probably not.
Account not actively monitored. I do elections stuff at Split Ticket (https://www.split-ticket.org) ✉️ lakshya@splitticket.org
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probably not.
lol, the only people who think I'm a Republican are just mentally ill morons with too much time on their hands.
Remember that Maine is a blue-leaning state. It backed Biden by 9 and Harris by 7. The median Maine voter agrees with stuff like this more than they agree with Susan Collins' votes, and there's no poison pills here on policing or guns that would hurt a candidate in a rural state like that.
Defeating Susan Collins is going to be hard. If you're inclined to do anything and have money to spare, I urge you to consider donating to *COMPETITIVE* races rather than safe-state heroes with national ambition. Here's one: Graham Platner in Maine, against Susan Collins. www.grahamforsenate.com
DM me, we can talk more about it if you're curious!
1,562 respondents.
I'll try to post something about the methodology as a free article so that everyone can see. I do think that's important. Crosstabs are paywalled — editorial decision above my pay grade.
Will try to write about this, but split is driven by young Dems vs young Rs. The divide narrows heavily with age and is way too wide to be explained purely by sexual orientation. For voters under 30 re: "would you cut family off for opposing political views"... GOP: 77-23 "No" Dems: 74-26 "Yes"
It is always bizarre to me that a big swath of Bluesky treats people forcing Biden to drop out like some type of crime against humanity
Couldn't find much, but please let me know if you see it!
Sorry, to be clear: I was mentioning the design effect specifically in the context of weighting. The survey design, meanwhile, was reviewed by experts across the spectrum pre-fielding for bias.
Tbh I feel like I have a perfectly fine time on here criticizing the Democratic party, and the issue really is that the entire moderate wing of Bluesky is Dem Juche so moderates who want to criticize the party (often for the same reasons!) end up with more pushback from their more moderate audience
The latter — they reviewed the questions and design prior to fielding. The weighting scheme is simply registered voters in the United States, as we say in the crosstabs, with the full electorate screen. Design effect is very minimal. Weights didn't do much.
yes. like I said, I know multiple people willing to cut off their parents. i totally get why young gay people would do that. i know quite a few of them who have made that choice. i can't fault them.
An underrated factor in politics is the power of personal relationships. Friends being like "hey dude the Trump bill puts my Medicaid at risk" hits different than an ad saying that it's going to take away Medicaid from millions of people.
I know multiple people willing to cut off their parents but the proportion of parents willing to cut off their children is way, way smaller (though not zero).
Good-faith posters like @whstancil.bsky.social have said that this is mostly overrated, and that it's sentiment around the economy that matters. IMO that's the driving factor, but it is not everything, and knowing how coalitions view politics in terms of identity and interactions is super important
With respect to bias: we had four expert practitioners (David Broockman, Josh Kalla, Eleanor O'Neill, and Amanda Iovino) review our survey for bias. All errors are our own. But we were very careful to make sure we did this in as unbiased of a manner as possible. Because this stuff really matters.
In this case, it's valuable to understand that Harris voters *are* the only major group in society willing to cut off friends and family for political views. (Specifically, in our survey, this is EXTREMELY centered around Harris voters that aren't boomers. Old Democrats are not willing to do this.)
The business we have is to persuade people and improve society. We have to figure out how to balance the need to grow our movement and keep fascists out of power without compromising the core of what we're okay with. To do that, we need to figure out how others think and why.
What about for conservatives? It's possible that they don't view *politics* as inherently intersectional with sexual orientation or gender identity, to give two examples but this is also a tell, in and of itself, of what they feel politics encompasses. That is also valuable to know.
For a lot of people, this is not the case. For example, with nonvoters, politics is really just "who dod you vote for and what's the economy like?" But for liberals, a vote for Trump is a sign that you are comfortable with the horrid things he's brought and embraced.
Let me first point something out: among the very definitions of modern-day liberalism is that we push for greater acceptance in society for all. In the modern era, this also makes us much more likely to view politics as *part of our identity*. It's core to who we are. It intersects with our values.
I love the discussion, and I'm going to earnestly try and engage more on here because I want people to understand what we're talking about. So let me address some responses. Interact with whomever you want. Your life, your choice. That's good. But knowing how others view politics is important.
Well, 75% of Americans think it's not okay to cut family off, including 60% of Harris voters. This is where I disagree. I think it's understandable to do that, like I said in the piece. But it's not true that the chunk willing to do this is a majority. They *are* a clear minority.
The moderation debate is very important for maximizing *within cycle* odds IMO and you know where I fall on it, but the odds vary per cycle much more based on macroeconomic and global factors, so I wouldn't be surprised to see president AOC in 2029.
