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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

tomasmcintee.substack.com/p/china-is-n...

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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

We already went through the "affirmative action cheating" cycle with Elizabeth Warren. She still got elected in her safely Democratic constituency, but by a notably smaller margin, and head-to-head polls suggested that she would manage to lose the popular vote to Donald Trump nationally.

Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

No, you can't. Minnesota doesn't record party affiliation for voters. They do not disclose which primary ballot you select, either, with an exception of presidential primary request lists being sent to party chairs. (There was no presidential primary in 2022, FWIW.)

Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

There was a whole subgenre of early Star Wars EU fiction that was like this. "Hey, what about [BACKGROUND PERSON/THING] we saw once for five seconds in the movie? What's their version of the story?" Some of it was pretty great, some pretty silly. The Boba Fett part really took off, though.

Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

Minnesota does not register voters by party. If you remember who told you that he was registered as a Republican, I recommend you treat that person as an unreliable source.

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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

So, uh… these are headline images for the anti ICE action in Los Angeles. I don’t think they depict protest aesthetics that the typical American swing voter responds positively to. Just as a quick strategy note.

Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Interested in knowing what the Accidental War Mage #audiobook sounds like? Here's a sample... #fantasy #fantasynovel

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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

Feels so much more real now. It's exciting. This thing, it exists in the physical world.

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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

I have the new book cards (business cards) printed up. Comparison with the old ones on the right. Same idea, slightly different execution. Does a glossy finish make them last better?

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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

It has been 43 years since Reagan proved that cutting taxes would not increase revenue even when the top marginal rate was 70%. The top marginal rate is nowhere near 70%, and yet we still have talk about "tax cuts" and "deficit reduction" as if the US is on the far side of the Laffer curve.

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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Michael Steele may have lost his 2006 Senate bid, but he didn't underperform relative to the baseline of being a Republican in Maryland. (Deleted and reposted with correction for two unopposed districts, take the US House benchmark with a grain of salt.)

Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

If I had to read tea leaves based on the DNC's officer elections, I would say that the party is not correcting course based on the 2024 loss. Most battleground state Democrats outperformed Kamala Harris. The lone former elected official they just put in the vice chair position is a rare exception.

Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

AFAIK, there were no actions taken by the Biden administration that: (A) Represented a break with what "Blue Team" elites asked for. (B) Were less popular among voters than what "Blue Team" elites would have preferred. If you have a counterexample, speak up.

Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Something I started observing 6 years ago - and actively pointed out in articles starting in fall of 2019 - was that "blue" media were overtly hostile to Biden, frequently explicitly on the basis of his age, race, and sex. Zero surprise that, once elected, the Biden administration reciprocated.

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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

A large bipartisan supermajority passed the "TikTok ban" law. It was then promptly signed by a cooperative president. The Supreme Court has upheld the law unanimously 9-0. TikTok has gone dark. Will the Trump administration flout the law to turn it back on?

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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

Not coincidental. Short shorts & speedos &c. fell off a cliff in the 1990s during peak growth of gay awareness. You can blame it either on straight guys not wanting to be seen as gay or straight guys not wanting to attract gay guys... little of column A, little of column B.

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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Based on polling and news, I think the UK is approaching a tipping point. It’s been a running joke that the UK has a three party system where the most hated party gets to govern. But the old parties have consistently given the finger to UK public opinion on key topics, and that isn’t sustainable.

The aide quoted in the original story is dead on the money. "The groups" have pushed many Democrats into the position of opposing anything that supports deportations. This is unpopular. It is costing Democrats votes. If Democrats want to win back lost support, they need to change.

"Let's not deport illegal immigrants who commit crimes" is a fringe position. It's no more acceptable among the public than "Let's end birthright citizenship." Like it or not, Fetterman's political instincts are on point here, and it's likely the PA-SEN race in 2028 will prove it.

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Second, the median voter theorem remains undefeated as the major response of voters to specific policy stances. Polling shows that popular support for mass immigration has never existed. Support for illegal immigration is lower. Support for illegal immigrant criminals is even lower.

Graph showing how the American public has consistently demanded a lower volume of immigration since the major changes of 1965, with a brief exception during Trump's term when immigration dropped radically.

This shows both that Trump was to the right of the median voter on immigration, and that government policy outside of the Trump era has unequivocally been to the left of the median voter for the rest of the last 60 years, making it truly remarkable that it took this long for the neoliberal consensus on immigration between the two parties to fall apart.

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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Both of the highlighted claims are incorrect. First, the most notable political outliers in the rise of the far-right in Europe is Denmark, where the center-left party pivoted to the right on immigration. www.politico.eu/article/denm...

Screenshot of Dan O'Sullivan's tweet highlighting the incorrect claims that liberal parties pivoting rightwards on immigration has never worked to stem the rise of the far right and that nobody votes for "middle of the road" positions.

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Most unfortunately, the #January6th violence four years ago was part of a trend. Significant minorities of the losing party believed each of the preceding five elections to be illegitimate for one or another reason. I hope a peaceful and orderly count today marks the close of that chapter.

