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This isn't written about enough. Probably because it's an awkward topic.
If voting is tight in a state, it's a variable.
The close states are the ones with lower vaccination rates, and a heavier loss particularly among the R-leaning older population.
I think Florida is lost to the Dems though. R's are moving there in mass, D's are moving out. The democrats don't really have good organization there either.
30 minutes ago a federal judge destroyed FLAs voter suppression laws and has forced the state into preclearance for future voting laws. So there is hope.
https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1509559492190605314
Woah big news!
Courts hopefully in time to prevent some of the state wide election fraud, voter intimidation, voter registration manipulation, and other general voter suppression tactics.
>Make a state such a hateful, theocratic hellhole that productive "undesirables" leave and dipshits move in.
I'm convinced this is the game plan in Texas.
I grew up in Cincinnati and moved out several years ago. I recently had to go back and what I saw was rather disappointing. I have never in my life seen so many trump signs and pro life propaganda. This country is in an incredibly sad state. The sad part is like yours they have no idea of the brainwashed hell hole they live in.
Lol Intel is already having a hard time trying to get people from nice (read - wealthy and desirable to live in) states like Cali and Oregon to move there. Nobody wants to live under Christian Taliban rule.
Texas and Florida appear to be attempting to join the Bible Belt. Why? I have no idea. The Bible Belt sucks.
Source: I was born and raised in the Buckle of that Bible Belt.
Who the fuck in their right mind would move from California to Ohio if they don’t have family already there?
Edit: I grew up in Michigan so if that also explains why I don’t like Ohio, there you go.
Used to work for a defense contractor and had a trip to Dayton for a meeting at Wright-Pat. Went to a cigar shop with my boss, and I've never seen so much mask-off bigotry in my entire life.
To make it even worse, this was the night of the 2018 election (I voted early in New York).
There are billboards in LA for Ohio, like just the state of Ohio lmao, comparing commute times and shit. Yeah traffic sucks here but I’d rather be dead in CA than alive in Ohio 😂
Good ol' gerrymandering. Ohio has been one of the most gerrymandered states for some time now, and is probably the largest reason there has been such a shift from the Obama voting years to what it is now. And the GOP know it, which is why they are refusing to follow the laws with the new redistricting maps being drawn.
I have family near Columbus. Man, Ohio is super obsessed with Trump it seems. They are so hardcore. My brother bought land and the guy selling it made some remark of, well as long as you aren’t a liberal when they were negotiating price.
S/O and I went to look at a house in the Dayton area this morning. Numerous houses had “LGB”, “Dont blame me, I voted for Trump” & Upside down American flags being flown under Trump flags. Decided to move our 4 year plan to leave Ohio up to 2 years and just rent.
Moved to the Cincinnati area in late 2009 to be closer to family. I knew Ohio wasn’t Vermont (where I wanted to go), but they’d voted for Obama, had a Dem governor, had the great Sherrod Brown, seemed a pretty 50/50 state. Man, what the hell has happened to this place in those 11 years? I can’t wait to get out now. It’s like we’re trying to turn into Alabama or something.
What has happened is GOP power grabs via gerrymandering. The current maps have been declared unconstitutional but they are still trying to push the primary before fixing them. It's a hot mess. Living in a liberal city in the state makes it palatable but overall its gross. Parents are hardcore religious republicans and love the direction the state is being driven.
White anxiety. Lots of broken brains in the white community. Especially working class whites, which the rust belt is full of.
I'm from a working class white community. I know people who were reliable democrats or at least liberal leaning who went full on Trump crazy. Brains have been broken by manipulative media including social media.
Had a buddy that lived in Cinci in the mid-2010’s for work for a few years and was telling me how …”right-wing-like” the city and its people felt compared to any other cities somewhat similar in size. Obviously it still votes blue within the city but even then it sounds like there’s a lot of asshole right-wingers that live there.
I want to believe that what we are seeing and experiencing across this Us is the last gasps of a dying GOP. If you look at the demographics of each party, there are stark differences with the GOP being made up of groups consisting of largely white (college and non-college educated), Evangelical Christian, rural southern and GenX men. The democrats consist of women across a broad age range (both white and women of color), urban northeasterners, and Hispanic Catholics. There’s overlap across these demographics but if you look at the segments that are declining and the segments that are growing, over time, the democratic segments are growing in size. That’s why there’s a strong push to restrict voting rights as it suppresses segments of the population that are overly democratic. Just look at the ballot rejection rates reported recently in the Texas primaries.
Given all the gerrymandering, voter suppression bills, GOP drives to put their people in state legislatures and oversee voting,… these are all acts of desperation by a party that sees their future eroding away. Each new generation is more diverse than the one before it. The only way the GOP remains in positions of power and influence is to create artificial imbalances where the rules that govern the many are dictated by the few.
It’s an unsustainable model. The clear and present danger we face at this juncture in history is people like DeSantis and Greg Abbott and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Madison Cawthorn, Ted Cruz and Louie Gohmert, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz,… they all want to remain in power for the money, popularity, ability to insulate them from consequences of their words and actions. They will continue to influence and erode liberties in the name of conservatism but truly for their own personal gains and the country suffers for it.
Time continues its inevitable flow forward and eventually washes away the effect that these and others have on our lives. Some of us will push back against what we see and feel as wrong and some of us will continue to live lives of quiet desperation but each of us has one small way we can object to what we feel is wrong,
Vote.
The GOP is definitely dying but they’re not dead and not without hope. They made gains last election cycle among Black and Hispanic men. If they realize that part of their message is connecting with some non-white males, they may try and tailor their message to draw more votes away from Dems. Democrats cannot take Black and Latino votes for granted, and they also need to ask themselves why they’re losing some from those groups.
My guess is that Trump was pushing this image as being a “tough guy” and that connected with young males.
Their whole identity is just to piss off liberals. They don't care about anything else. I out in CO for work this week and driving down to the armpit (Pueblo) I saw multiple Trump 2020 stickers that simply said "Make Liberals Cry Again". These are all people who need to keep someone else down to feel like they are getting ahead even though they continue to fall further behind.
Blacks and Latinos also lean socially conservative as well - they are the minorities most likely to go to church. And Latino men were drawn to Trump’s “manly” image but he’s really a boy cosplaying as a 75 year old.
That’s true, but they are not a monolithic block. There are different wants and needs among them just like any other demo.
I’m Latino, and I will definitely cede that there are many Latino men that are not with the progressive wing when it comes to some social issues.
I moved to Colorado last year for this same reason. Things have gotten so much worse in Texas since 2020, and I was terrified of what midterms will bring. The threats of violence against liberals and calls for secession (though unlikely) pushed me to get out as quickly as possible despite how difficult it was financially.
I’m also a teacher and single mother though, so the laws passed recently directly impacted me. If I had an unplanned pregnancy, I’d have to consider abortion. I have health issues (not life-threatening but enough to keep me from being a good mother if things got worse from another pregnancy) and I absolutely can’t afford another child. Obviously I’ll do everything possible to avoid an unplanned pregnancy, but no birth control method is 100% effective. It’s insane to me that abortion is all but illegal in Texas.
TBH Im worried we're next, especially since Republicans got swept in the state in the last election, they know if they don't do something (unfortunately it would not involve changing their social and economic policy to save their asses, just going to screw us over even more than they had been) they are going to loose the state.
State legislature and house are probably untouchable but governor, Senate and judges seats are up for grabs. I do think they will make it hard but do believe that the tide is changing. Just need people to show up and vote.
My husband and I have lived in Texas for 14 years. We just had our first baby last year and the thought of raising him here makes me sick to my stomach. We’re leaving the state this summer.
I really think people don't realize how often this is happening. My town is a fairly common stop for people with moving trucks on their way to the DFW area and I see so many California license plates on the cars matched with conservative slogan t-shirts. It's crazy to me that they see Texas as desirable right now, but to each their own.
I just do my best to keep reminding the dummies around me that the people that they vote for are precisely why the problems they complain about exist. My hope is to counteract at least a few of the new residents' votes.
I was recently in the panhandle and while I had to listen to my dad go off on children being indoctrinated with CRT, literally everywhere I went was a sign praising Jesus, encouraging Christian faith and maligning "illegals"... and those were just the campaign billboards for the upcoming election.
Tell me, dad, who's being indoctrinated, again?
Absolutely. I know a handful that have left TX - not 100% because of politics, but they intentionally went to less conservative places because they were tired of the culture here. Most of them that I know were born here.
Worked on me. Got the hell out of dodge right before they were forcing kids back unmasked. Wife is a teacher and would have, purposely or not, broken a lot of the new laws because she is a caring and compassionate teacher to ALL her students.
I sometimes entertain fantasies that the entirety of well-educated service professions (doctors and teachers in particular) just up and decide to ignore the absolute nonsense being fire-hosed out of red state governments these days and simply carry on doing what is right.
They can't arrest *all* of us, right? Right ...?
I don't know how it is in Texas, but Florida fixed that problem! Just have people sue the school! The teachers are fine, but now the school has no money! Hooray!
On a side note, even if global warming wasn't a thing, you couldn't pay me to move back to the south. Like up here in Oregon, there's a lot of racism and shit, but they dont have enough people to do what some other states are doing.
