SIO503: Viral Post Claims Texas Has More Democrats Than Republicans. Is That True?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:11 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 503. I'm Thomas Smith. Got a fun one for you and actually a fun two or even five. No, don't worry. It's not a five part episode. Here's what's going on. And I'm going to just quickly explain it because Jenessa is going to come on and explain it again. I don't want to be too redundant, but just for the purposes of introing here. Jenessa keeps an eye out on all kinds of stories, science stories, studies, all kinds of stuff. And sometimes she finds stuff that's interesting, but short and therefore was never an episode, but she's collected a number of those. And so we've got a little variety hour for you. In this episode, we're going to talk about a story that spread that shows how much news is terrible and doesn't check or do their homework. Don't want to give that away, but that's roughly that. And then one that you may have seen, you may've seen this because I know I saw it. People referring to Texas not being red, but instead being rigged. And there are claims that actually there's more Democrats than Republicans in Texas. It's just that there's, you know, voter suppression, gerrymandering, other things like that. And it's more of a minority problem and a turnout problem than a numbers problem. And we'll find out if that's actually true from someone who not only knows science and data and studies and numbers and statistics, but also works and voting. So it's perfect. So those are our two little stories for this one. And then in the next episode, we've got three and they're so good. I can't wait to get to them, but we'll start here. All right. We're going to take our break, which you can avoid at patreon.com/seriouspod. And you'll be able to get ahold of that second episode right away. Well, maybe I should give you some previews. Oh my gosh. It's so much fun. There is a study that is the funniest thing. It involves allergies and semen. It's a really fun study. It's really funny. There's ADHD and TikTok. And there's also a claim that testosterone does not actually induce aggression. Those are the ones we're looking at in the next episode. And I'm telling you that now because if you're on patreon.com/seriouspod, you can get that right away. And you can support the show and lose the ads. Really important to us. It's the only reason that Jenessa can accumulate a whole bunch of things to debunk for us. All right. Thanks to the patrons. We'll take a break and then we'll get to it. Jenessa, how are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. I am

0:02:40 Jenessa: I am hanging in there. Yeah, I had never heard of it until you mentioned it. Oh, geez.

0:02:45 Thomas: Going to reference Quibi and say that you have some quick bites for us. And now that nobody's using that trademark, you know, I'm taking it maybe. Or do they, I wonder if they still police that. I don't know. Quibi. It was 2020. That was yesterday. Just happened. In my mind, this just happened like today. That's where I am mentally. God, that was so funny. I'll never get over it. It's one of the funniest things that ever happened. $11 billion into the dumbest idea ever and the commercials everywhere forever about all these shows that were going to be on your phone.

0:03:19 Jenessa: I do. So basically what I have is a bunch of things that I researched for this podcast

0:03:21 Thomas: And then it was like five seconds after lunch. Well, no, nevermind. Didn't work. So funny. So we're stealing it. You have some quibbies for us. What do you got? That's what you think.

0:03:38 Jenessa: Thinking, oh, that'd make a great episode, and then very quickly discovered it was only going to take up somewhere between 5 to 20 minutes, and that does not make a good... Yeah, well, Well, to be fair, if we start chatting, we could always make anything take an hour.

0:03:53 Thomas: Yeah, it's like our junk drawer episode or something.

0:03:56 Jenessa: But yeah, I just kind of abandoned some of these. I was like, eh, that's not really going to, you know, work. And then as they piled up, I was, like, oh, now they make an episode? Yeah, a little bit, yeah.

0:04:11 Thomas: Some weird keys, pens that don't work.

0:04:14 Jenessa: Oh, man, there was one time when I was a kid.

0:04:14 Thomas: You put them in your junk drawer, huh?

0:04:17 Jenessa: So I had a big garden, and I had, like... You know how, well, I don't know if you've ever had a garden, like, if you have four tomato plants, you have approximately 400 tomatoes by the end of the summer. She had a junk drawer. So I put signs up all over town that said tomato and junk sale. And my mom came out and was like, what are you doing? It's not junk. It's a garage sale.

0:04:41 Thomas: Tomato and junk. You know, tomatoes and junk!

0:04:46 Jenessa: The first one I have for you I guess I would label this the inshittification of journalism

0:04:46 Thomas: Oh, wow. Well, here's our tomatoes and junks tale. What's the first tomato in our drawer? Oh, great.

0:04:57 Jenessa: That truly everything has just gone down the toilet I can't decide how much of this is just laziness versus something more insidious of people by the end of this I really think at least some of these news outlets laundered an ad as if it was real investigative journalism yeah it's not great. I guess I can give this to you in sort of a narrative form of how I researched this and came to the conclusion that there was nothing here. So I'm scrolling along and I scroll past the headline from Mashable. Majority of Gen Z would marry an AI, survey says. No, fuck you, no. No I'm

0:05:19 Thomas: Oh, well. Hmm. Nope. Nope. No chance that's true. I see why this, yeah, you're right. This is a, this is a quick

0:05:47 Jenessa: Not reading this. I'm moving on with my life. I don't need to read this, right? I just, I don'

0:05:51 Thomas: Bite. It's over. There's that's a no. Slightly better if it were legal. Yeah. That's what,

