"The signs of possible Trump strength among young men are obvious online."

"Many of the major online young male subcultures, from gaming and gambling to cryptocurrency and weight lifting, are increasingly tinged with an anti-establishment ethos and a kind of conservative politics. Whether it’s TikTok or X, a new social media ecosystem has immersed younger and disengaged voters in more pro-Trump content than ever before...."

Writes Nate Cohn, in "The Evidence for a Big Youth Gender Gap and a Right Turn for Young Men/Young men are much more Republican than young women, the best data suggests, and may wind up backing Donald Trump" (NYT).

The article begins with some focus on Joe Rogan. We're told the "No. 2 predictor" of whether someone who'd voted for Biden in 2020 was going for Trump in 2024 was having a "very favorable" view of Joe Rogan. That was determined before Biden got replaced, but "Mr. Trump leads Ms. Harris among young men, 58 percent to 37 percent, across the last three Times/Siena national polls. Ms. Harris holds an even larger lead among young women, 67-28. Surprisingly, Ms. Harris is faring no better than Mr. Biden did among young men in the Times/Siena data, even as she’s made significant gains among young women."

I thought the "Surprisingly" was funny. It doesn't surprise me at all. 

"A near majority of voters say Mr. Trump is 'not too far' to the left or right on the issues, while only around one-third say he’s 'too far to the right.'"

"Nearly half of voters, in contrast, say Ms. Harris is too far to the left; only 41 percent say she’s 'not too far either way.' This is one of Mr. Trump’s overlooked advantages. Yes, he’s outside of the political mainstream in many respects.... But he’s also taken many positions that would have been likelier to be held by a Democrat than a Republican a decade ago, like opposition to cutting entitlements, support for a cooperative relationship with Russia or opposition to free trade.... Only 40 percent of likely voters said Ms. Harris represented 'change,' while 55 percent said she represented 'more of the same.' Mr. Trump, in contrast, was seen as representing 'change' by 61 percent of voters, while only 34 percent said he was 'more of the same.'... When Ms. Harris entered the presidential race, she seemed like a candidate with a lot of potential liabilities. She took many unpopular positions in her 2019 presidential campaign, and she was tied to the Biden administration’s immigration policy as well. In August, it seemed she could glide past all of these issues by running as a 'generic' Democrat.... The risk, however, was that Ms. Harris was inevitably going to be defined, one way or another, and that her campaign was mostly forfeiting its opportunity to clearly define her in the eyes of the public. In this poll, the risks associated with this strategy are evident...."

Writes Nate Cohn in "New Poll Suggests Harris’s Support Has Stalled After a Euphoric August

Almost 30 percent of voters said they needed to learn more about her" (NYT). A new NYT poll has Trump 1 point ahead of Harris, "the first lead for Mr. Trump in a major nonpartisan national survey in about a month." And, by the way, "Why haven’t there been more polls?"

Cohn points to a few "positions that would have been likelier to be held by a Democrat than a Republican a decade ago," but we could easily add to that list: support for endless wars, opposition to freedom of speech, persecution of political enemies....

"Ms. Harris is ahead of Mr. Trump by four percentage points in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, 50 percent to 46 percent..."

"... among likely voters in each state. The surveys were conducted from Aug. 5 to 9.... On question after question, the poll finds that voters don’t seem to have major reservations about Kamala Harris, Nate Cohn writes."

The NYT reports.

At the Nate Cohn link, the key point seems to be that Biden was a terrible candidate:

Views of Mr. Trump haven’t diminished. In fact, his favorability rating ticked up slightly, to 46 percent across the three states — just enough to represent his highest rating in the history of Times/Siena polling. It’s a tally that might have been enough for a clear lead against Mr. Biden, whose ratings had fallen into the 30s in early July. But for now it’s not enough against the surging Ms. Harris.

One way to think about her position is that she has become something like a “generic” Democrat.

Why is Trump doing so well in the polls?