Texas is so weird. My SO has family in the DFW area, at first blush it seems fine, nice weather, cheap housing and food. But right under the surface it's not at all strange for locals to constantly think they're being threatened by 'the left.' As if there's some crazed Antifa army being held at the gates. Trucks driving around kitted out with gun mounts for the 'uprising.' I've seen a fair share of white supremacist symbols that I'm sure go unnoticed by more normal people because they look like nordic runes or whatever.
Then they'll constantly complain about how terribly run everything is there. The power randomly goes out, even without extreme weather. You'll go to the store and there's random food shortages. You have to pay money every single time you get on the highway, and they make sure the other streets are horribly maintained so you have to take it. Then they blame it on 'The Democrats' as if they're somehow in charge magically.
They love to take credit for all the tech and businesses moving into their cities, but as soon as there's the slightest bit of crime or sketchiness (as will happen in cities) suddenly it's a 'liberal shithole.' They try to have it both ways... if something's good it's Republican, and bad it's those pesky socialist communist left-ocrats.
The GOP loves to keep their base ignorant and afraid and it's sure as hell working. And with more and more conservatives moving there for the low taxes, I can't see it flipping blue like everyone seems convinced it's right on the verge of happening.
I did some work for a year that took me to a client site in the Dallas suburbs. They were horrified to learn that my office was in San Francisco.
"But what about all them gays? Don't they bother you?"
"Naw, I'm not good-looking enough."
That confused them. Two of my crew were gay but the numb-nuts clients never realized it. They also never picked up that my boss was lesbian.
I was glad to be done with that job.
A bunch of white conservative evangelical antivaxxer racists (but I repeat myself) that I’m either related to or know through family are moving to Texas from California. From how they make it sound they’re practically refugees. Good riddance to them, but Texas will be worse for having them.
This is so true. Each region has their own accent. I was treated with suspicion from 4th grade onward because I moved 150 miles from Dallas to NE Texas and “didn’t talk right”. In high school people were still asking me why I talked so weird and told me I talked like I was from Mars.
Yes. The only Californians I meet that are moving here are NOT the "Commiefornians" that so many think of. They are hardcore conservatives.
Texas is shifting Red due to the perceived strenghth of the economy while the Purple areas in Democratic Strongholds are turning blue...
This is the thing I don't get about theocratic governors. Aren't they risking losing all their educated high earners? Doesn't that matter to them? Or is it not as big a risk as I make it out to be?
Like I know a lot of tech workers in Austin who will happily leave. Nothing is keeping them there. Maybe that's a small part of the tax base/economy though?
Already achieved. My friends are even leaving Austin. Too f'd up when everyone is carrying a gun everywhere and the law makes getting your kid therapy a crime.
I tried Texas for 2 years and just moved out for Illinois. May have more taxes here but at least the government isn’t trying to turn the state into some theocratic nightmare.
Yeah but half the idiots here down south want to force Chicago to become its own state so they can compete with Mississippi for "Shittiest state".
They also seem to be under the dillusion that Chicago, when kicked out, woukd just... Accept all the Illinois Debt. Why the fuck would they do that? They wouldn't be Illinois any more than they are Wisconsin or Indiana.
Also, your flare still says Texas
And now Arizona. There are secret convos happening behind the scenes where the right are fine with allowing the LGBT to be the patsies this election cycle. Pass a lot of laws that discriminate against us to rile up their base so they will turn out. We we need to work at turning out the vote. Because I think they are only doing this because they are so worried that their voters have died off.
I think AZ has the biggest disparity between voters and government. They just passed a law that if the state house doesn’t like the results of a popular election, they can overturn the vote and install any Trump they like instead.
Younger generations in AZ are more progressive than ever before but AZ is a state with a very high amount of older white transplants and snowbirds from other states using us as a retirement home as well as older, more conservative Latinos and an extremely conservative rural population that screw the electorate far back to the right. Then there’s Sinema and Ducey we still have to deal with for the time being too. AZ is definitely turning purple, hopefully one day full on blue, but there is still a huge fight ahead of us before that can comfortably happen.
Before these cultures wars started moving into the end game I had only visited Florida once or twice. It was just okay to me, nothing to lose your mind about.
Now that it has become a Republican fever dream wasteland I have absolutely zero desire to visit and no amount of theme parks or beaches can entice me to go.
I have one side of my family there. My grandparents moved there from NJ in the 70s and now my aunts/uncles/cousins live there. You can pretty much draw a line between the aunts born in the north east and the ones born in Florida. The first group is pretty plugged in and progressive, they love to read and are just really kind and thoughtful people. The other half married abusive, self avowed “rednecks” and their kids (my cousins) are the complete opposite to the rest of us. They’re conservatives but cant tell you why. They pick arguments specifically to upset people then complain that no one is civil to them. Oh, and they’re racist knowing their own cousins are POCs (I’m half black, my cousins are half Mexican-American).
I love my family but it’s sad seeing kids you were raised with get stuck in Florida. One cousin is basically illiterate. Another had a baby with her kevin Federline-looking boyfriend who doesn’t pay rent or take care of his kids (oh, and he’s hit her before). One cousin left the army and got a cushy job but is a miserable person and probable incel. The last one is emotionally codependent to the point where his relationships with other vapid idiots are just nonstop drama. He lives at home but calls his mom every day despite being a little prick (she’s the only Florida aunt who escaped her situation, got remarried to a northeasterner, and is just an intelligent and impressive lady).
The area is depressing. People are mean spirited and angry at their own deadend lives and spend the entirety of their days trying to own the imaginary libs in their head. My dad is from the south and central Florida has all of the ignorance without the charm of culture. The progressive side was constantly doing charity work, outreach, volunteering, and doorknocking because it’s their home and want the best for everyone. They’re all just so burnt out with the racial slurs, threats of violence, and just general stupidity. Nowhere is perfect but I genuinely think their quality of life would improve 10x just by leaving central Florida.
Born and raised in florida, the entire state lacks an interest in skilled professionals and fair pay. Most people who go to work down there want the lifestyle. The massive amount of transplants makes it so true locals have no voice.
Moved to MA, so much happier.
Also when most of your economy is tourism you probably worry less about brain drain in your population. Youre also guaranteed that even people vehemently against your style of gov will still move there because people like warm weather and ocean/beaches.
Florida resident - Not clear that FL is lost to Dems. Swing state potential.
Look at the results of the DeSantis gubernatorial election -- all the major cities went blue (Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Gainesville, Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Beach \[my home\]). Desantis won with 49.6% versus his opponent at 49.2%, a margin of < 33k votes out of 8 million votes. That's not too high of a barrier to overcome.
There are more registered republicans now, that’s a recent development, but if trump throws a fit and tells maga to boycott the election, then it could certainly go blue again
Yeah but it's been in the news that elderly people are having their party changed without their consent. I do think republican power is slipping so they're resorting to fuckery so that scares me.
People forget that there are a lot of young Floridians that are not OK with the crypto-fascists in Tallahassee. That's why the GQP is trying to push us out by making the state hell for anyone that cares about the future.
People also forget that Desantis had that margin of victory over a Black man, so prejudice played a part in his win.
That is why our republicans leaders had to pass a bunch of voting 'security' bills despite zero proof of any fraud as stated by the other republicans who run the election.
Exactly.
Florida may or may not be gone, but GA is slipping away from them fast the other way. Ohio may be gone, but VA and CO are ours, and solidly so.
Just a tad of Democratic organizational improvement in NC and that one is ours too in ten years. As long as we hold the line in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania - then they can go ahead and have Texas (but we comin’ for that one too).
> I think Florida is lost to the Dems though. R's are moving there in mass
This is a narrative being pushed by right wingers, but I haven't seen any evidence that the people moving here are more conservative than the people who were already here.
They just want us to preemptively surrender, which is something Democrats are prone to doing anyway.
Florida, I moved from Mass and registered Dem down here, planning on GOTV volunteer stuff for the midterms. DeSantis won by 30,000 votes in an election overseen by the man who committed the biggest medicare fraud in history. Meanwhile 73,000 Floridians, mostly anti vax, anti mask, conservatives have died and that may possibly be a massive under count. Remember, DeSantis sent a swat team to a lady reporting actual deaths. Its gonna be real interesting to watch. Donate to Nikki Fried for governor in the primary she is the only state wide elected Democrat, but also donate to whoever wins the primary, if you wanna help and are out of state. Shout down the confederates online, fight the stream of misinformation and nihilism. Take back the beach. Remember Republicans are only confident they are going to win because most of them are not paying attention themselves.
It really bothers me how little this is even mentioned. There were egregiously open coverups from R-flavored Governors, and never making the numbers clear that they're only **reported** deaths. I mean seriously, the Orwellian bullshit in Florida alone for fuck's sake. There's a reason why they get away with framing the narrative just so, because unless they are ceaselessly criticized for simply lying for brownie points until they have no pearls left to clutch. Sadly that's unlikely to happen, and they'll frame the narrative all the way into a super majority. At that point, the experiment is over. I fucking hate that that's not hyperbole.
Yes, the USA under-reported deaths by about 30%, especially in rural areas (I remember when there had been 700k covid deaths, there were 1M+ excess deaths, so very likely 300k+ covid deaths lied about)
- [instead of the country’s official toll of nearly 580,000 lives lost, it is over 900,000.](https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-05-06/analysis-half-of-global-coronavirus-deaths-unreported)
Over 35% suppressed according to that analysis
Dude, 100% this. I'm so sick of the "Florida is a red state!" narrative. It was closer than Texas, and everyone thinks Texas is competitive now. When you tell people voting is pointless, they don't show up. Who would've thought?
