• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

The Caedite Infobox and Graphics Thread

NDP in '88
I saw this poll mentioned in a test thread at The Other Place, and figured it would be fun to figure out what would have happened if that had been the final result in 1988:

S9mAFO5.png

The results are a little funky since the sample sizes in some provinces are ridiculously small (for Prince Edward Island, n=7), but overall, a fun and delightfully Canadian result.

Liberal
Ahuntsic, QC
Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies, QC
Annapolis Valley—Hants, NS
Beauce, QC
Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC
Bellechasse, QC
Berthier—Montcalm, QC
Bonaventure—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC
Bourassa, QC
Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Capilano—Howe Sound, BC
Carleton—Charlotte, NB
Cumberland—Colchester, NS
Don Valley East, ON
Don Valley North, ON
Don Valley West, ON
Drummond, QC
Etobicoke Centre, ON
Fredericton, NB
Fundy—Royal, NB
Gaspé, QC
Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
La Prairie, QC
Lachine—Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Lanark—Carleton, ON
Laval, QC
London West, ON
Madawaska—Victoria, NB
Markham, ON
Matapédia—Matane, QC
Mégantic—Compton—Stanstead, QC
Mississauga South, ON
Mississauga West, ON
North Vancouver, BC
Oakville—Milton, ON
Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Portneuf, QC
Regina—Wascana, SK
Richmond—Wolfe, QC
Rimouski—Témiscouata, QC
Rosedale, ON
Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
Saint-Jean, QC
Saint John, NB
Scarborough East, ON
St. Paul's, ON
South Shore, NS
Vancouver South, BC
Vaudreuil, QC
Verdun—Saint-Paul, QC
York—Simcoe, ON


New Democratic
Abitibi, QC
Argenteuil—Papineau, QC
Athabasca, AB
Beaver River, AB
Blainville—Deux-Montagnes, QC
Brampton, ON
Brampton—Malton, ON
Broadview—Greenwood, ON

Bruce—Grey, ON
Burlington, ON
Calgary Centre, AB
Cambridge, ON
Cariboo—Chilcotin, BC
Central Nova, NS
Chambly, QC
Champlain, QC
Charlesbourg, QC
Châteauguay, QC
Chicoutimi, QC
Cochrane—Superior, ON

Davenport, ON
Delta, BC
Durham, ON
Duvernay, QC
Edmonton North, AB
Edmonton Northwest, AB
Edmonton Southeast, AB
Edmonton—Stratchona, AB
Elgin, ON
Elk Island, AB
Erie, ON
Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Fraser Valley East, BC
Fraser Valley West, BC
Guelph—Wellington, ON

Halifax, NS
Halifax West, NS
Hamilton East, ON
Hamilton Mountain, ON
Hamilton West, ON

Hamilton—Wentworth, ON
Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC
Huron—Bruce, ON
Joliette, QC
Jonquière, QC

Kenora—Rainy River, ON
Kent, ON
Kingston and the Islands, ON

Kitchener, ON
Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
Langelier, QC
Laurentides, QC
Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC

Laval-des-Rapides, QC
Lévis, QC
Lincoln, ON
London East, ON
London—Middlesex, ON
Longueuil, QC
Lotbinière, QC
Louis-Hébert, QC
Manicouagan, QC
Mercier, QC
Montmorency—Orléans, QC
Niagara Falls, ON
Nunatsiaq, NT

Okanagan Centre, BC
Ontario, ON
Ottawa Centre, ON

Outremont, QC
Oxford, ON
Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON
Peace River, AB
Perth—Wellington—Waterloo, ON
Peterborough, ON
Pontiac—Gatineau—Labelle, QC
Prince George—Peace River, BC
Québec-Est, QC
Richmond, BC
Rosemont, QC
Saint-Hubert, QC
Saint-Maurice, QC
Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Scarborough Centre, ON

Scarborough West, ON
Sherbrooke, QC
Simcoe Centre, ON
Simcoe North, ON
St. Albert, AB
St. Catherines, ON
St. John's East, NL

Sudbury, ON
Surrey—White Rock, BC
Témiscamingue, QC
Terrebonne, QC
Thunder Bay—Nipigon, ON

Timiskaming, ON
Trois-Rivières, QC
Vancouver Centre, BC
Verchères, QC
Victoria—Haliburton, ON
Waterloo, ON
Welland—St. Catherines—Thorold, ON

Wellington—Dufferin—Grey—Simcoe, ON
Western Arctic, NT
Windsor West, ON

Yellowhead, AB

Progressive Conservative
Cardigan, PE
Churchill, MB
Egmont, PE
Hillsborough, PE
Malpeque, PE
Moose Jaw—Lake Centre, SK

Saint Boniface, MB
Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK

The Battlefords—Meadow Lake, SK
Winnipeg North, MB
Winnipeg North Centre, MB
Winnipeg—St. James, MB
Winnipeg—Transcona, MB

Winnipeg South Centre, MB
 
Twitter Decides '20
There was a brief thing a few years ago where someone came up with the idea of using a political party's Facebook "likes" as their votes and creating an election box out of that.

Naturally, since Facebook doesn't quite capture the stupid and hellish nature of 2020 adequately enough, I decided to use Twitter followers--the popular vote using the subscriber counts of the GOP & Democratic official accounts and those of their state affiliates to decide electoral votes:

dseidtq.png

Yes, the DC Republican Party has more followers on Twitter than the DC Democrats. Which is pretty amazing since that means the affiliate of a major political party has almost as many Twitter followers as it has actual voters.
 
