#AP VoteCast

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman at Public Notice:

After our book, “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy,” hit shelves in February of last year, we made a wager: Tom bet that Donald Trump’s support among rural white voters had peaked in 2020, and Paul predicted Trump would further increase his white rural support in 2024. Alas, Paul looks to be the winner. While the final tallies are not yet in, the AP Votecast shows that Trump’s overall rural support increased by three points from 2020 to 2024, and about three-quarters of rural residents are white. Those numbers indicate he’s pushed up his ceiling among rural voters each of the three cycles he’s been on the ballot. More than 100 days into his second term, however, Trump’s policies are starting to wreak havoc on the very rural white citizens who have been his most loyal geo-demographic voting base. If they voted for Trump last year hoping he’d make their lives better, they’re quickly finding out they made a mistake.

Farm policy

Given the damage of Trump’s first-term agriculture tariffs, rural American farmers may have forfeited the right to express surprise or dismay about what’s happening to them — again. Despite Trump’s “trade wars are easy to win” bluster, farmers learned the hard way in 2018 and 2019 how easily those wars are lost, especially when the primary combatant is China. After Beijing reciprocated by retaliating against Trump’s tariffs with its own on US farm exports in Trump’s first term, American farming losses and bankruptcies quickly mounted. Trump had to authorize $28 billion in farm bailouts to make up for the damage farmers endured. This time around, the cost of Trump’s chaotic trade policy to farmers is magnified by three factors.

The first is Trump’s wildly chaotic imposition of tariffs, which complicate farmers’ crop decisions. Unpredictable tariff policies create uncertainties for any affected industry, of course. But unlike a car bumper or a computer chip, fruits and vegetables are perishable. [...] The second factor is shrinking demand caused by the administration’s reckless DOGE cuts. The dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been devastating for people around the world who relied on American aid, but has hurt American farmers, too. The shuttering of USAID programs threatens the roughly $2 billion in food that the USDA purchases annually from American farmers to supply USAID aid programs that feed starving people around the globe. Those purchases have stopped, leaving crops sitting in storage with no one to buy them. Large-scale farmers in Texas and Virginia are already taking a hit.

[...]

Coal and extractive industries

Few regions voted for Donald Trump with more enthusiasm than coal country, a land of broken Trump promises. Since 2016, Trump has repeatedly claimed he’d bring back all the coal jobs that have disappeared, but he has never delivered. He recently brought a group of coal miners to the White House for a photo op to announce a pair of executive orders meant to promote coal.

[...]

Schools and libraries

Because more than two-thirds of rural counties lost population between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, rural schools are shrinking if not closing. Many of the K-12 schools that have survived are severely under-resourced. Among its duties, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) tracks beleaguered schools and targets them for federal support. NCES helps determine which struggling, under-funded rural schools need federal subsidies through the Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP). These monies provide salary, supply, and technology support to rural schools so small they graduate as few as 10 seniors per year. [...]

The poor and minorities

Look at any program serving Americans with low or moderate incomes that Trump is trying to cut or eliminate, and you’ll likely find a particularly harsh impact on rural areas. For instance, the administration is seeking to end Head Start, which supports thousands of child care centers around the country. According to a recent report from the Center for American Progress, “Head Start programs represented 22 percent of the overall child care slots in rural communities, including available home-based care. Approximately 46 percent of all funded Head Start slots are in rural congressional districts, compared with 32 percent in suburban districts and 22 percent in urban districts; and 96 percent of rural congressional districts have at least one Head Start grantee, compared with 83 percent of suburban districts and 81 percent of urban districts. Without Head Start, many rural communities would have no licensed child care center.” [...]

Informational literacy and broadband access

Many rural areas are “news deserts,” where local papers have shut down and there are few options for local news — except for the nearest NPR station. As NOTUS explains, “Because rural stations have smaller audiences, they receive fewer donations and rely more on federal funds than stations based in major cities.” Trump signed an executive order targeting the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which provides support to PBS and NPR, and is asking congressional Republicans to cut off funding completely. While CPB funds provide just a small portion of the budget for the national news organizations, those funds are critical to local stations.

[...]