I'm reading "As Trial Begins, Was Trump Benefiting From Being Out of the News? His liabilities weren’t dominating the conversation the way they once did, perhaps helping his polling" by Nate Cohn.

Donald J. Trump appears to be a stronger candidate than he was four years ago, polling suggests, and not just because a notable number of voters look back on his presidency as a time of relative peace and prosperity. It’s also because his political liabilities, like his penchant to offend and his legal woes, don’t dominate the news the way they once did....

Really? I think he seems to dominate the news. But of course, he isn't President. The actual President does necessarily claim some space. In Biden's case, it's the least space I've ever seen claimed by a President. Because of all the prosecutions, Trump's first presidency is still immensely important daily news. And Trump also gets attention as the leading contender to be the next President. Biden is overwhelmed. What do we hear of Biden? He said something weird about cannibalism. He didn't wear a bow tie with his dinner jacket.

Nevertheless, Cohn seems to have convinced himself that Trump is lower profile in the news these days:

"Could President Biden and Donald J. Trump really be locked in a close race among young voters — a group Democrats typically carry by double digits...?"

Asks Nate Cohn (at the NYT).

There are "dozens" of recent polls, but people are still skeptical, Cohn says, and I find it funny, because it corresponds to the way Trump supporters find it hard to believe the results of the 2020 election. It can't be!

Cohn offers the solace that, though "the polling is mostly right... things might change." I'd say you need to shake yourself out of denial and think about why the polls are the way they are. Cohn says:

"When Trump was president I started every morning by reading the New York Times, followed by the Washington Post, and would track both papers’ websites..."

"... regularly throughout the day. To be less than vigilant was to fall behind.... My friend Mike likened this constant monitoring to having a second job. It was exhausting, and the moment that Biden was sworn in to office I let it all go. When the new president speaks, I feel the way I do on a plane when the pilot announces that after reaching our cruising altitude he will head due north, or take a left at Lake Erie. You don’t need to tell me about your job, I always think. Just, you know, do it. It’s so freeing, no longer listening to political podcasts—no longer being enraged...."

Wrote David Sedaris, in "Happy-Go-Lucky," which came out in 2022 (I earn a commission through that link).

I recalled that passage as I was listening to Monday's NYT "Daily" podcast, "Swing State Voters Are Souring on Biden/A new Times/Siena poll finds Donald Trump leading President Biden in five of six key battlegrounds."

"The new left sees society as a web of overlapping power structures or systems of oppression, constituted by language and norms as much as law and policy...."

"[Almost everything debated recently — critical race theory, the distinction between sex and gender, we can go on — originated in academia over the last half-century.... Academic scholarship is ... the source of the expanded, academic meanings of 'trauma,' 'violence,' 'safety' and 'erasure,' which implicitly equate the psychological harm experienced by marginalized groups with the physical harms of traditional illiberal oppression.  This does not readily lend itself to a 'politics of hope,' as virtually everything about America might have to change to end systemic racism. No law will do it. No candidate can promise it. But it does imbue individual actions that subvert oppressive hierarchies with liberatory and emancipatory implications, helping explain the urgency of activists to critique language and challenge norms in everyday life.... This is quite different from Obama-era liberalism...."

Writes Nate Cohn in "What’s 'Woke' and Why It Matters/A marker of just how much American politics has changed over the last eight years" (NYT).

When in conflict, the new left prioritizes the pursuit of a more equitable society over enlightenment-era liberal values. Many of the academic theories, including critical race theory, critique liberalism as an obstacle to progressive change. In this view, equal rights are a veneer that conceal and justify structural inequality, while some liberal beliefs impede efforts to challenge oppression. The liberal value of equal treatment prevents identity-conscious remedies to injustice; the liberal goal of equal opportunity accepts unequal outcomes; even freedom of speech allows voices that would offend and thus could exclude marginalized communities. 

Is this a definition of woke? No. But it covers much of what woke is grasping toward: a word to describe a new brand of righteous, identity-conscious, new left activists eager to tackle oppression, including in everyday life and even at the expense of some liberal values....

