WHAT IS THE ROLE OF INTERNAL MIGRATION?

In the course of the election night channel surfing, I caught an MSNBC analyst suggesting that the Republicans had created enough safe districts in Florida alone to flip control of the House of Representatives (even with Lauren Boebert being turfed out?) and his stratification of districts included less contested districts that might be in play, depending on how much of a Republican surge there was, or not.

I later caught a Fox analyst suggesting that those new safe districts in Florida were being populated by people fleeing corona tyranny and crime in New York, and thus no longer being able to vote in New York against corona tyranny and crime, meaning the remaining voters in New York were more likely to have a different bundle of policy preferences, creating a Democrat island of sorts that would withstand any Republican tide.

It's possible that something similar is at work in the Midwest, where the corona tyrants of the Great Lakes (Evers in Wisconsin, Pritzker in Illinois, Walz in Minnesota, and Whitmer in Michigan) were returned to office, as were the free state governors to their west (Noem in South Dakota, Reynolds in Iowa).

So it goes.  My neighbors have voted.  I do not agree with their choices.  It's on me to continue to persuade them to think differently, and perhaps the expiration of the temporary suspension of grocery sales tax and the cost of living increase in the motor fuel tax will help change some minds.

The reactions among the populists who were hoping for a major rebuke of the Jarrett regency are instructive.  Stephen Kruiser's Morning Briefing has an ill-advised headline.  "We're Done–American Voters Are Idiots."

Losing skippers blame the crew.  It's a mistake when Marxist vanguardists accuse the proletariat of false consciousness.  That's the kind of wordnoise a gender studies professor might use to sound erudite, but when you attempt to explain it to a six year old (False consciousness is when you're not seeing what you think you're seeing) it breaks down.  It backfired on Hillary Clinton, when her attempt to make her donors feel good about themselves went public, with the deplorables more inclined to vote against her, rather than shamed into supporting her.

So let it be with Mr Kruiser.  His neighbors have voted.  It's on him to continue to persuade them to think differently.

Power Line's John Hinderaker also looks at the outcome.  He, too, is of the view that Donald Trump has become an albatross.

“Our democracy” and “fascism” were code for Donald Trump. At this point, Trump is a giant anvil around the neck of the Republican Party. In many areas, likely most, he is absolute poison. To be associated with Trump is to lose. Pretty much everything he has done in the last two years has been not just ill-advised but massively destructive to the Republican Party and to the United States. He has teased a “big announcement” in the next few days. I hope he announces that he is moving to Bulgaria.

An off-year election is normally a referendum on the president, which is why the out-party nearly always gains. When the Democrats tried to make this year’s election a referendum on Donald Trump, I thought they were crazy. Trump is not an office-holder, nor was he on the ballot. How could that possibly work? Well, it did work, and Trump, with his inimitable bad judgment, collaborated fully with the Democrats in putting himself front and center, with disastrous results.

He also has thought on opinion polling.

We Republicans have gotten used to the idea that polls generally underpredict Republican performance. When liberal pollsters started reporting more favorable numbers for Republicans in the days leading up the election, it looked like the usual script was being followed. But this year, if anything the polls may have understated Democratic support, not Republican. What–to cite just one instance–happened to the 26-point swing among suburban women toward the GOP, which led Steve to dub this the “Desperate Housewives Election?” They were desperate, all right–desperate to vote in favor of abortion and against Donald Trump. But how could so many polls be so wrong?

I have no idea why this happened, but I know that it wasn’t just the major public polls that were off-target. I was privy to private poll data here in Minnesota, and it showed far greater support for Republican legislative candidates than actually turned out at the polls. Why? I don’t know. I speculate that a number of Trump voters who are not consistent voters and are lightly attached to the Republican Party didn’t show up. On the other hand, liberals who thought they were voting in favor of abortion and against Donald Trump turned out massively.

I didn't watch the polls, let alone dip into the crosstabs, anywhere near as deeply as the people with bigger platforms.  But I noticed, frequently, the expression "trailing but within the margin of error."  That's not reason to be optimistic.  The key word is "trailing."  The point estimate is "You're going to lose."  In the language of empirical research, you're in the position of "expected sign, statistically insigificant." That's not the best place to be: you want to have a prior that is supported by the evidence, and to have a finding that is surprising in some way so as to get it published, or as we phrase it, "expected sign, statistically significant."  But you're in a better place than if you have the "wrong sign" whether statistically significant or not.

Mr Hinderaker concludes, "There is much more that could be said, but I will leave it there for now."

One area that might be of interest is the prediction markets, many of which going into the weekend valued the contracts "Republican House" and "Republican Senate" highly.  Looks like those contracts didn't pan out.  Might be something for me to work on.