Election 2022 Predictions

One result is as predictable as the sunrise.

image from 538, found via a google image search for “red wave”

Edit: I turned commenting off, sorry. I apparently have to get a lot better at being clear. No matter how many times, ways, or how explicitly I repeat over and over and over and over again that my concerns are about child abuse and little girls who end up being chosen by pedophiles to be the mothers of their children, I somehow keep ending up having to discuss why I do not believe that the Republicans are the answer to everything and why voting for the red team is not by definition the right thing to do. Vote for anyone you want, people. You don’t have to justify it to me. There is nothing you can say that will make me agree with you that voting for the Republicans is the right thing to do for even one child. Neither party deserves my vote, because of my concerns about children. You weigh your own concerns about whatever matters to you in your own way and vote for whoever the hell you want. I don’t care, and I’m too busy, and too short on emotional energy, to constantly be debating about things I haven’t said, or worse, things I’ve said dozens of times.

Election Day is November 8.

I’ve read a lot of predictions and projections, and many of them are wildly contradictory. For example, this is from RealClearPolitics:

And this is from TargetEarly, based on early voting results and modeling:

Twitter thread from TargetEarly here with a bit more.

Who is right?

I don’t know. It is way too easy to lie with statistics, either directly—trust me, having worked as a data scientist for just a year and a half, at this point I know enough that I could design a survey to return absolutely any results I wanted it to—or unconsciously. (It is also very easy to write ambiguous or unclear questions, to fail to take into account how the question might be understood, to miss an important factor in sampling.)

But even if I had full confidence in the statistical methods being employed, I don’t trust the media reporting them to us.

So I have no idea whose models are accurate and whose aren’t.

If the data wasn’t collected and analyzed by me or by someone I personally know to be mathematically sophisticated and intellectually honest, I don’t trust it.

Will Abortion Matter in the Results?

I don’t know. It matters to me, but I have life experience that means I have a good understanding of what raped fifth and sixth graders who will be forced by their red state governments to give birth, often to half-siblings, will go through. Those little girls matter to me in a way that it’s reasonable for them not to matter to most people. Our own personal tragedies are always the most salient to us.

One reason why it might matter: every woman I know (well enough that we’ve discussed our lives in any depth) has either been raped, had a very near-miss at being raped, has helped a female friend in the immediate aftermath of a rape, or has had another person’s mistake put them at grave risk of an unwanted pregnancy even though they were in no way behaving irresponsibly or carelessly (for example, a pharmacist who didn’t warn them that a particular antibiotic would render their birth control pill ineffective). My experiences and friend groups have been fairly diverse, and I suspect that an overwhelming majority of women have one or more of these personal experiences that makes abortion very salient to them. The reality of a world where abortion access has gotten more difficult in many (red) states might matter in their voting.

One reason why it might not matter: in most families, the woman handles the mundane details of life. She keeps the budget, does the grocery shopping, figures out which of the kids’ desired extracurricular activities the family can afford, sets the budget for Christmas and birthday presents. Women are thus feeling the inflation pressure more directly and immediately than men, in most cases. (Supply your own #notalls, please). This may be enough to outweigh reasons to vote against Republicans, in many cases.

The One Predictable Thing

No matter what happens, there will be anger from a significant percentage of the country, and that anger will be directed at white women.

If there is a red wave, the left and the mainstream media will rise up and declare that it is the fault of white women. White women, the soldiers of patriarchy, stepped up to give power to their husbands, fathers, and brothers. Those stupid, racist bitches voted against their own interests because they’re white supremacists before they’re anything else, and now we’re stuck with Nazis in charge of Congress. Thanks, Karen!

If there is not a red wave, the right will rise up and declare that it is the fault of white women. White women, the soldiers of wokeness, stepped up to give power to the men invading their locker rooms and sports teams and to the politicians empowering teachers to trans their children. Those stupid, brain-dead bitches voted against their own interests because they’re like children, who need boundaries set by men stepping up to tell them what to do and how to live, and now we’re stuck with Woke lunatics keeping Congress. Thanks, Karen!

If there is not a red wave, the left will not praise white women for voting their way. They will praise black women for “saving the country,” point to other elections where black female turnout was high, and do stories on black women who worked in community organizing and such.

If there is a red wave, the right will not praise white women for voting their way. They will praise white men for helping their women see sense, or at best, they will say something like “I hope they’ve learned their lesson this time but if anyone is slow to learn lessons, it’s white women,” and laugh.

Commentary

This is as predictable as the sunrise. I could write multiple news stories in advance, hewing to all of these narratives, and have them ready to go with only final percentages and numbers to be filled in.

This is where we are, and it’s pathetic. It’s pathetic on the left, where they use the laudable desire of white women to be compassionate and understandable fear of losing their children to suicide as weapons to manipulate them. It’s pathetic on the right, where they will hew to this narrative and then feign astonishment (or in some sad cases, honestly fail to understand, which is worse) at the 4,000%+ increase in white girl children who are opting out of white womanhood by transitioning to boys.

The predictable consequences of these narratives—particularly the desperation of little girls to transition and the more intense driving of white women into tribes where there’s at least some chance that someone will eventually not hate or blame them for every problem—will intensify.

It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

If it gets better.

Housekeeping: Comments are open for paid subscribers. Email hollymathnerd at gmail if you want to participate but can’t afford a paid subscription. I’m no longer on any social media, so your spreading the link to anything you enjoy reading here is helpful and appreciated. Thank you!