Stidmatt

So I have a spreadsheet where I have recorded the partisan alignment of the federal government and how Americans have voted for the President, House, and Senate. This data is from Wikipedia.

If you navigate to the Organized table this is as easy to understand as I’ve figured out how to make it so far. From this, I have found some interesting findings.

• There have only been three times in American history where the president, house, and senate have flipped from one party to the other. These were in 1800, 1840, and 1952.
• The House usually flips before the Senate. The only exceptions since the 17th amendment were in 1946, 1952, and 1980.
• Democrats have won the popular vote for the President in every election since 1990 except 2004 and 2024.
• When we add up the vote totals for three Senate elections in a row to get an overview of how the entire country feels, with a rolling sum (so the count for 2024 is in the 2020, 2022, and 2024 elections), the Republicans have not received a majority of the popular vote for the Senate since 1998.

Here is a list of presidential elections where the popular vote matched the results for the President, House, and Senate, for an election leading to a trifecta, with a three-election rolling sum for the Senate:

• 1936: All Democratic
• 1940: All Democratic
• 1944: All Democratic
• 1948: All Democratic
• 1960: All Democratic
• 1964: All Democratic
• 1976: All Democratic
• 1992: All Democratic
• 2008: All Democratic
• 2020: All Democratic

The Republicans have not won a trifecta while also winning the popular vote among all three branches since Wikipedia records the sum of votes for the Senate.

The Democrats have not won a trifecta without also winning the popular vote for all three branches since the popular vote for the Senate began.

This leads me to the conclusion that the Republicans have not had broad-based appeal since at least the 1920s.

So why do Republicans keep winning the presidency if they have not done well across the board since the 1920s for any six years?

Let’s look back at the Keys to the White House, the best prediction system for Presidential elections developed so far.

But first I need to make some corrections.

Lichtman predicted Harris would have won and if the perception of the economy was accurate among most Americans then his prediction would likely have been accurate. However, there was a divergence between the perception of the economy and the actual economic performance. Also, I disagree that there was a major military success under Biden’s term. The war in Ukraine is still ongoing. I also don’t see anything Biden did as being a major policy change, the BBB act turned into a major slush fund for overpriced infrastructure projects. This adds 4 false keys to the four he gave Harris, giving her 8 false keys and the win to Trump.

With this modification we realize his model correctly predicts the winner of the popular vote or the electoral college in every year since 1876, so it’s worth using.

Now let’s delve into the elections where Republicans won a trifecta without winning a popular vote trifecta.

The first obvious case is 2024. The Democrats continue their 22-year-long streak in the Senate by popular vote. It becomes clear to me that Americans were not so much enamored by Trump but repulsed by Biden’s foreign policy, the only issue where he is behind in the polls.

2016 saw a narrow win for Republicans in the House since Hillary Clinton’s coattails end at her shoulders. Neither Trump nor Clinton have long coattails because they are extremely unpopular candidates. Biden has never been that popular either, since before Warren dropped out he had a minority of the popular vote in the primary. The message is clear. We need different candidates.

2004 is an interesting case because even though Bush won the popular vote and the House popular vote, Democrats won a majority of the vote for the Senate. Bush was never very popular.

2002 is tricky because even though Jim Jeffords was a Republican before 2001, he switched to being an Independent and caucused with the Democrats. Once adjusting for this switch the Democrats had a majority of the popular vote in 2002.

In 2000 Bush was unable to carry a solid majority in the Senate and lost the popular vote. He was unpopular.

Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan never had coattails long enough for the Republican Party to win the majority of the vote in the House. Either they were unpopular or the Republican Party was disorganized. It also was an era where the Republicans still had a lot of support in the North and Democrats carried the Solid South, so it was a different party system.

We only saw the final crystallization of policies between candidates and parties at a nationwide level in 1994 with Gingrich’s Contract for America. Before then the party alignment mattered less than the region the politician was from.

Another factor is that California has grown to be such a massive state while still carrying only two Senators. Even though the small states are pretty evenly divided between liberal northeastern states and conservative middle-American states, California has over 10 million more people than Texas in the last census and over 10% of America’s population. This has led to the Senate being very disproportionate for the last 50 years. But this is not a new problem either. Virginia had 18.9% of the population in 1790, in a way America is less disproportionate now than it was when it was founded! The country became slightly disproportionate from 1880 to 1920 and 1950 to 1960 when New York had just under 10% of the national population (woo! Relative proportionality!) but the meteoric growth of Silicon Valley and Hollywood in the latter half of the twentieth century to today led to California becoming the largest state by far.

