The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
● AZ-07: Oh nuts to this. Sophomore Rep. Ruben Gallego has not only been a rock-solid progressive during his tenure in Congress, he's also emerged as one of the fiercest and most outspoken critics of Donald Trump in the entire Democratic Party. So what has that earned him? A primary challenge from a state senator, Catherine Miranda, who claims to be a Democrat but is awfully cozy with the GOP—so cozy that she endorsed Republican Doug Ducey when he successfully ran for governor in 2014.
Campaign Action
And that's not all—far from it. Gallego's campaign greeted Miranda's entry into the race by dubbing her "an anti-choice, corporate-sponsored politician," and she certainly is anti-choice. Among other things, she voted to ban abortion at 20 weeks, voted to defund Planned Parenthood, and even signed a "pro-life pledge." She also launched her campaign by promising to be "someone who will put partisan politics aside, and get things done," a message that couldn't be more out-of-step with our times. At least we can be confident that few Democratic primary voters will find that sort of talk appealing.
But Miranda still poses a deeply frustrating problem for progressives, particularly because the sort of wealthy Republican donors who remember her support for Ducey would likely be all too happy to help her kneecap a rising star like Gallego. Arizona's primary also isn't until the end of August, meaning this race could become a distraction even as we enter the stretch run ahead of the midterms. Fortunately, Democrats won't have to worry about the general election here, since the Phoenix-based 7th District went for Hillary Clinton by a heavy 72-23 margin, but the last thing we'd want is to see someone as awful as Miranda replace someone as awesome as Gallego.
4Q Fundraising
It's that time again! The deadline for House and Senate candidates to file their quarterly fundraising reports (covering the period from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31 of last year) is Jan. 31, but it's common for campaigns to leak their numbers early to generate some press. (Deadlines vary by state for gubernatorial contenders and often aren't quarterly.) And as we always urge campaigns every quarter, if you want to get attention for your most recent fundraising haul, issue a release now. Don't wait until the reporting deadline, when everyone's numbers come out at once.
● CA-Gov: Gavin Newsom (D): $4.5 million raised (second half of 2017), $19 million cash-on-hand
● CA-49: Sara Jacobs (D): $1.3 million raised (includes self-funding)
● FL-27: David Richardson (D): $250,000 raised (plus $250,000 in self-funding), $850,000 cash-on-hand
Senate
● MI-Sen: On Wednesday, former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Robert Young announced he was ending his campaign for the GOP nod to take on Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow. Young had had trouble raising money, which he noted as he pulled the plug. Businessman John James and wealthy venture capitalist Sandy Pensler are the main contenders competing in the August primary.
● UT-Sen: In the wake of Orrin Hatch's retirement announcement on Tuesday, the entire political world seems pretty confident that Mitt Romney will run to succeed him. Indeed, Hatch even pre-endorsed Romney, saying he'll "have my support" if he decides to go for it, but Mittens himself still has yet to speak. One unnamed adviser told the New York Times that Romney would "make his intentions known in a matter of weeks," while another (or maybe the same one?) told the Boston Globe that it likely won't be "this week or next week," adding that "there's no immediate rush."
Big-name candidates often feel this way, but sometimes, it can be a mistake to delay. Romney by all accounts is quite popular with GOP voters in Utah, and he'd certainly be hard to beat. But the longer he waits, the more of an opening he gives to alternatives who can offer a more undiluted strain of Republicanism—and there's always someone who thinks they can provide that purer choice. That high-grade conservative smack could potentially come from Rep. Chris Stewart, who said back in August that he'd run if Hatch didn't and is reportedly still weighing his options. When Stewart made his original declaration, Romney's name had long been circulating as a potential candidate, so he may be less scared of the recent MA → UT transplant than you might expect.
Gubernatorial
● CA-Gov: This is a very strange story. On Friday, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, now a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote that he'd heard that Rep. Jackie Speier, a Bay Area Democrat who had not been seriously mentioned at all in connection to this year's gubernatorial race, was "spending the New Year's weekend in Palm Springs with her advisers and mulling a possible run for governor." Brown is notorious for spreading political gossip about things that usually go nowhere, but Speier and her team's odd behavior over the next few days give us reason to think there may be something to this.
