(05-05-2018 10:17 AM)erice Wrote:  

(05-04-2018 09:56 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Nice googling, but poor reading. I suggested the percentage of split tickets among Democrats was less than 30%. You came back with 35.3% of the TOTAL vote was D straight ticket. So the percentage of Democrats (as opposed to the percentage of ALL voters who voted a straight Democratic ticket)voting a straight ticket was probably very close to 70% Ok?

Shoot. Pesky denominators. Ruin a good fake news story. Guess I’m one of the mindless.

‘Course that correct math shifts the straight-ticket voting more towards the Repubs than my faulty math, considering the 10 largest counties, by and large, are the ones that went blue. In Harris, for example (which went Clinton 54-42, and where 35% of votes were straight-ticket blue and 30% were straight-ticket red), a higher percentage of Trump’s voters went straight-ticket than Hillary’s.

I’m not going to claim to know what that means for the U.S. voting population as a whole, but generalizations about any large group (such as “Certainly there are R's the same way, but in much lower numbers”) sometimes say more about the speaker’s perception bias than the target of the statement.

The whole thing was my perception(I never said otherwise), and your whole response is your perception. You were so eager to present what you perceived as a counter to my perception bias you didn't catch the basis for the stats.

So if your point is that Republican voters are as mindless/more mindless as Democrats, fine with me. I am pretty sure we can less the third option, less mindless, out of that mix.

It has long been my thought that we could run blank slates and still get 35-40% voting Democrat and 25-30% voting Republican. Most of those are negative votes - not voting FOR a party so much as AGAINST the other party. The lady in my first anecdote demonstrates that kind of thinking.

So, what's your point? That my perception is flawed and yours is spot on? Or maybe just that I am a deplorable clinger and the Democrats are not?

I really don't care. I am not running for your vote. I post here for other reasons.

I did not want to become one of the mindless, straight ticket, party voters. I find that my positions on the issues that matter most to me most closely align with the Republican Party, but I know there are good people in both parties if one will just take the time to search them out, rather than just mindlessly pulling the straight ticket lever, like my former father in law.

I am not too happy with Governor Abbott. Here is an opportunity for the Dems to get my vote - but it won't happen is they run a standard left of left of left of center Democrat. The country is polarizing, and I prefer the middle, so that makes voting hard.

If Trump doesn't run again, I will choose the candidate from any party who best represents my thoughts on things. So far, I have not figured out who the Democrats might run that deserves a second look, but Trump says, we will see. Trump was never, for one minute, my favorite, not did I vote for him, but I think the whole witch hunt thing is shameful and partisan, and an attempt to undo a legal election.

Thanks for the stats and figures. next time I want to back up my perceptions with facts, I will ask for your help.