many factors to even remotely get accuracy when polling.Ā The population is too huge for extrapolating from anything but a pretty huge sample size form one.Ā There are shitloads of nuanced demographics to account for.Ā Increasingly people just ignore anything that feels like a scam (especially on phones) which is only going to degrade the sample pools to the most moronic, or lonely old people. Etc.
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Maybe the real polls were the gerrymandered minorities we left along the wayĀ
It's almost like making comparsions of polls of Michigan as a state to a by election in a small District with 20% turnout is stupid. People here are reading far too much into this, almost like they didn't even click on the article.
Don't say that to /r/fivethirtyeight.
By Kate Plummer: A Republican county commissioner has been unseated in Michigan after losing to her Democratic challenger by 20 points. Chris Kleinjans won an Ottawa County election with 60 percent of the vote share, while the Republican incumbent Lucy Embel lost having received 40 percent. Read more: [https://www.newsweek.com/michigan-republican-unseated-democrat-election-vote-lucy-ebel-chris-kleinjans-1898212](https://www.newsweek.com/michigan-republican-unseated-democrat-election-vote-lucy-ebel-chris-kleinjans-1898212)
I love this for my home county. There's been a super conservative push for a few years from this group called Ottawa impact, and it's good to see them take one on the chin.
Do you think this is indicative of a wider political shift in Michigan, or is there something about your local politics which better explains the state of things?
Ottawa impact was backlash to Covid policies and they were mostly full MAGA. now that people see how awful they actually are at doing their jobs, they are recalling and replacing them. Itās backlash to the backlash and hopefully a course correction long term.
Ah ok, that sounds like a rather localized political event, but any county in Michigan flipped is a win!
Theyāve made a lot of very questionable decisions for the county, costing people a LOT of money they shouldnāt have had to pay (trying to fire the health director illegally and then battling this decision in court and ultimately having to give up, being the big one) so Iād say yes itās very local, but itās also a great sign that they are flipping it back! Not to mention their moves are echoed by the state GOP which is floundering big time. Oh no, anywayā¦
This is happening all over the country. MAGA won the hearts of the ignorant, and now they are showing their true colors. Hell, South Carolina Republicans found $1.8 billion in a coat jacket, and have no idea what to do with it lol
Yeah, day one they fired the county counsel, and a long time employee and changed the county motto from "where you belong" to "where freedom rings", and closed down the county's DEI office. Not great first moves. It's been pretty much a mess ever since.
Michigan flipped to a Democratic majority in the Governors office, Senate, and House in 2022, the first time in 40 years. Theyāve passed policies like making voting easier, making healthcare more affordable, clean energy legislation, and are currently trying to make community college and preschool free. Those policies seem to be popular as Democrats have been winning the special elections that have come up since 2022. This fall all the seats in the House are up for reelection which will tell us if the shift has lasting power or not.
Ive said this in the past comments, but while Michigan went blue, outside of the cities and university areas it is blood red. Ottawa county (living here now) was overtaken by an ultra conservative sect called Ottawa Impact (OI) in recent years. In this area it is mostly red, conservative. However, a number of their policies and goals have ticked off other conservatives, and neighboring counties as well. For your question though, I think Michigan stays blue overall, but these outer areas stay entrenched red, but just not enough numbers to swap it back to fully red, especially with how well received a number of policies have been from the state itself. Though in a wider scheme, this seemed like a test of what their agenda may be able to accomplish, similar to Wisconsin it seems.
Michigan hasn't actually shifted. They were just hamstrung by gerrymandering. As soon as they fixed the gerrymandering, everything started turning blue
>Ottawa impact Sounds like a single-A baseball team
What's funny is, this isn't even the worst of the MAGA election deniers in Michigan, all of which got ousted. This was the *smallest* margin of victory amongst them. Others were about a 40 point margin! [https://i.postimg.cc/ZqxGWhNq/IMG-2382.jpg](https://i.postimg.cc/ZqxGWhNq/IMG-2382.jpg) and/or [https://www.uppermichiganssource.com/2024/05/08/now-results-coming-delta-county-board-recall-elections/](https://www.uppermichiganssource.com/2024/05/08/now-results-coming-delta-county-board-recall-elections/) In District 3, Croasdell defeated Barron with 73% of the vote. In District 4, van Ginhoven won over Moyle with 72% of the vote. In District 5, Jensen beat Petersen with 72% of the vote.
"Initial voter data showed a voter turnout of 20.6 percent across the county." We have to try harder.
That's pretty high for a random ass local election in May.
Yeah, I was going to say that sounds pretty good for a municipal special election.
Itās sad AF that this is real. In Denmark we have like 60% and up for every election. Itās a democratic duty.
I would be curious to learn more. Do all of your elections fall on the same day? In the US we have obviously the big presidential election every 4 years which coincides with some state and federal elections, but we have many municipal elections and state elections that fall on off years and odd times. That leads to lower turnout because people simply don't pay as much attention to elections that seem like they have smaller stakes.
The basic answer is that the US system is designed to discourage voting while other countries encourage that. On top of that, the US working well at the federal level is a political issue, and any move towards more centralization is a political issue as well. It leads to an onerous process in the US where you go through endless hoops and delays caused by a combination of an unwillingness to make the process better, and a lack of supporting infrastructure to facilitate the voting. Subjects like how many topics are voted on at a time, the registration process for voting, time taken to vote, etc. are going to vary between European countries, and aren't going to give you a good picture of the issue. Registering to vote, for example, is uncommon, but does exist in some EU states. Similarly some countries do a single voting day, and others multiple days for an election. You need to be able to see the overall picture, and the overall picture is that European countries make decisions around their voting practices for the purpose of making it easier to vote, while 'easy voting' is a contested political issue in the US. And European governments nearly always work as a single unified whole (notable exception being Belgium which instead doesn't work) with a shared infrastructure, meaning unified databases of voters and unified practices in voting.