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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

The reviews have been great - I'm proud of the work I did in putting this book together. It's suitable for experts and laypersons alike. I hope it'll be an obsolete study within my lifetime, relegated to analysis of history, but the #ElectoralCollege has been very resistant to abolition over time.

Text of reviews of the book:

"McIntee gives a comprehensive critique of the Electoral College that includes a consideration of its mathematical failings ... An analytically incisive account of the Electoral College's foibles."

- Kirkus Reviews

"In addition to taking readers on a journey of the Electoral College's role in every election through 2020, McIntee's classification of pivotal, critical, and crucial states will be quite useful to scholars, pundits, and even casual observers of the Electoral College. This is an accessible book that will be especially attractive to critics of the Electoral College."

- Robert Alexander

Author of Representation and the Electoral College

"To say that Graduating from the Electoral College is key to understanding the American democratic process is an understatement. This is the book that should be assigned reading from high school upwards, required background reading for any educated voter who wants to enter the modern fray of controversial discussions with more than innuendo and vague notions of the College's history, intentions, and relevance to the power struggles that affect this nation."

-D. Donovan

Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Reviews

"Once their utility passed, three-corner hats, outdoor privies, and horse-drawn carriages were dismissed. It is long past time to drop another eighteenth century relic; one that threatens our democracy: the US Electoral College. This is where, not yours, but the votes of 538 essentially anonymous people elect the President of the US! For political reasons, reform is difficult-until enough people speak out. An excellent place to learn about its history and dangers is this book by McIntee."

-Donald G. Saari

Author of Chaotic Elections! A Mathematician Looks at Voting

Distinguished Research Professor, University of California, Irvine

"This book is a masterpiece, a real page-turner for anyone with an interest, either professional or recreational, in the bizarre system the most power…

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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Today in America is what I like to call #CountingDay, the day that the #ElectoralCollege tally is certified by Congress. It's the 2nd anniversary of the release of my book & the 4th anniversary of the first-ever attempt to forcibly disrupt the count. books2read.com/ElectoralGra...

Cover of the book Graduating from the Electoral College, showing an American flag, the title, and the name of the author (Tomas McIntee).

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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

I'm either perfectly safe or smeared into a fine pulp.

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In spite of what the podcast crowd says, there wasn't really much evidence that Biden would do worse. Trump's numbers didn't start going up until after the switch; what Biden had was a lot of "soft" disapproval among Democratic partisans, much like Harry Truman in 1948 with the Dixiecrats.

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Black men were "misogynistic" to the point of backing Hillary Clinton by 82% to 13%. Which is a larger margin than their support for Joe Biden (79% to 19%). This is one of very few groups that actually supported Hillary Clinton more strongly than Joe Biden - Biden did significantly better overall.

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Harris underperformed in her statewide races against Republicans. Most, though by no means all, presidential contenders are drawn from statewide overperformers. She was always a visibly weak "insider-track" candidate.

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We're not in the transitional period of the early Southern Strategy of the 1960s-1980s. Welcome to 2020-2024. Black voters moved away from Harris; they liked Biden better. Trump's support eroded slightly 2020-2024 among white voters; they liked Harris at least as much as Biden.

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I understand there are popular postmodern narratives surrounding the Civil Rights Movement that try to reframe its success as something less "normie." Those narratives largely originate with those who were sidelined radicals. Pointedly, the CRM succeeded by being very persuasive.

LBJ curbstomping Goldwater in the 1964 election with the rest of the country lining up against the Deep South and Goldwater's home state of Arizona.

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School and transit desegregation SCOTUS decisions of the 1950s had strong majority support. Interracial marriage was a notable exception in a mostly-popular bundle (and not by much re: laws). We live in a democracy. Proceeding directly to implementation without persuasion usually means failing.

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A recent Gallup poll on whether or not it's "morally acceptable" to change genders: 44%. Very basic ask. Just this, by itself, is contentious among the public at large. Meanwhile, the Biden administration was fighting for trans athletes being able to participate in women's sports with 26% support.

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Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

To give you a notion of what it used to mean for a Democratic politician to be boldly progressive, here's Gallup polling highlighting support for gay marriage when Biden rocked the boat by going full "gaffe machine" and supporting it in May 2012. Democrats were really careful about picking fights.

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Bezos has not announced this. In fact, he has explicitly denied this on the other site.

Tomas McIntee @mathintee.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

"Put down the phone and throw the ball!"

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This is very much not a response to the shooting. Atrium went forward with this in September, implementation was slow but the couple in the article got their forgiveness letter back in November. Shooting was this month.

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Not at all. This was decided in September. If you want to credit one man in particular, say "Thank you" to Roy Cooper, outgoing governor of NC.

Luigi had nothing to do with this. Roy Cooper did.

Not related. This was in motion long before the shooting.

He had nothing to do with it. Thank Roy Cooper instead.

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Not related to the shooting at all, sorry. This is the normal political process being functional.

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This was not triggered by the shooting. It was triggered by local political efforts in North Carolina a while back.

Not remotely related. This is from before the shooting.

Because Roy Cooper held their feet to the fire. This is news from September, not a new breaking development.