So this is a good-faith debate I'd love to have. I *do* think Democrats have struggled a lot with language and tent-shrinking over the last few years. I *also* think they can win in 2026 regardless of any of that. The real question, to me, is 2028. But this all pales in comparison to the economy.
It's very logical to do this. But again, it's good to understand how the rest of America thinks as well. We're very different from them and I think it's good to remember and understand that, while we can and should continue to make our own choices on what's best for us.
I think people must be incapable of reading because the post explicitly says "I don't think they're wrong" for cutting off friends/family for diametrically opposite values. It's a fair decision. just worthwhile to understand that we're very different from a lot of America.
I think people must be incapable of reading because the post I had explicitly said "I don't think they're wrong" for cutting off friends/family for diametrically opposite value.
Like I said, I don't think that bloc of Harris voters is wrong for making the decision in that way. As I said in the piece, it's completely understandable and very, very logical. It's just worthwhile to understand that we're very different from most of America. www.theargumentmag.com/p/when-ameri...
Sharing this finding: Harris voters are the only group of people remotely likely to say it's OK to cut off friends/family for political views. I don't think they're *wrong* — again, it's a question of identity. But we're very different from most of America. www.theargumentmag.com/p/when-ameri...
I mean, if you believe that someone is a Republican despite openly saying they're a Democrat, that they vote for Democrats (and post pictures of their ballot marked as such), and despite them fundraising for Democrats, then you're just lost in the head.
The unweighted sample was ~Trump +2 by 2024 vote, and the design effect was really quite low at 1.20. Weighting didn't have that much to do with this survey. But we did make sure to weight by race x education, race x gender, and age x gender as well for more stable crosstabs.
Our first survey at The Argument is out. What kind of free speech are Americans actually okay with, and how does it vary by party? How does it differ in public vs private? Also: Trump underwater by 12, but Democrats lead the generic ballot by just 1. www.theargumentmag.com/p/when-ameri...
I'm not a Republican is the point. I'm a Democrat.
Alternatively, you could understand that people can have disagreements on things while being pretty explicit about *how* they identify, instead of lying.
Yes, George, you have, because I don't like it when people outright lie about me.
One more note: this whole argument is really stupid, but because I’m still getting questions about my affiliation, I guess it’s kind of weird to see a “Republican” fundraising for Democratic candidates, isn’t it? Gosh, people are really stupid here.
lol did you collect any??
Republican is when you vote straight ticket Democrat in every election you've ever been eligible to vote in, but you still think party leadership is ineffective and that Ruben Gallego's approach is a bit better than AOC's. Learn something new every day, I guess.
coming to your gdpolitics.com feed later: @lakshya.splitticket.org and i go to war over WAR (in a nice way)
Here's what we have planned for The Argument's polling vertical: a commitment to transparency and rigor in an effort to understand how Americans think, using one of the only good tools we really have. www.theargumentmag.com/p/polling-is...
Some news. Split Ticket has agreed to a partnership with The Argument. With that, I'm also their new Head of Political Data. I'm so proud of what we built, and I'm even more excited by what's in store at The Argument. Coming soon: a lot of surveys and a lot of data. Join us! www.theargumentmag.com
My concern about evaluating against a predicted 2024 baseline, as Bonica and Morris suggest, is this: the factors that make a presidential candidate overperform the model in a district do not stop at the president itself and impact the downballot candidates too.
One last note — modeling is very difficult and it took us three years to arrive at a good, stable model. I fundamentally disagree with a lot of what Morris/Bonica did, but this is really hard stuff.
As for what’s better or not, you decide. Modeling is hard. At a first gut check, I can’t explain Miler-Meeks being +1 while Sanford Bishop, Adam Gray and Shomari Figures are net negatives. Jayapal being +2 while underperforming Harris by 9 as an incumbent also just...defies basic logic.
The reason progressives do poorly in WAR has to do with some elementary controls applied. Informing them (incumbency, lagged presidential vote) would get you laughed out of the room. And yes, we fit on the real 2024 topline. That’s meaningfully different from Grumbach/Bonica and Morris.
Deconstructing WAR in great detail, and addressing some questions from the past couple of days: split-ticket.org/2025/08/15/d...
honestly, not for me because I don't care what X skull measurers have to say lol
lol i'd have to block like 40% of my replies. i do that but after a while the point is kind of lost
I know. There's merit to the whole "wait for a recession to put you in power and do big things". I would have been ok with this in the pre-Trump era. Now, I think the stakes are just too big, and I can't tolerate losing more of what we do have. That's why I disagree.
mmmm...I respectfully disagree. I used to post a lot on Bluesky, and *then* I got those replies, and *that's* why I started posting about it — because it infuriated me to see so many "so you hate waffles?" posts.