If Texas continues to add half a million people per year they will finally surpass California in around 2040.

The Senate has always been disproportionate. The skew between the Senate popular vote and the majority in the Senate since the 1980s is due to California’s explosive growth.

Ideal candidates

To finish this up, who would be the ideal candidate for each party who would be able to capture the imagination of the American people and have long coattails leading to a strong trifecta?

Let’s start with the Republican Party. The candidate should be a veteran. He should be level-headed and appoint a very experienced Republican politician who already has a high profile to be his vice president, fixing John McCain’s mistake. Socially conservative, but not giving Nazi salutes. Fiscally the Republican wants to move to a superannuation system instead of OASI. He wants to end red tape. He is not going to attack Medicare, because that hurts seniors. Strongly anti-communist and in favor of America’s alliances like Eisenhower was. Appear levelheaded and calm to voters. Key issues:

• Military strength
• Fiscal responsibility
• End red tape
• Anti-abortion

Every Republican candidate since Eisenhower has violated one of these principles. Even Eisenhower made some very poor choices with his cabinet, particularly with picking Vice President Nixon. Every Republican President since Eisenhower has been very corrupt and has had a certain level of disdain for our allies, which is why none of them have had significant coattails. I think a Republican candidate like this would be the first Republican since Eisenhower who I would not absolutely detest, while also carrying some of the values of the Republican Party which are fairly agreeable, aside from the anti-abortion stance which is shrouded in ignorance.

The ideal Democratic candidate however will support expanding Medicare and Medicaid, with a focus on ensuring every American always has health insurance. They might support Medicare for all. Very socially liberal, supporting Black Lives Matter and trans rights. Supports auditing the Department of Defense and alternatives to policing. Like the Republicans the Democrat supports strengthening American alliances, but with conditions regarding the treatment of prisoners and how war is conducted. They will support a peaceful solution in Israel and Palestine without blank checks. They support Ukrainian accession to NATO. They support visa-free travel and reforming our immigration system for migrant workers to give them a pathway to work in this country legally. They strongly support the rights of refugees. They work closely with our allies, building bridges. They support building out passenger rail and likely support buying out private railroad tracks. Aside from that, the Democrat is an ardent capitalist, supporting regulation to protect consumers while also opposing red tape which serves no useful purpose.

Key issues:

• Socially liberal
• Internationalist, strong Atlanticist foreign policy. Embraces allies.
• An economically moderate capitalist in favor of railroad nationalization and Medicare for all.
• End unnecessary red tape.

This Democrat will be very similar to Obama in terms of social and economic policy but with a major upgrade to our foreign policy. Building up alliances in Asia is a good thing, but not at the expense of NATO.

This will help us move away from the current state of American politics and towards a bright future where we have never been before.

On top of this, we need to ensure that the party machinery is well-oiled beyond the president, supporting excellent candidates for every office from your local school board to the presidency and everywhere in between.

This is how Democrats won in 2008, and this is how Democrats will win in 2028.

Most cities in the world have areas which are more expensive and least expensive. Very few cities will be only for the rich (where do the restaurant employees live), and few big cities will have no rich people. There are of course small towns which have only poverty or only extremely rich people, but those are the exception.

So when a city looks at their underserved areas they will often want to provide the same quality of service to the underserved areas as they do to the wealthier areas. People ask why the poor areas cannot have access to parks, transit, walking paths, and other valuable services. This is a good question to ask.

The issue then becomes that by building these amenities the desirability of the lower-income neighborhood will increase and more people will want to move there. Increase demand, increase price.

So then a city might say that they want to improve everywhere a little bit all at the same time, which is an admirable goal, but in reality, the world can’t work that way. Cities have limited resources in terms of labor, construction machinery, and the like. I’m not even worrying about money yet. So some areas will necessarily get the amenity before others. If a city does this long enough to build a well-connected transit system, expansive trails, good quality parks, and other amenities that people enjoy, then the city will become a more valuable place to live compared to other cities in the same country.