0:05:56 Jenessa: I don''t need to. I don't need to. Move on, move on. I tell my brain. And very shortly after I come past Vice, who is usually, you know, they in the past have done amazing journalism and it's slightly more detailed. And it says eight out of 10 men would consider marrying an AI girlfriend if it it were legal. Yeah. God. Yeah, yeah, of course, right? So I look at this and I'm like, okay,

0:06:22 Thomas: That's what's, that's, what's holding men back. They're like, ah, I want to, I wants to do this proper. I want it. I don't want to go down to city hall. I'm going to make this official with my AI girlfriend, but dammit, the man won't let me. As soon as it's legal, hon, as soon as it's legal. If I know men, that is definitely happening. I am willing to take this bit. Yeah,

0:06:42 Jenessa: Already. Still no. Still not. Absolutely not. But the thought cooking in my head is, okay here's what could have actually, what's, you know, science headlines, they're often somebody misunderstood or whatever. If there's a population of people who already have an AI girlfriend who have, you know, are not well, and a psychologist thinks, huh, I wonder how far these people are willing to go. Yeah. Is this a replacement? They are planning to move on to like a real human relationship? Or do they think this is a real relationship? Maybe you do a survey of young men who are using this service already and they now I believe eight out of ten would be like no I'm gonna marry her yeah well there's always some percent of people who check the

0:07:14 Thomas: You know I I appreciate how much thought you put into that because I was just like no that's dumb somebody lied or something idiots somebody doesn't know what any those words mean or something I don't know yeah mm-hmm yep that's crazy that's a good guess ah wow you yeah you you you crack

0:07:50 Jenessa: Wrong box on a survey and there's only some percent people who think like lizard aliens that live in the hollow earth run the government so like you always have to throw out some percent of your survey okay it's vice and they say like eight out of ten like okay and survey and I'm like okay so maybe maybe that's what happened a psychologist examined I'm now I'm curious and I want to check and it's fine well it's funny that the facebook headline that I when I came across it vice has since reposted this like a hundred times slightly differently every time the facebook headlines said would consider marrying an ai girlfriend and when you click click the link. The headline now says would marry their AI girlfriend. And I'm like, ha ha, I am correct. Cracked that nut.

0:08:36 Thomas: That one geez all right sure because once you select cherry pick down to a very specific

0:08:38 Jenessa: So, okay, now I want to read this scientific paper because, well, that's what's going on with these guys. Maybe it does.

0:08:48 Thomas: Population of people then maybe that makes more sense oh yeah all right did we talk about this

0:08:53 Jenessa: Sammy Caramella, the vice reporter, has reported on this. And they say, Eva AI, a platform allowing you to create and connect with your own AI partner, recently surveyed 2,000 men. And I go, oh no, oh no, this is not, it's not a scientific survey. This is an ad. This is the platform surveyed their own customers. Oh, I wonder, I don't know.

0:09:19 Thomas: On dads or something what am I thinking of god we did like this exact thing okay sorry I'll remember at some point oh yeah yep yep yep because no one gives a shit and it's in shitified and they just

0:09:26 Jenessa: I see eight in 10 would consider marrying an AI girlfriend and I, it is linked. Hallelujah. Hallelujah, nothing drives me more crazy than how often on this show people just say shit and there's no link and I have to go do all the work if you journalists supposedly read a source for this like why do you not link your sources drives me crazy precisely driving me crazy I'm like perfect I'm going to click on this and the link goes to the mirror which if you're not familiar is like a uk-based tabloid even trying to read this is like crashing my phone there's so many ads popping up yeah it literally crashed out the website like twice while I was scrolling through

0:09:51 Thomas: Need the clicks and yeah yeah yeah, that's everything. That's even real websites, it's just just unreadable. Uh, yeah. Oh God. Wow. I was long, long ago. Give up that idea. Oh my God.

0:10:19 Jenessa: I managed to get to as I go through this this mirror article by for some reason chiara fiorello it has a link to her little bio at the mirror and samantha bartlett does not maybe she's just just, I don't know, hasn't been there long enough. They again say Eva AI, a platform offering AI girlfriends, did this survey and they have a link. Okay. And it takes you to joi.com, J-O-I, and that is just the front page of this AI girlfriend website. And I am like, get me out of here before my algorithm is destroyed. Okay, I'm just so curious, was this survey like, Like, is this real? Has a psychologist touched this? Forbes, you're already, you're done. Forbes, 80% of Gen Zers would marry an AI, colon, study. I know. John Kotzier, senior contributor. I'm just calling out everybody for doing a shit job on this today. I'm sick of this shit.