So what are ordinary Democrats supposed to do when Republicans square off against this new "new left"? 

"Republicans fared exceptionally well in some states, including Florida and New York. In others, like Michigan or Pennsylvania, Democrats excelled."

"How can we make sense of it? The results seem unusual because of two unusual issues: democracy and abortion. Unlike in the typical midterm election, these issues were driven by the actions of the party out of power. Indeed, the party out of power achieved the most important policy success of the last two years: the overturning of Roe v. Wade.... In states where democracy and abortion were less directly at issue, the typical midterm dynamics often took hold and Republicans excelled. A comparison between New York and Pennsylvania is illustrative. The states share a border — if you drive across the state line, things look about the same. Yet their election results look as if they’re from different universes...."

Writes Nate Cohn in "Why Some States Went in Different Directions in Midterms/Abortion rights and antidemocratic stances were more relevant or pressing in some places than others" (NYT).

"In the poll we have in the field right now, only 0.4 percent of dials have yielded a completed interview."

"If you were employed as one of our interviewers at a call center, you would have to dial numbers for two hours to get a single completed interview.... Call screening is definitely part of the problem, but if you screen your calls almost 100 percent of the time, it might be a little less of one than you might think. About one-fifth of our dials still contact a human. But once we do reach a person, we’ve got a number of challenges. Is this the right human? (We talk only to people named on the file, so that we can use their information.) If it is the right person, will he or she participate? Probably not, unfortunately.... The main thing is we make sure that the sample of people we do reach is demographically and politically representative, and if not, we adjust it to match the known characteristics of the population. If we poll a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by two percentage points, and our respondents wind up being registered Democrats by a four-point margin, we give a little less weight to the Democratic respondents. We make similar adjustments for race; age; education; how often people have voted; where they live; marital status; homeownership; and more."

 Writes Nate Cohn in "Who in the World Is Still Answering Pollsters’ Phone Calls? Response rates suggest the 'death of telephone polling' is getting closer" (NYT).

How do they know "Democrats outnumber Republicans by two percentage points" other than by relying on already unreliable polls?

The article doesn't really answer the question in the headline, which I read as saying what kind of weirdos are answering these polls and why do we care what they think?

The NYT's Nate Cohn pushes Democrats to worry about "the possibility that the apparent Democratic strength in Wisconsin and elsewhere is a mirage — an artifact of persistent and unaddressed biases in survey research."

I'm reading "Yes, the Polling Warning Signs Are Flashing Again/Democrats are polling well in exactly the places where surveys missed most in 2020."

Most pollsters haven’t made significant methodological changes since the last election....  The pattern of Democratic strength isn’t the only sign that the polls might still be off in similar ways.... 

About Wisconsin, Cohn says: "The state was ground zero for survey error in 2020, when pre-election polls proved to be too good to be true for Mr. Biden. In the end, the polls overestimated Mr. Biden by about eight percentage points. Eerily enough, [Mandela] Barnes is faring better than expected by a similar margin."

"[T]he confluence of economic problems and resurgent cultural issues has helped turn the emerging class divide in the Democratic coalition into a chasm..."

"... as Republicans appear to be making new inroads among nonwhite and working-class voters — perhaps especially Hispanic voters — who remain more concerned about the economy and inflation than abortion rights and guns. For the first time in a Times/Siena national survey, Democrats had a larger share of support among white college graduates than among nonwhite voters — a striking indication of the shifting balance of political energy in the Democratic coalition. As recently as the 2016 congressional elections, Democrats won more than 70 percent of nonwhite voters while losing among white college graduates."

Writes Nate Cohn in "Poll Shows Tight Race for Control of Congress as Class Divide Widens/Nonwhite and working-class Democrats worry more about the economy, while white college graduates focus more on cultural issues like abortion rights and guns" (NYT).

This is one of the graphics. Don't miss the fine print that shows the smallness of the segment of voters that puts the "blue" issues first:

"One reason demographic change has failed to transform electoral politics is that the increased diversity of the electorate has come not mainly from Black voters but from Hispanic, Asian-American and multiracial voters."