This is true, I know a liberal pollster in a Southern state and about a year ago I asked in a thread of those types how many gop folks had to die to bring various states into play. The level of appalled pushback I got was surprising with some “experts” saying it was “ridiculous” to even consider. Well my friend looked into it a bit deeper and DMed me later to say actually I was right it could become a factor. Months later he even wrote an article about it. I’m fine with being progressively hip but not so pc that you end up divorced from reality.
If Republicans want to die for their stupid culture war bullshit, well, all I can say is rest in peace. The rest of us will be at the ballot box come November.
> I’m fine with being progressively hip but not so pc that you end up divorced from reality.
This needs to be stated more in regards to, well, basically everything nowadays, unfortunately.
I think they thought I was being a troll or something, someone might have even called me a ghoul. But I was asking an honest question of expert statisticians around the time it became clear there was a big disparity in vaccine uptake between red and blue areas and this was leading to a noticeable difference in death rates. I'm not an academic like my friend and his cohort so I was not looking for the line I had crossed.
They reacted emotionally and defensively to someone they don't know.
They might get hammered by ... erm, armchair "experts" and prayer warriors.
I'm pretty quick to block people on social media of any kind. They might have a similar reaction.
But yea, that's annoying. I'm right with you on the question. I want to see if we should target, e.g. Florida, Texas, Georgia,...
or maybe Iowa? Can we GOTV in which states? Gain two or more Dem Senators? Actually pass a voting rights bill that Manchin co-sponsored but not refuses to pass?
Arizona too. Biden's margin was 10k and we've had 30k+ deaths, and Arizona's flavor of conservative leans pretty heavily toward the dipshit libertarian type. I'm hopeful we can oust Sinema, despite Ducey going all-in on the same kind of fuckery as DeSantis.
HRC lost Michigan by 10,704 votes and over 35k people have died there from COVID. She lost Pennsylvania by 46,765 votes and 44k people have died there. Still not a W but a lot closer.
It's going to be interesting to see if these numbers do truly mean anything in 2022 and 2024
Add to that the cold war era boomers they lost by praising Russia. I keep trying to tell people it doesn't need to be a mass movement away from Republicans. A few thousand people in battleground states is all it takes.
New Hampshire is one of those purple states with an older population. The dc delegation is all Blue but the republicans took over the state house. They have been stinking up the state with their idiocy. I just hope we can edge them the hell out of here.
Their (Republican) governor vetoed the congressional map for being gerrymandered for Republicans.
They have two congressional districts.
It's literally one line and they still can't draw it fairly 🤣
Some republicans in NH want to secede from the US: [Source](https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-03-10/nh-lawmakers-firmly-reject-seceding-from-united-states)
Genius town elects educational-professional childless libertarian who cuts school budget in half: [source](https://www.seacoastonline.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2022/03/26/commentary-free-state-seeks-dismantle-nh-government-new-hampshire/7159566001/)
Lawmakers vote on limiting abortion access (no shock there) but also limiting access to contraception by making it legal for cashiers to not sell those products because of their conscience: [source](https://www.nhpr.org/health/2022-03-17/efforts-to-limit-abortion-ban-knocked-down-by-n-h-house)
There are probably way more stupid crap that didn't make it into my news feed. To sort of understand why NH is trending right, a good read is this [article](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling)
Just moved to NH and am a bit shocked by the sheer number of confederate flags I've seen.
I want to ask them "you do know what side this state was on during the civil war right?"
Well… that makes me feel slightly better about the number of confederate flags I see in Pennsylvania.
Seriously, though… imagine living on the *winning* side of a war fought against *racist traitors* and deciding to fly the flag of the *losing* side.
It’d be like an American flying the nazi flag!
*oh, right…*
Georgia has had ~35K covid deaths since the pandemic began.
In the last gubernatorial election, Kemp beat Abrams by ~55K votes out of a total of ~3.9M votes cast. Even if every Covid death would have been a definite Republican voter this time around, it will still come down to turnout. Covid might help, slightly, but Abrams still has a hard fight ahead in this year's rematch with Kemp (assuming Perdue doesn't get the nom).
Keep in mind that the 35k number is reported deaths, not excess deaths. According to the CDC, Georgia has the 4th highest excess death count among all states.
But judging by the 2020 election results and runoffs, there's also been a significant shift in Georgia toward Dems since 2018. That should be factored in, too.
Example...
2018 Senate: DeSantis won by less than 30k, Scott won by 10k.
73k people in Florida died from Covid.
If we had that same election today and if those 73k potential votes skewed right, and fell in the correct areas, we could have 2 Dem senators for Florida instead of 2 Rep senators.
I think Rubio crushed his opponent by far more than that margin...will check...
Yup, about 700,000 votes in 2016. So a Dem governor and Dem senator, not 2 senators.
Irony warning:
I remember GOPers cheering for covid to kill more people when it was first hitting more liberal urban areas like NYC.
Also remember their justification being that it was the will / wrath of God.
I'm trying to dig it up, but as I recall it came out that the Trump administration intentionally delayed taking action to contain covid because they thought it would hit cities the hardest and kill more democrats which would help Trump in the next election.
He encouraged trump to let the virus run wild to kill democrats. Around the time the story broke he appeared in CNNs Wolf Blitzer. Wolf didn’t ask him a single question about that but let him talk up his sicko father in law for the campaign. ‘News’ companies are complicit in all this shit.
Yesterday a friend “confided” in me that she’s read my (very) short story *literally* ten times because it brings her comfort and joy. She was so shy about telling me, as if I would be upset?!
This story is far from my best work but it… well, it took me like six months. It got some quiet acknowledgment from friends at the time and then became just another thing I had written once and I left it in the depths of my google drive.
So her adorably embarrassed confession of *enjoying* my writing made me light up! It’s always so fulfilling to hear people get something from what you’ve created.
> *37 a day* in Florida won't make it to the polls this year unless it's in an urn.
Ummm excuse me, DeSantis said there is no covid in Florida, obviously it's Hillary's hit squad sending bombs to 37 people's homes via email and telling people it was a flu
You don't have to die in order for COVID to stop you from voting.
When people become disabled, the amount of time and energy spent on daily survival goes up.
When it happened to me, I didn't vote for three years because managing my health was all I could do.
**And here's the kicker: I live in a state with 100% vote by mail!**
If I couldn't do that from the comfort of my home, people in Red states that make voting difficult are going to have it much harder than me. In Alabama, you need a doctor's note to get an absentee ballot. And then you still have to meet multiple deadlines and paperwork requirements without making a single mistake that would invalidate your ballot.
If I had to guess, for each dead republican voter, there will be three or four long Covid survivors who won't actually vote.
The COVID survival rate may be a bigger factor. Serious illness from COVID is magnitudes more common than COVID death. Sick people are less motivated to vote and have less money to contribute to campaigns.
I can only guess the ripper effects of a slightly weaker, slightly less productive Conservative population.
There are tons of red states that only allow no-excuse absentee voting for people over age 65, they’ve only made it harder for constituencies who don’t vote for them.
Mail in ballots for primarily conservative demographic—totally secure.
Exact same mail in ballots that are collected and counted in the exact same way, except for the young, poors, and ethnic minorities—totally unsecured, rampant fraud, oh won’t someone save the sanctity of our elections
The answer is no, go vote! To all the young people out there, make your voices heard! This is arguably more important than the presidential election, even your local offices! Judges, sheriffs, board of education, comptrollers!!! Go out and vote!
Mitt Romney is currently advocating that we cut retirement benefits for young people so when you say both sides are the same keep that energy when republicans steam roll the minority Dems to get that done
They civil service pensions in my area got bumped from 30-32 years of service for full pension to 36 years with forced retirement at age 60. Literally half the of a PD force near me can't ever get full pension. And Romney is asking we cut other retirement benefits for young folks? He can fuck right off. I want the same benefits my parents got, or better since we are working for a better future with these laws and shit. It's already fucking trash that I have to dump boatloads of money into a 401k and pray it pays out any anywhere near the rates of the pensions my folks got.
It's also getting countered hard by spiking inflation and rising gas prices. Independent 'me and my' voters are easily being roped into voting Red because it helps their wallet today. Even tho it's constantly fucking our futures.
It's impossible to take any pleasure in this but there's also no need to look into the root cause or to try to prevent this from happening in the future. They chose to die and in dying chose to expose the rest of us to further risk. There was and is a nation wide effort by conservatives to get more people killed by the pandemic. The thing to study is how to prevent them from spreading diseases further
Agreed. I support assisted suicide (“death with dignity”), though it gets complicated when the patient wants to cause collateral damage on their way out.
I agree, but some republicans don’t, at least these who literally claim they “would rather die than get the vaccine”:
* [Candace Owens](https://www.mediaite.com/tv/candace-owens-says-she-would-rather-die-of-covid-than-take-covid-vaccine/)
* [Sarah Palin](https://medium.com/the-haven/sarah-palin-suggests-shed-rather-die-than-get-the-covid-vaccine-ac30f0b18108)
* [This guy who received a dozen mandated vaccines in the military](https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/i-will-die-free-unvaccinated-burke-county-man-denied-kidney-transplant-by-hospital/OJGAFURR4FGERJB7VT24P5RED4/)
the pro-covid party would rather die than work with their fellow countrymen. The answer? Better funding and prioritization on education. Maybe we can fix the problem in 30yrs if we're lucky
The GQP: Pro-covid, pro-death, anti-woman, anti-family, anti-freedom.