For cities in the United States, the cities that have built the most transit and walkability are now the most expensive. Cities which have not invested in these amenities are less expensive. City-states can choose to limit who can and cannot live in their city through a visa policy, but the only city that is like this is Singapore. Monaco, Malta, and Vatican City are all part of the Schengen area. Singapore is also the third most expensive country in the world to live in, behind only the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. This does not adjust for wages. So even by controlling immigration you still have the reality that if you are a low-corruption city with great job opportunities and great urbanism people will want to move there.

The only way I know of that would make it so average people could live in great urbanist cities is if everywhere started building in this way all at the same time. This is impossible. So the best we can do is improve our places or relocate.

World military expenditure is increasing along with global deaths due to armed conflict reaching its highest level since 1995 in 2022.

This is due primarily to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine the deadliest armed conflict in the world. Interestingly, deaths due to armed conflict follow the rank-size rule, as we observe in cities. The Russian Invasion was unprovoked, unlawful, and has killed countless civilians. It’s a very simple conflict. The only solution to the war that will end is for Russia to leave Ukraine. We have tried every other option. List of ongoing armed conflicts

The Arab-Israeli war will continue until Palestinians have citizenship in a UN member state. Over the last few years here on my blog, I have written about my research on the history and politics of the conflict. It is caused by one thing, which is that Palestinians are denied citizenship in a UN member state. The easiest way to describe it is in this decision tree: This shows why a one-state solution is probably the most viable path to peace. The far-right parties in Israel and Palestine will be at each other’s throats for mutual benefit in order to scare their population to vote for them. It’s revolting. This is why Hamas is still in control of Gaza and will remain in control of Gaza for the foreseeable future.

The only way a war is possible in a one-state solution is for Hamas and Likud to form a coalition.

The remaining wars are in countries in the high inequality-high corruption-high poverty trap. Solve that trap for those countries and the fighting will cease.

On top of this, there are only a few countries in the world that are really able to project violence at the scale we have seen from Russia. If we filter even further to be a large authoritarian regime bordering a democracy or hybrid regime country where the authoritarian regime has more than twice the GDP per capita and a larger military expenditure than their democratic neighbor there are only three targets, Mongolia, Georgia, and Ukraine. These countries are threatened by Russia and Mongolia by China.

Only two authoritarian regimes today have over 100 million people, Russia and China.

China is (was?) substantially constrained by trade. Invading Taiwan would destroy their economy, bringing in a people’s revolution to overthrow their communist regime.

If we reduce our threshold to countries with over 10 million people and over $10k GDP per capita, we only have Saudi Arabia and Venezuela as potential candidates. As predicted, Saudi Arabia is waging a proxy war in Yemen against Iran while Venezuela is threatening to take 3/4 of Guyana’s land. The rest of the world’s authoritarian regimes are too small or too poor to successfully wage war.

The rest of the Gulf States are slightly less likely to wage war based on their democracy index, but they do sponsor terrorist groups outside their borders to project their ideology even if they don’t have the population to wage war as Russia does.

We need to continue to constrain China with trade to guarantee economic destruction if they invade Taiwan. It has worked so far. We need to further increase sanctions on Russia and increase military aid to Ukraine so Ukraine will be able to fully win the war, and then bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO as soon as possible. That’s how we guarantee peace in the world.

We can bring peace to the world through a combination of trade through complex interdependence theory, backed up by mutual protection pacts so if any democracy is attacked there will be swift action to counteract the attack.

This is already the case as seen in this map which shows which countries currently have military alliances with the United States. If any of these countries were attacked, the United States would immediately be at war. Israel is the only country with a democracy score over 7, a population over 1 million people, and a GDP per capita over $10,000 that does not have a mutual protection pact with the United States or is a member of the European Union or Schengen Area.

However, Israel has a lower Corruption Perceptions Score than most US allies. At a corruption perceptions score around 60 and below it is less likely the United States will form a mutual protection pact with a country. Israel is right at that cusp. Taiwan has a great democracy score and a good enough corruption perceptions index score but lacks recognition from the United States, so they don’t have a mutual protection pact with us.

Singapore’s democracy index score is around 6 which is the point where the probability of a country having a protection pact with the United States is a tossup.