0:11:23 Thomas: Yeah, man. I can't put my finger on why everything sucks and everyone's wrong about everything all the time. I just can't put my finger. Do you have any idea? Anyone? Huh? Hmm. Oh, wow. I gotta

0:11:24 Jenessa: Hmm, so curious. This one now is saying Joy AI instead of Eva AI. So I'm like, okay, I think this company changed their name. They are quoting jamie bronstein so I guess it could be a woman a licensed relationship therapist and relationship expert at joy ai okay so this is somebody talking about it who is supposedly a relationship expert who but who works there forbes is not linking to any source there is colon study in the title no source now I'm back to freaking mashable who tells me there's an april 2025 survey survey of 2,000 Gen Z respondents by the AI company Joy AI. But the problem is April 2025 is after the Mirror and Vice publication dates of the first time they published those articles. So this doesn't make any sense whatsoever. NDTV World, Gen Z believes they could marry an AI,

0:12:25 Thomas: Get to the bottom of this. Somebody, this thing goes all the way to the top. Wow, where, who,

0:12:35 Jenessa: Replace human connections, report. No author, but they link to a survey. And it just takes me back to that joy ai uh, actually it takes me back to the Forbes article. They say 83% of Gen Z, even more precise, they do mention joy ai and they link me to forbes who links me to no one how did they get 83 I don't know I go to tech radar their website says would you marry an ai a recent survey says

0:12:57 Thomas: Yeah. Where's the first thing of this? How did this first happen? Yeah. They made it the fuck up. Oh, yeah. Oh boy. Yeah. Yeah, no comment. Wow. Still? Yeah, yeah, well, except it's not even that easy to get to what it is, is it?

0:13:08 Jenessa: As most Gen Zers would, here's why that's a ridiculous idea, by Lance Ulinoff. Again, our title is not reminding us that this is people who already use this girlfriend website. It's kind of important. But this person finally starts to give us a little bit of a hint of what has happened here. Quote from him, before we delve too much into this mind-bending stat, let's look at the source. Yeah, right? Joy AI, formerly Eva AI. Finally, somebody's telling me I'm correct. They renamed their company. Premium online AI companion service. So they're telling us this is who did the survey, complete with AI generated imagery that can be, depending on settings and what you pay, not safe for work. Okay, great. I don't understand why Joy AI's respondents, Even Generation Z, who are much more deeply immersed in technology, social media, and AI than any generation before it, would accept AI as a life mate. In survey, though, they sound primed for AI connection, with 83% saying they, quote, could build a deeper emotional bond with an AI partner. So, okay, allegedly we have, like, what the survey question was. That's helpful. Quote, unconvinced that Joy.ai's data points to a real trend, parentheses, I did ask them for survey details and have yet to receive a response. Forbes, Vice, Mashable, The Mirror, all these people reposted, linked to one another instead of the survey, quote, the same supposed expert who works for the company. Some of them do not say they work for the company. Some of these articles are word for word, almost identical to each other. Finally, somebody at this TechRadar website actually asked the company for any information about like what this survey was and what you asked them and just doesn't get a response. Yeah vice is still just reposting this over and over again and I don't know whether they know it's just an ad or yeah it's like still up on their facebook sometime like the posts are there and they've reposted it multiple times with like you know their little there's always like some little graphic that's just a person in front of a computer or whatever to me this is clearly an ad for the company and it's just being laundered. They always name either Eva AI or Joy AI and

0:15:53 Thomas: I mean, I guess, how prominent was the company in the first thing? Oh, okay.

0:16:01 Jenessa: Many of them link to it and you click it and it takes you not to the survey, to the front page of the website with little pictures of digital women. Gross. Yeah, so your gut instinct is correct. No, No, the majority of men, the majority of Gen Z, whatever, are not going to marry an AI.

0:16:25 Thomas: Obviously.

0:16:25 Jenessa: If this internal survey was even conducted, this is an internal survey by a corporation that makes AI girlfriends of men already using their website. So, no to all of this. And nobody can actually get the data when they ask for it, which they don't. They just all link to each other. Forbes basically copy pasted Mashable what are you doing yeah yeah as much as that feels like just a silly

0:16:46 Thomas: It's incredible. Imagine telling somebody that sentence like 20 years ago. So I just can't understand why everyone's wrong about everything and no one knows anything anymore. It's just, I don't know. It's hard to know. Can't possibly solve that one. Wow. Wow. So journalism is dead. It's one of those jobs that has already been replaced by AI, even when the AI wasn't even good enough to do that. And I don't think we'll notice because it wasn't great to begin with because all of the financial incentives are terrible. I think the internet was a mistake and we need to undo it. I think we can keep parts of it. We can keep elements of it, but no, it's ruined our entire world and I stand by it. They used to

0:17:36 Jenessa: Story papers in there that are that should be reputable Forbes and Vice used to do great journalism yeah and like vice did a big purge around the time of like oh ai's gonna you know

0:17:43 Thomas: To be somebody yeah and meanwhile they're like that's fine with us because we got the clicks

0:17:50 Jenessa: Write all the articles. And it's like, are you kidding me? They fired some of their best journalists. Who knows what those people are doing now? I hope they're still doing journalism somewhere. But this is what you get now when it's, like, oh, well, just copy and paste from the mirror. What are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. Nobody checked. People probably just read the headline

0:18:10 Thomas: We needed and nothing happened because only Jenessa and sometimes Thomas cared yeah at least

0:18:18 Jenessa: And went, oh. Men are gross. And, like. Didn't check what any of that meant or what the more possibly more nefarious thing that is going on there. Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I guess people

0:18:30 Thomas: We're not getting the millennial article after millennial article anymore remember that that was a solid 10 years every single thing millennials are ruining this millennials are ruining that and I was like okay and then uh now it's gen z yeah yeah that's true we did get that end of it

0:18:45 Jenessa: Just got sick of that one. I don't know. Now it's Gen Z making fun of Millennials.