If Speier had no interest in running, there was nothing stopping her from just saying so immediately, or at least when asked, but that's not how things played out. On Monday, Speier's chief of staff, Josh Connolly, told the Palo Alto Daily Post's Emily Mibach that he'd not spoken to the congresswoman since Brown's column came out and would try to get an answer that day, but Mibach says she never heard back. The next day, an unnamed Speier confidant told Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross that the big question surrounding June's top-two primary would be who would make it to the general election with Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, adding that "[i]f it's Jackie, then he has a problem." The source said they were speaking anonymously because Speier had yet to decide.
On Wednesday, close to a week after Brown's column was published and two days after Speier's chief of staff said he'd try to find out what was up, Speier herself finally spoke, but she did nothing to clear things up, emailing out an amusing but ultimately ambiguous statement:
"I'm not sure who Willie's source is, but the only thing accurate about the post was that I was in Palm Springs with my family. Willie was smoking something before [sales] became legal on January 1st. I still have a lot of work to do in Washington."
Note what's missing: Any definitive statement from Speier in which she confirms she won't run for governor. And given all the crosstalk and Speier's very delayed reaction, it seems Brown really might have been on to something, for once. In any case, if Speier still has any interest in going for the big prize, we should know soon. California's filing deadline is in March and the primary is in June, so we won't need to wonder for too long. Realistically, though, any serious candidate should have entered a race of this magnitude long ago, so perhaps Speier isn't one.
● FL-Gov: Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine began an $800,000 ad buy back in November, and he's only poured more money in over the following two months. Politico reports that Levine, who is one of several candidates competing in the Democrats' late August primary, has spent a total of $1.3 million so far on radio and TV. That's a lot this far from Election Day, but the incredibly wealthy and well-connected Levine can afford it.
● KS-Gov: Even though Donald Trump nominated Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback to serve as his "Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom" all the way back in July, the Senate proved unable to confirm him by the close of its 2017 session and returned his nomination to Trump's desk. That means Trump would have to re-nominate Brownback, and if he doesn't, well, the governor has to keep on being governor, which he now says he'll continue to do rather than step aside in favor of his lieutenant governor, Jeff Colyer (who is running to succeed him).
Even if Trump does choose to put forth Brownback's name again, that's still no guarantee of success, as the same things that tripped him up last year (mostly that he's an anti-gay zealot with an insufficient number of friends in Congress) could very well doom him once more. Indeed, the Senate could have chosen not to return Brownback's nomination to Trump, so the fact that it did so says something about how his former colleagues feel about him.
House
● AL-02: Rich Hobson, a longtime aide to disgraced former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore who also served as campaign manager during Moore's failed Senate bid last year, announced on Wednesday that he would oppose GOP Rep. Martha Roby in the June primary for the state's safely red 2nd Congressional District. Hobson took a few pages from his boss's book during his kickoff and declared that the women who accused Moore of sexual abuse and harassment should "come clean," adding that the "liberal elite in America pulled off the biggest political assassination of our time" when Moore lost to Democrat Doug Jones.
Among hardcore GOP primary voters, though, that kind of rhetoric could play, and Roby offers a tempting target. One month before the 2016 elections, Roby pissed off local conservatives when she said she wouldn't vote for Donald Trump after the Access Hollywood tape was released, prompting her detractors to launch a general election write-in campaign. While Trump carried her Montgomery-area seat 65-33, Roby turned back her underfunded Democratic rival by just a 49-41 margin, with the rest going to write-ins. Since then, Roby has kept her head down and been a reliable Trump supporter, and the White House hasn't shown any obvious interest in unseating her. However, Roby also went quiet during the last month of Moore's campaign following the allegations that he'd sexually pursued teenage girls as an adult, something Moore supporters can't feel too warmly about.
One difficulty for Hobson, though, is that he isn't the only Republican who's betting that Roby is beatable. Both state Rep. Barry Moore and Iraq veteran Tommy Amason have been running for months, though neither of them has raised much money. There's good reason to think that Hobson won't, either: While Moore has always had an intense following among Alabama Republicans, he's forever struggled to raise money for his campaigns. The GOP establishment utterly hates Moore, especially now that he cost them a Senate seat, and Hobson probably won't raise much cash if he's depending on Moore fans to be his donors.
