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dfxm12

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Both parties support federalism when it suits their platform and not otherwise.

> they simply don't care about that

Or don't feel there is a better choice. The biggest oligopoly in the US is in politics.

> in a nation where, on aggregate, their platform is unpopular

Many polls report that the Republicans are more popular than the Democrats at the moment.[1]

Sadly, refusing to acknowledge the existence of differing views seems to be rather common these days.

1: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2022-generic-...

Many congressional elections are unposed due to extreme gerrymandering this zeroes out voters from that party in a nationwide count.

Going alphabetically Alabama 2 of 7 races without Democratic candidates which means Democratic voters in those districts will obviously not vote for a Democrat.

https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_House_of_Representativ...

This is polling data. You have to read the question. In this CNBC poll[1], the question was "which party do you want to control Congress?" and the Republicans came out ahead.

In this[2] Harvard poll, the question was "would you be more likely to vote for a Republican or a Democrat in the midterm" and it was a 50/50 tie.

Generally, I think OP's conclusion is correct. There is a tendency in this bubble to assume that the GOP is dead and unsupported, but that is not the case.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/20/gop-holds-big-leads-on-key-e...

[2] https://harvardharrispoll.com/key-results-october-3/

I agree the GOP has quite a bit of support, even when they lose an election they still get close. However, it’s important to understand what is actual support vs designing your platform for the system vs tweaking the system.

The 2016 presidential election was R 62,984,828 to D 65,853,514 in votes with 55.7% turnout of registered voters. But in that exact same election the house votes went 63,182,073 R vs 61,765,832 D. In other words the R house got +200 thousand votes and D lost over 4 million votes in the house.

That kind of advantage is common in recent elections. They lost in 2020 at R 72,760,036 vs D 77,529,619 in the house, but was still much better for them than the presidential election at R 74,216,154 vs D 81,268,92.

Support for party isn't the best metric for support for the party's policies though. There is broad support for gay marriage for example but marriage between a man and a woman and the "incorrectly decided" Obergefell v. Hodges is still part of the Republican platform.

To me support for a party is much more about tribalism and branding than actual policy.

68% of voters support a public health care option run by the government, including 56% of Republican voters and 80% of Democrats.

That's the congressional vote, which suffers from gerrymandering.

In raw numbers, far more people support the Democrats than the Republicans.

Its polling data, not an actual vote.

According to this CNBC poll[1], on the question of "party preference to control Congress", the Republicans come out ahead. Its close, but hardly the landslide Democrat victory you would expect if nobody supports the GOP.

I would recommend you take another look at the polling data[2]. It might help pop some bubbles.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/20/gop-holds-big-leads-on-key-e...

[2] https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2022-generic-...

It's the generic congressional vote, which is simply the percent of people polled who prefer either party. It's analogous to the popular vote for President, not the percent of seats either party is predicted to win.

All the surveys are only of "likely voters". People who live in heavily gerrymandered districts tend to say "I'm not planning on voting". Also a lot of younger people who generally support Democrats aren't even included in the surveys.

If this were generally true, you'd see more polls erring in favor of Republicans. I can't recall any mainstream polling misses that have; do you have any references?

Many races only have candidates from a single party.

Which discards votes in any such count not just from the election tallies but also likely voters.

Pollsters know that, so they phrase questions to avoid the issue, like:

"Would you rather see the Republicans or the Democrats in control of Congress, or doesn’t this matter to you?"

(from Monmouth)

That doesn’t help when you ask if someone is a likely voter and they say no because of who’s running.

Granted it doesn’t say it’s asking likely voters, but somehow they got 95% of responses say they are registered voters when only 50% of Americans are registered voters.

(Page 8) https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/documents/monmout...

> somehow they got 95% of responses say they are registered voters

That's 95% of people who are old enough to respond to the poll (under 18 are excluded without reporting) and don't hang up.

I don't find it strange that people who aren't registered to vote hang up without responding to the poll.

There are many possibilities, but the point stands that it’s clearly a very biased sample. Almost 80% of people between 65-74 are registered voters but that’s still a long way from 95%.

But FDR, with its New Deal, is still the prefered US President, and by a large margin :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_preside...

That’s because most people don’t realize that those policies started us down the path to authoritarianism we’re headed to now.

That's something JP Morgan would say.

Flip that: Democrats focus is on tyranny of the majority so that a few big cities can rule a nation that doesn't want to live by rules that are destroying places like New York and LA.

It's not that we don't care... it's that we know why our system was setup the way it is.

Because only an idiot supports "Pure Democracy" - we don't have pure democracy for many reasons.

You simply don't care to admit those reasons and address the problems with pure democracy.

Conservative principles are far more popular than the left wing dogma.

Abortion on day of birth Secure boarders Lower taxes and regulations. Personal responsibility vs government handouts Crime Boys in girls sports.

Discus actual issues and many democrats will be shocked they they are in the wrong party.

But hey, endless personal attacks is a strategy as well.

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