When it comes to Ukraine and Georgia the people have made it clear what they want. The best thing to do is to let them into NATO and assist them as much as they want with implementing anti-corruption efforts to align with the European Union acquis. It’s the same with every other country which chooses this path. Bosnia, Moldova, Kosovo, and Serbia are in a similar situation. Every other European country except Andorra is a member state of the European Union, Schengen Area, or NATO. Andorra is a very special case.

The rest of the world

Enough about Europe, what about other regions?

When it comes to the Americas, Latin America is mostly middle-income and very isolated from any potential threats. Most countries in Latin America are still part of the Rio Pact. The Caribbean islands are too small to make invasions worthwhile. They are safe.

African countries uniformly score poorly on corruption, with Botswana and Mauritius leading the pack with average scores of around 50. No country in Africa has a nominal GDP per capita above $10k. South Africa is the largest country with a democracy score above 5, and they are so far from everywhere outside of Africa that they would be the last place to be invaded. It’s unlikely there will be invasions in any democracy in Africa. There are far better targets elsewhere.

In Asia, India is so populous that invading them would be suicide. Indonesia is only made of islands, so it would be practically impossible to successfully invade. Malaysia is the tip of a long peninsula and you would have to get through Thailand first, which has a mutual protection pact with the United States. Singapore is small and you would have already invaded Malaysia and Indonesia so an invasion of Singapore is basically impossible. All of these countries are members of ASEAN who would almost certainly come to each other’s defense. Mongolia is the only democracy in Asia at risk of invasion.

The only country in Oceania without a US protection pact and a population of over a million is Papua New Guinea. They have a very low corruption score leading to a very poor economy. Australia and New Zealand are protected by ANZUS. Every small island country maintains a very strong relationship with one of the three ANZUS nations. There are no good targets in Oceania.

So, for a country to be a good target for an attack, they need to be:

1. Large enough to be worthwhile. No one is going to spend the resources to invade Liechtenstein. It’s not worth it. So you need over a million people.
2. No protection pact with the United States. No membership in any other mutual protection pact like the European Union or ASEAN. No membership in Schengen.
3. Countries that have low democracy scores are likely to self-implode before they are invaded. They tend to be so poor that they are not worth invading. So to be a target you have to be democratic enough that there is something worth taking.

Ukraine hits all of these targets. Its economy was growing rapidly before the invasion. It is democratic. It borders Russia. It has no mutual protection pact. Georgia and Mongolia are the only other countries that face the same level of danger due to their politics. Taiwan faces a threat from the People’s Republic of China due to its claim, but the Communists are constrained by trade with the United States.

It all comes down to this conclusion.

If you want world peace, defeat Russia.

Sure, Elon Musk is raiding the treasury and halting payments to contractors he doesn’t like, Trump has done more horrible things in the last few weeks for me to even process, but we have unity in a solid government trifecta.

I do believe the issues that turned the election against Harris were based on foreign policy. The withdrawal from Afghanistan is the largest military defeat of the United States since 1975 if not forever. It is only the second time in history an American ally has fallen to a hostile enemy power. The first time was Vietnam.

But hey, now they are at peace with a democratic score that makes North Korea look good!

Sure, the Biden Administration valued unity over the lives of Ukrainian people, but getting along with others is the paramount value of society, according to Joe Biden. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, kidnapped, raped, and have lost their homes, but hey, we got unity out of it. We listened to Putin’s red lines, aside from all the ones we violated. But their lives were expendable to the Biden administration in his lifelong quest for political unity.

Israel fought a war to “eradicate Hamas” from the Gaza Strip, claiming it was to protect Jews around the world and Hamas is still in control of Gaza. The approval for the war in Gaza was always very low among independents and Democrats, but hey, we sure got some bipartisan legislation out of it! We got unity, never mind the people who died to give us political unity, harmony is the only thing that mattered to the Biden administration.

As a result, Trump and Elon Musk are now raiding the treasury, government websites are down, tariffs are being threatened against our closest allies, and the Republicans have a trifecta.

But hey, at least we finally have unity before everything goes to hell.

Mission accomplished, right Joe?