Rural reawakening

Paul was correct in the short term about rural support for Donald Trump ticking up. But might Tom be proven right over time? A stunning PBS/NPR/Marist poll released earlier this month showed Trump’s support in rural America since taking office cratering. His February approval rating of 59 percent — a figure that includes both Trump-loving white rural citizens and far less supportive non-white rural citizens — fell 19 points to just 40 percent. Given the limited number of rural residents in all but the biggest national surveys, that poll could be an outlier. But it suggests doubts may be emerging in the places where Trump got his strongest support — and which are now being punished for believing that he actually cared about them.

A White rural reckoning could be happening, as Donald Trump’s strongest group of supporters (rivaled only by White Evangelicals) are beginning to face the music about Trump policies harming rural Americans.

[aropride]

immigration nearly 8 times more important than in 2020. racism and health care half as important as in 2020. covid not even on the fucking list. does anyone else feel nauseated .

[republicanidiots]

"Trump increases support among young people, African Americans" -- Associated Press

The AP’s preliminary findings based on its VoteCast data reveal a few shifts towards Trump among typically Democratic-supporting demographics, which may be key if he does win the presidency.The preliminary data shows that Trump has increased his support among 18-29 year olds from 36 percent in 2020 to 44 percent this election.

Interestingly, his support among Black people rose from 8 percent in 2020 to 15 percent in 2024. That support was particularly marked among Black men – the AP’s data reveals that Trump has the support of 23 percent of that demographic this election.

And among Latinos, Trump’s support went up from 35 percent in 2020 to 40 percent in 2024.

[summerscaries]

Associative Press VoteCast numbers on race and sex voting, since we’ve all seen that out of context Georgia graph!

TikTok by prettycritical

[mariacallous]

After our book, “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy,” hit shelves in February of last year, we made a wager: Tom bet that Donald Trump’s support among rural white voters had peaked in 2020, and Paul predicted Trump would further increase his white rural support in 2024.

Alas, Paul looks to be the winner. While the final tallies are not yet in, the AP Votecast shows that Trump’s overall rural support increased by three points from 2020 to 2024, and about three-quarters of rural residents are white. Those numbers indicate he’s pushed up his ceiling among rural voters each of the three cycles he’s been on the ballot.

More than 100 days into his second term, however, Trump’s policies are starting to wreak havoc on the very rural white citizens who have been his most loyal geo-demographic voting base. If they voted for Trump last year hoping he’d make their lives better, they’re quickly finding out they made a mistake.

[follow-up-news]

For years, Pat Verhaeghe didn’t think highly of Donald Trump as a leader. Then Verhaeghe began seeing more of Trump’s campaign speeches online and his appearances at sporting events. There was even the former president’s pairing with Bryson DeChambeau as part of the pro golfer’s YouTube channel series to shoot an under-50 round of golf while engaging in chitchat with his partner. “I regret saying this, but a while ago I thought he was an idiot and that he wouldn’t be a good president,” said the 18-year-old first-time voter. “I think he’s a great guy now.” Verhaeghe isn’t alone among his friends in suburban Detroit or young men across America. Although much of the electorate shifted right to varying degrees in 2024, young men were one of the groups that swung sharply toward Trump. More than half of men under 30 supported Trump, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters, while Democrat Joe Biden had won a similar share of this group four years earlier. White men under 30 were solidly in Trump’s camp this year — about 6 in 10 voted for Trump — while young Latino men were split between the two candidates. Most Black men under 30 supported Democrat Kamala Harris, but about one-third were behind Trump.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

Hey, fun fact, did you know that the ENTIRE amount of third party votes counted so far is only 1.3% of the entire population of people who voted? Do you know how many percentage points Harris lost by? 3.4

Personally, I feel like if they don't even make up half of the gap when including the libertarians and constitution party fuck heads who were never going to vote Dem, third party voters literally cannot be responsible for Harris' loss. It seems as though, despite the work to pressure Harris during campaigning (you know. Like you're fucking supposed to), basically no one risked placijg their vote anywhere else but with her.

And she still lost by distreasingly large margins.

I am going to be plastering these numbers on any and every post I see blaming third party voters for this outcome.

And if you want to know WHY people voted the way they did, check out AP's VoteCast reporting for tidbits like this

It's always been about white supremacy my guys.

Hmmm, I wonder why Trump supporters would want to threaten the Ukranian and Palestinian genocide resistance movements while claiming to be isolationist in political stance......

