The Insane aspect of the 2020 election no one is talking about
The 2020 election was an existential threat to democracy. The damage that Trump did to our system of government (in addition to the half a million American lost lives that he is responsible for) is but a preface to the harm he would have done with an additional four years with all the people willing to say no to him out of the administration.
Then there were the endless challenges as well as the bare faced attempt to set aside the results for purely partisan reasons. And then there was the attempt to disrupt the certification of the results by violent insurgents egged on by Donald Trump himself.
So it’s understandable but not acceptable that in the midst of claims of irregular results it’s not being discussed every night on TV that the Republicans, in an abysmal year for the Republican brand, won 27 out of 27 elections that were considered too close to call. That is an insane result. While the probability of a toss up election is not as clear cut as a coin toss, to be off on every single one in twenty seven instances is an insane anomaly, the Mount Everest of outliers. This prediction by the Cook report, couldn’t be more wrong, literally.
Wikipedia has a section on election ratings from 2008 to 2020 so we can see how the Cook report, which called those 27 elections as toss ups, performed over that time. If the toss up rating was accurate we would expect results to mostly fall within 50 to 60 percent. And while that’s not exactly what we see, nothing is remotely close to the 100 percent showing in 2020. All of the races from 2008 to 2018 fall within 60 to 73 percent for one side of the other.
There are outliers. In 2010 the result of the ‘toss up’ elections in the House were 64 percent for Republicans. Now, if we get in the way back machine that was a very strong year for the Republican brand. The Tea Party was a nationwide movement, somehow the anger felt at the collapse and bail out at Wall Street turning into a pro Republican message. Yeah still makes no sense to me ten years later, but the Obama backlash was real and so an outlier makes sense. And 64 percent is not too far outside the 50 to 60 percent range we would expect.
Another outlier, the 2008 House of Representatives election, 73 percent of the ‘toss up’…