2020 United States vice presidential election
XDNFIui.png
The 2020 United States vice presidential election was the 59th quadrennial election for Vice President of the United States, held on November 3, 2020. Democratic nominee senator Kamala Harris of California narrowly defeated incumbent Mike Pence, who was re-nominated by the Republican Party. Harris became the first woman, African-American and Asian-American to serve as vice president. It is the fourth, and most recent, occasion where the winner of the election did not win the popular vote.

Pence, per custom, was unchallenged in the Republican vice presidential primary after being re-endorsed by President Donald Trump. Harris had previously been a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, but withdrew before the state's primaries. She immediately became the frontrunner for the vice presidential nomination once she announced her candidacy in that primary, and defeated scattered rivals, including former Georgia US Senate candidate Stacey Abrams, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a late entry by Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren after Warren's presidential bid fizzled out.

Like the concurrent presidential election, the election was held amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and saw record turnout for a modern nationwide election. Unlike in the presidential election, where Democratic nominee Joe Biden (Pence's predecessor as vice president) held a firm lead over incumbent president Donald Trump throughout the campaign, Harris held only a shaky lead throughout the race against Pence. Harris was hurt by opposition from some progressives within her party to her prosecutorial record, while Pence was hurt by the federal government's poor handling of the pandemic. Whisper campaigns against Harris using racist and sexist language were also employed, with some Republican surrogates briefly attempting to whip up xenophobic frenzies against Harris by falsely claiming she was board abroad and therefore was ineligible to serve as vice president.

The result was an incredibly close election, with Pence winning the popular vote by less than 50,000 votes out of 155 million cast. Pence carried three states in the electoral college that Trump lost in the presidential election (Arizona, Georgia and Nevada), becoming the first Republican vice presidential candidate since Dick Cheney in 2004 to win Nevada. But Harris narrowly won in the Electoral College with 273 electoral votes to Pence's 265.

Several lawsuits were filed by the Pence campaign in the wake of the election, alleging voter fraud in several states including Michigan and Wisconsin. However, no evidence of any widespread fraud or irregularities was ever found, and all challenges were dismissed. Harris was inaugurated as the nation's 49th vice president on January 20, 2021.

I got the results by comparing the favorability ratings (in this poll) of Harris to Biden & Pence to Trump across the demographics used for the Cook Political Swingometer. I then plugged the CNN exit poll into the calculator, compared state results to the RL ones, and used the resulting "error" for each state to fine-tune the results.

EX: Using the exit poll, Biden "should" have won Pennsylvania by 0.3% in the two-party vote (TPV) (about 50.15%), but he won it by about 1.2% (50.61% TPV). So Biden overperformed by a factor of 1.01 (50.61/50.15=1.009) in PA. That gets us what I'll call the "Swingometer Margin of Error" (SMOE).

The Demographic Swing thinks Harris would win PA by a 1.1% margin (50.55% TPV). Since the SMOE for PA is 1.01 for the Democrats, we can say that instead, Harris would "really" win 51.06% TPV there (50.55*1.01=51.055)
 
XDNFIui.png
The 2020 United States vice presidential election was the 59th quadrennial election for Vice President of the United States, held on November 3, 2020. Democratic nominee senator Kamala Harris of California narrowly defeated incumbent Mike Pence, who was re-nominated by the Republican Party. Harris became the first woman, African-American and Asian-American to serve as vice president. It is the fourth, and most recent, occasion where the winner of the election did not win the popular vote.

Pence, per custom, was unchallenged in the Republican vice presidential primary after being re-endorsed by President Donald Trump. Harris had previously been a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, but withdrew before the state's primaries. She immediately became the frontrunner for the vice presidential nomination once she announced her candidacy in that primary, and defeated scattered rivals, including former Georgia US Senate candidate Stacey Abrams, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a late entry by Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren after Warren's presidential bid fizzled out.

Like the concurrent presidential election, the election was held amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and saw record turnout for a modern nationwide election. Unlike in the presidential election, where Democratic nominee Joe Biden (Pence's predecessor as vice president) held a firm lead over incumbent president Donald Trump throughout the campaign, Harris held only a shaky lead throughout the race against Pence. Harris was hurt by opposition from some progressives within her party to her prosecutorial record, while Pence was hurt by the federal government's poor handling of the pandemic. Whisper campaigns against Harris using racist and sexist language were also employed, with some Republican surrogates briefly attempting to whip up xenophobic frenzies against Harris by falsely claiming she was board abroad and therefore was ineligible to serve as vice president.

The result was an incredibly close election, with Pence winning the popular vote by less than 50,000 votes out of 155 million cast. Pence carried three states in the electoral college that Trump lost in the presidential election (Arizona, Georgia and Nevada), becoming the first Republican vice presidential candidate since Dick Cheney in 2004 to win Nevada. But Harris narrowly won in the Electoral College with 273 electoral votes to Pence's 265.

Several lawsuits were filed by the Pence campaign in the wake of the election, alleging voter fraud in several states including Michigan and Wisconsin. However, no evidence of any widespread fraud or irregularities was ever found, and all challenges were dismissed. Harris was inaugurated as the nation's 49th vice president on January 20, 2021.

I got the results by comparing the favorability ratings (in this poll) of Harris to Biden & Pence to Trump across the demographics used for the Cook Political Swingometer. I then plugged the CNN exit poll into the calculator, compared state results to the RL ones, and used the resulting "error" for each state to fine-tune the results.

EX: Using the exit poll, Biden "should" have won Pennsylvania by 0.3% in the two-party vote (TPV) (about 50.15%), but he won it by about 1.2% (50.61% TPV). So Biden overperformed by a factor of 1.01 (50.61/50.15=1.009) in PA. That gets us what I'll call the "Swingometer Margin of Error" (SMOE).