Surprising as always that trying to out racist the white supremacists while positing yourself as a progressive party wasn't a winning strategy for the Dems.

[democracyunderground]

STOP BLAMING MEN FOR EVERYTHING

it's a gross generalization, it's sexist, and it's wrong.

the gender gap was actually smaller in 2024 than in 2020 or 2016.

as one example, women between 45 and 64 voted for democrats

by 7% less in 2024 than they did in 2020, and under 30 years old,

women voted 2% less, that's right, even under 30 voted less. but,

both men and women over 65 the same in both 2020 and 2024.

most likely, because of social security, medicare, and medicaid.

"Vice President Kamala Harris’ potentially history-making bid to become the first woman in the White House did little to bring more women voters into the Democratic Party during the first presidential election after the loss of federal abortion rights, with seemingly one exception: women over 65.

These women were motivated by the same issues that were important to the overall electorate, like the economy, threats to democracy, immigration and abortion, something central to Harris’ failed bid for the presidency. They were, however, more likely to name priorities like caregiving, aging in place and preserving the government retirement savings program Social Security as decisive factors, according to an AARP analysis of an AP VoteCast survey of 120,000 registered voters.

The specific priorities of women over 65 could explain why they voted for Harris at higher rates than men their age and moved more in Harris’ direction than younger women.

“Social Security … is not an issue that people said was either first or second most important, but 70 percent of voters said that Social Security was an extremely or very important issue in their vote, and it was slightly higher among voters who voted Democratic,” Jeff Liszt, a partner at Impact Research, a Democratic polling firm, said during a post-election briefing hosted by the AARP.

“And then voters 50+? Eighty percent of voters 50+ said that Social Security was extremely or very important in their vote,” he continued.

Across gender, age and race, the electorate largely moved away from Democrats this year and the shift typically, though not always, benefited Republican President-elect Donald Trump. This happened even as a record-breaking percentage of voters said that abortion was their top issue and majorities of the electorate across all demographic groups said they trusted Democrats to better handle it.

Trump picked up support despite his role cementing the conservative Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, the dozens of allegations of sexual misconduct against him and his conviction last year for sexual abuse. He received more support from women across all age groups compared to 2020, except for those 65 and older, who swung in Harris’ favor by several points: 54 percent of them backed Harris while her support from men of the same age group was 44 percent, according to CNN exit polls.

A main takeaway this year is that a gender gap that many political experts predicted could be historic did not materialize, in part because the share of the women’s electorate that Harris won decreased across all age groups, except for women over 65.

A gender gap has existed in every presidential election since 1980, with more women supporting the Democratic candidate. This year, it was smaller than in the past two elections. Trump competed in both — winning the first, losing the second — though each occurred before Roe was overturned and the former president’s sexual abuse conviction. He has also since been convicted of 34 felonies related to falsifying business records to obscure payments to an adult film star during his first campaign.

The gender gap is typically considered the difference between the proportions of men and women who supported the winning candidate. In 2024, there was a 10-point gender gap. In 2020, there was a 12-point gender gap. In 2016, there was a 11-point gender gap, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

A smaller proportion of women overall backed Harris this year than did President Joe Biden in 2020, with 53 percent voting for her; 45 percent cast ballots for Trump, according to a CNN analysis of exit polls, an imperfect science that nonetheless provides an initial look at the electorate.  The same exit polls from the 2020 election indicated that 57 percent of women backed Biden and 42 percent backed Trump.

The CNN exit polls indicated that Harris lost support across all other age groups of women this year. The drop ranged from two points among 30- to 44-year-old women to seven points among 45- to 64-year-old women..

But women and men 65+ moved roughly equal amounts in favor of Harris as compared to 2020  — and women in this age cohort remained more likely than men to support the Democratic nominee.

Liszt participated in the briefing hosted by the AARP, along with Bob Ward, a partner at Fabrizio Ward, a Republican polling firm. The two pollsters analyzed AP VoteCast data across 43 of the most competitive U.S. House districts, most of which were also in presidential battleground states. As they layered gender across age and race, a fuller picture started to come into focus about why women 65 and older in these key areas seem to have defied the ideological shifts seen across other demographic groups.