0:18:52 Thomas: Too we got old enough where we weren't as interesting and then it's like oh now the kids these days there was I remember there's still like the straggler millennials are ruining everything articles and then someone posted it was like I'm 37 or whatever it was you know it was like a kids these days type article I was like you you gotta move on it's not millennials anymore

0:18:54 Jenessa: I guess so. Yeah. Millennials are the boss. They can't be not working well enough. Pretty much.

0:19:12 Thomas: Yeah we are we're we've now we're now writing those articles all right well uh turn the tape over and let's get to story number two, I guess. Oh, I saw this. I saw, yeah, people, this is a

0:19:24 Jenessa: So this one, similar kind of social media sharing thing going on, probably more in the accidental misinformation camp, at least for the vast majority of people sharing it, I think.

0:19:50 Jenessa: I saw this posted and shared a couple of different ways, but probably the more egregious one I saw was just like as a graphic and it says there are in Texas 8 million registered Democrats and 6 million registered Republicans and quote, we're not a red state. We're a rigged state. Yeah, yeah. Generally, I never want to be perceived as saying we don't have a voter suppression problem, especially in Texas. Definitely, Texas has some of the stricter rules on voter ID, on absentee ballots.

0:20:16 Thomas: Talking point. I'll be interested to hear because I wasn't sure. I felt like there was some amount of truth to the idea that there's untapped potential in Texas, but okay. I'd be curious to find out the answer to this one. Yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah well that in Florida and it just got

0:20:46 Jenessa: Ballots. They have some pretty bad gerrymandering already. And as we know, they are trying to make it even worse this year. I am still holding out hope that's about to backfire on them. It is certainly possible, especially for like house races, that they are gerryandering in such a way that you could have gotten more blue representation out of Texas. That's almost certain. In terms of like the whole state flipping blue, I mean, my entire life, they've been saying and any day now, any day now it's going to happen. Yeah, Ohio is like not even a swing state anymore. But then other states have become swing states. It kind of varies. Yeah, yeah, you never know. I'm really hopeful for this upcoming midterm. All signs in the 2025 elections and in special elections, everything is pointing towards a pretty big blue shift. So I'm still very hopeful. Could Texas flip someday, especially if voter suppression was addressed? I think so. Though. Like, I don't want to come across as not suggesting that they address that and motivation problems that if people perceive it as hopeless, then they don't get out and vote. Yeah, absolutely.

0:21:19 Thomas: Worse and worse. Sure. And that could, that could flip back. You never know. Yeah yeah. Could could snowball a little bit if it one way or the other like positive or negative uh oh okay for

0:22:05 Jenessa: All that being said, these numbers are nonsense. This doesn't add up at all. The first problem is that in Texas, you do not register for a party because they have open primaries. There are not registered Democrats and registered Republicans. It's just, yeah, yeah. You go to a primary and

0:22:21 Thomas: Every single election there's no level at which you oh okay huh okay so there's something going

0:22:30 Jenessa: Day of you walk in and they say, do you want the ballot for the Democrat primary or for the Republican primary? That's what happens. As far as I can tell, they don't do primaries in local elections. So it's every two years they're going to do it for the federal. I was trying to look updates and just not coming across it for anything. And what I was seeing in local elections was like 10 people on the ballot, which kind of says to me there was not a primary process to whittle this down. Every two years they have a primary and you show up the day of and you can pick Democrat or Republican. Which ballot do you want to vote on? Allegedly, according to one data source. If you look through people who picked the Democrat ballot or the Republican ballot over the course of God knows how long, I can't get the actual methods they used, and then use statistical modeling, the conclusion they came to, the exact numbers do roughly come out to 8 million Democrats and 6.5 million Republicans. They rounded down that Texas this number quite a bit. Yeah. So the problem is if you go look at any one primary, the first thing

0:23:43 Thomas: On here at least hmm that's gotta be not that common right oh right right right yeah and the

0:23:49 Jenessa: To know is there's no reason to be confident that because someone picked up the Republican ballot, they are going to vote Republican in the general or because they picked up The Democrat ballot, they're going to vote Democrat in the General. There's plenty of people who for any number of reasons might strategically vote in a primary that is not the party they're gonna vote in in the general when you have open primaries. It's really hard to actually pin that down because people aren't registered by definition if it's open. I can tell you of examples I know of anecdotally people who are like, hey, I live in a red state. I'm going to vote blue in the general. But during the primaries, realistically, I know the primary is what picks the winner. Whoever wins the primary is going to win the general. So in the primary, I vote in the the Republican primary. And that can happen within states as well. If you're a Republican living in New York City, the primary is picking the New York city mayor. Usually, you know, we don't normally see this three-way contest like we just did. Most of the cities in New York, most cities everywhere are extremely blue. Yeah, exactly. That's also true in the

0:25:02 Thomas: Primary did still pick the the winner just uh tip of the cap to Zohran Mamdani that was awesome

0:25:07 Jenessa: The latest uh primary in new york right um yeah so but but it is normally the case that like once

0:25:13 Thomas: Remember when that happened guys that ruled like they don't people don't even pay attention to it

0:25:20 Jenessa: The primary is over like the general is practically yeah like turnout can be extremely low because people are like yeah I mean it's come on what is the actual prevalence of people voting in a primary of a party they don't plan to vote for in the general I I don't really know worth just keeping keeping in mind that that number is not like locked in, that is for sure. In a place where you register, I'm like a little more confident. I mean, even then, in New York with closed primaries, I know people who register the opposite party for that exact reason. I live in a super red area.

