What Went Down In The 2018 Midterms

Chad, we saw I think two big trends in terms of how identity and politics intersect. On the Democratic side, you had this wave of female candidates run and then win primaries. Democrats didn’t take Clinton’s loss as some kind of indication that women could not be elected, but instead made their party more female-led than before. Similarly, in Florida and Georgia, Democratic voters basically rejected nominating white candidates who some said were more “electable.” We are going to see a lot of firsts (Muslim, African-American, gay) in terms of Democratic candidates winning across the country. On the GOP side, in the campaigns of Kemp, DeSantis and some congressional Republicans I think you saw an embrace of Trump-style identity politics: few appeals to minority voters, lots of aggressive anti-immigrant rhetoric, and some campaign ads that are downright racist.

Perry, the link you posted about Gillum made me wonder whether this election cycle shed any light on how Democrats and Republicans approached “identity politics” this cycle. Anything new or different?

Americans’ environmental voting trends aren’t new this election cycle, either. The same dynamic I wrote about earlier was kind of happening in 2016. There’s just A LOT that is important to people and environment ends up getting pushed down the list. One interesting thing: There’s an activist group dedicated to finding people with environmentalist beliefs who don’t vote and getting them out to the polls. They claim that more than 15 million environmentalists didn’t vote at all in the 2014 midterms.