The AARP analysis showed that abortion and immigration were the top issues overall that determined candidate choices this year, with about one in four voters naming each as the decisive factor. The economy and jobs ranked at a close second, though it became the top issue overall when expanded to include inflation and Social Security in the broader category of “personal economic issues.”

Voters 65 and older were also far more likely than those in other age groups to say “protecting democracy” was at least a “very important” issue to them. About 90 percent of 50+ women said that protecting democracy was very important, compared to 79 percent of men.

While women over 50 were less likely than men the same age to name “personal economic issues” as the most determinative, more of them specifically picked Social Security. Women in this age group preferred Democrats’ approach, with 59 percent of them reporting that Social Security is or is expected to be a “major source” of income for their household. Fifty-one percent of men the same age said the same, the AARP analysis showed.

The biggest gender gaps in 50+ voters were on the issues of abortion and immigration, with women prioritizing the former and men the latter, the pollsters said.

Voters caring for an elderly, ill or disabled adult were more likely to vote for Harris and more women than men over 65 reported being a caregiver. Women over 50 were also 10 points more likely than men to say they trusted Democrats more than Republicans to “help seniors live independently.”

AARP’s takeaways are supported by interviews The 19th did with 65+ women ahead of the November elections.

Take Kathryn Engelhard, 69. She said after a mid-October Harris campaign event in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, that protecting Social Security was her top concern, followed by health care, specifically the GOP policies related to reproductive rights and abortion.

Sue Shomsky, a 70-year-old Michigan voter who backed Harris, said she was inspired to put up yard signs and go door-knocking for the first time this year because of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which she saw as a threat to democracy, as well as Republican abortion policies, which she considers a threat to her grandchildren.

“You know, after January 6, I said: ‘My God, we cannot let this man get back in the White House.’ I’m going to do everything I can to protect the rights of my daughter and my granddaughters. Whatever it takes, I’m willing to do it,” Shomsky told The 19th in late October.

The AARP analysis was based on AP VoteCast, which surveys more than 120,000 registered voters across all states and is conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for Fox News, PBS NewsHour, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press. These interviews, conducted in English and Spanish, took place in the final week before Election Day and reflect responses from registered voters who cast ballots in person, early, absentee, by mail or decided not to vote. It is a more expansive survey than the exit polls analyzed by CNN, which were compiled by doing voluntary interviews with about 23,000 voters.

The post Harris lost support from women overall — but not women over 65 appeared first on The 19th."

[mightyflamethrower]

  PITTSBURGH -- Walking out of the Allegheny County Republican election night event at a local luxury hotel, the young men waiting to valet my car got into a discussion with me about the just-announced election results.

        All four men were in their 30s. Two were white, one was Black and the other Hispanic. As I traditionally do, I asked them how they voted, and they all answered with President-elect Donald Trump.

        The conservative populist coalition was always right in front of reporters and experts in working-class neighborhoods, suburbs and cities. If only they had not treated those voters as either racists, fascists, misogynists, garbage, stupid or outliers to their narrative of what Americans should look like.

        These voters were directly observable. I saw them, heard them and reported that welders, cosmetologists, barbers and mechanics, as well as doctors, lawyers, engineers and architects of all shapes, sizes and colors, would be voting for their communities to thrive and for prosperity, safety and more money in their pocketbooks.

        These voters were much more concerned that they would be able not to go into debt if their "check engine" lights went on in their cars than if there was access to abortion. They were more concerned that the school districts in their communities had enough funding, weren't overcrowded and were serving the future's potential than if fossil fuels were causing the climate to burn. They were more concerned about the cost of butter than the insane notion that Trump is a fascist.

        They grew weary of the national news' doomsaying or inaccurate reporting. Their pro-Trump votes should provide a reckoning to the industry that lost the trust of a large majority of voters.

        In a series of really bad "takes" coming from the national news, never mind the inaccurate reporting for a second, one of my favorites came toward the final days of the race when reporters, goaded in private messages from the Democrats, exulted that Trump rallygoers were leaving early or sleeping, or that rally events were half empty.

        The Associated Press reported the night before the election here at the same event I was attending with a headline that read, "Empty seats become a more common sight at Trump's final rallies," suggesting his support was waning with the sentence, "The occasional scenes of empty seats offered a notable contrast to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris' biggest events."

