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In light of Astead’s tweet from earlier today, I’d like to share my thoughts on what ET means to me.
ET captivates me because it teaches me something new every day. I’m continually inspired by the creativity of our map makers and am proud to promote their work.
ET captivates me because it teaches me something new every day. I’m continually inspired by the creativity of our map makers and am proud to promote their work.
What Astead meant by “election twitter” is what I’d refer to as Election Pundit Twitter. Election pundits pay attention to elections, and sometimes even to ET. But they draw political conclusions from elections and opine on them in ways not necessarily directly supported by data.
An example of election punditry is something like “more moderate Dems won in swing districts in 2018, so Dems should move toward a more moderate platform.” Statements citing electoral data, but clearly opinionated ones.
In contrast, something an ET mapmaker might say is “Cori Bush won in 2020 by increasing her margins of victory among both upscale white voters in St. Louis’ south and Black voters in its north.” Note the objectivity and lack of opinion inherent in this statement.
To be very clear, I don’t think election punditry is *always* bad. It’s just not ET. I think Liam Donovan and Henry Olsen are really sharp people and I learn a ton from them, but I don’t consider them ET.
This can get confusing because Election Pundit Twitter is itself distinct from Politics Twitter, which contains pundits that opine on politics a lot but where elections are relegated to a “backdrop” role.
When I say Politics Twitter, I’m referring to people like David Brooks and Elizabeth Bruenig, whose pieces are very political but not typically motivated by elections or reliant on electoral data.
This is not meant to come off as gatekeeping—indeed, anybody can be part of ET.
And this is NOT a putdown at those who are motivated by policy and campaigns. Indeed, many people on ET are! But I think ET works best when we are cognizant of that and separate it from our electoral analysis.
We love data and maps. That doesn’t mean we’re dismissive of campaigns or that we can’t participate in politics on our own time.
I’ll finish by saying that I think ET’s North Star must be helping people learn about elections, just as @JMilesColeman, @SenhorRaposa, and many others helped me. I know I’ll forever be grateful for their generosity and insights.