I know how to put it. I voted for Elizabeth Warren in 2020 because she was the only candidate who was not reactionary. Bernie is obviously reactionary with his form of anti-billionaire populism. Biden is no less reactionary by his stance being a nebulous “let’s all get along.” Warren actually stood for something independent of the republican stance. She was the only one with a real vision.

If you delved into the websites of the three candidates, Warren was the only candidate with detailed plans for how her policies would work. She had the policies ready to go, ready to be laid on the table in Congress. Sanders had a vague notion of universal health care like Canada, the model he points to since his state is on the border, but he didn’t lay out too many details beyond that.

Biden is very simple. We need to move to the center and Republicans will like us. Given how he is in his second term… oh wait… no… he became one of the least popular presidents in history on leaving office.

I think that Bernie would have been a better president than Joe Biden without question. I think he likely would have had more experienced and knowledgeable cabinet officials for foreign affairs than Biden did. I think he would not have fallen for the trap of Gaza, and not withheld Ukrainian aid. I doubt he would have withdrawn from Afghanistan. But beyond that, I don’t think he would have been very successful in getting legislation passed through Congress. He likely would have had longer coattails than Biden, and if he did not have the crisis of the Taliban taking over Afghanistan in his first year, he likely would have won his midterms, and likely reelection if he chose to run in 2024. But beyond that, I don’t think much legislation would pass under President Sanders.

President Warren is a different animal. I am certain her foreign policy picks would have been far more experienced than the clowns Biden had running the show. She would not have fallen for Netanyahu’s lying, and she is far more supportive of Ukraine than any President has been since the fall of the Soviet Union. The war would be over by the time the 2024 election came around, giving her a major foreign policy victory, and a second term. She has advocated against the filibuster since before she was elected to the Senate and would make it her top priority, which would open the floodgates to the rest of her proposals. I don’t think everything would necessarily be rosy under her term, the media would have hated her just as much as they hated Obama, our only center-left president since LBJ. But the reality is that no matter how much the pundits would have hated her, she has already proven she is more capable of bringing results than Biden has been over their careers and would have been a better president than Biden.

Because she is not a reactionary politician.

If Democrats want to win a trifecta in 2028, I think we need to let go of Sanders/Biden reactionary politics. We need to abandon the failed Biden/Trump foreign policy. We need to move towards a more progressive direction that defines positive goals for what we want, not just in relation to Republicans. Our next president needs to be unforgivingly Atlanticist. Our next President needs to work on abandoning the government boat known as ESTA and reintroducing visa-free travel between the United States and the rest of NATO. Our next President needs to not just be unforgivingly an Atlanticist but cultivate our relationships with our Latin American allies, bringing Mexico back into the Rio Pact, and reforming our immigration system, erasing the damage George W. Bush did.

Only then will America be able to succeed.

The calls in 2016 were clear, from every political party except the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, the United Kingdom was going to leave the European Union and take control of their affairs. They were out. The UK was going to be a fully independent country (except for NATO purposes) in terms of trade, military, and immigration. No longer would the United Kingdom be shackeled by the Eurocrats in far away Brussels, appointed not by Britons but by Eastern Europeans and the United Kingdom would be fully independent and sovereign.

That’s the claim made by the Labour/Tory coalition and they won. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is no longer a member state of the European Union and now 5 years later to the day it is very clear that Brexit has devestated the British economy. This is coming from the BBC which I felt had a pro-Brexit bias in 2016.

The United Kingdom has a population of around 66,000,000 people. It has overseas territories around the world today. It used to control India, Canada, Australia, and much of Africa. It’s main language is the most commonly spoken language in the world. Even with all of these enormous advantages, losing membership to the European Union has been devestating to their economy. Trade with the EU makes up the largest share of British imports and exports.

Now imagine what will happen if Greenland were to become independent and lose its preferential trade access to the European Union. With a population of only around 56,000, and a large percentage of their budget coming from Denmark Greenland would be devestated from the loss of access to the EU market far more than the United Kingdom was.

If Greenland were independent it would be the 6th least populated country in the world outside of Europe. It would be close to that of Saint Kitts and Nevis, with a smaller population than Dominica. Of the 20 least populous countries in the world outside of Europe, two are African island nations, the rest are in the Caribbean and Oceania. The five comparable Oceanic nations, Tuvalu, Nauru, Palau, Micronesia, and Tonga are in the tropics and maintain close relations with the US, Australia, and New Zealand giving them preferential trade and migration to and from at least one of those countries. The Caribbean nations form CARICOM, with a unified visa policy and they peg their currency to the United States dollar.