        That silly focus and suggestion that Trump was losing is exactly why, for the entire cycle, the press missed what mattered to voters in the rush to get a click over a story that was clearly not true. The events were full of enthusiasm. A person leaving early did not mean the person wasn't voting for Trump. And if someone fell asleep waiting, which is another favorite story, it simply meant the person was tired.

        Trump's win was evident in every state he won where I drove, talked to voters and reported -- from here in my home state of Pennsylvania to North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona. It was also evident in the places that did not end up mattering in the states I covered that he did not win, such as Virginia, New York and New Jersey. Even there, Trump performed considerably better than reporters and experts believed he could or should.

        What reporters missed because of their dislike of center-right belief systems was that it was not Trump who was the fluke in politics in 2016. It was President Joe Biden who was the fluke in 2020, thanks in large part to COVID-19. They thought Biden was a rejection of the center-right trajectory of the country, but the results of 2024 show the opposite.

        Voters weren't turned off by Trump's brash approach. They wanted the bull to break up the china shop. Black, white, Asian and Hispanic voters told me that, and AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide, confirmed it in a postelection analysis that showed well over half of voters said they wanted to see substantial change.

        Trump and Republican candidates were picked over Democrats because of the impact the economy was having on voters' bottom line and the abysmal way Biden and Harris handled the enforcement of immigration laws or, for that matter, almost any kind of law.

        It was ridiculous to voters to see officials acting as if it were OK not to prosecute someone for breaking into neighborhood businesses or homes. Or to assault someone and be let out, often the same day, with cashless bail.

        Because 2016 was dismissed as a fluke, there was little reckoning within my profession in the national media or in the other powerful cultural curators in academia, corporations, institutions, Hollywood and government to stop doing the things they always do. All insulated in counties of power and wealth, they spent four years bashing Republicans when Trump held the White House and four more years mocking Republicans and their voters all the way up until Election Day this year.

        That is why they never saw it. They thought this coalition had shrunk and that they had had the power to do that through the institutions they run. They didn't. Voters didn't just vote for Trump. They voted against the elitist institutions. After two full days, post-election, of watching left-leaning cable news and the once-vaunted national news reports, it is clear they still don't understand not only what just happened but also what is continuing to happen.

One last reason: The progressives were so condescending and vile to anyone who disagreed with them that most of us just shut up. They assumed our silence meant that we were OK with the status quo. I exercised MY freedom to speak by voting the bastards out.

[the-eternal-quest-for-balance]

Data obtained by AP VoteCast found that 40 percent of those who voted for Nikki Haley in the South Carolina primary were Democrats who voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

Neither Dems or Repubs will vote for her in the general. She knows it and so does everyone else. Nikki is conducting Election interference in the hope something horrible happens to President Trump.

Sikki Nikki is a Democrat shill.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Will Weissert and Adriana Gómez Licón at AP, via HuffPost:

MIAMI (AP) — From Pennsylvania to Florida to Texas, areas with high numbers of Hispanics often had little in common on Election Day other than backing Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris for president. Trump, the president-elect, made inroads in heavily Puerto Rican areas of eastern Pennsylvania where the vice president spent the last full day of her campaign. Trump turned South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, a decadeslong Democratic stronghold populated both by newer immigrants and Tejanos who trace their roots in the state for several generations. He also improved his standing with Hispanic voters along Florida’s Interstate 4 corridor linking the Tampa Bay area — home to people of Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Colombian and Puerto Rican origin — with Orlando, where Puerto Ricans make up about 43% of the local Hispanic population. Trump was the first Republican since 1988 to win Miami-Dade County, home to a sizable Cuban population and the country’s metropolitan area with the highest share of immigrants.

It was a realignment that, if it sticks, could change American politics. Texas and Florida are already reliably Republican, but more Hispanics turning away from Democrats in future presidential races could further dent the party’s “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, that had helped catapult it to the White House before Trump romped through all three this time. The shift might even make it harder for Democrats to win in the West, in states such as Arizona and Nevada. Harris tried to highlight the ways Trump may have insulted or threatened Latinos. Trump, in his first term, curtailed the use of Temporary Protected Status, which Democratic President Joe Biden extended to thousands of Venezuelans, and tried to terminate the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He also delayed the release of relief aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 until nearly the end of his term, having long blasted the island’s officials as corrupt and inept.

