Priors Confirmed, Priors Challenged

After elections, politicians and pundits invariably go out and make the case that the results have confirmed their priors, and cherry-picking data and anecdotes to weave into their preferred narratives. The final conclusion is always some version of “the lesson we should take from the election is that we need to enact all of my policy and aesthetic preferences.”

In the spirit of more sincere political discourse, I’m going to think about some things that surprised me or challenged my understanding of American politics. At the same time, I’m going to gloat about some things as well, because who doesn’t like to brag about being proven correct.

Prior Confirmed: Republicans Can Do Well Among Hispanic Voters
In March 2019, I wrote a piece for the Orange County Register mostly framed as a rebuttal to arguments from (conservative) Michael Anton in his famous Flight 93 Election essay, and indirectly to liberal dreams of the Emerging Democratic Majority, that Hispanic immigrants and their children increasing as a share of the electorate spell inevitable doom for the Republican Party.

In the piece, I focused on pitching Republicans on accepting Venezuelan refugees. As evidence, I used the fact that Cuban-Americans, as well as Vietnamese-Americans, have historically voted for Republicans, and that accepting Venezuelan refugees would help Republicans electorally, as they are fleeing a leftist government just as the Cubans and Vietnamese did. To be clear, I really dislike making “they’ll vote for us” an argument for whether or not to accept refugees—we should accept refugees regardless of which party they’d tend to prefer—but if that argument is able to change someone’s minds and make them more likely to support refugees, that’s good for refugees.

The importance of Republican improvements among Latino voters in Nevada and Florida, making the former extremely close and locking in a decisive victory in the latter, help vindicate this idea and refute “demographics is destiny” devotees of both the left and right.

Prior Challenged: Trump is a Significant Hindrance to This Goal
In that same article, I argued that Republicans needed to drastically reverse their immigration policy and rhetoric to do better among Latinos as a whole.

However, despite the Trump administration’s hostile immigration policy to both undocumented and legal arrivals, he improved significantly among…