Hopefully, by sharing this about me, you understand something. I'm not as progressive as you. But I care so much about Dems winning, because I know what's on the other side. The reason I'm not here isn't because I like X. It's because I don't want to see my own side saying "Go be a Republican".
But to wrap this stream-of-consciousness thread up, the reason I'm on X rather than Bluesky is because I fundamentally do not care if Nazis call for me to get deported. You think an Indian American can't handle racism? I'm not here because I hate it when my own side says I'm for the other guys.
If you disagree, that's fine. Unless you're a person in power, I don't really care. (If you are a person in power, I do care because I view it as fundamental to the preservation of American democracy and healthcare for Democrats to keep winning right now, but we can have good-faith disagreements).
So if you're wondering *what* I am (I see my name a lot on here), I'm a moderate Democrat that fundamentally cannot *stand* the GOP winning. But I believe the nation is significantly more conservative than me — and my work tells me moderates have a better chance of keeping these lunatics out.
Sure, we have different approaches. My perspective is that IMO, the way to protect healthcare is to keep the GOP out of power. I don't pretend that my views on AI and tariffs align with progressives, but I'd crawl over broken glass to vote for AOC even against someone like Brian Fitzpatrick.
If you're still reading this, one of the reasons I get so fucking infuriated by people who say I'm a Republican is that I can't ever imagine myself being that. Healthcare is the policy area I care about the most. It's a BIG reason I vote straight-ticket Democrat. I can't tolerate the GOP approach.
It was all the people sharing their experience that gave us ways to prepare. That's how we knew what to expect, what to brace for, what to buy, and what to ask. (And *THANK GOD* for that one Hank Green video explaining cancer survival rates.)
That's where I was so grateful for everyone on X who responded to my questions (we were able to get ahead of the official diagnosis by calling 7 different oncologists...not to mention the people who shared their experience).
I think the hardest part of this was that sometimes, I just didn't know what to expect or say. I mean, *I've* never had cancer. The most experience I had was that my mother passed away from lymphoma 5 years ago. So...I mean, that helps prepare you, but not in the ways you'd like to be prepared.
I think one of the worst days of my life has got to be my 28th birthday. We went to the doctor's office and were told she likely has lymphoma (stage 4). What nobody tells you about being the partner is that you have to figure out how to keep it together so that the other person doesn't collapse.
One of the things nobody tells you about cancer is how helpful it is to see someone else detail their experience, so you know what to expect. We've watched @hankgreen.bsky.social's videos dozens of times by now over the last six months and it's been so, so useful to hear his experience.
This is our final Post piece; we’ve elected to move in a different direction as a firm. But it has been a huge honor to write for The Post — big thanks to @strombergsteve.bsky.social and David Shipley for bringing us on board and to @benjysarlin.bsky.social for being a great editor.
"Trump’s rise has generated much commentary on the evolving nature of the Republican base," @lakshya.splitticket.org and Harrison Lavelle write. "Less discussed are the dramatic ways that the Democratic Party has changed over the same period, partly in response."
An underrated part of the divide between Dem leadership and the Dem base: over the last 8 years, Democratic voters have slowly become more and more liberal, but the leaders haven’t followed suit in Trump v2. Our final piece for the Washington Post: wapo.st/4mu6AMR
that's probably fair, yeah
so in aggregate I think you lose 3 in Texas (I think Dems win Cuellar and Gonzalez's seat even then), 2 in Florida, 1 in Missouri (+ Wagner), 2 in Ohio, and 1 in Indiana, which makes 10.
I appreciate the support but I genuinely wouldn't put much thought into this. People will read whatever they want and just believe anything they want to believe, regardless of what's true regarding my views on Dem policy or midterm odds. Bad faith, but part of the deal — and why I'm not here :)
precisely. but i do not view most of what is flagged in the table as "vulnerable" truly beyond Wagner's MO-02 and *maybe* one seat in Florida across the 5. perhaps you can argue for one in Ohio if you really try.
yeah so it's a *combination* of that and seats currently held by democrats that are drawn to be Trump +18 or whatever.
what is the question? happy to engage, I just don't understand.
