election – Page 2 – Lone Candle

India’s election shows the world’s largest democracy is still a democracy

Posted on June 26, 2024 by ajk1311@gmail.com

“If the basic test of whether a country remains a democracy is that the party in power can still suffer a setback at the ballot box, India passed”

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“Results from the nation’s parliamentary elections — the largest in the world — indicate a shocking electoral setback for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“Setback,” to be clear, is a relative term here. At the end of the staggered six-week election, Modi will become only the second Indian prime minister to win a third consecutive term. As of this writing, the BJP-led National Democracy Alliance (NDA) has won 289 seats in the 543-seat parliament and is leading in one more. A majority requires 272 seats.

The BJP itself has won 240 seats. That’s more than any Indian party won between 1984 and 2009, when Modi first came to power, and in most elections, it would have been an amazing result. But the expectations game is real, and Modi and his party lost it.

During the campaign, the NDA had a stated goal of winning 400 seats: a supermajority that would have allowed them to push through major legislative and constitutional changes. They didn’t come close. And after winning an absolute majority on its own in the last election, the BJP will likely now have to rely on its smaller coalition partners in the NDA to form a government.

Exit polls over the weekend were also wildly wrong, with most incorrectly projecting around a 350-seat victory for Modi. (One of the more bizarre media moments on Tuesday was a prominent pollster breaking down in tears on Indian TV over his erroneous forecast and being comforted by his fellow panelists on camera. Not something you’re likely to see from Frank Luntz.)

The opposition Congress Party, which very recently looked headed for political oblivion under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi, the much-mocked fourth-generation scion of India’s most prominent political dynasty, appears likely to double its tally from the last election.”

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/353785/india-election-2024-modi-bjp

India just showed the world how to fight an authoritarian on the rise

Posted on June 25, 2024 by ajk1311@gmail.com

“the BJP held just 240 seats. They not only underperformed expectations, they actually lost their parliamentary majority. While Modi will remain prime minister, he will do so at the helm of a coalition government — meaning that he will depend on other parties to stay in office, making it harder to continue his ongoing assault on Indian democracy.”

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“after looking at the information that is available and speaking with several leading experts on Indian politics, there are at least three conclusions that I’m comfortable drawing.
First, voters punished Modi for putting his Hindu nationalist agenda ahead of fixing India’s unequal economy. Second, Indian voters had some real concerns about the decline of liberal democracy under BJP rule. Third, the opposition parties waged a smart campaign that took advantage of Modi’s vulnerabilities on the economy and democracy.”

https://www.vox.com/politics/354424/india-election-results-2024-modi-congress-economy-democracy-liberalism

Republicans are ramping up election fraud claims ahead of November

Posted on June 17, 2024June 17, 2024 by ajk1311@gmail.com

“Forget election season; election denial season has officially kicked off.
Over the last few weeks, Republican legislators have held committee hearings as well as introduced and passed legislation preventing noncitizens from voting — something that is already illegal in state and federal elections, and very rare. Former President Donald Trump has ramped up his claims that the 2024 election will be stolen — even above and beyond his typical portending. The cast of the 2024 veepstakes have all been toeing the line on election denialism. And let’s not forget the hundreds of election-denying candidates running for election or reelection up and down the ballot.

“This effort has the effect, and perhaps has the intent, of planting the seeds of doubt about an election that some Trump supporters must think he might lose,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.

There was a moment in the weeks following the 2022 midterm elections where it felt like maybe, just maybe, the election denial trend was starting to fade. Voters had roundly rejected election-denying candidates, including in some of the most high-profile races on the ballot, and the vast majority of candidates who lost their election conceded, including even some of the most dedicated election deniers. But it’s become clear over the past few weeks that Republicans are not yet ready to abandon the election denial narrative and are instead angling to make it a central issue come November.”