The Demographic Swing thinks Harris would win PA by a 1.1% margin (50.55% TPV). Since the SMOE for PA is 1.01 for the Democrats, we can say that instead, Harris would "really" win 51.06% TPV there (50.55*1.01=51.055)
I really wonder how something like this would work in real life and how often would we actually have a bipartisan split.
 
Van Trumpen
TFW you're trying to pull a Grover Cleveland but you end up pulling a Martin Van Buren

UUpNkrW.png

I used a formula to get the state results that incorporated the 2020 (unofficial) results and Trump's job approval in each state. Harris' vote was simply Biden's vote with a few percentage points shaved off, while Trump was given a portion of his 2020 vote with the "Trump factor" (difference between what vote he got in 2020 versus his approval rating) being added to adjust for the amount of voters he got in each state who were GOP voters who disliked him/the job he did as POTUS but supported him because he was the GOP nominee.

The Trump/Harris states (AK, FL, NC, OH, SC, TX) were basically the states where the "Trump factor" was small enough that it took enough GOP votes from Cruz to hand the state to Harris on a plurality.
 
Last edited:
TFW you're trying to pull a Grover Cleveland but you end up pulling a Martin Van Buren

oQ9dLYk.png

I used a formula to get the state results that incorporated the 2020 (unofficial) results and Trump's job approval in each state. Harris' vote was simply Biden's vote with a few percentage points shaved off, while Trump was given a portion of his 2020 vote with the "Trump factor" (difference between what vote he got in 2020 versus his approval rating) being added to adjust for the amount of voters he got in each state who were GOP voters who disliked him/the job he did as POTUS but supported him because he was the GOP nominee.

The Trump/Harris states (FL, NC, OH, SC, TX) were basically the states where the "Trump factor" was small enough that it took enough GOP votes from Cruz to hand the state to Harris on a plurality.
How close did Trump come in WV and Alabama?
 
*Wins Ohio, both Carolinas, Florida, and even Texas*

*Still can't win Iowa*

It helps that there was a pretty large gap (around eight percentage points) between Trump's approval rating and 2020 voteshare in Iowa, which in this scenario helped Lyin' Ted. It's the closest victory for the GOP this cycle (45.7% Cruz, 43.6% Harris, 9% Trump)

How close did Trump come in WV and Alabama?

Trump doesn't come close to winning any state. Not even a former president who still maintains his ability to draw media attention with his outrageous and increasingly deranged statements can escape the effects of a highly polarized electorate while running on a third-party ticket.
 
Also, edited because I realized re-checking the calculations that the Democrats would have barely (Harris 41.80%, Cruz 41.65%, Trump 12.95%) won Alaska in this scenario.

Which of course, needed its own note because taking Alaska gives the Democrats 420 electoral votes and turns people who spent the 2020 Democratic primaries complaining about "Kopmala" into Charlie.
 
Also, edited because I realized re-checking the calculations that the Democrats would have barely (Harris 41.80%, Cruz 41.65%, Trump 12.95%) won Alaska in this scenario.

Which of course, needed its own note because taking Alaska gives the Democrats 420 electoral votes and turns people who spent the 2020 Democratic primaries complaining about "Kopmala" into Charlie.

Well, we've hit every part of the west coast and made it blue.

Time to start going east.
 
2020 in 1988
You're finally awake! Are you okay? That fall looked pretty bad.

Global pandemic that's devastating the economy? Gerontocracy? Our institutions and democracy are being undermined by authoritarians led by a corrupt, delusional blowhard? What are you talking about? Come on, we're going to watch President-elect Biden's inauguration and the first female vice president get sworn in!

cqHkFqC.png

State results obtained with Biden getting the OTL Dukakis vote in each state times 1.12 (51.31/45.65=1.12) and Trump getting the remainder of the OTL two-party vote share
 
Biden Would Have Won
Basically "WI: Biden instead of Hillary in 2016?"

The genesis of this little thought experiment was the reminder that Nate Silver of 538 wrote an article (listed in "sources") about how a sizable portion of Bernie Sanders' support in the 2016 primaries were what he called #NeverHillary voters who voted for Sanders mostly because he was the candidate opposing Hillary Clinton rather than ideological affinity. Silver calculated (in February 2019, mind) that Sanders' real base of support was around 30% rather than the 43% he won in the 2016 primaries which...was born out in 2020 when he had to face off against other opponents, none of whom were Hillary Clinton.

I decided to see what the results would look like if I replaced HRC with Biden in the 2016 primaries (let's say Alex Jones is right and she really did have Parkinson's). The article has a table of how much support Sanders is estimated to have gained from anti-Clinton votes, and I used this to calculate the new results. All of the #NeverHillary voters who supported Sanders in the OTL primaries instead go to Biden, so the map ends up being different than the one in the article (which just removes the #NeverHillary voters from Sanders' column).

ipcWxH5.png

Since it's not on the infobox, Biden won enough pledged delegates (2,701) to win without superdelegates, making TTL 2016's discourse only slightly less toxic and soul-destroying. The "roll call" vote is essentially all the pledged (delegates won via primary votes) and unpledged (superdelegates who have since had their ability to vote in the first round removed) votes added together, hence why some states had more pledged delegates for Sanders but voted more for Biden at the convention.

It's kind of notable that ITTL Sanders only won two actual primaries (Vermont and Democrats Abroad); the remaining nine contests he won (it isn't shown, but Sanders is considered to have won Wyoming because he got more state delegates than Biden) were caucuses.

----------------​

In the presidential contest, I relied on a Quinnipiac poll taken before Biden announced he would not run to compare Biden's demographic support in a hypothetical contest against Trump to Clinton's. I then compared Clinton's demographic support in a Clinton-vs.-Trump hypothetical (when the poll was taken) to OTL exit polls taken in 2016. After calculating the differences, I applied the results to Biden's demographic support in the poll.