0:25:25 Thomas: Yeah yeah hard to know yeah right

0:26:00 Jenessa: I know what the primary is, what's more important. If we go to the Texas Secretary of State website, that's where you're going to get the official turnout numbers and all of that. How many people are registered, we know that. If we look at the 2022 gubernatorial primary, there were 17 million roughly people registered and about 2 million Republicans turned out and about 1 million Democrats turned out. In the 2024 presidential, presidentials can get weird sometimes, but There were about 18 million people registered in 2024, about 2 million Republicans turned out, about 1 million Democrats turned out. As I looked through the primaries, that seems consistent. About 2 million people pick the Republican ballot when they show up for a primary, and about a million people people pick the Democrat ballot when they show up for a primary. So that's two times as many Republican turnouts. If we think those people who turn out and pick the Republican ballot are going to vote Republican in the general, I don't know how we ended up with, well, there's eight million registered Democrats and six million registered Republicans. Like if we're making the assumption that they vote a certain way that's the same. The other problem is if a million people turn out in the Democratic primaries every two years, even if that's a completely different million people every two year, it would take 16 years to document 8 million people. So how the hell

0:27:39 Thomas: Oh okay oh I thought you had said there was some amount of method but you didn't know

0:27:41 Jenessa: Hell, are they getting this? I can't. It's a private company. I can'T find their methods anywhere. Yeah, that's the problem. They're claiming it's a combination of a statistical

0:27:51 Thomas: What specifically it is but they're saying they're claiming them okay Okay. Hmm. Huh. Okay. Just pure misinformation. Yeah. Jeez. There's steam coming out of your ears

0:28:00 Jenessa: Model, which I can't find anywhere. I don't know how well I'd understand it if I could, and knowing the people who voted in a primary under that ballot. Clearly, if you scroll back through the turnout numbers in primaries, we do not have in any one of them anywhere close to 8 million or 6 million in either group turning out. So how, it just, I don't know, like, are they modeling it based off of, well, a million people turned out and picked up a Democrat ballot, and if we assume those people vote Democrat in the general and they're representative of like well the democratic turnout is this in the primary and then like I'm trying to be so generous right now like maybe if only 12.5 percent of people who will vote democrat and the general turned out in in the primary, then you have to, yeah, like, then we're going to multiply by eight, like we're going to get to 8 million will turn out in the general, except they don't because we know that they lose. So 8 million would turn out if they felt like, like would vote Democrat if they turned out in general. How did you, I can't, I, yeah. I just don't know how you get from 2 million In general, as we go across various primaries, 2 million people turn out and pick up the Republican ballot and 1 million turn out and pickup the Democrat ballot. And somehow we're going to go back through the record, take those individuals and model that actually in Texas, there are 8 million people who would vote Democrat in the general if they could. What? Where did you get

0:29:08 Thomas: Trying to figure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. If that, yeah. Wow. This is pretty loose. Huh? Huh?

0:30:04 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. This just seems completely made up. Just to make sure I had it. So the original claim

0:30:05 Jenessa: Them from. Only a million turn out in the individual primaries. Where are they hiding? Where's the other 7 million? When you get this idea that there should be, when you add the 8 million Democrats and 6.5 million Republicans who allegedly exist, that's almost 15 million people. The turnout in the November 2024 election, which is like record turnout as far as the country goes, was 11,388,000 people that's 3,300,000 less than the number of people who supposedly exist who would vote a certain like how can the general election turnout be less it really does doesn't it yeah sometimes you see six million sometimes you See 6.5 which is closer to the reported

0:30:54 Thomas: Was that there's 8 million registered Democrats and 6 million registered Republicans. So then you said that they don't even really register in that state. So what's that reported number you're saying? All right. Okay. So when you said reported, it wasn't like that was an actual good

0:31:06 Jenessa: Number it's posted on the independent voter project which is a non-partisan not-for-profit charity thing they they seem to do some good stuff you know they're opposed to closed primaries you know they they they seemed pretty generic they cite to this private for-profit corporation L2 Inc., who for the most part seems to do like business analysis. Exactly. And they trace back to this L2 and they write, though voters in Texas don't register by party, we've got you covered. L2's party identification modeling in Texas is built from both primary ballot selections and academic modeling, which has gone through extensive testing. And unless you pay for their subscription-based service you don't get to see the reports and like I can see the numbers but I don't know how they created it mostly they help like businesses do sales I donno I mean according to this independent voter project they say voter registration data

0:31:44 Thomas: Number. You've traced back the source. Okay, wow. It's like, trust me, bro, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Do they even do political stuff? How did they get on this? I wonder, huh? But you can't

0:32:33 Jenessa: Provided by and in collaboration with L2 data a trusted provider of non-partisan voter data I don't know. Maybe they have an offshoot that does that for some reason. And it just doesn't line up. Certainly the people who've extrapolated this to say these are the number of registered Democrats, that is definitionally not how it works.