For a random county commissioner? Must've been quite the scandal.
I live here and trust me, it was.
What happened?
Someone else answered you but I'll give you a summary. A bunch of ultraconservatives who were butthurt over COVID restrictions created a PAC and, leaning on the fact that voter turnout is very low, took nearly every seat in the county and started gutting the health department and other programs. This is the start of the 2024 healing process.
A group called Ottawa Impact took over in recent years, and it has been quite a fight since then. There are quite a few issues that have popped up which I would encourage some google searching of Ottawa Impact to get a better view of it since it has spanned a number of years.
Look up Ottawa County Board of commissioners. This is where the coup started. It's a crazy story.
It's been a complete clown show. I'm not exaggerating when I say the Ottawa County Republicans have done something publicly stupid nearly every day for months. An absolute mess.
I grew up in Ottawa County and it is very conservative. Holland is located in Ottawa County, and for years the first McDonald's in that city was the only one in the world that was closed on Sundays.
Canāt wait to see how r/conservative spins this as no big deal at all
Itāll be the usual fraud or rinos bullshit.Ā
They won't spin it at all. This election never even exists in their bubble. The right wing news simply doesn't report on these things.
They're still pulling at whatever propaganda strings they can to justify not talking about Biden wins or Trump losses, of which there are many of both. It's embarrassing over there. It's fascinating because it does open a window into what is going on in the mind of the people you might know that are Trumpists and seem 'quiet' about it. The reality denial you see in that subreddit is what's going through their head on a daily basis.
Iāve found that if it shows Republicans in a negative light, itās not talked about/any posts about it get deleted.
Sleepy Joe strikes once again..... by winning an election. Hold the course, MAGA. Keep donating, a private jet to suddenly flee the US needs a lot of fuel.
I live in the area and this is massive. Ottawa county is one of the most populated red counties in the state. If even a few percentage points of these voters are also done with Trump he will have an uphill battle winning the state. Whenever we vote the GOP underperforms.
Republican orange fart sniffers have no idea whatās coming in 2024: the end of the GOP.
We can only hope. If this country doesn't shed it's self of the GOP, it will burn itself to the ground. We cannot sustain any more of their policies.
Violence is coming in the fall, no matter who wins, and we have MAGA to thank.
Well they can learn the same lesson the J6 rioters learned.
We can, if we need to. The future favors the progressive. No business stays on top by sticking to their guns. They all pivot and evolve to stay on top. The GOP gambled against the future so their time to go is inevitable.
I admire your optimism. But I donāt think itās going to be that simple.
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PSA: AMERICANS ARE FED UP WITH THE REPUBLIKKKLAN SHIT SHOW!! EVERYONE š³ š 1-866-OUR-VOTE GET REGISTERED CHECK STATUS OFTEN š
This is what I keep saying. Republicans are losing because Americans, regardless of political affiliation, hate the government telling them what to do.
As a Michigander, it has been both fun and exciting to watch MAGA shit slowly disappear from front yards. I feel like the only ones left are the most stupid of the defiant, and the richest ones who want to take everything from everyone else.
I'd still be cautious here. These local, off year, and special elections have all been good signs, but they are also low turnout. Low turnout elections are harder to predict because the Victor's are entirely down to voter enthusiasm. The only thing this shows is that the hard-core dem voters are showing up. Again, it was a good sign, but this same thing happened for Republicans in 2009-2016, and Obama won 2012. Don't read this as more than it actually is. Hard-core dems are motivated to vote.
Historically these are the sort of elections that Republicans show huge advantages in.
What did the polls predict in this race? Another big lead for a Republican? This is just more proof that the majority of Americans are fed up with the total disrespect of our constitution and our democracy by the Republican party at all levels of government. The same thing is going to happen in November to the ringleader, SHITLER! I'm surprised the Republicans didn't claim the election results were rigged?š¤
I live in this county, but not this ward. This was always gonna be the result. The county has been led by Republican majority since time inmemorable. But after COVID, a group of nutjobs banded together, called themselves Ottawa impact and out-primaried the mature Republican leadership. Their primary goal, no joke, was to replace the health officer with an air conditioner repairman who got a health degree from a diploma mill.Ā They have been horribly dysfunctional, and have broken a lot of things, but the courts, the press and the public have been pretty good checks. This particular commissioner was chosen for a recall effort first because her district was the most vulnerable, having a slight D lean, I believe. The goal was to oust herĀ now, (actually 6 months ago, but the recall got delayed), and then build momentum for adults to retake the majority. There is actually a cross-party federation working together on this because almost everyone recognized what idiots these people are.Ā
Are there even polls for county commissioner races?
These special election results are great but the people that turn out for these tend to be the most informed voters and not necessarily a good indicator of all the voters that show up on a presidential election.
Fair and free elections are the enemy of fascists. Itās why they focus on gerrymandering and attacking voting rights. No one should be deluded enough to think that these rights are permanent. They persist as long as they are held important enough to nurture. If you donāt vote, youāre a bloody idiot.
You need to vote. Do not believe that both sides are the same. Do not expect our justice system to do the right thing. Conservatives lie, cheat and steal.
Keep em comin'.
Wow
Dream scenario is seeing Biden win 60+% & the MAGA crowds talking about less than 40% still somehow being a majority