Then I used FiveThirtyEight's 2016 demographic calculator to get the results. First, I entered OTL exit poll data into the calculator and recorded the margin of error in each state and district. Then I input the ATL Biden demographic numbers and applied the margin of error in each state and district to get Biden's "correct" share of the vote.

o8NbsaQ.png

I put Klobuchar in as VP because I figured Biden would pick a woman in 2016 in a "No Hillary" scenario--Elizabeth Warren would have been the first choice, but her replacement in the Senate would have been a Republican. Klobuchar is then the second choice since she has racked up large victories in a swing state with a Democratic governor.

I kept three faithless electors from OTL 2016: the Texas ones seemed like they would have gone faithless regardless and the Washington elector who voted for Faith Spotted Eagle did so because of Clinton's environmental policies, which probably wouldn't have been that different from those put forward by a Biden '16 campaign.

The results are a little weird compared to OTL 2016. Those bits come from the closest states: Ohio (IOTL a state Trump won by 8%) and Maine's 2nd congressional district (Trump won by 10%) go Democratic here while Iowa (Trump won by around 9.5%) and Arizona (Trump won by 3.5%) remain Republican.

----------------​

 
2020 Supreme Court retention elections
P8DpSCm.png
The 2020 Supreme Court retention elections took place on November 3, 2020 to determine whether to retain two of the nine justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Voters in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and five territories chose to retain Associate Justice Stephen Breyer for another 12 year term, but declined to retain Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who had been appointed by President Donald Trump in 2018, to a full term. This is only the second time a sitting Supreme Court justice has been removed since the implementation of the retention system.

Breyer was appointed in 1994 by President Bill Clinton to replace former justice Harry S. Blackmun. He was retained for a term of his own alongside Clinton's re-election in 1996, and similarly retained in 2008. One of the members of the court's liberal wing, Breyer sought to remain in office in 2020 despite his age (82 at the time of the election) in order to prevent Trump, a Republican, from appointing his successor.

Kavanaugh was chosen by Trump in 2018 to replace justice Anthony Kennedy, who had originally been appointed by George H.W. Bush after Robert Bork lost his retention election in 1988. Kennedy had been able to remain on the court until 2026, but chose to retire, it is speculated, to allow Trump to appoint Kavanaugh, who had once clerked for Kennedy.

Despite being the second election in two years where an aged liberal justice sought another twelve year term, the campaign quickly became about Kavanaugh instead of Breyer. Following his appointment, several women came forward to allege that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted them while he was in high school or college. The newly-minted justice responded combatively and emotionally when questioned by members of the Senate during his retention hearing, shocking many onlookers with his breech of the court's traditional decorum.

With Breyer being the median justice at the time the campaign commenced, the election drew similar amounts of media coverage as the 2018 retention elections, which had seen nearly half the court, including Chief Justice John Roberts, up for election.

The campaign took on a new dimension when associate justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had won a third retention election in 2018 at the age of 85, died on September 18, 2020. President Trump appointed Amy Comey Barrett, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, to replace Ginsburg, shifting the balance overnight to favor the conservative wing of the court.

Breyer was retained with just over 56% of the vote, down nearly ten percent from the total he received in 2008. Kavanaugh was not retained, with 52.8% of voters voting against him remaining on the court.

Like the concurrent presidential election, the election's results were challenged by the Trump presidential campaign and their allies, falsely alleging widespread voter fraud and attempting to interfere with the counting of ballots in several presidential swing states where a majority of voters declined to retain Kavanaugh. Despite Kavanaugh himself declining to publicly speak on the results, the effort to keep Kavanaugh on the court by overturning the results was voiced by several participants in the U.S. Capitol attack of January 6, 2021 (and privately by Trump himself during phone calls with Republican state officials). Following the results' certification on the evening of January 6th, Kavanaugh was declared to have been removed from the court by Vice President Mike Pence (in his role as President of the Senate) and his seat vacated.

On January 28, 2021, newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden appointed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia Circuit to the seat vacated by Kavanaugh. The appointment of Jackson, the first African-American woman to sit on the Supreme Court, returned the relative balance of the court's wings back to where it was before Ginsburg's death, with Breyer again becoming the median justice.


The backstory here is that, in reaction to the Warren Court & Roe v. Wade, conservative activists decide to push for federal adoption of a retention election system based somewhat on the Missouri Plan, with justices serving 12-year terms. They finally succeed in getting the plan into the Constitution as the Twenty-Seventh Amendment in 1985, but all justices appointed prior to the amendment's ratification are grandfathered in, meaning elections don't start until Chief Justice Warren Burger announces his retirement in 1986.

The provisions of TTL's 27th Amendment:
  • Allow the president appoint any person who a panel (essentially the American Bar Association) deems "qualified" to the Supreme Court, with the justice being required to have a majority of voters support their retention at the next regularly-scheduled federal election after they have been on the court for at least twelve months.

  • To compensate for the removal of the Court from the Senate's ability to "advise and consent", all justices appointed under the amendment's provisions must attend retention hearings with the Senate within six months of the date of their retention election, and can be removed by a vote of 2/3 supermajority of the Senate (unlike regular impeachment, the process is solely within the Senate's purview).

  • Should a sitting justice decline to file for retention with the Senate by the end of the Supreme Court term preceding their scheduled election, the seat is declared vacant and the president is allowed to appoint a new justice.

  • Should a sitting justice lose retention or be removed by the Senate, their seat is declared vacant until January 21st of the next calendar year. The former justice becomes ineligible to be reappointed to the court for a period of six years from the date of their removal.

