The Daily Chart
November 13, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Last week I posted a Daily Chart item cautioning readers not to infer conclusions about the 2020 election based on this chart: On the surface, it does indeed seem to indicate that something was . . . off . . . about the 2020 election. I cautioned that we should wait until all the votes are counted before latching on to this prima facie evidence, since it disgracefully takes us
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November 12, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page notes the irony that it was the Supreme Court rulings on campaign spending that Democrats have deplored and compared to Dred Scott that enabled Democrats to vastly outspend Republicans in the election cycle just concluded: The [Democratic] party was spared from an even bigger rout by their huge advantage in campaign spending, and for that they can thank their billionaire donors—and the Supreme Court
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November 11, 2024 — Steven Hayward
It is impossible to overstate how much Trump’s win shifted the tectonic plates of American politics. As mentioned previously, his largest vote shifts occurred in the deepest blue states like California and New York. And that’s after so many Republican voters in those states moved away. Let is hope this trend is an augur of a turnaround in some of these spots. This is also very interesting indeed:
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November 8, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The dimensions of Trump’s triumph at the polls this week are staggering. Let’s start with the FT chart showing Trump’s gains with virtually every cohort of the electorate: Then let’s notice that some of his biggest gains in the popular vote occurred in deep blue states that the Trump campaign didn’t seriously contest. I wonder how much more his vote total might have gone up in some of those deep
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November 7, 2024 — Steven Hayward
This chart was making the rounds widely on social media yesterday, and on the surface it appears to raise afresh the problem of the 2020 vote: Let’s wait until we see what this chart looks like when all the votes are counted—there may be as many as 10 million outstanding ballots still to be tabulated. This is a scandal of its own, to be sure, but not unusual any more.
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November 4, 2024 — Steven Hayward
I’m ready to update/modify Shakespeare: “First thing we do, let’s kill all the pollsters.” The last round of polls show things essentially dead even, but the convergence of the polls is odd. You’d expect more variance. So forget the head-to-head horserace polls. Nate Silver’s model shows Trump with a 52 % chance of winning: Let’s look instead at the underlying issue map, which favors Republicans: Postscript—I do think this is
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November 1, 2024 — Steven Hayward
With everyone talking about preserving or restoring American’s manufacturing might, it is worth noting that there is a huge construction boom for manufacturing facilities under way: But when you look closer, you quickly discover that much of this is being driven by the spending spree of the Biden so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” and related sugar highs, which may or may not fully reflect underlying economic reality: The other thing to
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October 31, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Yesterday the government released a relatively robust 2.8% growth rate for the last quarter, but our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity have looked under the hood and noted that the majority of the overall spending that is propping up the growth rate is government spending rather than private sector investment or consumer spending. This is the economic equivalent of a sugar high. And all this government spending is
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October 30, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The New York Review of Books thinks the problem with the Biden-Harris administration is that it has been too tough on immigration. No—seriously, they really think this: Activists—and asylum seekers—have good reason to be outraged at what they see as the Biden administration’s betrayal on asylum. . . In 2022 at least 853 people died crossing the US–Mexico border, compared to 227 in 2020. While numbers haven’t been officially tallied
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October 29, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Most mainstream news stories about energy are written by ignorant and/or energy-illiterate journalists, who tend to be mere stenographers for the “green energy transition” apparatchiks in government and the environmental community. One notable exception is Bloomberg’s energy reporter, Javier Blas. It is worth following him on Twitter/X if you don’t have a Bloomberg subscription. His latest piece of note is “The Energy Transition Is Powered By — Wait for It
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October 28, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Bruce Mehlman notes in his weekly chartbook that “Gallup data shows ‘the party rated as better at handling the most important problem has won’ every presidential election since 1952 (n.b. question not asked in 2000 and was tied in 1980). The economy / cost of living is consistently rated the top issue to most voters in 2024 across almost every poll, and Trump is consistently more trusted on the issue.
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October 25, 2024 — Steven Hayward
I’ve decided I’m just going to re-up yesterday’s chart showing that leftists are more likely than conservatives to end a friendship over politics because of something J.D. Vance said today: “If you’re discarding a lifelong friendship because somebody votes for the other team, you’ve made a terrible mistake … Don’t cast aside family members and lifelong friendships. Politics is not worth it.” As yesterday’s chart shows, this advice will fall
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October 24, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Over at my “Political Questions” Substack I’ve got a series underway on “Leftist Fragility,” with more installments coming as soon as I can catch up on things. Today I just want to bring on some data, showing that not only are left-leaning people more intolerant of different points of view than conservatives, but the younger generations are the worst of all. What explains this? Is it merely the passion of
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October 23, 2024 — Steven Hayward
It is a given in the press that as this is the first presidential election since the Dobbs decision struck down Roe v. Wade, it should be a major focus of the campaign. And sure enough the media asks Trump and Vance about abortion as often as possible. But this is also the first presidential election since the Harvard and UNC cases struck down race-based college admissions at long last.
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October 22, 2024 — Steven Hayward
It was back in the 1990s that “Prozac Nation” became all the rage, as SSRI medications were going to transform America. I’m not sure how that has worked out, and there is clear evidence that higher rates of medication among liberals hasn’t helped them. In any case, get ready for Ozempic Nation, as it seems the rise of the new generation of weight-control medication may already be having an effect:
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October 21, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Trying to sort out the public polls on the election is a fool’s errand. If you must, just go with the RealClearPolitics poll average, which will probably come closest to the final result at the ballot box. People who are suspicious of the big media and university-based public polls on this election are right to be, given the anti-Trump error evident in the last two presidential election cycles. Supposedly pollsters
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October 18, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Democrats always claim that they will raise taxes on the rich because the rich aren’t paying their “fair share,” but don’t expect anyone in the mainstream media to ever ask a Democrat to give a precise definition of exactly what proportion of someone else’s income it is “fair” to take. The real answer is always “more,” but occasionally Krugman or some other nitwit will openly call for something like a
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