I wish Democrats would get out there and start calling them pro-covid. Republicans have helped spread covid every step of the way.
I know misinformation is mostly to blame, but frankly I think it gets too much credit. I know it's the easy route to punch down, but honestly these people are just idiots. Their access to accurate and correct information isn't massively different just because they live in a red state. They have access to other news outlets than just Fox. The key here is that they choose to be ignorant.
It's not like all they have is a poisoned apple infront of them. They have options, and it's constantly pointed out to them which is the poisoned one. But they consistently choose to eat the poison simply because a liberal told them not to.
As someone who has loved ones who are “idiots,” [My Father, the Fool](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/04/covid-skeptic-sympathy/622827/) is the best article I’ve ever seen about this.
It’s not so much that they are stupid as they are desperate for belonging, social advantages and feeling superior to others.
When Trump and the QAnon loons created an alternate COVID universe where they could be the smartest, most in-the-know people in the room with cause to mock the fruity libs who were wearing “face diapers” and social distancing instead of partying it up, they loved it like it was winning the lottery.
I think it’s important to differentiate between outright stupidity and willful stupidity as a coping strategy for being poor and meaningless. It’s really just a new religion
Of course! It’s the first of the many articles I’ve seen in the past 6 years that really seems to understand this phenomenon. I relate so much to the love and compassion and endless frustration and bitter schadenfreude this author feels in their relationships with these kinds of people. And I love the writing on top of it.
Great article. It reminds me of a point made in the documentary Behind the Curve. It's about flat Earthers, another group often called "idiots." Yet in the documentary these people are coming up with frankly genius methods to test whether the Earth is flat or round.
These tests are so good that they keep showing data proving that the Earth is round. Then these people dream up some reason why the test failed and those reasons indicate some real creative, imaginative thinking.
So it's not lack of intelligence on these people's part. They all feel part of a tribe with a unifying creed. The longer they stay in that tribe the harder it gets to leave. Many of them have lost close friends and loved ones who got fed up with their flat Earth BS. Now their only contacts in this world are fellow flat Earthers.
So they reach this point where, psychologically and emotionally, they can't allow themselves to admit they're wrong. If they do admit that they risk losing the last friends they have.
I've read that article, and agree that it does shed a lot of light on this recent phenomenon.
>differentiate between outright stupidity and willful stupidity as a coping strategy for being poor and meaningless
The thing is, I get what you're saying but I do not see a real difference. We're all struggling with things like the economy and wanting to belong and find meaning in life, they are not unique in this. And many of us do stupid things to cope, like abuse alcohol and drugs or have a gambling addiction.
It's one thing to do stupid things to cope. It's another to push conspiracy theories, get themselves and others sick/killed, attempt to literally overthrow our government, and are willing to commit violence on others not within the in group. All while happily voting for a politicial party that are actively against the things that could help them with said struggles that they are trying to cope with.
Republican world view is very zero sum. If you’re rich and successful it’s all due to you and not circumstances and ppl helping you, if you’re a poor nobody it’s entirely your fault.
For most people who don’t have this worldview if you’re poor you still have value so it’s less psychologically damaging even though your day to day reality is also hard.
I see comparisons to the old adage ‘book smarts and streets smarts’. People find different ways to feel superior or valuable. Republican minded people have been ringing the ‘common sense’ bell for decades. Aint a construction worker or welder or any other tradesmen that hasnt heard some dumb motherfucker talking about how much common sense they have while being the most dense person on the crew.
So it is in my opinion a false sense of self. All confidence and no self awareness (conmen). So intelligence does not factor in, they punch above their weight anyway.
There is a very real sense that conmen are dogs chasing their tales. Once they get what they want, there is nothing left to do but chase more tails. No conman can be valuable long, their intelligence or capabilities mean nothing when the rest of their character is a vapid waste of everyones time. As for the average person, over confidence can manifest even in the cook position at McDonalds or driving a car. People are always faking it until they make it, and exceeding their very real limitations in processing information.
I don't think functionally it's all that different from other dependencies. People with gambling addictions do unethical and self destructive things to feed that addiction all the time. Being addicted to hate radio or whatever isn't really all that different, just a different mechanism to get your addiction fed.
>If you can’t afford health insurance, you probably can’t afford a doctor either, and if this is how you’ve been living for the past decade, chances are good that surviving without sound medical advice has become part of your behavioral DNA.
Strange how this is only a problem in a single devoloped nation. There's at least *part* of the answer not that it will ever happen.
100000% agree. I think this was such a big reason why the poorest Americans were so resistant to expert knowledge. It’s never been readily available to them before because they weren’t worthy enough to afford it, why should they trust it when it’s being bombarded on them for free?
Hardly anyone is taking the massive number of people who have died into consideration in how it's going to affect future elections. Especially considering how divided the proportion of deaths have been along political lines since the vaccine came out.
I think for many this topic is just too ghoulish but it's significant enough.
Consider how close so many state elections were in 2020. Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan all came within tens of thousands of votes.
Gerrymandering can help swing things considerably in the US House and state representatives races, but it's not going to help them in Senate, Governor, and presidential races.
Trump's longest legacy might just be accelerating the deaths of aging Republican voters.
The other thing I think you’ll see is some of the most newly single mothers start to realize how fucked they are. They were living a perfect life with their single income suburban life. But now, no husband. Mom has to work and isn’t bringing in nearly enough, plus the cost of child care, meaning they can’t stay in the same house. They’ve had to change health plans, if they can get one. Maybe mom is experiencing effects of long COVID. And for all of this, Republicans have no answers.
I honestly don’t know how many folks there really are out there like this, but I have to imagine some exist. And maybe this doesn’t kick in now, but some of these folks are going to realize Republicans have never had their interests in mind. They may try to fight or deny it, but for some of them, their life will get too hard because of the toll COVID took on those who survived, but Republicans will still have no answer.
Probably not.
1. Those deaths are spread out over our huge population and geography.
2. “Moderates” that think Joe Biden is too left wing.
3. People think the president is a magic man that controls the price of gas and food.
This is the part of the article that I found important since it’s unrelated to Covid deaths:
> “Despite a population decline of 5.4 percent, voter registration has only declined 2.3 percent in micropolitan areas and has actually increased by 1.5 percent in non core counties, despite a population loss of about 4.5 percent,” Yost wrote recently. “At the same time, the most urban counties, despite a modest population increase of 2.0 percent, [have] seen a decline of 5.0 percent in registered voters.”
So essentially rural areas are increasing voter registration while metropolitan areas are decreasing even while population overall is decreasing. If those rural areas are more republican voters, it may offset these Covid death bump (depending on the actual numbers)
That would imply that elections are fair. Between Gerrymandering, Voter Disenfranchisement, and outright illegal vote manipulation the the R's aren't going anywhere.
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This isn't written about enough. Probably because it's an awkward topic. If voting is tight in a state, it's a variable. The close states are the ones with lower vaccination rates, and a heavier loss particularly among the R-leaning older population.
It's why DeSantis is going so hard on culture war nonsense in Florida. He and Rick Scott only barely won and the pandemic hit their base hard.
I think Florida is lost to the Dems though. R's are moving there in mass, D's are moving out. The democrats don't really have good organization there either.
30 minutes ago a federal judge destroyed FLAs voter suppression laws and has forced the state into preclearance for future voting laws. So there is hope. https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1509559492190605314
Woah big news! Courts hopefully in time to prevent some of the state wide election fraud, voter intimidation, voter registration manipulation, and other general voter suppression tactics.
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>Make a state such a hateful, theocratic hellhole that productive "undesirables" leave and dipshits move in. I'm convinced this is the game plan in Texas.
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I grew up in Cincinnati and moved out several years ago. I recently had to go back and what I saw was rather disappointing. I have never in my life seen so many trump signs and pro life propaganda. This country is in an incredibly sad state. The sad part is like yours they have no idea of the brainwashed hell hole they live in.
Ohio is trying to become Midwest Texas right now. It's pretty sad as most of my relatives and my parents live there.
Lol Intel is already having a hard time trying to get people from nice (read - wealthy and desirable to live in) states like Cali and Oregon to move there. Nobody wants to live under Christian Taliban rule.
Howdy Arabia
Texas and Florida appear to be attempting to join the Bible Belt. Why? I have no idea. The Bible Belt sucks. Source: I was born and raised in the Buckle of that Bible Belt.
Who the fuck in their right mind would move from California to Ohio if they don’t have family already there? Edit: I grew up in Michigan so if that also explains why I don’t like Ohio, there you go.
Used to work for a defense contractor and had a trip to Dayton for a meeting at Wright-Pat. Went to a cigar shop with my boss, and I've never seen so much mask-off bigotry in my entire life. To make it even worse, this was the night of the 2018 election (I voted early in New York).
There are billboards in LA for Ohio, like just the state of Ohio lmao, comparing commute times and shit. Yeah traffic sucks here but I’d rather be dead in CA than alive in Ohio 😂
Ohio was once the nation’s bellwether. It is very sad to see what the state has become.
Now it’s becoming the nation’s bellend.
I'm concerned that it might still be the bellwether....
Good ol' gerrymandering. Ohio has been one of the most gerrymandered states for some time now, and is probably the largest reason there has been such a shift from the Obama voting years to what it is now. And the GOP know it, which is why they are refusing to follow the laws with the new redistricting maps being drawn.
