(my questions are in boldface)

Let's examine the timeline. Maybe we can unravel the nature of this mystery.

Ticket splitting in 2020? In 2016 I suggested that watching the Senate races would be more constructive than monitoring the Presidential polls and that ticket splitting wouldn't feature. Thus, I put FL and NC into the Trump column. NH was too close to call. The WI Senate polls totally tripped me up. And then I made the boneheaded (split-ticket) projection in PA – HRC and Toomey.

“Should consumerism be the last thing we accomplish as a species, after all this evolution and the miraculous series of accidents that granted our sentience? Would that not be an utterly dull and inane end to our history?” ~ Robert Wringham, Escape Everything!: Escape from work. Escape from consumerism. Escape from despair.

More interesting than part 1 and more evidence of a consistent shape/narrative.

1. Another boring “red state.”

Georgia

2016 election outcomes:

President - Trump 51% and Clinton 46%
Senate – Isaakson 55% (inc R) and Democrat 41%

2020 election polling:

‘Socialist Presidential Candidate Arce Wins Bolivia’s Elections’, Oct. 19, 2020, telesurenglish

“After midnight on Sunday, Bolivian authorities allowed the results of the exit polls to be known. The Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) presidential candidate Luis Arce obtained 52.4 percent of the votes, the Citizen Community (CC) candidate Carlos Mesa got 31.5 percent, and the “We Believe Alliance” candidate Luis Fernando Camacho reached 14.1 percent of the votes.

Bolivia’s president-elect Arce thanked the people for their support and for their peaceful participation in the electoral process.” […]

Despite last year's right-wing coup, and a full year of government repression, the people of Bolivia have reelected the Socialist party

The shape and narrative of an election is more interesting than polling percentages. From one election to the next, the shape or narrative changes more than all those hard numbers from polls and vote counts, but they do work in tandem. Therefore, get one correct, the outcome can be correctly projected.

Anniversary Edition

This is the 200th issue of the WW. We've covered lots of ground in the last four years...traveled around the world a bit, worked in the garden and on the farm, maximized our health with good diet and life style, learned to avoid COVID-19, studied environmentally sound structures and alternative energy options, but the purpose and origin of this column has been to ferret out the weeks news and try to make some sense out of what has happened each week. In creating this series, I've found all news is bias by its nature. Which stories you cover, the sources you cite, the way the stories are integrated all reflect the compiler's perspective. I hope you've found some useful information in these pieces over the years. I know most weeks are a fire hose flow of links, but the WW is meant to be a menu of stories to select from...like a Sunday newspaper. That's one reason I usually try to include a comic or two. As a kid that was my favorite part of the paper. So join in as we ramble through this week's news and views.