Election ALERT: The AMISH Win Again
How pebbles turned into a landslide
Hi Hamaniacs,
Wow! What a crazy election cycle this has been. How are you feeling? When I think back over the last quarter century, so many historic events have occurred that it doesn’t seem possible (Or is it probable? Watch this episode of Haman Nature to find out). The post mortem on this election by the political pundits will go on for years, but the political class will come to the same conclusion as they always do:
It’s the economy stupid.
The messaging wasn’t effective.
I think both are wrong. In another recent episode of our show, we had Angela McArdle and Scott Horton on and we were talking about what incentivizes voters most. I made the comment that between morality and pocketbook, morality always wins. In particular, I felt that the abortion issue would drive Left-leaning voters to the polls in huge numbers like it did in the 2022 mid-terms with the implication that it was likely Ms. Harris would win. What I didn’t know was that many states had the abortion issue as a separate ballot measure which allowed people to be able to separate out that one issue from everything else. This allowed other issues to take precedence which favored the Right side of the aisle. Of course, there were various other factors that contributed to the significant gains made by Republicans across ALL demographics. How did they do it?
The Trump campaign did something very clever and a bit under the radar. They spent get-out-the-vote efforts in targeted places and with specific groups that Democrats simply ignore. One of those groups is the Amish. Why? A couple of articles from the Daily Caller will help shed some light on this:
Does that last headline shock you? I first learned about this from one of my personal libertarian heroes David Friedman who many years ago made this observation.
Charts from the Daily Caller article reference above:
Election after election after election, the Amish quietly go their own way, continuing to grow. Their population today is small, but like pebbles cascading down a mountain, eventually they may turn into a landslide that may change the landscape of American politics for generations to come. And so it goes, like it has for a hundred years, the Amish win again.
In liberty,
Tyrone the Porcupine Hobo