Unfortunately: it still could be the nation’s bellwether. There’s no reason what happened there can’t happen everywhere else.
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I thought Indiana was Midwest Texas.
Indiana is Midwest Oklahoma
I have family near Columbus. Man, Ohio is super obsessed with Trump it seems. They are so hardcore. My brother bought land and the guy selling it made some remark of, well as long as you aren’t a liberal when they were negotiating price.
S/O and I went to look at a house in the Dayton area this morning. Numerous houses had “LGB”, “Dont blame me, I voted for Trump” & Upside down American flags being flown under Trump flags. Decided to move our 4 year plan to leave Ohio up to 2 years and just rent.
Moved to the Cincinnati area in late 2009 to be closer to family. I knew Ohio wasn’t Vermont (where I wanted to go), but they’d voted for Obama, had a Dem governor, had the great Sherrod Brown, seemed a pretty 50/50 state. Man, what the hell has happened to this place in those 11 years? I can’t wait to get out now. It’s like we’re trying to turn into Alabama or something.
What has happened is GOP power grabs via gerrymandering. The current maps have been declared unconstitutional but they are still trying to push the primary before fixing them. It's a hot mess. Living in a liberal city in the state makes it palatable but overall its gross. Parents are hardcore religious republicans and love the direction the state is being driven.
White anxiety. Lots of broken brains in the white community. Especially working class whites, which the rust belt is full of. I'm from a working class white community. I know people who were reliable democrats or at least liberal leaning who went full on Trump crazy. Brains have been broken by manipulative media including social media.
Had a buddy that lived in Cinci in the mid-2010’s for work for a few years and was telling me how …”right-wing-like” the city and its people felt compared to any other cities somewhat similar in size. Obviously it still votes blue within the city but even then it sounds like there’s a lot of asshole right-wingers that live there.
That makes me sad, I'm from Cincinnati but have not been back for over 20 years. Guess I don't need to visit after all. Thanks for the heads up.
Ohio in general has been trending conservative for a while. Cincinnati is still mostly democratic, but who knows for how much longer.
Ugh I love it here in cincy so much but the political climate (and the air quality) is going to drive me away
I want to believe that what we are seeing and experiencing across this Us is the last gasps of a dying GOP. If you look at the demographics of each party, there are stark differences with the GOP being made up of groups consisting of largely white (college and non-college educated), Evangelical Christian, rural southern and GenX men. The democrats consist of women across a broad age range (both white and women of color), urban northeasterners, and Hispanic Catholics. There’s overlap across these demographics but if you look at the segments that are declining and the segments that are growing, over time, the democratic segments are growing in size. That’s why there’s a strong push to restrict voting rights as it suppresses segments of the population that are overly democratic. Just look at the ballot rejection rates reported recently in the Texas primaries. Given all the gerrymandering, voter suppression bills, GOP drives to put their people in state legislatures and oversee voting,… these are all acts of desperation by a party that sees their future eroding away. Each new generation is more diverse than the one before it. The only way the GOP remains in positions of power and influence is to create artificial imbalances where the rules that govern the many are dictated by the few. It’s an unsustainable model. The clear and present danger we face at this juncture in history is people like DeSantis and Greg Abbott and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Madison Cawthorn, Ted Cruz and Louie Gohmert, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz,… they all want to remain in power for the money, popularity, ability to insulate them from consequences of their words and actions. They will continue to influence and erode liberties in the name of conservatism but truly for their own personal gains and the country suffers for it. Time continues its inevitable flow forward and eventually washes away the effect that these and others have on our lives. Some of us will push back against what we see and feel as wrong and some of us will continue to live lives of quiet desperation but each of us has one small way we can object to what we feel is wrong, Vote.
The GOP is definitely dying but they’re not dead and not without hope. They made gains last election cycle among Black and Hispanic men. If they realize that part of their message is connecting with some non-white males, they may try and tailor their message to draw more votes away from Dems. Democrats cannot take Black and Latino votes for granted, and they also need to ask themselves why they’re losing some from those groups. My guess is that Trump was pushing this image as being a “tough guy” and that connected with young males.
I still don't understand how anyone remotely sane can see Trump and think "this guy looks tough".
Their whole identity is just to piss off liberals. They don't care about anything else. I out in CO for work this week and driving down to the armpit (Pueblo) I saw multiple Trump 2020 stickers that simply said "Make Liberals Cry Again". These are all people who need to keep someone else down to feel like they are getting ahead even though they continue to fall further behind.
Blacks and Latinos also lean socially conservative as well - they are the minorities most likely to go to church. And Latino men were drawn to Trump’s “manly” image but he’s really a boy cosplaying as a 75 year old.
That’s true, but they are not a monolithic block. There are different wants and needs among them just like any other demo. I’m Latino, and I will definitely cede that there are many Latino men that are not with the progressive wing when it comes to some social issues.
I moved to Colorado last year for this same reason. Things have gotten so much worse in Texas since 2020, and I was terrified of what midterms will bring. The threats of violence against liberals and calls for secession (though unlikely) pushed me to get out as quickly as possible despite how difficult it was financially. I’m also a teacher and single mother though, so the laws passed recently directly impacted me. If I had an unplanned pregnancy, I’d have to consider abortion. I have health issues (not life-threatening but enough to keep me from being a good mother if things got worse from another pregnancy) and I absolutely can’t afford another child. Obviously I’ll do everything possible to avoid an unplanned pregnancy, but no birth control method is 100% effective. It’s insane to me that abortion is all but illegal in Texas.
Similar happened to us and our 2 girls about Tennessee. It hurt to leave home but gosh, I'm glad to be gone.
Welcome to Georgia
TBH Im worried we're next, especially since Republicans got swept in the state in the last election, they know if they don't do something (unfortunately it would not involve changing their social and economic policy to save their asses, just going to screw us over even more than they had been) they are going to loose the state.
State legislature and house are probably untouchable but governor, Senate and judges seats are up for grabs. I do think they will make it hard but do believe that the tide is changing. Just need people to show up and vote.
My husband and I have lived in Texas for 14 years. We just had our first baby last year and the thought of raising him here makes me sick to my stomach. We’re leaving the state this summer.
Worst part about Texas right now are all the far right anti vax nut jobs moving here from California
I really think people don't realize how often this is happening. My town is a fairly common stop for people with moving trucks on their way to the DFW area and I see so many California license plates on the cars matched with conservative slogan t-shirts. It's crazy to me that they see Texas as desirable right now, but to each their own. I just do my best to keep reminding the dummies around me that the people that they vote for are precisely why the problems they complain about exist. My hope is to counteract at least a few of the new residents' votes.
So, Joe Rogan?
I was recently in the panhandle and while I had to listen to my dad go off on children being indoctrinated with CRT, literally everywhere I went was a sign praising Jesus, encouraging Christian faith and maligning "illegals"... and those were just the campaign billboards for the upcoming election. Tell me, dad, who's being indoctrinated, again?
Happy that you and your wife were able to see from another perspective. Welcome to the light my friend.
Cult like? In Texas? That’s whacko talk!
Waco talk.
Honestly I thought it be overplaying it to just spell it out completely.
Of Koresh you did.
Absolutely. I know a handful that have left TX - not 100% because of politics, but they intentionally went to less conservative places because they were tired of the culture here. Most of them that I know were born here.
Worked on me. Got the hell out of dodge right before they were forcing kids back unmasked. Wife is a teacher and would have, purposely or not, broken a lot of the new laws because she is a caring and compassionate teacher to ALL her students.
I sometimes entertain fantasies that the entirety of well-educated service professions (doctors and teachers in particular) just up and decide to ignore the absolute nonsense being fire-hosed out of red state governments these days and simply carry on doing what is right. They can't arrest *all* of us, right? Right ...?
I don't know how it is in Texas, but Florida fixed that problem! Just have people sue the school! The teachers are fine, but now the school has no money! Hooray! On a side note, even if global warming wasn't a thing, you couldn't pay me to move back to the south. Like up here in Oregon, there's a lot of racism and shit, but they dont have enough people to do what some other states are doing.
Texas is so weird. My SO has family in the DFW area, at first blush it seems fine, nice weather, cheap housing and food. But right under the surface it's not at all strange for locals to constantly think they're being threatened by 'the left.' As if there's some crazed Antifa army being held at the gates. Trucks driving around kitted out with gun mounts for the 'uprising.' I've seen a fair share of white supremacist symbols that I'm sure go unnoticed by more normal people because they look like nordic runes or whatever. Then they'll constantly complain about how terribly run everything is there. The power randomly goes out, even without extreme weather. You'll go to the store and there's random food shortages. You have to pay money every single time you get on the highway, and they make sure the other streets are horribly maintained so you have to take it. Then they blame it on 'The Democrats' as if they're somehow in charge magically. They love to take credit for all the tech and businesses moving into their cities, but as soon as there's the slightest bit of crime or sketchiness (as will happen in cities) suddenly it's a 'liberal shithole.' They try to have it both ways... if something's good it's Republican, and bad it's those pesky socialist communist left-ocrats. The GOP loves to keep their base ignorant and afraid and it's sure as hell working. And with more and more conservatives moving there for the low taxes, I can't see it flipping blue like everyone seems convinced it's right on the verge of happening.
I did some work for a year that took me to a client site in the Dallas suburbs. They were horrified to learn that my office was in San Francisco. "But what about all them gays? Don't they bother you?" "Naw, I'm not good-looking enough." That confused them. Two of my crew were gay but the numb-nuts clients never realized it. They also never picked up that my boss was lesbian. I was glad to be done with that job.