Moore himself still has a legion of Republican voters who worship him and have convinced themselves he was the subject of a smear campaign, and if he can send them Hobson's way, things could get interesting in the June primary. However, Moore's own primary win last year gives us some reason to be skeptical that even his base will vote for Hobson like they've voted for Moore. Trump, who similarly has a massive cult-like following in GOP politics, endorsed incumbent Luther Strange over Moore in that primary, but Trump-loving Republicans didn't seem to have much issue in defying the man in the White House and voting for Moore.
So likewise, if enough Moore-supporting primary voters have forgiven or forgotten about Roby's transgressions, they may feel fine going against him and backing the congresswoman. And there are certainly many Republicans who don't like Moore and would be very reluctant to back his protégé. Roby still needs to be wary, however. Alabama requires a primary runoff if no one takes a majority in the first round, so the congresswoman can't just count on her opponents splitting the anti-incumbent vote and allow her to win with a plurality.
● CA-21, CA-10, PA-07: Just before Christmas, the National Journal's Ally Mutnick took a look at House seats where national Democrats aren't happy with their current choices and are still searching for candidates. Fortunately for Team Blue, a few names are percolating.
Perhaps the biggest gap in the House field is in California's 21st District, which stretches from the Fresno area to Bakersfield in the state's Central Valley. This seat went for Clinton 55-40, but Republican Rep. David Valadao defeated attorney Emilio Huerta 57-43 that same year. Huerta is running again, but understandably, D.C. Democrats don't feel confident in him. Mutnick writes that the DCCC has been talking to Steve Schilling, who serves as CEO of Clinica Sierra Vista, a local chair of health clinics that serve low-income migrant communities. Schilling has yet to say anything publicly about this race, but interestingly, he announced last week that he would be retiring at the end of January. California's candidate filing deadline is in March.
Another Central Valley target is the 10th District, which is around Modesto to the north of the 21st. Republican Rep. Jeff Denham beat beekeeper Michael Eggman by a convincing 56-44 during the 2014 GOP wave, though he won their 2016 their rematch by a much tighter 52-48 as Clinton was carrying the seat 48.5-45.5. Eggman had announced he won't run a third time, but he's reportedly reconsidering at the urging of state and national Democratic groups. A number of other candidates are running, but Mutnick writes that some Democratic consultants are worried that the contender with the most cash, venture capitalist Josh Harder, has a profile that "won't resonate in a district with a median income of $54,000."
Finally, across the country in Pennsylvania's 7th District, House Democrats began looking for a new candidate against GOP Rep. Pat Meehan after state Sen. Daylin Leach was accused of sexual harassment in mid-December and said he would "step back" from his campaign. Mutnick writes the DCCC has approached both former Philadelphia prosecutor Tanner Rouse, who is running for the state Senate, and Dave Foster, an Army veteran who runs a real estate development company. Neither of them has said anything publicly yet, and it's not clear how interested they are. A few other Democrats are running for this competitive suburban Philadelphia seat, but Leach was the only one who had raised much money by the end of September. The filing deadline is in March.
● MI-09: On Wednesday, ex-state Rep. Ellen Lipton joined the Democratic primary to succeed retiring Rep. Sandy Levin. Lipton was first elected in 2008, and she and a colleague both challenged state Sen. Vincent Gregory in the 2014 primary when term-limits forced them out of the lower house. Gregory won the three-way race with 35 percent of the vote, and Lipton was a close third with 31 percent. Lipton joins attorney Andy Levin, who is the congressman's son, and state Sen. Steve Bieda in the primary for this 51-44 Clinton seat in suburban Detroit.
● NV-04: On Tuesday, Democratic state Sen. Pat Spearman filed with the FEC to set up a campaign for this open suburban Las Vegas seat. Spearman thus came closer to jumping in than any other noteworthy Democrat so far, though she stopped just short of announcing she was in. Instead, Spearman told local NBC reporter Jeff Gillan she was "leaning like 99 percent," and she still talked about what would happen, "[i]f I get in" (emphasis ours).
As we've written before, it's not uncommon for politicians to say publicly or privately that they're almost certain to run, only for them not to run. For instance, Florida Republican David Simmons said at the beginning of April last year that he was "98 percent headed towards a run" against freshman Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy. It's now 2018, and we're still waiting for him to announce what that other 2 percent thinks he should do.