"Those groups back Democrats, but not always by overwhelmingly large margins.... The new census data’s finding that the percentage of non-Hispanic white voters in the country’s electorate dropped by about two percentage points from 2016 to 2020 might seem like a lot. But with Hispanic, Asian-American and multiracial voters representing the entirety of the increase, while the Black share of the electorate was flat, the growing nonwhite share of the electorate cost Mr. Trump only about half a percentage point over a four-year period. Another factor is the electoral map. The American electoral system rewards flipping states from red to blue, but many Democratic gains among nonwhite voters have been concentrated in the major cities of big and often noncompetitive states. By contrast, many traditional swing states across the northern tier, like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, have had relatively little demographic change.... White voters still represent more than 80 percent of the electorate in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the new census data. The nonwhite population in these states is predominantly Black; their share of the population has been fairly steady over the last few decades. But Mr. Biden won these states so narrowly that the relatively modest demographic shifts of the last few decades were necessary for him to prevail in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. It’s just hard to call it a Great Replacement if Mr. Trump could have won in 2020 if only he had done as well among white voters as he did in 2016."

From "Why Rising Diversity Might Not Help Democrats as Much as They Hope/Voters of color make up an increasing percentage of the United States electorate, but that trend isn’t hurting Republicans as much as conservatives fear" by Nate Cohn (NYT). 

The "Great Replacement" theory is referred to elsewhere in the article, here: "Contrary to what Tucker Carlson says repeatedly on Fox News about the rise of 'white replacement theory' as a Democratic electoral strategy, the country’s growing racial diversity has not drastically upended the party’s chances." That's carefully worded. It doesn't say that the Democrats do not have that strategy, only that it hasn't worked as well as you might think. If it's an odious strategy, then it's bad whether it works or not. If it's not odious, then you'd go right to open discussion of how well it works. So I'm inclined to think that the NYT doesn't think it's odious or doesn't want us readers to think it's odious. If the latter, it would seem that the NYT is trying to quell concern about about "replacement": it's not really happening, not that much, and even if it were that would be okay too, and if you feel at all worried about it, then you're in the Tucker Carlson camp, and you'd better get out of there.

(To comment, you can email me here.)

"The swing towards Trump in Hispanic areas across the country is extraordinary. It was hinted at in the preëlection polls."

"The polls always showed the President faring better among nonwhite, and particularly Hispanic, voters than he did four years ago, but the magnitude of the shift was way beyond expectations.... I think it could easily be a double-digit swing in the President’s direction. I have not crunched these numbers conclusively, and it’s still too early to do that. But that would be my initial gut sense, yes. The most obvious reason for this, I would assume, is the education divide in our politics manifesting itself across racial lines.... And I think this was not an election on immigration. Immigration was a major theme of the 2016 election.... So it makes sense to me that if we stop talking immigration and Hispanic voters start assessing the President without that in mind, that they might begin to shift in ways that are fairly similar to demographically similar white voters, but four years later...."

Said Nate Cohn, in "Nate Cohn Explains What the Polls Got Wrong" (The New Yorker).

I'm also seeing this today in The Washington Post: "Why Texas’s overwhelmingly Latino Rio Grande Valley turned toward Trump." Excerpt: 

“Hispanics have been acculturated in Texas over many generations and because of that, their perceptions are much more like that of the Anglo population,” said Jason Villalba, president of the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation. 

University of Texas San Antonio political scientist Sharon Navarro said the conservatism of some Texas Latinos is nothing new, particularly in rural communities. The difference this year is that Republicans did the work to court these voters and tailor their message about the election around the economy and jobs. 

Republicans said they are convinced that the margins they won in the Rio Grande Valley and beyond is a sign that the region’s politics are trending in their favor....

"The Scary Proposition That Trump Is Gradually Becoming More Popular."

Headline at NY Magazine.