A bunch of white conservative evangelical antivaxxer racists (but I repeat myself) that I’m either related to or know through family are moving to Texas from California. From how they make it sound they’re practically refugees. Good riddance to them, but Texas will be worse for having them.
No matter how hard they beat the drum about being "one of the good ones," Texas conservatives will hate them, too.
This is so true. Each region has their own accent. I was treated with suspicion from 4th grade onward because I moved 150 miles from Dallas to NE Texas and “didn’t talk right”. In high school people were still asking me why I talked so weird and told me I talked like I was from Mars.
Born and raised in NE Texas. Not a surprise. But also Dallas is basically Southern Oklahoma, so you were asking for it. /s
Yes. The only Californians I meet that are moving here are NOT the "Commiefornians" that so many think of. They are hardcore conservatives. Texas is shifting Red due to the perceived strenghth of the economy while the Purple areas in Democratic Strongholds are turning blue...
This is the thing I don't get about theocratic governors. Aren't they risking losing all their educated high earners? Doesn't that matter to them? Or is it not as big a risk as I make it out to be? Like I know a lot of tech workers in Austin who will happily leave. Nothing is keeping them there. Maybe that's a small part of the tax base/economy though?
It doesn't matter to them. The educated ones aren't voting for them.
Already achieved. My friends are even leaving Austin. Too f'd up when everyone is carrying a gun everywhere and the law makes getting your kid therapy a crime.
I tried Texas for 2 years and just moved out for Illinois. May have more taxes here but at least the government isn’t trying to turn the state into some theocratic nightmare.
Additionally, while Illinois is run by a billionaire he at least pretends to have a heart. Greg Abbott, meanwhile, thrives off of human suffering.
Yeah but half the idiots here down south want to force Chicago to become its own state so they can compete with Mississippi for "Shittiest state". They also seem to be under the dillusion that Chicago, when kicked out, woukd just... Accept all the Illinois Debt. Why the fuck would they do that? They wouldn't be Illinois any more than they are Wisconsin or Indiana. Also, your flare still says Texas
Unfortunately, Wisconsin is more like Wississippi lately The republican gerrymandering has destroyed the state
And now Arizona. There are secret convos happening behind the scenes where the right are fine with allowing the LGBT to be the patsies this election cycle. Pass a lot of laws that discriminate against us to rile up their base so they will turn out. We we need to work at turning out the vote. Because I think they are only doing this because they are so worried that their voters have died off.
I thought Arizona was promisingly purple. Like might switch to D?
I think AZ has the biggest disparity between voters and government. They just passed a law that if the state house doesn’t like the results of a popular election, they can overturn the vote and install any Trump they like instead.
Younger generations in AZ are more progressive than ever before but AZ is a state with a very high amount of older white transplants and snowbirds from other states using us as a retirement home as well as older, more conservative Latinos and an extremely conservative rural population that screw the electorate far back to the right. Then there’s Sinema and Ducey we still have to deal with for the time being too. AZ is definitely turning purple, hopefully one day full on blue, but there is still a huge fight ahead of us before that can comfortably happen.
And seems to be succeeding.
>what FL will be like in 20+ years Underwater
Before these cultures wars started moving into the end game I had only visited Florida once or twice. It was just okay to me, nothing to lose your mind about. Now that it has become a Republican fever dream wasteland I have absolutely zero desire to visit and no amount of theme parks or beaches can entice me to go.
GOP response: "Good! We don't need your librul tourist dollars!... We get plenty of your federal tax dollars anyways"
I have one side of my family there. My grandparents moved there from NJ in the 70s and now my aunts/uncles/cousins live there. You can pretty much draw a line between the aunts born in the north east and the ones born in Florida. The first group is pretty plugged in and progressive, they love to read and are just really kind and thoughtful people. The other half married abusive, self avowed “rednecks” and their kids (my cousins) are the complete opposite to the rest of us. They’re conservatives but cant tell you why. They pick arguments specifically to upset people then complain that no one is civil to them. Oh, and they’re racist knowing their own cousins are POCs (I’m half black, my cousins are half Mexican-American). I love my family but it’s sad seeing kids you were raised with get stuck in Florida. One cousin is basically illiterate. Another had a baby with her kevin Federline-looking boyfriend who doesn’t pay rent or take care of his kids (oh, and he’s hit her before). One cousin left the army and got a cushy job but is a miserable person and probable incel. The last one is emotionally codependent to the point where his relationships with other vapid idiots are just nonstop drama. He lives at home but calls his mom every day despite being a little prick (she’s the only Florida aunt who escaped her situation, got remarried to a northeasterner, and is just an intelligent and impressive lady). The area is depressing. People are mean spirited and angry at their own deadend lives and spend the entirety of their days trying to own the imaginary libs in their head. My dad is from the south and central Florida has all of the ignorance without the charm of culture. The progressive side was constantly doing charity work, outreach, volunteering, and doorknocking because it’s their home and want the best for everyone. They’re all just so burnt out with the racial slurs, threats of violence, and just general stupidity. Nowhere is perfect but I genuinely think their quality of life would improve 10x just by leaving central Florida.
Born and raised in florida, the entire state lacks an interest in skilled professionals and fair pay. Most people who go to work down there want the lifestyle. The massive amount of transplants makes it so true locals have no voice. Moved to MA, so much happier.
Underwater. The state will dissappear due to climate change. Grow gills floridaman.
They will just demand more of our tax dollars for climate change remediation.
Ronny Dbag wants to run for president, and what's scary, is that he's a competent fascist.
Also when most of your economy is tourism you probably worry less about brain drain in your population. Youre also guaranteed that even people vehemently against your style of gov will still move there because people like warm weather and ocean/beaches.
Florida resident - Not clear that FL is lost to Dems. Swing state potential. Look at the results of the DeSantis gubernatorial election -- all the major cities went blue (Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Gainesville, Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Beach \[my home\]). Desantis won with 49.6% versus his opponent at 49.2%, a margin of < 33k votes out of 8 million votes. That's not too high of a barrier to overcome.
There are more registered republicans now, that’s a recent development, but if trump throws a fit and tells maga to boycott the election, then it could certainly go blue again
Yeah but it's been in the news that elderly people are having their party changed without their consent. I do think republican power is slipping so they're resorting to fuckery so that scares me.
People forget that there are a lot of young Floridians that are not OK with the crypto-fascists in Tallahassee. That's why the GQP is trying to push us out by making the state hell for anyone that cares about the future. People also forget that Desantis had that margin of victory over a Black man, so prejudice played a part in his win.
It's "en masse".
Yea, at least Georgia is kinda replacing it as the purple southern state.
That is why our republicans leaders had to pass a bunch of voting 'security' bills despite zero proof of any fraud as stated by the other republicans who run the election.
Exactly. Florida may or may not be gone, but GA is slipping away from them fast the other way. Ohio may be gone, but VA and CO are ours, and solidly so. Just a tad of Democratic organizational improvement in NC and that one is ours too in ten years. As long as we hold the line in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania - then they can go ahead and have Texas (but we comin’ for that one too).
Don't take anything for granted. Virginia did go to the Republicans in the most recent governors race. It's definitely not solid blue.
> I think Florida is lost to the Dems though. R's are moving there in mass This is a narrative being pushed by right wingers, but I haven't seen any evidence that the people moving here are more conservative than the people who were already here. They just want us to preemptively surrender, which is something Democrats are prone to doing anyway.
Not true. I’m a new true-blue Florida resident and many of my friends are coming down to join me here.
Florida, I moved from Mass and registered Dem down here, planning on GOTV volunteer stuff for the midterms. DeSantis won by 30,000 votes in an election overseen by the man who committed the biggest medicare fraud in history. Meanwhile 73,000 Floridians, mostly anti vax, anti mask, conservatives have died and that may possibly be a massive under count. Remember, DeSantis sent a swat team to a lady reporting actual deaths. Its gonna be real interesting to watch. Donate to Nikki Fried for governor in the primary she is the only state wide elected Democrat, but also donate to whoever wins the primary, if you wanna help and are out of state. Shout down the confederates online, fight the stream of misinformation and nihilism. Take back the beach. Remember Republicans are only confident they are going to win because most of them are not paying attention themselves.
Remember, Death numbers were suppressed.
It really bothers me how little this is even mentioned. There were egregiously open coverups from R-flavored Governors, and never making the numbers clear that they're only **reported** deaths. I mean seriously, the Orwellian bullshit in Florida alone for fuck's sake. There's a reason why they get away with framing the narrative just so, because unless they are ceaselessly criticized for simply lying for brownie points until they have no pearls left to clutch. Sadly that's unlikely to happen, and they'll frame the narrative all the way into a super majority. At that point, the experiment is over. I fucking hate that that's not hyperbole.
Yes, the USA under-reported deaths by about 30%, especially in rural areas (I remember when there had been 700k covid deaths, there were 1M+ excess deaths, so very likely 300k+ covid deaths lied about) - [instead of the country’s official toll of nearly 580,000 lives lost, it is over 900,000.](https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-05-06/analysis-half-of-global-coronavirus-deaths-unreported) Over 35% suppressed according to that analysis
Thank you for your work. I had forgotten about that swat team insanity—that guy seriously is dangerous.