This whole scenario was inspired by this poll that showed Kavanaugh was the least liked and (after Ginsburg's death) most well-known justice in 2020.

The maps were created using uniform swings to the popular vote percentages for the Democrats (Breyer) and Republicans (Kavanaugh) in each state/territory* for the 2020 House election, run in separate contests (i.e.- the swings to the Democrats only applied in mapping out the results for Breyer's contest, and the swings to the Republican only during Kavanaugh's).
1988
  • William Rehnquist (replaced Burger, 1986) retained
  • Antonin Scalia (replaced Rehnquist, 1986) retained
  • Robert Bork (replaced Powell, 1987) rejected
1990
  • Anthony Kennedy (replaced Bork, 1989) retained
1992
  • David Souter (replaced Brennan, 1990) retained
  • Clarence Thomas (replaced Marshall, 1991) retained
1994
  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg (replaced White, 1993) retained
1996
  • Stephen Breyer (replaced Blackmun, 1994) retained
1998
  • none
2000
  • William Rehnquist retained
  • Antonin Scalia retained
2002
  • Anthony Kennedy retained
2004
  • David Souter retained
  • Clarence Thomas retained
2006
  • John Roberts (replaced Rehnquist, 2005) retained
  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg retained
  • Samuel Alito (replaced O'Connor, 2005) retained
2008
  • Stephen Breyer retained
2010
  • Sonia Sotomayor (replaced Souter, 2009) retained
2012
  • Antonin Scalia retained
  • Elena Kagan (replaced Stevens, 2010) retained
2014
  • Anthony Kennedy retained
2016
  • Clarence Thomas retained
2018
  • John Roberts retained
  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg retained
  • Samuel Alito retained
  • Merrick Garland (replaced Scalia, 2016) retained
2020
  • Stephen Breyer retained
  • Brett Kavanaugh (replaced Kennedy, 2018) rejected

Scheduled
2022

  • Sonia Sotomayor term expires
  • Amy Comey Barrett (replaced Ginsburg, 2020) term expires
  • Ketanji Brown Jackson (replaced Kavanaugh, 2021) term expires
2024
  • Elena Kagan term expires
2026
  • none scheduled
2028
  • Clarence Thomas term expires
2030
  • John Roberts term expires
  • Samuel Alito term expires
  • Merrick Garland term expires
2032
  • Stephen Breyer term expires
 
P8DpSCm.png
The 2020 Supreme Court retention elections took place on November 3, 2020 to determine whether to retain two of the nine justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Voters in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and five territories chose to retain Associate Justice Stephen Breyer for another 12 year term, but declined to retain Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who had been appointed by President Donald Trump in 2018, to a full term. This is only the second time a sitting Supreme Court justice has been removed since the implementation of the retention system.

Breyer was appointed in 1994 by President Bill Clinton to replace former justice Harry S. Blackmun. He was retained for a term of his own alongside Clinton's re-election in 1996, and similarly retained in 2008. One of the members of the court's liberal wing, Breyer sought to remain in office in 2020 despite his age (82 at the time of the election) in order to prevent Trump, a Republican, from appointing his successor.

Kavanaugh was chosen by Trump in 2018 to replace justice Anthony Kennedy, who had originally been appointed by George H.W. Bush after Robert Bork lost his retention election in 1988. Kennedy had been able to remain on the court until 2026, but chose to retire, it is speculated, to allow Trump to appoint Kavanaugh, who had once clerked for Kennedy.

Despite being the second election in two years where an aged liberal justice sought another twelve year term, the campaign quickly became about Kavanaugh instead of Breyer. Following his appointment, several women came forward to allege that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted them while he was in high school or college. The newly-minted justice responded combatively and emotionally when questioned by members of the Senate during his retention hearing, shocking many onlookers with his breech of the court's traditional decorum.

With Breyer being the median justice at the time the campaign commenced, the election drew similar amounts of media coverage as the 2018 retention elections, which had seen nearly half the court, including Chief Justice John Roberts, up for election.

The campaign took on a new dimension when associate justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had won a third retention election in 2018 at the age of 85, died on September 18, 2020. President Trump appointed Amy Comey Barrett, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, to replace Ginsburg, shifting the balance overnight to favor the conservative wing of the court.

Breyer was retained with just over 56% of the vote, down nearly ten percent from the total he received in 2008. Kavanaugh was not retained, with 52.8% of voters voting against him remaining on the court.

Like the concurrent presidential election, the election's results were challenged by the Trump presidential campaign and their allies, falsely alleging widespread voter fraud and attempting to interfere with the counting of ballots in several presidential swing states where a majority of voters declined to retain Kavanaugh. Despite Kavanaugh himself declining to publicly speak on the results, the effort to keep Kavanaugh on the court by overturning the results was voiced by several participants in the U.S. Capitol attack of January 6, 2021 (and privately by Trump himself during phone calls with Republican state officials). Following the results' certification on the evening of January 6th, Kavanaugh was declared to have been removed from the court by Vice President Mike Pence (in his role as President of the Senate) and his seat vacated.

On January 28, 2021, newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden appointed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia Circuit to the seat vacated by Kavanaugh. The appointment of Jackson, the first African-American woman to sit on the Supreme Court, returned the relative balance of the court's wings back to where it was before Ginsburg's death, with Breyer again becoming the median justice.


The backstory here is that, in reaction to the Warren Court & Roe v. Wade, conservative activists decide to push for federal adoption of a retention election system based somewhat on the Missouri Plan, with justices serving 12-year terms. They finally succeed in getting the plan into the Constitution as the Twenty-Seventh Amendment in 1985, but all justices appointed prior to the amendment's ratification are grandfathered in, meaning elections don't start until Chief Justice Warren Burger announces his retirement in 1986.