From the article by Ed Kilgore:

[F]ormidable number cruncher Nate Cohn... calls attention to something most of us have ignored since Trump took office: the president’s personal favorability ratings.... "Millions of Americans who did not like the president in 2016 now say they do. Over all, his personal favorability rating has increased by about 10 percentage points among registered voters since Election Day 2016, to 44 percent from 34 percent...."...

Cohn acknowledges that the odds are pretty good Democrats will nominate a more popular opponent for Trump than Hillary Clinton was in 2016, though nobody knows how she or he will compare to the president in personal favorability. I think it’s pretty important to remember that Trump won among the 18 percent of the electorate who disliked both candidates by a robust 47/30 margin....

From a longer perspective, my guess is that the narrow band of favorability and job approval numbers for Trump is just another testament to the partisan polarization that made it possible for him to win in 2016, despite his unpopularity.... 

ADDED: Another scary thing about Trump in NY Magazine: "The Owner of SoulCycle and Equinox Is Throwing a Fancy Trump Fundraiser." I find that especially funny. If you were relying on riding a stationary bike to meet the needs of something you like to think of as a soul, you deserve disillusionment.



I thought that picture would help understand the problem under discussion here. I clicked to that from "The Owner of SoulCycle and Equinox Is Throwing a Fancy Trump Fundraiser." It's an ad for Equinox that predates Trump's election, an ad discussed at "See Steven Klein’s Muscly, Freaky Fitness Ads," a New York Magazine article from January 2016. Doesn't it eerily presage the nation's "white supremacy" fetish?

"But Mr. Trump’s approval rating has been stable even after seemingly big missteps."

"And if it improves by a modest amount — not unusual for incumbents with a strong economy — he could have a distinct chance to win re-election while losing the popular vote by more than he did in 2016, when he lost it by 2.1 percentage points. The president’s relative advantage in the Electoral College could grow even further in a high-turnout election, which could pad Democratic margins nationwide while doing little to help them in the Northern battleground states. It is even possible that Mr. Trump could win while losing the national vote by as much as five percentage points.... Many assume that the huge turnout expected in 2020 will benefit Democrats, but it’s not so straightforward. It could conceivably work to the advantage of either party, and either way, higher turnout could widen the gap between the Electoral College and the popular vote. That’s because the major Democratic opportunity — to mobilize nonwhite and young voters on the periphery of politics — would disproportionately help Democrats in diverse, often noncompetitive states. The major Republican opportunity — to mobilize less educated white voters, particularly those who voted in 2016 but sat out 2018 — would disproportionately help them in white, working-class areas overrepresented in the Northern battleground states...."

Writes Nate Cohn in "Trump’s Electoral College Edge Could Grow in 2020, Rewarding Polarizing Campaign/Re-election looks plausible even with a bigger loss in the national popular vote" (NYT).

That's all very interesting about the Electoral College, and if you read the whole article, you'll see a lot about polls about "approval" of Trump, which are used as a proxy for how people will vote. But in an election, you have to vote for one or another candidate (or abstain), and you might disapprove of all of them.

That is, withholding approval doesn't mean you won't vote for Trump. It's hard to approve of Trump. He's not exactly approval-seeking. You might like the results he's getting and still feel you want distance from him. You might vote for him because you want more of the same or because you think his opponent will take away some of the things you like and still be able to say that you "disapprove" of the person known as Trump.

A conscious sense of disapproval may even facilitate a vote for Trump. People who seek approval for themselves may find it expedient to express disapproval of Trump — to be free of the onus and stigma of approving of him — but when the time comes to answer the question whether they want 4 more years of his work, they might also find it expedient to say "yes."

Nate Cohn at the NYT says the post-Orlando gun issue is "probably" going to help Trump.

You can't predict the future with certainty, so I respect that "probably." He says:

According to an Upshot analysis of Pew Research data, nearly half of white working-class Democrats think it’s more important to protect gun rights than to control gun ownership. That’s a larger percentage of Democratic voters than agree with Mr. Trump on many of the other issues that he stresses on the campaign trail.