0:32:48 Thomas: Get at their methodology. No way to verify. Yeah. Yeah, is there any other source that has this

0:33:02 Jenessa: The extrapolation from 2 million Republicans are turning out in primaries and a million Democrats are turning out in primaries, I guess I could imagine a statistic that could convince me, Hey, without voter suppression, knowing that very few people turn out to primaries, knowing, you know, convince me that most people who vote for the Democrat in the primary are going to vote for The Democrat in The General, you know, convinced me of all these pieces, model the demographics, maybe it's true that, like, remove the voter suppression in Texas should be blue. Should it be 8 million versus 6.5, like that big of a margin? It's this one place is where it comes from.

0:33:50 Thomas: Kind of number? Is it just this one? Yeah. Sounds like bullshit. Someday, maybe we'll get rid of

0:33:55 Jenessa: If you try to track it down, it just all comes from right here. Yeah, certainly Texans turn out and vote. I don't doubt that you can flip local elections, that you can flip a district or two. Yeah, you never know.

0:34:12 Thomas: Ted Cruz. Who knows? Could happen. Yeah? Yeah, that's true. Yeah if you're like, wow, we have

0:34:16 Jenessa: Georgia got two blue senators. Like, it can happen. I think the presentation of this data could honestly be demoralizing and defeatist. Right.

0:34:28 Thomas: Have that big of an advantage and yet they're so good at suppressing us yeah no that's not good

0:34:32 Jenessa: I don't know how useful this really is to show to people.

0:34:34 Thomas: Yeah oh sure yeah yeah yeah I had come across this kind of thing in the wild and I I don't remember

0:34:38 Jenessa: If it's true, I mean, show me true facts. But, like, I find this obscure for-profit modeling to be a little concerning. Maybe L2Data's a non-profit offshoot? I don' t know. I don'' t think so.

0:34:56 Thomas: I didn't send this to you did I or no I don'T think I did yeah I I came across it and someone

0:34:59 Jenessa: No, I just kind of came across it and researched myself.

0:35:02 Thomas: Was like it's voter suppression and and I think it was the same slogan you said where it was like it's not a red state it's a suppressed state or something what was that it's something like that at, right? A rigged state, yeah. It's not a red state, it's a rigged state. I came across that exact thing

0:35:02 Jenessa: It's a rigged state. Like, it's a cute little RR, yeah. Yeah.

0:35:18 Thomas: And these exact talking points and I want to, you know, I have no feel for time anymore, but I would say it was somewhere in the range of like a month or two ago, which could mean it was last week or five years ago. No, it was within a year, I'd say. And they seem so sure. I remember thinking like, huh, that doesn't seem right. But I think it wasn't a time where I had time to like look into it. I was just kind of scrolling and I'm so glad that you did this because like, yeah, that

0:35:40 Jenessa: In the primaries, about 3 million people turn out while there are 17 to 18 million people registered. In the general, a little over 11 million will turn out. Yeah, like next to nobody votes in the primaries. So that's why I really struggle to imagine we can extrapolate so much from those primaries.

0:35:42 Thomas: That that doesn't seem right. So what's so to remind me, what's what's like our best, you know, numbers available of like the true, you know, breakdown? Wow. Nobody votes in the primaries. Holy shit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and wait, one million. Wait, how are those

0:36:18 Jenessa: To extrapolate 1 million up to 8 and 2 million up to 6.5, I find challenging, especially because those 1 million and 2 million are probably the same people over and over again, realistically. If we assume the vast majority of people who show up in the open primary and say, I would like to vote in the Democrat primary are going to vote Democrat in the general, there's 1 million Democrats and 2 million Republicans. Republicans I don't think the rest of the people are unaffiliated they just don't turn up to the primary you know primary turnouts unfortunately low yeah there's about two million Republicans

0:36:58 Thomas: Numbers that low? Maybe I misunderstood. One million and two. Oh, the primary. Sorry. Yeah But just in terms of the numbers of the

0:37:03 Jenessa: And three million two million republicans and one million democrats are turning out to most of the primaries yeah you know I doubt it so in Texas in 2024 Trump got 56 percent of the vote

0:37:12 Thomas: Balance of the overall state because the elections are somewhat close, right? Because that would be a two to one. I don't think they lose. Do we lose by that much in Texas? Yeah. And I know we've actually gotten somewhat close although I think it got further away in recent elections. Huh. Yeah.

0:37:33 Jenessa: So that was six million people and Harris got forty three percent at four million eight hundred about. Yeah. Yeah. That's part of the problem, too, is if we see that in the primary turnout we have a two to one ratio and then certainly in the general we do not see that.

0:37:43 Thomas: So nowhere near like a two to One ratio, which I think is kind of interesting. So I guess the primaries are really not indicative maybe. Right. Yeah, like you're saying. Yeah to your point. Yeah

0:38:00 Jenessa: Really, what that tells me is either Democrats don't turn out to the primary or Democrats vote in the Republican primary because they know the Republican is probably going to win. I don't know. I mean, I know in New York, in the general election, when it's local elections are odd years, we get about 25 percent turnout. Like it's abysmal for what I would argue are some of the most important elections.

0:38:13 Thomas: Yeah, could be that. But it's how is it that is that OK? I know this is branching off, but like our primary elections that low in every single state because that is insane. Wow. Yeah, for sure. Now, I know for for us, we have so much mail in that I feel like it's like it'S not really that hard to vote in the primary.