If Spearman does go for it, however, she could be a very interesting candidate. Spearman pulled off an upset 63-37 primary win in 2012 against conservative state Sen. John Lee despite being badly outspent. Spearman is a black and openly gay veteran and minister, and she could be very appealing to national groups looking to elect more under-represented voices to Congress. A number of other Democrats, including Lee (who is now mayor of North Las Vegas), are considering running, but some of them may defer to former Rep. Steven Horsford if he gets in. This filing deadline for this 50-45 Clinton seat is in mid-March.
● NY-27: Let's not beat around the banana stand: Longtime Buffalo television personality John Beard, who played a fictional version of himself on Arrested Development, isn't ruling out a bid against GOP Rep. Chris Collins in New York's 27th Congressional District.
Beard is planning to leave his current TV gig this month, and while he's come back from the brink of retirement before, he insists this time is for real. Last month, the Buffalo News' Alan Pergament asked if Beard, who is quite anti-Trump on Twitter (though Beard is a registered independent and describes himself as "fiscally conservative, socially liberal or libertarian") was interested in running for office. Beard would only say, "I'm interested in politics. That's all I have to say just yet."
When Pergament suggested he'd be a good candidate against Collins if he moved into his district (Beard lives a few miles away), Beard replied, "I'm open-minded about politics in general"—so, not a no. Pergament summed up the interview writing, "History has taught Western New Yorkers that Beard's plans can change. But a reporter really, really got the sense he could be as easily convinced to run against Collins as he has been convinced to stay at Channel 2 over the years." So take from that what you will.
Collins' seat backed Trump 60-35, but the congressman has attracted a legion of bad headlines over the last year in what Beard's Arrested Development character might describe as a not-so-delicious whodunit. In October, the Office of Congressional Ethics released a report saying there was "substantial reason to believe" that Collins "shared material nonpublic information" about an Australian biotech company he'd invested heavily in—in other words, engaged in insider trading—and Collins' $17 million investment was wiped out last year when the company's lone drug failed in clinical trials. Collins currently faces a challenge from Democrat Sean Bunny, a former Erie County prosecutor, but as Beard's potential interest shows, we may get hop-ons.
● PA-09: A few new local Republicans are making noises about running to succeed retiring GOP Rep. Bill Shuster in this safely red rural seat. State Sen. Rich Alloway said Tuesday that Shuster's announcement earlier this week caught him by surprise, adding that he'll "need to talk more with my friends and family and determine" if he wants to run. PoliticsPA also writes that state Sen. Pat Stefano is considering as well, but there's no quote from Stefano.
● TX-02: Longtime GOP donor Kathaleen Wall, who is one of several Republicans running in the March primary to succeed retiring Rep. Ted Poe, is out with the first TV spot of the campaign. Wall's minute-long ad features her telling the audience that if everyone in Congress had grown up like her in a home with seven kids and one bathroom "the place may actually function." She goes on to talk about working her way though Texas A&M and "the man's world of semiconductors" and features photos of her with prominent Republicans like Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, and Donald Trump. There is no word on the size of the buy, though it reportedly ran during the Rose Bowl on Monday.
Meanwhile, primary rival Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw received an endorsement from Rep. Pete Sessions. Sessions' Dallas seat is located far from this Houston-area district, but if the former NRCC chair can help Crenshaw raise money, he'll be an asset to him. The other noteworthy GOP candidate is state Rep. Kevin Roberts.
Legislative
● Pres-by-LD: Daily Kos Elections' project to calculate the 2016 presidential results for every state legislative seat in the nation hits Indiana, the 47th state we've released data for. You can find our master list of states here, which we'll be updating as we add new states; you can also find all our data from 2016 and past cycles here.
Indiana has usually been a reliably red state in presidential elections, though Barack Obama pulled off a shocking 50-49 win here in 2008. However, the state quickly snapped back to the right in 2012 as Mitt Romney carried it 54-44, and Donald Trump took it 57-38 four years later. However, there's historically been more ticket-splitting down-ballot. While the state Senate has been in GOP hands since the 1978 election, the state House has been a bit more volatile. The lower chamber flipped back and forth several times in the last decade, and Team Blue won narrow majorities as recently as 2006 and 2008.