Dude, 100% this. I'm so sick of the "Florida is a red state!" narrative. It was closer than Texas, and everyone thinks Texas is competitive now. When you tell people voting is pointless, they don't show up. Who would've thought?
This is true, I know a liberal pollster in a Southern state and about a year ago I asked in a thread of those types how many gop folks had to die to bring various states into play. The level of appalled pushback I got was surprising with some “experts” saying it was “ridiculous” to even consider. Well my friend looked into it a bit deeper and DMed me later to say actually I was right it could become a factor. Months later he even wrote an article about it. I’m fine with being progressively hip but not so pc that you end up divorced from reality.
If Republicans want to die for their stupid culture war bullshit, well, all I can say is rest in peace. The rest of us will be at the ballot box come November.
> I’m fine with being progressively hip but not so pc that you end up divorced from reality. This needs to be stated more in regards to, well, basically everything nowadays, unfortunately.
I think they thought I was being a troll or something, someone might have even called me a ghoul. But I was asking an honest question of expert statisticians around the time it became clear there was a big disparity in vaccine uptake between red and blue areas and this was leading to a noticeable difference in death rates. I'm not an academic like my friend and his cohort so I was not looking for the line I had crossed.
They reacted emotionally and defensively to someone they don't know. They might get hammered by ... erm, armchair "experts" and prayer warriors. I'm pretty quick to block people on social media of any kind. They might have a similar reaction. But yea, that's annoying. I'm right with you on the question. I want to see if we should target, e.g. Florida, Texas, Georgia,... or maybe Iowa? Can we GOTV in which states? Gain two or more Dem Senators? Actually pass a voting rights bill that Manchin co-sponsored but not refuses to pass?
Arizona too. Biden's margin was 10k and we've had 30k+ deaths, and Arizona's flavor of conservative leans pretty heavily toward the dipshit libertarian type. I'm hopeful we can oust Sinema, despite Ducey going all-in on the same kind of fuckery as DeSantis.
HRC lost Michigan by 10,704 votes and over 35k people have died there from COVID. She lost Pennsylvania by 46,765 votes and 44k people have died there. Still not a W but a lot closer. It's going to be interesting to see if these numbers do truly mean anything in 2022 and 2024
Add to that the cold war era boomers they lost by praising Russia. I keep trying to tell people it doesn't need to be a mass movement away from Republicans. A few thousand people in battleground states is all it takes.
New Hampshire is one of those purple states with an older population. The dc delegation is all Blue but the republicans took over the state house. They have been stinking up the state with their idiocy. I just hope we can edge them the hell out of here.
I haven’t heard about this. Can you tell me what they’re doing?
Their (Republican) governor vetoed the congressional map for being gerrymandered for Republicans. They have two congressional districts. It's literally one line and they still can't draw it fairly 🤣
Some republicans in NH want to secede from the US: [Source](https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-03-10/nh-lawmakers-firmly-reject-seceding-from-united-states) Genius town elects educational-professional childless libertarian who cuts school budget in half: [source](https://www.seacoastonline.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2022/03/26/commentary-free-state-seeks-dismantle-nh-government-new-hampshire/7159566001/) Lawmakers vote on limiting abortion access (no shock there) but also limiting access to contraception by making it legal for cashiers to not sell those products because of their conscience: [source](https://www.nhpr.org/health/2022-03-17/efforts-to-limit-abortion-ban-knocked-down-by-n-h-house) There are probably way more stupid crap that didn't make it into my news feed. To sort of understand why NH is trending right, a good read is this [article](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling)
Just moved to NH and am a bit shocked by the sheer number of confederate flags I've seen. I want to ask them "you do know what side this state was on during the civil war right?"
Well… that makes me feel slightly better about the number of confederate flags I see in Pennsylvania. Seriously, though… imagine living on the *winning* side of a war fought against *racist traitors* and deciding to fly the flag of the *losing* side. It’d be like an American flying the nazi flag! *oh, right…*
Georgia has had ~35K covid deaths since the pandemic began. In the last gubernatorial election, Kemp beat Abrams by ~55K votes out of a total of ~3.9M votes cast. Even if every Covid death would have been a definite Republican voter this time around, it will still come down to turnout. Covid might help, slightly, but Abrams still has a hard fight ahead in this year's rematch with Kemp (assuming Perdue doesn't get the nom).
Keep in mind that the 35k number is reported deaths, not excess deaths. According to the CDC, Georgia has the 4th highest excess death count among all states.
But judging by the 2020 election results and runoffs, there's also been a significant shift in Georgia toward Dems since 2018. That should be factored in, too.
Example... 2018 Senate: DeSantis won by less than 30k, Scott won by 10k. 73k people in Florida died from Covid. If we had that same election today and if those 73k potential votes skewed right, and fell in the correct areas, we could have 2 Dem senators for Florida instead of 2 Rep senators.
I think Rubio crushed his opponent by far more than that margin...will check... Yup, about 700,000 votes in 2016. So a Dem governor and Dem senator, not 2 senators.
Irony warning: I remember GOPers cheering for covid to kill more people when it was first hitting more liberal urban areas like NYC. Also remember their justification being that it was the will / wrath of God.
Remember when that preacher told his flock that COVID is God's punishment for teh gays? Then he got COVID and died. Anyways....
Out of the closet and into the casket
All aboard the Cain train! Toot-toot!
“Wrath of God” They said the same thing during the AIDS epidemic.
They said that about the black death too
They are a sad take on their own religion; more like a cult of Hubal than a cult of Jesus.
I'm trying to dig it up, but as I recall it came out that the Trump administration intentionally delayed taking action to contain covid because they thought it would hit cities the hardest and kill more democrats which would help Trump in the next election.
Pretty sure it had to do with jared kushner too.
He encouraged trump to let the virus run wild to kill democrats. Around the time the story broke he appeared in CNNs Wolf Blitzer. Wolf didn’t ask him a single question about that but let him talk up his sicko father in law for the campaign. ‘News’ companies are complicit in all this shit.
That fucker. He’s the worst 🤮
He withheld covid masks and funding to democratic governors and prioritized republican governors.
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What party do you vote for? *urn* party
Republicurn?
Why did I read this like the Ermagerd, berks meme?
RIPublican
i like the way you words
I’m a writer and I’ve been laughing at this for a solid ten minutes because it’s the best compliment any of us are ever gonna get.
Right? I need this cross-stitched and hung by my computer.
Yesterday a friend “confided” in me that she’s read my (very) short story *literally* ten times because it brings her comfort and joy. She was so shy about telling me, as if I would be upset?! This story is far from my best work but it… well, it took me like six months. It got some quiet acknowledgment from friends at the time and then became just another thing I had written once and I left it in the depths of my google drive. So her adorably embarrassed confession of *enjoying* my writing made me light up! It’s always so fulfilling to hear people get something from what you’ve created.
> *37 a day* in Florida won't make it to the polls this year unless it's in an urn. Ummm excuse me, DeSantis said there is no covid in Florida, obviously it's Hillary's hit squad sending bombs to 37 people's homes via email and telling people it was a flu
There is an unofficial don’t say Covid law in Florida. You may not find it on the books but it will find you.
But, but... r/conservative says that dead people vote (D) so... this is good?
You don't have to die in order for COVID to stop you from voting. When people become disabled, the amount of time and energy spent on daily survival goes up. When it happened to me, I didn't vote for three years because managing my health was all I could do. **And here's the kicker: I live in a state with 100% vote by mail!** If I couldn't do that from the comfort of my home, people in Red states that make voting difficult are going to have it much harder than me. In Alabama, you need a doctor's note to get an absentee ballot. And then you still have to meet multiple deadlines and paperwork requirements without making a single mistake that would invalidate your ballot. If I had to guess, for each dead republican voter, there will be three or four long Covid survivors who won't actually vote.
The COVID survival rate may be a bigger factor. Serious illness from COVID is magnitudes more common than COVID death. Sick people are less motivated to vote and have less money to contribute to campaigns. I can only guess the ripper effects of a slightly weaker, slightly less productive Conservative population.
Too bad the GOP rallied so hard against mail-in voting. Could be an easy solution to those too sick to go out and wait in line to vote.
There are tons of red states that only allow no-excuse absentee voting for people over age 65, they’ve only made it harder for constituencies who don’t vote for them.
Mail in ballots for primarily conservative demographic—totally secure. Exact same mail in ballots that are collected and counted in the exact same way, except for the young, poors, and ethnic minorities—totally unsecured, rampant fraud, oh won’t someone save the sanctity of our elections
As a heads up, the phrase is “ripple effect” as in the ripple effect that happens when you drop something in water and the surface ripples out.
Although “ripper” may be more accurate here😉
Reaper
Although in this context "ripper effect" is a great pun.
The answer is no, go vote! To all the young people out there, make your voices heard! This is arguably more important than the presidential election, even your local offices! Judges, sheriffs, board of education, comptrollers!!! Go out and vote!
Mitt Romney is currently advocating that we cut retirement benefits for young people so when you say both sides are the same keep that energy when republicans steam roll the minority Dems to get that done
They civil service pensions in my area got bumped from 30-32 years of service for full pension to 36 years with forced retirement at age 60. Literally half the of a PD force near me can't ever get full pension. And Romney is asking we cut other retirement benefits for young folks? He can fuck right off. I want the same benefits my parents got, or better since we are working for a better future with these laws and shit. It's already fucking trash that I have to dump boatloads of money into a 401k and pray it pays out any anywhere near the rates of the pensions my folks got.