The 20 smallest independent countries outside of Europe have small GDP per capia, with only the Bahamas with a GDP per capita above 20,000. The Bahamas has the fortunate advantage of being a one hour boat ride from Miami. Greenland is extremely remote, with no such advantage.

RealLifeLore is correct, if Greenland were to harness its minerals it runs the risk of looking like Qatar, with a small population and immense mineral wealth. Starting as a democracy should give them an advantage, which Qatar did not have. Look to Guyana, another democracy which has discovered immense oil wealth and see how that impacts their politics over the next 5 years. It’s very rare for small democracies to come across large amounts of natural resources, Guyana is the best example I know of. Maybe Greenland will harness the natural resources similar to how Norway did with their oil wealth if they are independent, but they still only have 1% of the population of Norway and Norway has the advantage of being in the EFTA. Greenland will likely have no such advantage. What will Greenland use as its currency? The smallest developed country with an independent free floating currency today is Iceland, with 5 times the population of Greenland, and they are a member of the EFTA and Schengen Area. If Greenland were to make its own free floating currency, it would be the most minor independnet currency in the world. The second smallest developed country with an independent free-floating currency is New Zealand, with almost 100 times the population of Greenland. There are challenges to going alone. The challenge if they choose to have a free floating currency is it could easily be susceptible to large swings from speculation, in a way no other currency in the world is today. This is why most countries peg their currency or just use a currency from a larger country, which provides stability. I do not expect Greenland would choose to have an independent free-floating currency, but this does come with the tradeoff of reducing Greenland’s independence.

So in terms of freedom and autonomy, what does Greenland have to gain? They right now are fully self-governing in all matters except defense and foreign relations. This gives them all the major advantages of independence without the economic disadvantages. While being fully self-governing they also elect two members to the Danish parliament, on par with other parts of Denmark. They have as much of a voice as someone in Copenhagen.

When it comes to how they left the European Economic Community in 1985 they didn’t fully leave because they remain an Overseas Territory with some trade advantages of that relationship. If they were to sever their relationship with Denmark they would lose this protection.

There are three factors which have to be considered all of which are valuable. Those are independence, economic well-being, and social freedom.

If you maximize independence you end up like Ukraine, a fully independent country without any military defense aside from themselves, no mutual protection pacts. You do not have the advatange of being in a free trade area, you miss out on the advantages of being able to travel freely to other places. Borders pop up if only for customs duties. The increase in trade barriers harms economic well-being, the increase in travel barriers infringes on social freedom. It puts you at risk of invasion. Most countries nowadays do not go for maximum indepdendence. Only fools actively advocate for it.

If you maximize economic well-being you will advocate for open borders with your neighbors, requiring you to establish a common visa policy and external trade policy. Joining organizations like the European Union is the inevitable endpoint of economic maximization. This provides many social and economic advantages, but it also means that you are restricting what laws you can make without violating the treaty.

If you maximize social freedom you are still going to minimize independence because expanded travel freedom through a customs union reduces independence.

What does Greenland value most? There are inevitable tradeoffs to such a decision.

I cannot tell them what to do. But we can learn from history and if I was Greenlandic I would not support any severing of ties with Denmark unless if membership in the European Union is assured. I do not think that is possible, so I think the status quo is probably close to the best deal Greenlanders have available to their massive yet sparsely populated island.

If I am correct, and the main objective of the Gaza war has been achieved which is to bring Trump into power and keep Netanyahu in power, and it sure looks like I am right… then thousands of Palestinian and Ukrainian civilians needlessly died to keep these two men in power.

Sure you lost your home, your grandparents were killed, your daughters were raped, your sons drafted, and your homes destroyed.

But just remember it was all worth it to these freaks to prevent liberal governments in Israel and the United States.

I’m disgusted by all of this.

Wars always end for one of two reasons:

1. The objective of the war has been achieved.
2. One side is fully exhausted and cannot keep fighting, leading to a stalemate.

Both Hamas and Israel are capable of continuing to fight… neither has exhausted their military abilities.