However, both chambers look like they'll be very red for the foreseeable future. The 2010 GOP wave turned a 52-48 Democratic majority to a 60-40 GOP edge in the House, and Team Red got to draw the lines for the next decade. Today, Republicans have a 41-to-nine edge in the Senate, and a 70-30 supermajority in the House, and once again, they’re exceedingly likely to hold the reins for redistricting following the 2020 census. Even if Democrats were to succeed in taking the governor's mansion that year, it would only take a simple majority of both houses of the legislature to override a veto and craft another GOP gerrymander.
Now let's get to the numbers. Donald Trump's 19-point win allowed him to carry 40 of the state's 50 Senate seats and 75 of 100 House districts. The entire House is up for election every two years while only half of the Senate is up every cycle, so we'll start with the lower chamber. There was a little bit of ticket-splitting in 2016, and it mostly aided Democrats. Six Democrats sit in Trump seats, while just one Republican holds a Clinton seat. That lone Republican is Sally Siegrist, whose Lafayette-area seat moved to the left slightly, from 50-48 Obama to 50-43 Clinton. However, Siegrist won her first term 53-47 despite that.
The handful of Democrats on Trump turf are few in number, but they represent some decidedly red territory. The Democrat in the Trumpiest seat is Terry Goodin, whose southern Indiana seat went from 55-43 Romney to 65-31 Trump. Goodin, however, won his ninth term 60-40, and he became minority leader last year. Not far behind is Melanie Wright in the Muncie area. Wright's seat went from 56-42 Romney to 64-31 Trump, but she won her second term 52.5-47.5. All three Obama/Trump seats are represented by Democrats, while Trump carried all of Romney's seats.
To get a sense for how bad this map is for Democrats, we can sort every district in each legislative chamber from Clinton's greatest margin of victory to Trump's biggest edge and take a look at the seat in the very middle, known as the median seat. (Because there are an even number of seats in the House and Senate, we average the two middle seats' presidential results to come up with the median point in the chamber.) We have also published a handy spreadsheet listing the median seat for every other state chamber where we have data.
In Indiana, the median point in the chamber backed Trump 62-33, 10 points to the right of his 57-38 win. This means that, even if Indiana votes like it did in 2008 when Obama pulled off his historic 1-point win, Democrats would still be at a huge disadvantage if they wanted to take a majority again. And even a more pro-Democratic climate might not be enough. In 2012, Democrat Joe Donnelly beat Republican Richard Mourdock 50-44 in the Senate race, but Mourdock still won 53 of the 100 seats in the House.
We'll next turn to the Senate, where there was a bit less ticket-splitting. One seat went from Obama to Trump and two went from Romney to Clinton; those also happen to be home to the only Democrat in a Trump seat and the only two Republicans on Clinton turf. Senate Democratic Leader Timothy Lanane won without opposition in 2014; Lanane's Muncie-area seat flipped hard to the right from 57-41 Obama to 50-45 Trump.
On the other side, Republican state Sen. Mike Delph, a conservative hardliner and notorious pain in the rear for the party establishment, won re-election in 2014 54-46. Delph's suburban Indianapolis seat went from a narrow 50.0-48.5 Romney to 53-41 Clinton. The one member of this group who was up in 2016 was Republican John Ruckelshaus, who won his first term 51-46 as his seat, which neighbors Delph's, swung from 49.3-49.0 Romney to 56-38 Clinton.
The median point in the Senate backed Trump 59-35, about 5.5 points to the right of the state. That's not quite as bad as the House, but it's still quite a challenge. In 2012, Donnelly and Mourdock each took 25 seats; the median point in the chamber backed Mourdock 47.9-47.7.
● VA State House: The rather epic and unpredictable journey of the election in Virginia House District 94 has taken yet another turn. On Wednesday, a three-judge recount panel denied Democrat Shelly Simonds' request to reconsider their decision that moved the race from a one-vote win for Simonds to a tie. This ruling clears the way for the race to be determined, in accordance with Virginia law, by the drawing of lots at 11 AM ET on Thursday.
