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Tim Walz calls for scrapping of electoral college to decide US presidential race (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Kamala Harris’s running mate urges popular vote system but campaign says issue is not part of Democrats’ agenda

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Here's a comparison of Bill Clinton's, Al Gore's, and Barack Obama's election results in Florida:

Election Year	Democratic Candidate	Vote Percentage	Republican Candidate	Vote Percentage	Margin
1992	Bill Clinton	39.0%	George H. W. Bush	40.89%	-1.89%
2000	Al Gore	48.84%	George W. Bush	48.85%	-0.01%
2008	Barack Obama	50.91%	John McCain	48.09%	+2.82%

Florida is reliably blue now, right? Since 2010, the Hispanic proportion of the state has grown by 5 percentage points while the white proportion has shrunk by a similar number. It's gotta be like Dem +8 by now.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Florida is different because conservatives move there when they retire or to escape COVID restrictions. And don't forget, those Latinos in Florida are Cuban, so race isn't as good an indicator.

Texas is really opposite. It's getting large influxes of left-wing voters each year.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yes yes, we all have our post hoc excuses for why a state with a historical trend toward the Democrats didn't continue on. All of those excuses were happening when Florida was getting bluer. It'd be great if all we needed to do was kick our feet up and demographics would solve our political problems, but this isn't a new idea. People in 2000s thought the Democrats would have a permanent majority by now. Turns out the money behind the Republican party isn't going to just sit back and let them wither into nothingness.

In 10 years we'll have a good excuses for Texas too. It will be obvious that some Hispanic group was going to turn conservative because they were fleeing failures in nominally left wing states, or were very religious, or had a machismo culture or something. The young people moving to Texas for economic opportunities will be scared away by the abortion bans. Or they'll crank their media propaganda to 11. Or maybe Texas really will go blue and we'll have an entirely different set of turning-point states. The Democrats weren't doomed to be unable to win the presidency because Florida is no longer a swing state and somehow after all the Republican's failures and odious behavior we're still in a toss up now.

If it was a simple matter of waiting for Democrats to break the cycle and win forever, it would have happened by now. People have been predicting the impending collapse of the Republican party for decades.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Actually a lot of people moving to Texas tend to be conservative from other states moving explicitly for the politics. Conservatives from California in particular.

For instance in Ted Cruz's last election he got a higher percentage of Voters from new residents than he did from native Texans and of course the inverse.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/11/09/native-texans-voted-for-native-texan-beto-o-rourke-transplants-went-for-ted-cruz-exit-poll-shows/