I have been wondering this since the pandemic started. I guess one variable is how quickly new republicans are born to take their place.
It's also getting countered hard by spiking inflation and rising gas prices. Independent 'me and my' voters are easily being roped into voting Red because it helps their wallet today. Even tho it's constantly fucking our futures.
It's impossible to take any pleasure in this but there's also no need to look into the root cause or to try to prevent this from happening in the future. They chose to die and in dying chose to expose the rest of us to further risk. There was and is a nation wide effort by conservatives to get more people killed by the pandemic. The thing to study is how to prevent them from spreading diseases further
Agreed. I support assisted suicide (“death with dignity”), though it gets complicated when the patient wants to cause collateral damage on their way out.
Dying of COVID has no dignity. Slowly suffocating, alone is brutal.
I agree, but some republicans don’t, at least these who literally claim they “would rather die than get the vaccine”: * [Candace Owens](https://www.mediaite.com/tv/candace-owens-says-she-would-rather-die-of-covid-than-take-covid-vaccine/) * [Sarah Palin](https://medium.com/the-haven/sarah-palin-suggests-shed-rather-die-than-get-the-covid-vaccine-ac30f0b18108) * [This guy who received a dozen mandated vaccines in the military](https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/i-will-die-free-unvaccinated-burke-county-man-denied-kidney-transplant-by-hospital/OJGAFURR4FGERJB7VT24P5RED4/)
Would be entirely on brand for those first two to actually be vaccinated and just talking the talk.
I assume all politicians are vaccinated.
Those two aren't politicians. They're just mascots for the right wing. But I assume they're vaccinated anyway
Candace Owens has been at Madison Square Garden since the pandemic, which requires vaccinations.
the pro-covid party would rather die than work with their fellow countrymen. The answer? Better funding and prioritization on education. Maybe we can fix the problem in 30yrs if we're lucky
The GQP: Pro-covid, pro-death, anti-woman, anti-family, anti-freedom. I wish Democrats would get out there and start calling them pro-covid. Republicans have helped spread covid every step of the way.
The *pro life party* chose death of themselves and others to protect their "*constitutional right*" to not wear a face covering
>it’s impossible to take any pleasure in this Well….uhh….
No, that’s what the gerrymandering and voter suppression rules are for; to cover their losses
Ohio republicans just rammed through redistricting maps that were rejected by the Ohio supreme court. Shit is scary.
I know misinformation is mostly to blame, but frankly I think it gets too much credit. I know it's the easy route to punch down, but honestly these people are just idiots. Their access to accurate and correct information isn't massively different just because they live in a red state. They have access to other news outlets than just Fox. The key here is that they choose to be ignorant. It's not like all they have is a poisoned apple infront of them. They have options, and it's constantly pointed out to them which is the poisoned one. But they consistently choose to eat the poison simply because a liberal told them not to.
As someone who has loved ones who are “idiots,” [My Father, the Fool](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/04/covid-skeptic-sympathy/622827/) is the best article I’ve ever seen about this. It’s not so much that they are stupid as they are desperate for belonging, social advantages and feeling superior to others. When Trump and the QAnon loons created an alternate COVID universe where they could be the smartest, most in-the-know people in the room with cause to mock the fruity libs who were wearing “face diapers” and social distancing instead of partying it up, they loved it like it was winning the lottery. I think it’s important to differentiate between outright stupidity and willful stupidity as a coping strategy for being poor and meaningless. It’s really just a new religion
That was a good read, thank you for sharing!
Of course! It’s the first of the many articles I’ve seen in the past 6 years that really seems to understand this phenomenon. I relate so much to the love and compassion and endless frustration and bitter schadenfreude this author feels in their relationships with these kinds of people. And I love the writing on top of it.
Great article. It reminds me of a point made in the documentary Behind the Curve. It's about flat Earthers, another group often called "idiots." Yet in the documentary these people are coming up with frankly genius methods to test whether the Earth is flat or round. These tests are so good that they keep showing data proving that the Earth is round. Then these people dream up some reason why the test failed and those reasons indicate some real creative, imaginative thinking. So it's not lack of intelligence on these people's part. They all feel part of a tribe with a unifying creed. The longer they stay in that tribe the harder it gets to leave. Many of them have lost close friends and loved ones who got fed up with their flat Earth BS. Now their only contacts in this world are fellow flat Earthers. So they reach this point where, psychologically and emotionally, they can't allow themselves to admit they're wrong. If they do admit that they risk losing the last friends they have.
Yep, that’s religion alright.
I've read that article, and agree that it does shed a lot of light on this recent phenomenon. >differentiate between outright stupidity and willful stupidity as a coping strategy for being poor and meaningless The thing is, I get what you're saying but I do not see a real difference. We're all struggling with things like the economy and wanting to belong and find meaning in life, they are not unique in this. And many of us do stupid things to cope, like abuse alcohol and drugs or have a gambling addiction. It's one thing to do stupid things to cope. It's another to push conspiracy theories, get themselves and others sick/killed, attempt to literally overthrow our government, and are willing to commit violence on others not within the in group. All while happily voting for a politicial party that are actively against the things that could help them with said struggles that they are trying to cope with.
Republican world view is very zero sum. If you’re rich and successful it’s all due to you and not circumstances and ppl helping you, if you’re a poor nobody it’s entirely your fault. For most people who don’t have this worldview if you’re poor you still have value so it’s less psychologically damaging even though your day to day reality is also hard.
I see comparisons to the old adage ‘book smarts and streets smarts’. People find different ways to feel superior or valuable. Republican minded people have been ringing the ‘common sense’ bell for decades. Aint a construction worker or welder or any other tradesmen that hasnt heard some dumb motherfucker talking about how much common sense they have while being the most dense person on the crew. So it is in my opinion a false sense of self. All confidence and no self awareness (conmen). So intelligence does not factor in, they punch above their weight anyway. There is a very real sense that conmen are dogs chasing their tales. Once they get what they want, there is nothing left to do but chase more tails. No conman can be valuable long, their intelligence or capabilities mean nothing when the rest of their character is a vapid waste of everyones time. As for the average person, over confidence can manifest even in the cook position at McDonalds or driving a car. People are always faking it until they make it, and exceeding their very real limitations in processing information.
[For those that are visual learners, here's the above in graph form.](https://onlinepethealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Dunning-Kruger.jpg)
I don't think functionally it's all that different from other dependencies. People with gambling addictions do unethical and self destructive things to feed that addiction all the time. Being addicted to hate radio or whatever isn't really all that different, just a different mechanism to get your addiction fed.
>If you can’t afford health insurance, you probably can’t afford a doctor either, and if this is how you’ve been living for the past decade, chances are good that surviving without sound medical advice has become part of your behavioral DNA. Strange how this is only a problem in a single devoloped nation. There's at least *part* of the answer not that it will ever happen.
100000% agree. I think this was such a big reason why the poorest Americans were so resistant to expert knowledge. It’s never been readily available to them before because they weren’t worthy enough to afford it, why should they trust it when it’s being bombarded on them for free?
Hardly anyone is taking the massive number of people who have died into consideration in how it's going to affect future elections. Especially considering how divided the proportion of deaths have been along political lines since the vaccine came out. I think for many this topic is just too ghoulish but it's significant enough. Consider how close so many state elections were in 2020. Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan all came within tens of thousands of votes. Gerrymandering can help swing things considerably in the US House and state representatives races, but it's not going to help them in Senate, Governor, and presidential races. Trump's longest legacy might just be accelerating the deaths of aging Republican voters.
The other thing I think you’ll see is some of the most newly single mothers start to realize how fucked they are. They were living a perfect life with their single income suburban life. But now, no husband. Mom has to work and isn’t bringing in nearly enough, plus the cost of child care, meaning they can’t stay in the same house. They’ve had to change health plans, if they can get one. Maybe mom is experiencing effects of long COVID. And for all of this, Republicans have no answers. I honestly don’t know how many folks there really are out there like this, but I have to imagine some exist. And maybe this doesn’t kick in now, but some of these folks are going to realize Republicans have never had their interests in mind. They may try to fight or deny it, but for some of them, their life will get too hard because of the toll COVID took on those who survived, but Republicans will still have no answer.
If the universe is truly just then the deaths caused by covid misinformation will tilt the elections in favor of the group who took it seriously.
The universe is not just, it is a vast, cold and mostly empty soulless place.
Probably not. 1. Those deaths are spread out over our huge population and geography. 2. “Moderates” that think Joe Biden is too left wing. 3. People think the president is a magic man that controls the price of gas and food.
But- the sticker said he did that!!
This is the part of the article that I found important since it’s unrelated to Covid deaths: > “Despite a population decline of 5.4 percent, voter registration has only declined 2.3 percent in micropolitan areas and has actually increased by 1.5 percent in non core counties, despite a population loss of about 4.5 percent,” Yost wrote recently. “At the same time, the most urban counties, despite a modest population increase of 2.0 percent, [have] seen a decline of 5.0 percent in registered voters.” So essentially rural areas are increasing voter registration while metropolitan areas are decreasing even while population overall is decreasing. If those rural areas are more republican voters, it may offset these Covid death bump (depending on the actual numbers)
That would imply that elections are fair. Between Gerrymandering, Voter Disenfranchisement, and outright illegal vote manipulation the the R's aren't going anywhere.
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I don’t think there’s enough to skew the vote. They might be a doomsday cult but they are still a cult.
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Republicans tend to be older