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“Roughly the same percentage of Americans believe the 2020 election was stolen today as did in 2021. Polling from YouGov and The Economist in April showed 36 percent of Americans said Biden did not legitimately win, similar to the 38 percent who said so in April 2021 — making it clear what kind of lasting impact this rhetoric can have on voters’ perception of an election’s legitimacy. It also raises the specter of a repeat of the violence we saw on Jan. 6; meanwhile, threats against election workers have continued in the four years since the last presidential election.”

https://abcnews.go.com/538/republicans-ramping-election-fraud-claims-ahead-november/story?id=110640715

Trump’s conviction may be hurting him — but it’s early

Posted on June 17, 2024June 17, 2024 by ajk1311@gmail.com

“two other polls found that the verdict has made a small but significant share of potential Trump supporters less likely to vote for him. According to Ipsos/Reuters, 10 percent of Republican registered voters said they were less likely to support Trump after the conviction; HarrisX/Forbes put that number at 11 percent. Similarly, 25 percent of independents said they were less likely to vote for Trump in the Ipsos/Reuters poll, and 28 percent of independents said so in the HarrisX/Forbes poll.”

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“you should take more-or-less-likely polls with a grain of salt; some of those people who say they are less likely to vote for Trump may not have been very likely to vote for him in the first place, and even among supporters, “less likely to vote for” does not mean “definitely will not vote for.””

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“On average, the most recent national polls from the four pollsters who’ve polled since the verdict show a tied race.* That represents a 1-point average swing toward Biden from those pollsters’ pre-conviction surveys.”

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“Interestingly, at least according to these surveys, the shift toward Biden isn’t because Trump is losing support; it’s because Biden is gaining it. On average, Biden’s support went from 42 percent in these four pollsters’ pre-conviction polls to 43 percent after it. By contrast, Trump’s support stayed flat at 43 percent.”

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“Although the fact that three out of the four pollsters showed a shift toward Biden makes us more confident that this is, in fact, real movement, the shifts in both the Ipsos/Reuters and Morning Consult polls were within the margin of error — meaning they could have just been due to random chance. That said, Echelon Insights did something useful: It surveyed the same voters both before and after the conviction, removing the possibility that its 2-point shift toward Biden was due to getting a slightly more Democratic sample the second time around.

It’s also possible that these shifts are an illusion caused by something called (deep breath) differential partisan nonresponse bias. Basically, in the wake of bad news for Republicans and/or good news for Democrats, Republicans may be less excited about responding to surveys and Democrats may be more excited to — which can lead to polling numbers that are a bit better for Democrats than the true state of public opinion.”

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“Even if Biden’s improvement is real, though, another thing to bear in mind is that these are just four polls.”

https://abcnews.go.com/538/trumps-conviction-hurting-early/story?id=110790504

Biden’s path to winning the Electoral College runs through the Midwest

Posted on June 13, 2024June 13, 2024 by ajk1311@gmail.com

“Seven states are generally considered to be competitive this fall, and when you look at our polling averages of each of them, six of them fall into two clean categories: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Biden trails Trump by less than 2 points; and Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, where Trump leads by a more comfortable 6- or 7-point margin. (Arizona, at Trump+3.5, is somewhere in the middle.)”

“Obviously, if those turn out to be the final margins in November, Trump would win every swing state and the presidency. But the numbers also point to a narrow but feasible path for Biden to win. If he carries Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, plus every other state and district* that he won by at least 6 points in 2020, he would finish with exactly 270 electoral votes”

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“Winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will require Biden to proactively improve in the polls (or hope that they are wrong — and generally you don’t want to leave your campaign up to fate!), something he has struggled to do so far this year. This path also leaves the campaign no margin for error: If Biden loses just one of those three states, he’d need to carry one or more of the more challenging Sun Belt states to make up for it.”

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“there’s one further wrinkle: Getting to 270 electoral votes via Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would also require Biden to win the electoral vote from Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which Biden won by only 6 points in 2020, according to Daily Kos Elections. Polls of Nebraska’s 2nd District are scarce, but the one we do have suggests that Trump is leading there right now.”

“if Trump wins Nebraska’s 2nd while Biden wins Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the Electoral College would be tied 269-269. Under the Constitution, that would throw the election to the House of Representatives, where each state’s delegation (not each representative) would get one vote, with 26 out of 50 votes needed to elect the president. Trump would very likely win under such a scenario because Republicans will probably control a majority of congressional delegations after the election, even if they don’t have an overall House majority.
The House hasn’t needed to step in to decide the presidential election since 1824, but the way the electoral map is shaping up, there is a nonzero chance it could happen this year.”

https://abcnews.go.com/538/bidens-path-winning-electoral-college-runs-midwest/story?id=110231273