Ok, so....centrists are so insufferable with the "electability" argument. They act like they have a monopoly on being able to be electable. And it's not even true most of the time. And apparently, some socialist won Florida's democratic primary for senate in an upset and now they're acting like they're DOOMED, DOOMED I say. Looking at the polling data...the republican is up 9.5% here. That makes it basically safe, with the democrat having a mere 1% chance of flipping it. That is doomed.
Except....what did the more moderate candidate have? R+8.4%? A 2% chance of winning? My god, we totally blew our chances. We cut our chances in half from 2% to 1%, the horror....
Alternatively, the republicans went from a 98% chance to a 99% chance. Let's face it, the dems were never gonna win florida anyway. But the centrists are like WATCH WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU NOMINATE A SOCIALIST IN FLORIDA! As if they'd do SOOOO much better. Guess what? You're losing either way. It doesnt matter if you chose Nixon or Vindman, Florida is a soft safe seat. it barely makes it on my chart. I used to only keep seats under 8 points in play on my charts. Basically, with a 4% MOE, anything within 8 points is roughly within my 95% confidence interval. That means, in a one tailed environment, it's actually a roughly 97.5% confidence interval. Actually comes out to 97.7% because a Z score of 1.96 or so is the 95% mark, but meh, I just round to 2 like a normal person, so that amounts to a 95.5% confidence interval instead, or 97.7% in a one tailed environment. Anything beyond that is a long shot that's barely worth looking at. I havent even considered Florida a serious swing state, so idk why the "electability" people are making such a big deal. I honestly think they just hate DSA types.
Anyway, let's have a realistic discussion about electability this election cycle. It's been all over the place, but generally favors the moderate slightly. In Maine, Janet Mills was at R+0.5, while Graham Platner was around D+7.4% in the same cycle. Platner was the socialist, while Mills was the establishment backed candidate. Mills was LOSING to Susan Collins, while Platner was BTFOing her until his scandals came out. Even Troy Jackson is at a modest D+2.3, beating Collins, but far more narrowly than Platner was at his peak. So that's a race the leftist is MORE electable in.
In Michigan, Abdul El Sayed tends to trail Mike Rogers. At winning the nomination, El Sayed trailed Rogers by 0.3%. Stevens was up 1.7%, and that was a relatively large gap. For a while, El Sayed and Stevens were both at D+0.5% for a while. But let's say its 2 points, okay, Stevens is a little more electable, but that's why I said that if El Sayed loses by more than 2, it doesnt matter, because electability doesnt matter a ton unless the race is really close.
The same can be said here. R+8.4 vs R+9.5% doesnt matter. Youre gonna lose anyway.
heck, the only race where I really felt electability mattered was the Wisconsin governorship where Mandela Barnes was up by 3-4, while Hong was down by 3. At a 6-7 point gap (5 with crowley, who is at D+2), yeah, that's significant enough IMO to say that Hong actually disadvantaged the democrats. You can argue a mild effect with el sayed and how that could matter, but yeah, again, for most races, it's only gonna matter if it comes down to a 1-2 point gap or something. For the most part, the fundamentals of the race and mood of the country matter A LOT LOT more than the actual candidate, given the candidate is competent. So...generally speaking, Im gonna encourage you to vote your conscience unless youre dealing with a Francesca Hong like situation. Dont freak out too much about electability. It honestly doesnt matter a ton. And sometimes a leftist actually is more electable than a centrist, in which case the centrist will likely intentionally ignore the data. Because I've seen them pull THAT before.
But yeah, in Florida, its not gonna matter. It's safe R either way.
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