The provisions of TTL's 27th Amendment:
  • Allow the president appoint any person who a panel (essentially the American Bar Association) deems "qualified" to the Supreme Court, with the justice being required to have a majority of voters support their retention at the next regularly-scheduled federal election after they have been on the court for at least twelve months.

  • To compensate for the removal of the Court from the Senate's ability to "advise and consent", all justices appointed under the amendment's provisions must attend retention hearings with the Senate within six months of the date of their retention election, and can be removed by a vote of 2/3 supermajority of the Senate (unlike regular impeachment, the process is solely within the Senate's purview).

  • Should a sitting justice decline to file for retention with the Senate by the end of the Supreme Court term preceding their scheduled election, the seat is declared vacant and the president is allowed to appoint a new justice.

  • Should a sitting justice lose retention or be removed by the Senate, their seat is declared vacant until January 21st of the next calendar year. The former justice becomes ineligible to be reappointed to the court for a period of six years from the date of their removal.

This whole scenario was inspired by this poll that showed Kavanaugh was the least liked and (after Ginsburg's death) most well-known justice in 2020.

The maps were created using uniform swings to the popular vote percentages for the Democrats (Breyer) and Republicans (Kavanaugh) in each state/territory* for the 2020 House election, run in separate contests (i.e.- the swings to the Democrats only applied in mapping out the results for Breyer's contest, and the swings to the Republican only during Kavanaugh's).
1988
  • William Rehnquist (replaced Burger, 1986) retained
  • Antonin Scalia (replaced Rehnquist, 1986) retained
  • Robert Bork (replaced Powell, 1987) rejected
1990
  • Anthony Kennedy (replaced Bork, 1989) retained
1992
  • David Souter (replaced Brennan, 1990) retained
  • Clarence Thomas (replaced Marshall, 1991) retained
1994
  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg (replaced White, 1993) retained
1996
  • Stephen Breyer (replaced Blackmun, 1994) retained
1998
  • none
2000
  • William Rehnquist retained
  • Antonin Scalia retained
2002
  • Anthony Kennedy retained
2004
  • David Souter retained
  • Clarence Thomas retained
2006
  • John Roberts (replaced Rehnquist, 2005) retained
  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg retained
  • Samuel Alito (replaced O'Connor, 2005) retained
2008
  • Stephen Breyer retained
2010
  • Sonia Sotomayor (replaced Souter, 2009) retained
2012
  • Antonin Scalia retained
  • Elena Kagan (replaced Stevens, 2010) retained
2014
  • Anthony Kennedy retained
2016
  • Clarence Thomas retained
2018
  • John Roberts retained
  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg retained
  • Samuel Alito retained
  • Merrick Garland (replaced Scalia, 2016) retained
2020
  • Stephen Breyer retained
  • Brett Kavanaugh (replaced Kennedy, 2018) rejected

Scheduled
2022

  • Sonia Sotomayor term expires
  • Amy Comey Barrett (replaced Ginsburg, 2020) term expires
  • Ketanji Brown Jackson (replaced Kavanaugh, 2021) term expires
2024
  • Elena Kagan term expires
2026
  • none scheduled
2028
  • Clarence Thomas term expires
2030
  • John Roberts term expires
  • Samuel Alito term expires
  • Merrick Garland term expires
2032
  • Stephen Breyer term expires
😮 this is really cool
 
Stabbed In The Back, Vietnam-Style (1992 election)
VLtJead.png
The 1992 United States presidential election was the 52nd quadrennial presidential election, held on November 3, 1992. Incumbent President Bo Gritz of the Freedom Party defeated former President Gerald Ford, who ran as an independent, and Ralph Nader, who ran as the Alliance candidate. This was the last presidential election under the Second Constitution where non-Freedom candidates were permitted on the ballot, and the only such election held under Freedom Party rule. It is also the most recent election where a former president ran after leaving office.

The election was held four years after the Freedom Party came to power under Gritz, and two years after the 1990 congressional elections that had given the Freedom Party majorities in both chambers of Congress owing to pervasive voter fraud, intimidation by both police and government-backed militias (the Patriot Battalions), and a coordinated propaganda campaign.

Gritz was re-nominated unopposed, and rather than retain his Republican Vice President Bob Martinez, he chose his running mate from the 1988 campaign, retired US Navy vice admiral James Stockdale, to complete the Freedomite ticket.

For the election, the two major parties for the past 130 years, the Democrats and Republicans, united behind an independent pro-democracy ticket consisting of former President Gerald Ford (a Republican) and former Secretary of State Warren Christopher (a Democrat).

The left-wing Alliance initially nominated former congressman Ron Dellums of California and consumer advocate Ralph Nader, but Dellums was ruled ineligible to run after being arrested for sedition and conspiracy in August 1992, in what both international observers contemporaneously, and almost all historians retrospectively, viewed as a politically-motivated prosecution. Nader replaced him as the party's nominee and former District of Columbia delegate Walter Fauntroy was chosen as the party's vice presidential nominee. Dellums was eventually convicted in what has been widely described as a show trial, and was incarcerated until the fall of the Freedom Party in 2001.

Like the midterm elections two years previously, the election was marred by widespread voter fraud, intimidation and violence by both police and Patriot Battalions, and an intense propaganda campaign in favor of Gritz. With the Freedomite takeover of most state and local governments after 1990, the election also saw targeted disenfranchisement of voters with "suspect credentials", mostly immigrants, members of certain ethnic minority groups, and members of certain dissident or opposition groups.