Once he returns to the White House, Trump has pledge to stage the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. That could affect millions of families in mixed-status homes, where people who are in the United States illegally live with American citizens or those with legal residency. But the Democratic warnings did not appear to break through with enough voters for Harris. Now the party must figure out how to win back votes from a critical, fast-growing group. “Trump, he’s a very confounding figure,” said Abel Prado, a Democratic operative and pollster who serves as executive director of the advocacy group Cambio Texas. “We have no idea how to organize against him. We have no idea how to respond. We have no idea how to not take the bait.” Ultimately, concerns about immigration did not resonate as much as pocketbook issues with many Hispanics. About 7 in 10 Hispanic voters were “very concerned” about the cost of food and groceries, slightly more than about two-thirds of voters overall, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. Nearly two-thirds of Hispanic voters said that they were “very concerned” about their housing costs, compared with about half of voters overall.

[...] Harris promised to lower grocery prices by cracking down on corporate price gouging and to increase federal funding for first-time homebuyers. Also, recent violent crime rates have declined in many parts of the country. She also spent many of the final days of the campaign trying to capitalize on remarks by a comic who spoke at a Trump rally in New York and joked that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.” She even leaned on Puerto Rican celebrities — from Bad Bunny to Jennifer Lopez — to decry racism. But Trump nonetheless gained ground in some of the areas with the highest concentration of Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, the state where Harris spent more time campaigning than any other. He won the counties of Berks, Monroe and Luzerne — and lost Lehigh County by fewer than 5,000 votes against Harris. Biden had carried it by nearly three times that margin in 2020.

The big rightward shift among Latinos-- especially Latino men-- towards Donald Trump, is what got him over the line over Kamala Harris. Trump has long championed anti-Latino/anti-Hispanic bigotry in his campaigns.

Exit polls revealed that Latino men swing gigantically from a modestly Biden 2020 group to a small but sizable Trump group, as Latina women stayed with Harris but with reduced margins from 2020.

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Trump has spoken openly about his plans should he win the presidency, including using the military at the border and in cities struggling with violent crime. His plans also have included using the military against foreign drug cartels, a view echoed by other Republican primary candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor.

The threats have raised questions about the meaning of military oaths, presidential power and who Trump could appoint to support his approach.

Trump already has suggested he might bring back retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser and twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during its Russian influence probe before being pardoned by Trump. Flynn suggested in the aftermath of the 2020 election that Trump could seize voting machines and order the military in some states to help rerun the election.

Attempts to invoke the Insurrection Act and use the military for domestic policing would likely elicit pushback from the Pentagon, where the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is Gen. Charles Q. Brown. He was one of the eight members of the Joint Chiefs who signed a memo to military personnel in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The memo emphasized the oaths they took and called the events of that day, which were intended to stop certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, “sedition and insurrection.”

Trump and his party nevertheless retain wide support among those who have served in the military. AP VoteCast, an in-depth survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide, showed that 59% of U.S. military veterans voted for Trump in the 2020 presidential election. In the 2022 midterms, 57% of military veterans supported Republican candidates.

Presidents have issued a total of 40 proclamations invoking the law, some of those done multiple times for the same crisis, Nunn said. Lyndon Johnson invoked it three times — in Baltimore, Chicago and Washington — in response to the unrest in cities after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

William Banks, a Syracuse University law professor and expert in national security law, said a military officer is not forced to follow “unlawful orders.” That could create a difficult situation for leaders whose units are called on for domestic policing, since they can face charges for taking unlawful actions.

“But there is a big thumb on the scale in favor of the president’s interpretation of whether the order is lawful,” Banks said. “You’d have a really big row to hoe and you would have a big fuss inside the military if you chose not to follow a presidential order.”

Nunn, who has suggested steps to restrict the invocation of the law, said military personnel cannot be ordered to break the law.

“Members of the military are legally obliged to disobey an unlawful order. At the same time, that is a lot to ask of the military because they are also obliged to obey orders,” he said. “And the punishment for disobeying an order that turns out to be lawful is your career is over, and you may well be going to jail for a very long time. The stakes for them are extraordinarily high.”

