Voter Turnout | Benjamin Studebaker

October 5, 2018

It’s Not All Bad: The Political Upside to the Kavanaugh Confirmation

I’ve been picking at Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination for a while now. I emphasised that if the midterms weren’t coming, the Republicans would have bailed on Kavanaugh long ago. I pointed out how Kavanaugh trafficked in emotional manipulation to survive his hearing. I noted that in the past, Americans would have been much less tolerant of the lies Kavanaugh told while under oath. But despite my efforts and the efforts of many other people, it seems just about certain that Kavanaugh will be confirmed tomorrow. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has aligned herself with the Republican leadership, and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has followed suit. Many will write long lamentations about this. Others will rip Collins and Manchin for failing to align with us. You can read those pieces elsewhere. But I’ve been watching the numbers this past week, and I’ve come around to the view that in the long-run, the left will benefit from Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Here’s how.

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June 9, 2017

The 3 Groups Only Corbyn Could Win for Labour

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has gained 31 seats in parliament and increased its vote share by nearly 10 points. This gives Labour its largest vote share by percentage since 2001. This is somewhat perplexing, because Corbyn had a net approval rating of -11, even during the final week of the election campaign. But even though many ordinary Labour voters might have preferred a more traditional Labour leader, they appear to have nonetheless preferred Corbyn’s Labour Party to the alternatives. In the meantime, Corbyn helped bring in three groups of people which a more traditional Labour leader might have failed to attract.

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March 6, 2016

Democracy Discriminates Against the Young

Young people overwhelmingly support Bernie Sanders in this election, but many of them are not showing up. He crushed the demographic in Massachusetts, but still lost the state narrowly:

Young voters are just not keeping up with older folks:

This has been true for a long time–Millennials did not invent low youth voter turnout:

Many people see figures like this and their knee-jerk response is to scold young people for failing to show up, often attributing it to the laziness or lack of civic virtue of the current crop of young people. But as we see above, young people have been less active in politics since long before Millennials came on the scene. There are larger reasons why young people tend to feel disenfranchised by democratic politics–it’s because the system discriminates against them.

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October 11, 2015

Why the Speaker of the House is a No-Win Situation for Republicans

This past week has seen quite a bit of drama surrounding the planned retirement of current Speaker of the House, John Boehner. Boehner wants to quit, but his republican colleagues cannot seem to find an agreeable replacement for him. The first consensus choice, Kevin McCarthy, has pulled himself out of the race. Some have alleged it’s due to an affair, but it’s also quite possible that McCarthy could not get the support of the “Freedom Caucus“, a group of 42 hardline republicans who together have enough seats to prevent mainline republicans from passing anything without the support of democrats. Now many republicans are calling on former Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan to put himself up for the job, but to this point he has refused to do so. What’s the deal?

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