The unfree and unfair election process resulted in Gritz winning a landslide victory over his opponents, being proclaimed the winner in 46 states. He became the third candidate to win over 500 electoral votes under the electoral college system used from 1788 to 2001, following Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1936) and Richard Nixon (1972). Ford won four states, among the last few states where Freedomite rule was not yet established. He became the first independent presidential candidate since George Washington to win a state's electoral votes, and the oldest person (at age 79) to receive an electoral vote. Nader won the District of Columbia, the only victory an opposition party won at the presidential level during the Gritz administration.

This was the last election before the repeal of the Twenty-Second Amendment in 1994, which abolished the two-term limitation on the presidency that had been in effect since 1951. Gritz would win the uncontested 1996 and 2000 elections, facing only write-ins in several states. Warren Christopher, Ford's running mate, would serve as President of the Provisional Government of the United States between the return of sovereignty from the United Nations and the ratification of the current Third Constitution.
 
Stabbed In The Back, Vietnam-Style (To Present)
Stabbed In The Back, Vietnam-Style (To Present)

Presidents of the United States (1969-2001)
1969-1973: Richard Nixon / Spiro Agnew (Republican)
1968: Hubert Humphrey/Edmund Muskie (Democratic), George Wallace/Curtis LeMay (American Independent)
1972: George McGovern/Sargent Shriver (Democratic)

1973: Richard Nixon (Republican) / (none)
1973-1974: Richard Nixon / Gerald Ford (Republican)
1974: Gerald Ford (Republican) / (none)
1974-1977: Gerald Ford / Nelson Rockefeller (Republican)
1977-1981: Frank Church / Elmo Zumwalt (Democratic)

1976: Ronald Reagan/Richard Schweiker (Republican)
1980: Elliot Richardson/Bob Dole (Republican), Bo Gritz/Pat Buchanan (Freedom)

1981: Elmo Zumwalt (Democratic) / (none)
1981-1989: Elmo Zumwalt / Lloyd Bentsen (Democratic)

1984: George Bush/Al Quie (Republican)
1989-1993: Bo Gritz (Freedom) / Bob Martinez (Republican)
1988: Bo Gritz/James Stockdale (Freedom) def. John Heinz/Bob Martinez (Republican), Lloyd Bentsen/Geraldine Ferraro (Democratic), Jesse Jackson/Frank Lautenberg (Alliance)
1993-2001: Bo Gritz / James Stockdale (Freedom)
1992: Gerald Ford/Warren Christopher (independent), Ralph Nader/Walter Fauntroy (Alliance)
1996: write-ins
2000: write-ins

2001: Bo Gritz (Freedom) / (none)
2001: Trent Lott (Freedom) / (none)


---------------------​

Following his re-election, Gritz takes the United States out of the United Nations and the far-right begins a reign of terror that ultimately destroys the United States. Domestically, the imprisonment of political opponents accelerates, while academia is purged. Civil and social rights are rolled back at breathtaking pace, and the country becomes militarized as military service becomes mandatory for young men 25 and under. Dissent is ruthlessly crushed and criticism drowned out by a pervasive propaganda network overseen by media czar Roger Ailes.

Internationally, the psychic scars of Vietnam loom too large for the nation's unquestioned leaders, and the United States begins an era of naked neo-imperialism, with a second consecutive generation of Americans sent into foreign jungles on seek-and-destroy missions. Only now, instead of saving Southeast Asia or Europe from communism, there is no fig-leaf to cover knocking off unfriendly governments in Venezuela or Nicaragua or using aircraft carriers for gunboat diplomacy in the Persian Gulf to insure a steady supply of oil.

The United States becomes a pariah state, even as it becomes clear there are plenty of opponents of the Gritz regime within the military and security state. The Cold War ends, and an anti-American alliance begins to form between Russia, the diminished former superpower, the United States' former allies in the United Kingdom and France, and the strongest nations from the developing world, such as India and China. Repeated aggression by the United States tests the new alliance's resolve, until Gritz attempts to bully Canada back into line with an attack on Ottawa by barely-disguised Patriot Battalion members.

The Second American Civil War (or the American War outside the United States) from 1999 to 2001 begins as a result, with several battalions openly crossing the border into Canada to help defend against US forces. The Freedom Party's militarization has resulted in the United States having unequivocally the largest and strongest military in human history. But it is grossly overextended by the time the war begins, and its ranks bolstered by resentful and unmotivated conscripts. The United Nations agrees to aid Canada, and many American veterans, resistance members and stateside military units join the United Nations Command.

The trickle of desertions picks up pace as UN forces take Hawaii and begin to liberate urban coastal centers on the mainland. It becomes a torrent once the first special correctional centers (SCCs) are liberated in spring 2001 and the crimes of the Freedom Party government revealed. Factories churning out consumer and military goods at the hands of malnourished prisoners. The eyewitness accounts of widespread torture, neglect, and rape. The mass graves of prisoners who were either summarily executed upon arrival or who died as a result of the horrible conditions. It doesn't take long before it becomes clear that an overwhelming percentage of the dead or nearly-dead are ethnic and racial minorities, Jews, LGBT people, political prisoners or women who had an abortion.

Faced with a military that is rapidly disintegrating, the government flees to the Raven Rock Mountain Complex in late summer 2001. Faced with what they believe is annihilation at the hands of a vengeful New World Order, the hardline Freedomite remaining draw up plans to launch the nation's nuclear missiles in a final Ragnarok that would take the world down alongside the United States.

But nothing happens. Whether it is because of the incredible stress the war has put upon him pushing him past his breaking point, or the fact that First Lady Claudia Gritz left Raven Rock and her husband upon learning of the plans, Gritz never gives the order. Instead, on September 20, 2001, he shoots himself in the head with his Army sidearm, dying instantly.