I mean, I stand by everything I said there. I'm not sure what the "gotcha" is.
start to hit D+12 or so and then some of these gerrymanders could really begin to face some trouble.
no I think the reason I stay on X is not to determine political sentiment — it's to chat with people who I think are especially good at that. there are still far more people on X for that than there are on bluesky.
you can't group R+10 and R+20 seats in the same bucket. that is the partisan difference between Louisiana and Ohio. what are we even saying here.
where the hell are you getting any of this from lol, I've said the GOP can lose a bunch of R+10 seats. I gave a huge presentation on it. what I have said is that it's cope to expect R+20 seats to all flip as a result of the gerrymanders. and it is. those didn't even flip in 2018. OK-05 was R+18.
popping in because someone sent me this and enough people seem to care about what i say for me to clarify: there isn't anywhere I've said the GOP have the midterms on lock. like i've said dozens of times, dems are big favorites to win the house. I think people are just making stuff up to be mad at.
you don't need to follow me back but let me engage: I think the tweet accurately diagnoses that the Biden presidency's massive unpopularity (plus Biden's unpopularity) has created a HUGE deficit for Democrats and we should reckon with what got us there.
broadly I think Bluesky and X are both full of neurotic morons (X moreso). however, there is enough interaction on X for elections and enough sane people are still there to make it kind of worthwhile. here it's mostly just angry people yelling if I say anything other than "midterms are D+25".
Someone sent me this so I'm here because I think at that point it's actually worth pointing out to well-meaning people what I've said and haven't said about the midterms.
I don't post here much any longer but I have no idea where half of you get half of the things I've supposedly said from because anyone thinking I've said the Democrats are about to "lose the midterms" is scrolling someone else's feed and thinking it's me, or making up stuff to be mad at.
Democrats are extremely likely to flip the House and the question is "what is the scale of the gains". The GOP gerrymandering Texas/Indiana/Missouri to high hell means that 10 new R+20 seats are very likely out of reach (they didn't flip even in 2018). But Dems only need a few flips to win the House
"There’s strong evidence that voters whom President Donald Trump brought into the Republican Party over his three presidential runs will be especially affected by the proposed funding changes to health care." The latest from Split Ticket's @lakshya.splitticket.org and Harrison Lavelle:
no, it's still nonsense. elon didn't do anything to voting machines. he can't. he's not some all-powerful overseers. harris just lost the election. this is all easily explainable.
Seriously, please do not let your brain get suckered into the same garbage that MAGA has fallen victim to. There is no need to go conspiracy-mode for easily explainable stuff. Donald Trump won. Rebekah Jones and the "Election Truth Alliance" are just misunderstanding and bastardizing data.
Actually, the best thing to do with election denial nonsense is to not even amplify it to debunk. Just remember that when you see anyone claim "this precinct that gave Harris 0 votes gave the Democrat 90% of the votes!" it's just them discovering bloc voting by Jewish voters.
Why are we celebrating traitors that fired upon US soldiers in a bid to keep people enslaved?
I will be damned if I allow a bunch of Confederate-waving January 6th apologists give the American people a lecture on flag waving. There is ZERO reason to enter an argument about patriotism with people who still worship traitors to America 150+ years later. They. Are. Breaking. The. Law.
I find this kind of response truly baffling. Yes, it will be hard & they’re gonna fuck around - but if you really believe there won’t be elections, what are you doing just, uh, posting? And what if you’re wrong? Then what?
We talk about the differences between Democrats a lot, but Phil Murphy is the worst of the lot: not particularly great at winning elections by large margins, ideologically nowhere, quite obviously corrupt, and pretty useless as a politician.
Not sure any state is going to get a more massive upgrade in same-party governance this cycle than New Jersey will if they swap Phil Murphy with Mikie Sherrill.
my guess is that trump will overreach on law enforcement against these protests and be punished for it, particularly if they are peaceful www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/o...
Well, I stand by every one of those opinions in the original screenshots. I haven't interacted with Hanania before, and I don't intend to. He's a disgrace.
Extremely obvious outcome: Sherrill was, by *far*, the most well-known nominee and had the deepest establishment support with the best fundraising. She'll probably be just fine. She's consistently a good campaigner/candidate. NJ Gov begins at likely Democratic and is closer to safe than Lean.
I challenge anyone on this site to go look up what I've said about Richard Hanania. It's pretty easy.
I am pretty firmly in the center-left camp of America and WAY to the right of Bluesky and I would vote Zohran in a heartbeat over Cuomo. It’s not even close. Cuomo is worse than even Eric Adams is.
I’ve seen a lot of “the left is blowing this race by uniting behind a socialist like Zohran” takes but not enough “the establishment/center is blowing this race by uniting behind a sexual harasser/corrupt weirdo like Cuomo” takes
