Dem
51
GOP
49
Have you ever wondered what would happen if young voters turned out at the same rate as seniors, or Donald Trump captured 40% of the Black vote? Now you can try out many different scenarios thanks to an interactive model built by the crew at FiveThirtyEight, which no longer has Nate Silver as chief cook and bottle washer. It is called the Swing-O-Matic. The model slices and dices the electorate five ways: by age, education, sex, income, and race. You can change how any of the groups votes and their turnout, and see which states flip, what the popular vote will be, and what the electoral vote will be. Here is a screenshot of the model's dashboard based on the exit-poll data from the 2020 election:
Here's how it works, using an example. Suppose you want to know what would happen if voters 18-29 went from D+29 to
D+40 and simultaneously increased their turnout from 46% to 60% (for example, on account of abortion). This is what the
results would be:
As you can see, North Carolina turns blue and Joe Biden picks up an additional 16 electoral votes. Now let's see what happens additionally if the Black vote for Biden drops from 82% to 60% but the youth vote increases as above. Here's what we get:
Now North Carolina flips back to being red and Georgia goes for Trump as well. This is not surprising since both states have large Black populations and losses among Blacks would hit Biden hard in those states. In this scenario, with Biden doing better among young voters and worse among Black voters, Biden still wins, but with only 287 EVs now. The model is additive and correctly accounts for what happens to young Black voters who would be pulled in opposite directions.
The model has several built-in scenarios to try, but why not just try your hand at changing the parameters and see what happens? As an aside, this could be a valuable tool for either party. If Republicans want to know what is the easiest way to flip, say, Arizona, a staffer could fiddle with the parameters. For example, Arizona has a lot of seniors. So the staffer could increase the Republican edge in the 65+ age bracket from R+11 to R+12, then R+13, etc., one point at a time, to see when Arizona flips. Turns out at R+12 already Trump wins it. This would suggest a strategy of polling Arizona seniors to find out what their biggest issues are and then planning a campaign there to increase Trump's margin from 11 points to 12 points among seniors.
Similarly, Democrats could play with the model to see what it takes to flip North Carolina. There are many Black voters in North Carolina, so how about seeing what happens if their turnout increases. Turns out going from 60% turnout among Blacks to 65% turnout doesn't do the job. But going to 66% turnout among Blacks turns North Carolina blue. That suggests a strategy of opening offices in all the big cities of North Carolina, working with Black churches, and getting lots of new Black voters registered and informed about the election. Maybe get the pastors of the Black churches to talk about how important voting is in swingy North Carolina. Stuff like that. As long as the pastors just preach about getting registered and voting and don't give advice about who to vote for, they are in the clear.
One thing you might want to explore is a possible electoral realignment. There is some tentative evidence that Biden is doing worse with young voters than 4 years ago but better with older voters. Maybe this is specific to Biden, rather than to partisanship in general. Possibly younger voters see Biden as an old fogey and seniors also see him as an old fogey. They just disagree on whether fogeyism is a bad thing or a good thing. It could also be about Israel (older voters tend to be more sympathetic) vs. Palestine (younger voters tend to be more sympathetic). But again, abortion could work against all of this.
By all means, play with the tool, but not until you have finished reading the blog. We have plenty of other important news items today. And thank you, FiveThirtyEight, for producing this marvelous tool! (V)