So the objective must have been achieved.

64% of Americans disapprove of Israeli action in Gaza, despite Biden’s unconditional support. https://news.gallup.com/poll/642695/majority-disapprove-israeli-action-gaza.aspx

74% of Americans disapprove of how the withdrawal from Afghanistan was handled. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/354182/american-public-opinion-afghanistan-situation.aspx

Only Republicans oppose American support of Ukraine. 86% of Democrat support helping Ukraine. https://news.gallup.com/poll/513680/american-views-ukraine-war-charts.aspx

On these three issues, and only these issues, the Biden administration’s actions were out of line with what the American people want.

There are three keys to successfully running for any political office.

First of all, stand for popular positions. Don’t be undecided on major issues, have your stances aligned with your party unless you have a very good reason not to.

Second, more experience is better if you are running for a state-wide office or a seat in Congress.

Third, if your party dominates state government, your party should be doing a good job. Otherwise, the opposite, obviously.

The party index of your state doesn’t matter as much as these factors. These factors ultimately determine the party index of your state.

This is similar to  the Cook Partisan Voting Index

We can quantify this for governors and Senators.

1. Governor’s Party
2. State plurality for the President in the last election
3. Incumbent party
4. Senators partisan affiliation
5. Which candidate has been at a higher level of office.

Add up the scores for both candidates, the candidate with the higher number is likely to win.

When the predictions do not match reality, this is sending you a signal that something is wrong. If it is a local issue and happening once or twice, it is likely a problem with one of the candidates the system does not capture. Maybe they had a scandal. Maybe their issue stances did not align with their constituents. If it is isolated to only a few cases per year then it is a local issue.

However, if there is a large number of upsets across the country all at once it tells us that a fundamental problem is in play. Either the President did something that makes people upset, or the party machinery is in trouble.

It is easy to tell the difference, by looking at presidential approval ratings. If the president’s approval ratings are low, the president is unpopular and there is something wrong with policy.

This tells you whether the party’s strategy is wrong, or whether the president is unpopular.

Historical analysis

My system only misses the Pennsylvania Senate election in the 2024 elections for governor or Senator. It was a very tight race. It predicts Montana and Ohio were tossups, and they were. This shows that the losses this year were basically what we should have expected. So we look at presidential approval, which was low. Biden must have made unpopular decisions in his last two years which cost Democrats the election. The party machinery did not fail.

Biden’s disapproval in the midterms was higher than his approval, so one would expect a small loss in the midterms but not a large one, exactly as we observed. We also observe that my system has only one miss, the Nevada governor’s race where conservative Democrat Steve Sisolak barely lost reelection. Everything else is exactly what my system would predict. Biden needed to look and analyze what he did which was unpopular, but he did not in his hubris. Furthermore, Harris underperformed Democratic candidates nationwide, meaning this was not a problem with the Democratic party, but there were fundamental problems with the Biden Administration that remain unaddressed.

Moving back in time, Donald Trump was unpopular throughout all of his first presidency, leading to the shellacking the Republicans received in 2018. This is pretty clearly voters sending a message that we were angry at Donald Trump. Trump should have analyzed his results and moved back to what Americans want, but he will never do that because he is a demagogue. I expect him to do the same over the next two years, pissing off Americans, and Democrats will likely win in 2026.

Obama’s approval however was never very low, in the midterms of 2014 his disapproval was around 5o-55%, and in 2010 it was 50%. You would expect some loss of seats, but not the massive gains by Republicans as we observed in 2010 and 2014. This implies that voters are not unhappy with the president overall, and there is something wrong with the party machinery.

What is interesting about Obama compared to Biden and Trump is that his approval increased over the second half of his first term. As opposed to what would happen later with Harris he won his reelection and significantly outperformed Democrats running for Congress. He had some coattails, with Democrats picking up 8 seats in the House in 2012, but not enough to get another trifecta. This is a lot of proof that Americans were not unhappy with Obama, but the Democratic Party’s machinery was failing outside of his control.

I have analyzed results back to 2010 focusing on seats that flipped and every senate seat in 2024. You can view my results here: https://1drv.ms/x/c/6c8d84458ba76309/EegBqMb4-bFBn1WX6IK9eIkBzYVmBtG59OrI64-AqrgbtA