The ruling is brief (you can read it for yourself here) and poorly addresses the concerns raised by Simonds' attorneys. The recount judges ignore the very real precedent they set by deviating from accepted recount rules and procedures by hiding behind the supposed "plain meaning" of the statutes at issue. In particular, the judges ruled that the challenge to the disputed ballot at the center of the case was not brought too late, even though it was made after the recount had concluded, and despite the fact that the ballot in question was not properly segregated from the rest. The judges also bent over backwards to justify their erroneous classification of the originally rejected ballot as a vote for Republican Del. David Yancey.
Simonds responded to the recount judges' ruling by sending a letter to Yancey calling on him to "respect the result of the lot drawing" on Thursday. Yancey declined, and Simonds has pledged to "continue to fight," saying that "all options are still on the table." The loser of Thursday's drawing may opt to ask for yet another recount, which may or may not be permitted by state law. While one statute says that recount proceedings "shall be final and not subject to appeal," a separate statute says that whoever loses the drawing of lots may seek another recount.
Mayoral
● San Francisco, CA Mayor: The Jan. 9 filing deadline for the June special election to succeed the late San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who unexpectedly died last month, is coming up quickly, but some of the biggest questions about this race remain unanswered. Board of Supervisors President London Breed automatically became acting mayor when Lee died, but it's unclear if she'll be in charge of the city as voters go to the polls for a special election in June. Breed hasn't announced if she'll run yet, but local political observers widely expect her to.
However, several of Breed's colleagues on the Board of Supervisors say that, when it's time for them to vote on who should be interim mayor until the June election, they want to pick someone who isn't running in the special so that no candidate will get to run as the incumbent. That vote hasn't been scheduled yet, but it will almost certainly happen sometime after candidate filing closes next week, and if a majority of the board can't agree on an alternative, Breed will remain acting mayor until the election.
No matter what happens with the interim mayoralty, it looks like there will be a competitive contest for the permanent job. Former state Sen. Mark Leno, who represented the entire city until he was termed-out in 2016, announced months ago that he would run in the regularly scheduled 2019 race to succeed Lee, and he's entered the special election as well. Supervisor Jane Kim, who narrowly lost an all-Democratic general election to succeed Leno, and former Supervisor Angela Alioto, who ran for mayor twice before, are both also in. Several other potential candidates have expressed interest as well, though they need to decide soon. Whoever prevails in June will likely be a Democrat, though in 2003, Gavin Newsom only narrowly beat future Green Party vice presidential candidate Matt Gonzalez.
San Francisco elects its mayor through an instant-runoff system, where voters are allowed to rank their choices. If no one takes a majority of first-place votes, then second and third choices are redistributed from the candidates with the fewest votes to those still remaining. This makes this contest even tougher than usual to poll, but PPP gave it a try on behalf of an unnamed progressive organization that the San Francisco Chronicle says is "considering putting an unrelated measure on the ballot." The poll was conducted Dec. 18 and 19, about a week after Lee died, and asked registered voters whom their first choice would be:
Former state Sen. Mark Leno: 26
Acting Mayor London Breed: 20
Assemblyman David Chiu: 11
City Attorney Dennis Herrera: 10
Supervisor Jane Kim: 5
Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu: 5
Alioto was not tested.
Grab Bag
● Demographics: The relationship between a person's politics and what kind of car they drive is one that a lot of people have a vague sense about. For instance, most people would feel it's kind of unusual to see a Republican-themed bumper sticker on a Prius, or a Democratic-themed bumper sticker on a full-size pickup. But now there's some quantitative research suggesting that this intuition is not just in our heads but is in fact very real.
Stanford researchers working on machine learning decided to investigate if they could use Google Street View depictions of various neighborhoods to see if they could identify the politics of a neighborhood by appearances alone, and, in fact, the cars parked on the street provide enough information to crack the code. Simply by using the ratio of pickups to sedans in various neighborhoods, researchers were, for instance, able to correctly predict the political leanings of 58 out of 60 precincts in Gilbert, Arizona.
Car and truck choices are often not so much utilitarian but instead more about how we want to express ourselves and what sort of lifestyle we want to signify to the rest of the world—and politics, of course, is a key aspect to many people's public identities. However, when you move past the ad-industry psychographic mumbo-jumbo and start layering in census data and looking at other possible intervening variables, the relationship really turns out to be more just about basic demographics. Car choices, it turns out, are also very indicative of race and of income (and thus educational level), which are all factors that we already know are highly predictive of how one might vote.