[news-wtf]

The lead-up to the 2024 election was all about cat owners — but in the end, the dogs had their day.

President-elect Donald Trump won slightly more than half of voters who own either cats or dogs, with a big assist from dog owners, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters. Dog owners were much more likely to support Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris. Cat owners, meanwhile, were split between the two candidates.

About two-thirds of voters said they own a dog or cat, but pet owners don't usually get much attention from politicians. That is, until this year, when then-vice presidential candidate JD Vance's old comments about “childless cat ladies” briefly became a campaign issue — and Taylor Swift signed her Instagram endorsement of Harris in September as “Taylor Swift Childless Cat Lady.”

Harris did end up decisively winning women who owned a cat but no dog, but those voters were a relatively small slice of the electorate. And pet owners as a whole did not seem to hold Vance's remarks against the GOP ticket.

[stevishabitat]

Election 2024: How and why young Black and Latino men chose Trump | AP News

WASHINGTON (AP) — Brian Leija, a 31-year-old small-business owner from Belton, Texas, was not surprised that a growing number of Latino men of his generation voted for Donald Trump for president this year. Leija had voted for the Republican in 2016 and 2020.

Leija’s rationale was simple: He said he has benefited from Trump’s economic policies, especially tax cuts.

“I am a blue-collar worker,” Leija said. “So, tax breaks for small businesses are ideal for what I do.”

For DaSean Gallishaw, a consultant in Fairfax, Virginia, a vote for Trump was rooted in what he saw as Democrats’ rhetoric not matching their actions. “It’s been a very long time since the Democrats ever really kept their promises to what they’re going to do for the minority communities,” he said.

Gallishaw, 25, who is Black, also voted for Trump twice before. This year, he said, he thought the former president’s “minority community outreach really showed up.”

Trump gained a larger share of Black and Latino voters than he did in 2020, when he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, and most notably among men under age 45, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 120,000 voters.

Even as Democrat Kamala Harris won majorities of Black and Latino voters, it wasn’t enough to give the vice president the White House, because of the gains Trump made.

Economy and jobs made men under age 45 more open to Trump

Voters overall cited the economy and jobs as the most important issue the country faced. That was true for Black and Hispanic voters as well.

About 3 in 10 Black men under age 45 went for Trump, roughly double the share he got in 2020. Young Latinos, particularly young Latino men, also were more open to Trump than in 2020. Roughly half of young Latino men voted for Harris, compared with about 6 in 10 who went for Biden.

Juan Proaño, CEO of LULAC, the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization for Hispanic Americans, said the election results make it clear that Trump’s messaging on the economy resonated with Latinos.

“I think it’s important to say that Latinos have a significant impact in deciding who the next president was going to be and reelected Donald Trump,” Proaño said. "(Latino) men certainly responded to the populist message of the president and focused primarily on economic issues, inflation, wages and even support of immigration reform.”

The Rev. Derrick Harkins, a minister who has served Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, has overseen outreach to Black American religious communities for more than a decade. He said that Trump’s hypermasculine appeal worked to win over some younger men of color.

“I think that Trump with this bogus machismo has been effective amongst the young men, Black, white, Hispanic,” Harkins said. “And I think unfortunately, even if it’s a very small percentage, you know, when you’re talking about an election like we just had it can be very impactful.”

Black and Latino voters’ priorities changed from 2020

While about 4 in 10 young voters under 45 across racial and ethnic groups identified the economy as the top issue facing the country, older white and Latino voters were likely to also cite immigration, with about one-quarter of each saying that was the top issue.

A clear majority of young Black voters described the economy as “not so good” or “poor,” compared with about half of older Black voters. Majorities of Latino voters, regardless of age, said the economy is in bad shape.

That belief made it more difficult for Harris to highlight the actual numbers in the economy, which show that inflation has receded dramatically, unemployment remains low and wages have risen. These voters simply did not feel that progress.

This is the first time Alexis Uscanga, a 20-year-old college student from Brownville, Texas, voted in a presidential election. The economy and immigration are the issues that drove him to vote for Trump, he said.

“Everything just got a lot more expensive than it once was for me,” Uscanga said. “Gas, grocery shopping even as a college student, everything has gone up in price and that is a big concern for me and other issues like immigration.”