0:38:38 Jenessa: Your town city mayor they impact your every day so some states automatically send you the ballot

0:38:49 Thomas: I don't think is that does that impact it, you think? Oh, I think we do. But I or Lydia is requesting it. I think I think we do.

0:38:55 Jenessa: Other states you have to request it do you guys just get it sent to you oh wow so you get it they just send it to you and still like 65 of people don't bother

0:39:04 Thomas: Do yeah we I think we get automatically sent ours I think that ours was more like 35 percent or something I think or it's just uh in terms of like population I don't know how many people

0:39:18 Jenessa: Right oh yeah because you also have to be careful sometimes turnout numbers are based on the voting

0:39:23 Thomas: Are registered to even get it or whatever right yeah yeah yeah which I I think voting eligible

0:39:31 Jenessa: Eligible population and not registered voters? Yeah, they can be very different sometimes,

0:39:37 Thomas: Is actually more to me is more interesting in a lot of ways I guess you might use either number I think it's way lower than that.

0:39:45 Jenessa: Which I think is important. So like if you look at a presidential election across the whole United States, the turnout of voting eligible, people often get really depressed, like, oh my God, it's like 65 percent. Among registered voters, it's often like in the high 80s, low 90s. If you look at voting age and voting eligible and then registered voters, the number changes drastically. So you have to think about was somebody's vote suppressed? They're voting age but not eligible. Some of those are like non-citizens, which like, yeah, they can't vote, of course. But some of them could be like, oh, in Texas, you've ever had a felony. And like, I would consider that voter suppression. I think that's bullshit.

0:40:05 Thomas: Ah, hmm. Ah, ah, right.

0:40:29 Jenessa: Shit. If they are registered but not voting, that could be voter suppression. That could be lack of motivation. That would be lack of education about the voting process. It could be a lot of things. So the gap there, when we see that registered voters are overwhelmingly turning out, we're like, OK, it's a registration problem. When we look at New York odd year local local elections and we see that among registered voters the turnout is so low oh boy like something else has gone wrong you know so it matters to look at those separately

0:40:57 Thomas: This is so interesting. I just pulled up in California, and everybody should vote like California, or at least in terms of the vote by mail stuff we have. I know you always hate us when it's presidential elections or whatever, because it takes so long. I found this spreadsheet on the Secretary of State. Okay, so you'll have to help me with some of these numbers, because I'm not used to this vocabulary. The voter participation statistics by county, and it is wild how much that varies and a lot of demographic reasons for that. That's an interesting thing to look at. But when it comes to the overall state, the percentage of, it says turnout registered versus turnout eligible.

0:41:41 Jenessa: Uh yep yes yep voting eligible people yeah okay oh wow yeah yeah yeah absolutely

0:41:43 Thomas: Okay. So that would be the turnout of registered voters, like divided by registered versus the the turnout divided by all eligible, right? So average for the state for, for the primary was 35% of turnout registered and 28 point. So 29% of turnout eligible, but for vote by mail voters, 88%. And many of these counties, this is actually kind of crazy. There's a, there's counties, I mean, they're small, but there's counties where it's a hundred percent, you know, it's like, uh, there's a county of, this is kind of funny. This is such nerd shit. Plumas County, 6,914 vote by mail voters, which is like, that's not like 12. That's like a number that, you know, total voters, uh 6, 914. So a hundred percent of them voted. Isn't that cool? Like, see, we need that. There's, there are five counties with a hundred% vote by mail. Are they super small? Yes. But I don't know. 7,000 is not like super duper small. That is like Like I would have thought that if it was a hundred percent, it would need to be like a hundred, you know, but, uh, but even ones, you know, Los Angeles County, obviously huge that, that dips down all the way to 80% of vote by mail. Yeah, exactly. Well, so that's my point is like, get everybody probably exactly. I, it'd be curious to, I could try to look at the, uh. The general, but like, let's get universal vote by mail and just send people the effing ballots and they'll fill it out. That's the thing. It's convenience. I mean, look at that. Let's say in theory if you and this is just me pontificating you know so much more about this you work you work in this so so check me if I'm wrong but just pontificate philosophically for fun you would want people who want to vote to be able to vote sorry I've already gone too far for a bunch of republicans but like in theory it should be like well there are people who want to go out there people who don't and like you would hope that I guess if you don't want to have a country where it's required which I think we should I think everybody should be required to vote it'd be great there's countries that do it it works out fine and you could even even vote like, no, none, you know, like, but as long as you do the form or whatever, I think that would be great. Set that aside. We have a system where it's like, No, you don't have to vote. If it's just a question of some people want to, and some people don't, you would think the vote by mail and the registered voters should be close ish, like just hypothetically, because all that is, is like a convenience of method. And so you would Think if this was a thing where it is like, some people really want to vote and some People don't and oh, well, but that's such a huge huge gap that's like, well, that sounds really like fickle and meaningless. There shouldn't,

0:42:31 Jenessa: Absolutely oh yeah no no right right that's still a lot in a primary yeah yeah right yes yeah right right in new york until a year or two ago we did not have no-excuse absentee