At the same time, Mr. Trump’s position has considerable support from Republican-leaning voters. About three-quarters of Republican-leaning voters side with gun rights over gun control, according to the Pew data.

That’s even better for Mr. Trump than a lot of his other populist wedge issues, like trade and immigration. It’s about as good as any issue for Republicans — even general conservative attitudes such as whether the government is wasteful.

I listened to Hillary's post-Orlando speech yesterday, and she said a lot of things about different issues, but when she got to the part about gun control, her audience went wild. Look at the long ovation after she says "We have to make it harder for people who should not have those weapons of war. That might not stop every shooting or terrorist attack. But it will stop some and it will save lives and it will protect our first responders":



She's in the presence of people who strongly encourage her to forefront gun control, but this should not be her chosen route. If she doesn't resist the temptation to follow the encouragement of crowds like this, she is helping Donald Trump get elected.

"There are not enough white voters in America for Donald Trump to win while getting routed among minorities."

Said Joe Scarborough. But, actually, he's wrong, explains Nate Cohn.

It's conventional (and seemingly politically correct) to say what Scarborough said, and not too many people find it appealing to point out what Nate Cohn is pointing out, but the numbers are whatever the numbers are.

And I happen to think Donald Trump is good with numbers. I think he studies the numbers and thinks in terms of numbers. He doesn't talk about that much — other than poll numbers when he likes them — but I suspect his business practice is highly numerical and he's bringing this orientation to politics. The other day he referred to his "statistician" and then joked that the crowd would find statistics too boring. I think he's done the math and he's doing the math.

Cohn's main point is that exit polls seem to have undercounted the "whiter, less-educated and older" voters, and 2 other sources of data show significantly higher numbers.

The larger number of white working-class voters implies that Democrats are far more dependent on winning white working-class voters, and therefore more vulnerable to a populist candidate like Mr. Trump....

The real pool of missing white voters are those who haven’t participated in any recent election, or aren’t even registered to vote. There are millions of these missing white voters — but they will be much harder to mobilize. Many are young, and might not be especially favorable to Mr. Trump. The older ones are true bystanders in American politics.

To win, Mr. Trump will need to make gains among white working-class voters. The earliest evidence, and polling this early can be quite inaccurate, suggests that he is doing that handily.

So far, Mr. Trump leads Mrs. Clinton by 27 points among white voters without a degree, 58 percent to 31 percent, in the last six national surveys from major news organizations. In the final 2012 polls, Mr. Romney led by just 19 points among such voters, 58 percent to 39 percent, over Mr. Obama.

ADDED: Trump derangement syndrome is raging in the comments over there at the NYT. Here's the second most up-voted comment:

Very interesting analysis, but it is a snap-shot and does not take into account the effects of the campaign. Mr. Trump is medically unfit to become president. He suffers from a severe personality disorder and possibly the early stages of dementia. As the campaign progresses, he will become increasingly unhinged and all but the least informed voters will notice it.

You know, a lot of real people suffer from mental illness and dementia. You'd think it would be considered politically incorrect to use this as a metaphor or as some kind of actual prediction. Ironically, those who attack Trump this way are indulging in the kind of disgust and disinclusion that they seem to want to be able to hate Trump for using. 

"Is Traditional Polling Underselling Donald Trump’s True Strength?"

Asks Nate Cohn (in the NYT):

Mrs. Clinton generally leads Mr. Trump by less in online surveys. On balance, though, Mr. Trump has about 2.5 more points in live-interview polls. He’s actually earning a smaller share of the vote in online surveys than in the live-interview polls — the exact opposite of what one might expect if he were being hurt by social desirability bias in live-interview polls.

So what’s going on? The main difference between the online and live-interview polls is there are vastly more undecided voters in the online surveys. In the live-interview surveys, there are correspondingly more supporters of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump, with Mrs. Clinton apparently gaining slightly more ground....