Having grown up selling tamales and used cars, and washing cars, Uscanga knows how hard it can be to make a living. When Trump was president, he said, it did not feel that way, he said.

“Under the Trump presidency more opportunities were abound,” Uscanga said. “I was not very fond of President Trump because of his rhetoric in 2016 but I look aside from that and how we were living in 2018, 2019, I just felt that we lived a good life no matter what the media was saying and that’s why I started supporting him after that.”

Though the shift of votes to Trump from Black and Latino men was impactful, Trump could not have won without the support of a majority of white voters.

“Men of color are really beginning to emerge as the new swing voters,” said Terrance Woodbury, co-founder of HIT Strategies, a polling and research firm that conducted studies for the Harris campaign.

“For a long time, we talked about suburban women and soccer moms who can swing the outcome of elections. Now men of color are really beginning to emerge as that, especially younger men of color, who are less ideological, less tied to a single party, and more likely to swing either between parties or in and out of the electorate,” Woodbury said.

Desire for strong leadership made Trump more appealing

A majority of voters nationally said Trump was a strong leader; slightly fewer than half said the same about Harris. Among Hispanic voters, even more saw Trump as strong in this election. Roughly 6 in 10 Hispanic men described Trump as a strong leader, compared with 43% who said that in 2020. About half of Hispanic women said Trump was a strong leader, up from 37%.

Black men and women were about twice as likely as in 2020 to describe Trump as a strong leader.

David Means, a purchasing manager in Atlanta who is Black, abstained from voting in the election because he did not feel either Harris or Trump was making the right appeals to Black men. But the results of the election did not disappoint him.

“I’m satisfied with the result. I don’t feel slighted. I wasn’t let down. I wasn’t pulling for Trump or Kamala, but I did not want a woman in that position,” he said. And if it were to be a woman, Means said, “I’d rather have a really strong and smart woman, for example, like Judge Judy.”

[darkmaga-returns]

I wonder if this is why Dems want non-stop third world immigration ...

Ann Coulter

Nov 09, 2024

I hate when people post images saying: “Notice anything?” Just tell me what I’m supposed to “notice.”

So I’ll tell you: The charts below demonstrate — as they do every 4 years! — whites are only race to ever, ever, EVER give a majority of its votes to Republicans. And white people split their vote, coming closer to 50:50 than any other racial group. If whites voted Republican merely at the same rate that Asians and Hispanics vote Democrat, the GOP would never lose another election.

Naturally, therefore, The Wall Street Journal, the RNC and every Republican consultant are wildly supportive of the nonstop conveyer belt of non-white voters to the U.S.

Yes, I’d love to get more minority votes, too — especially from Foundational American Blacks. But that’s not how you win elections and there’s absolutely no reason for the GOP to voluntarily handicap itself by supporting mass third world immigration.

AP VoteCast Exit Poll Results. As the idiots say, See if you notice anything.

[mariacallous]

WASHINGTON (AP) — There has been a doubling of petitions by workers to have union representation during President Joe Biden’s administration, according to figures released Tuesday by the National Labor Relations Board.

There were 3,286 petitions filed with the government in fiscal 2024, up from 1,638 in 2021. This marks the first increase in unionization petitions during a presidential term since Gerald Ford’s administration, which ended 48 years ago.

During Trump’s presidency, union petitions declined 22%.

President Joe Biden said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press that the increase showed that his administration has done more for workers than his predecessor, Donald Trump, the current Republican nominee who is vying to return to the White House in November’s election.

“After the previous administration sided with big corporations to undermine workers — from blocking overtime pay protections to making it harder to organize — my Administration has supported workers,” Biden said. “Because when unions do well, all workers do well and the entire economy benefits.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, is relying heavily on union support to help turn out voters in this year’s presidential election. But Trump with his push for tariffs on foreign imports has a blue collar appeal that has for some unionized workers mattered more than his record his office.

Just 16% of voters in 2020 belonged to a union household. Biden secured 56% of them, compared to Trump getting 42%, according to AP VoteCast. The margin of support in union households in this year’s election could decide the outcome of potentially close races in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Workers have also become more empowered to report what they judge to be unfair labor practices. The National Labor Relations Board said its field offices received a total of 24,578 cases last fiscal year, the most in more than a decade.