0:44:21 Thomas: You know what I mean? That sounds like, oh, well because these people checked a different box on a form, so they're not receiving a vote by mail. And there could be other thing where maybe, who knows, maybe they moved too much. They don't want to vote by, I don't know. Who knows? So you can tell me, but like the fact that it's goes from near a hundred percent to like 30 or 40, you know, and I guess if I look at the state average, it goes from 89% to 35%. And those are, Those both those groups are registered. But the first one does vote by mail and the second one doesn't. Well, shit, it sounds like we should all do vote by mail because they're registered to vote, meaning they they have done that step where they want to vote at least at that in that moment. And so the difference between consistently voting and not is if they decide to do vote by mail, which is, it's so arbitrary, I guess is what I'm saying. Like, so in an ideal system, like that, that shouldn't exist. There shouldn't be this massive difference between just because you check a box to get vote by mail and not like that. That's huge numbers. That'S massive numbers. Millions of people difference. Right. Right, right. Yeah. I do need to make a quick correction to something I said

0:45:26 Jenessa: You could only get an absentee if you were going to be out of state, if you had a disability, if you were caring for someone with a disability or there was like one other thing I can't remember and you can still apply for a permanent absentees if you are in those categories but now we have anybody can just ask for a mail-in ballot. So think about the difference that makes that that for almost all of our history in New York, you had to find time to get to the polls. We only just got early voting for a long time. You had to get the polls on a Tuesday in New York. Think about what that does to turnout when you work. If you're lucky, you work nine to five and then you have to go get in line on a Tuesday. You have to be committed. And the problem is there's a lot of people who think, oh good we only want people voting who are super committed but like that often means only people who have the time and the energy left at the end of the day and that that is extremely biased towards a lot of groups of people and biased against quite a few groups of people it doesn't make any sense if you express that interest in voting like just come on Mm-hmm. Mm-huh. Ah. Mm. Still really good. Mm hmm. Mm huh. Still. Yeah. Mm hum. Yeah, yeah. Yeah just reducing that barrier. Mm hm. No yeah yeah.

0:46:50 Thomas: When I, this is just something I was looking at for the first time. The ones that were a hundred percent, it turns out they are all mail voting counties. I didn't know that existed. They don't do precinct voting, I guess. But, but the reason that I could have been fooled is like, those are the ones that are a hundred, literal hundred. There's plenty there, like 97%. So, you know, here's one 98.65. That's not a male in county. So that was why it was plausible to me that there There could have been, you know, counties that hit 100%. But regardless, it's like, so I guess there's a reason for those ones to be literal 100, but that's just the very, very top. There's plenty that are in the high 90s that don't have that like special rules or anything. That's just what they happen to be. So when you look at the numbers, just for fun, the registered voters is 22 million and the vote by mail is 6.8 million. So like, imagine if we could get more of those registered to be vote by mail, how much that could hypothetically increase turnout if the trend kind of stayed the same. That's millions that would be millions more votes uh and kind of I mean california is not exactly where we need them but just goes to show there could be a lot elsewhere let's make voting easier if we can take control of anything uh and pass uh some good voting rights acts that could be a real thing so sorry to give that was a bit of a tangent what's your characterization of this

0:48:07 Jenessa: Yeah. Yeah. Basically, the way it was done, I'm being told by a subsidiary of a private for-profit corporation is through some sort of modeling that is behind a paywall. And it does not line up with the information that is available to me.

0:48:09 Thomas: It's not like you can say it's like made up bullshit, but there's no substantiation for it that you can find. Yeah, reality. Yeah, yeah. Well, good to know. It still might be rigged, not saying it's not, but that's, those numbers seem not right. Yeah, all right, we're calling it there because the

0:48:36 Jenessa: Yeah. Yeah, I don't find those numbers useful.

0:48:45 Jenessa: If anything, I think those numbers could be extremely demoralizing. If the margin is a lot closer than that, then what you really need is turnout. You need to get people registered and you need to get registered people motivated and get them to the polls and get educated about how to get to the Polls.

0:49:21 Thomas: Division just worked out that way we got three in the next one like I said oh my god it's so funny how about I give it even a little more of a hint more of the study that is Jenessa's favorite study and is now my favorite study too, involves if you are allergic to something, let's say, and your partner consumes that something, and then later you come into contact with said partner's ejaculate, will you have an allergic reaction? I can't think of anything more worthy of study. It's that it's interesting, but it's also, oh my God, the study itself is so funny. And some of the language in it. It's a good time. And we got two other amazing ones that I already previewed. So that's next episode. You'll hear it in a bit. If you're a normie, if you're a patron, you can hear it pretty much right away. Way I usually this is a true fact when I post multiples for the patrons I post them about the interval it would take to listen to I don't want to post them back to back because then sometimes in your player they show up like together and then you won't notice one of them but I also want to make sure that when I say they will have them right away I don'T want there to be a delay so what I do is I usually post like one and then I schedule the next one for like two hours later just to try to find that sweet spot of those things that's the insanity that goes on in my brain but uh you know just trying to make make it work the best for everybody so patrons can probably have it now unless they are so dedicated that they listen to this right away then maybe it maybe it won't be up but otherwise it's already up for patrons so can't wait for you to hear it all right we'll see you next episode I think the internet was a mistake and we need to undo it

0:51:14 Jenessa: Oh, Gen Z, dumb. Men are gross.