AND: Here's a NYT article — "Donald Trump Borrows From Bernie Sanders’s Playbook to Woo Democrats" — that had me leaping ahead to the notion of Sanders one day endorsing Trump. Oh, yes, it hit me at this point:

Mr. Trump recently offered a taste of his coming line of attack on the campaign trail in Oregon, where he praised Mr. Sanders for highlighting Mrs. Clinton’s ties to the country’s largest financial institutions. “She’s totally controlled by Wall Street,” Mr. Trump said, echoing a Sanders rallying cry.

Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump, said he expected the presumptive Republican nominee to grow aggressive on the banks. “Who’s been tougher on bankers than Donald Trump?” asked Mr. Stone, suggesting Mr. Trump could appeal to some of Mr. Sanders’s supporters. “He’s taken them to the cleaners. I think he has a healthy skepticism and deep knowledge of bankers and how they operate. He’s going to be tough on Wall Street.” Mr. Trump has said that “the hedge fund guys are getting away with murder.”

"Perhaps above all else, the data shows that Mr. Trump has broad support in the G.O.P., spanning all major demographic groups."

Nate Cohn reports in a piece — somewhat misleadingly titled "Donald Trump’s Strongest Supporters: A Certain Kind of Democrat" — based on interviews with 11,000  Republican-leaning respondents (done by Civis Analytics, a Democratic data firm).

[Trump] leads among Republican women and among people in well-educated and affluent areas. He even holds a nominal lead among Republican respondents that Civis estimated are Hispanic, based on their names and where they live.

But Mr. Trump’s lead is not equal among all G.O.P. groups, or across all parts of the country. His support follows a clear geographic pattern. He fares best in a broad swath of the country stretching from the Gulf Coast, up the spine of the Appalachian Mountains, to upstate New York....

His geographic pattern of support is not just about demographics — educational attainment, for example. It is not necessarily the typical pattern for a populist, either. In fact, it’s almost the exact opposite of Ross Perot’s support in 1992, which was strongest in the West and New England, and weakest in the South and industrial North....

Much of this article strains to find racial material, dragging in evidence of the Google searches in various areas. Maybe you can tell where the racists are by where people search for racial epithets, and then maybe Trump supporters in the same area are the same people who did the searches. Cohn concedes that this evidence is weak, but it's not so weak that he doesn't bother with it.

What stands out to me after reading the whole article, however, is that Trump obviously has a lot of support among a wide range of people, including many that you wouldn't expect if you've been relying on mainstream media for information: women, well-educated people, Hispanics. There needs to be much more serious analysis of what is going on. American politics is outrunning the pundit class, which has lost a lot of ground tripped up on the delusion that this can't be serious.

The NYT looks at "Why Marco Rubio’s Chances Are Rising."

Nate Cohn writes:

A lot has changed since April, when Marco Rubio announced his presidential bid. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin was the top candidate of mainstream conservative activists and donors. Jeb Bush seemed like a fund-raising juggernaut with natural appeal to the party’s moderate voters, who play an underrated role in the Republican primary process. Mr. Rubio, a broadly appealing candidate but the top choice of few, looked boxed out.

Today, Mr. Rubio isn’t blocked. Instead, he has a big opening....

I said it back on June 10th:



I originally embedded that clip in a post titled "The get-Rubio movement" — which called out the NYT:

We're seeing evidence of this movement this week with the NYT article "Marco Rubio’s Career Bedeviled by Financial Struggles" and last week's "Marco Rubio and His Wife Cited 17 Times for Traffic Infractions." These are ludicrously weak attacks. Rubio bought an $80,000 fishing boat (which the NYT called a "luxury speedboat") after he received an $800,000 and he chose to lease an Audi (a "luxury item") when he needed a car in 2015. And he's gotten 4 traffic tickets in 18 years. The main thing we learn from all that is that the NYT really wants to get him.

Let me take you back to May 22, when the NYT had a piece titled: "A Hillary Clinton Match-Up With Marco Rubio Is a Scary Thought for Democrats."...

So view the new article in that context.