At the time of Gritz's death, the vice presidency was vacant owing to the death of Vice President Stockdale (who had been effectively incapacitated for years) from Alzheimer's disease only a few weeks earlier. Accordingly, Gritz is succeeded by Speaker of the House of Representatives Trent Lott. Lott, seeing the writing on the wall, ignores entreaties of the paranoid fanatics who want the nuclear strike and agrees to a ceasefire with UN forces. The ceasefire becomes a surrender once Lott is informed of the complete disintegration of Freedom Party control in most of the country. The United Nations Transitional Authority for the United States (UNTAFUS) formally takes control of the former United States on October 1, 2001, ending the Second Constitutional Period.

---------------------​

Chief Administrator of the United Nations Transitional Authority (2001-2002)
2001-2002
: Shashi Tharoor (UNTAFUS--United Nations Transitional Authority For the United States)

President of the Provisional Government of the United States (2002-2003)
2002-2003: Warren Christopher (nonpartisan) (acting)

Presidents of the United States (2003-present)
2003-2011: Richard Lugar / Paul O'Neill (National)

2003 (1st round): Jesse Jackson/Martin Olav Sabo (Alliance), Al Gore Jr./Niki Tsongas (New Democratic), Doug La Follette/Winona LaDuke (United Greens)
2003 (2nd round): Jesse Jackson/Martin Olav Sabo (Alliance)
2007: Dennis Kucinich/Jim Hightower (Alliance), Harold Ford/John Breaux (New Democratic)

2011-2015: Paul O'Neill / Bill Owens (National)
2011: Bernie Sanders/Rocky Anderson (Alliance), Evan Bayh/Andrew Cuomo (New Democratic), Howie Hawkins/Pat LaMarche (United Greens)
2015-2019: Jon Huntsman Jr. / Robert Zoellick (National)
2015 (1st round): Bernie Sanders/Cecile Richards (Alliance) , Donald Trump/Ben Carson (independent), Joe Manchin/Henry Cuellar (New Democratic),, Cam Gordon/Constance N. Johnson(United Greens)
2015 (2nd round): Bernie Sanders/Cecile Richards (Alliance)

2019-0000: Bill de Blasio / Keith Ellison (Alliance)
2019 (1st round): Jon Huntsman Jr./Robert Zoellick (National), Krysten Sinema/David Archambault II (United Greens), Tulsi Gabbard/Mick Mulvaney (Reform America), Andy Beshear/Stephanie Dang (New Democratic)
2019 (2nd round): Jon Huntsman Jr./Robert Zoellick (National)


---------------------
The United Nations' administration of the United States is, by design, brief. Largely, UNTAFUS exists to give the anti-Freedom resistance and defectors a chance to re-establish enough state and local governments to plausibly be able to claim administrative authority over the former United States, as well as to continue military operations to crush the last remnants of Patriot resistance in what the dead-enders call their "redoubts".

The provisional government is perhaps rushed into creation when the thorny question of the United States' nuclear arsenal is raised by at the UN General Assembly (now reconvened in New York). Christopher is chosen to lead the government while the Second Constitutional Convention begins to craft a new constitution for the United States. Unwilling to make waves owing to the fragility of the provisional government, Christopher defers questions over the nuclear stockpile, the debts incurred by the Gritz administration, reparations for victims of the Freedomite regime, and other questions. He makes it clear he will retire when the new constitution goes into effect, and presides ably over the reunification of most of the country by the time the new Constitution comes into effect on December 1, 2003.

The Third Constitution seeks to prevent another Gritz from coming to power. Like other national constitutions written in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it lays out the human, social and civil rights granted to American citizens, while entrenching the country's democratic system of government and the human rights that were crushed under the Freedomite bootheel. Several powers and prerogatives accumulated by presidents from Washington to Zumwalt are given instead to the reformed Congress as a whole, which is now restructured so that the House of Representatives and one-half of the Senate is elected every four years. The presidency survives, but a strict two-term limit is entrenched and the Electoral College abolished in favor of a popular vote system that requires a run-off if no candidate receives at least 40% of the vote.

The destruction of the Democratic and Republican parties during the Gritz years, and the outlawing of the Freedom Party following the end of the war creates a brand new party system, with only the pre-war Alliance surviving as a result of several of its leaders surviving repression and the war. The National Party emerges as the main successor to the pre-Gritz major parties, although other new parties arise to poach members from both the Nationals and Alliance.

Former senator Richard Lugar becomes the standard-bearer for the Nationals, with his foreign policy expertise and status as one of the last "Old Republicans" left standing after Gritz and the war. He is barely kept from a first-round victory, but easily defeats Jesse Jackson in the first presidential runoff to become the 43rd President of the United States, and the first one under the Third Constitution.

Lugar's presidency is the most consequential of any president since Gritz: he greatly reduces the United States' military presence abroad, begins the long-term disassembly and destruction of 90% of the American nuclear arsenal, and the creation of the Reconstruction Authority that works to rebuild both the United States and fund and build infrastructure projects in the nations the United States government attacked after Gritz took power. His apology to the United Nations and successful return to the world body less than a decade after American troops were shooting soldiers waving the UN banner is seen as the biggest foreign policy triumph by an American administration since Nixon's visit to China. His popularity is such that he becomes the first (and so far only) president to win an election in one round since the adoption of the popular vote system in 2007.

However, Lugar's response to the crimes of the Gritz years draws some criticism. Despite endorsing the trials of surviving Freedomite leaders (including Lott) at The Hague and the government ostentatiously working to accommodate requests from the newly-created International Criminal Court to both provide evidence and help capture suspected war criminals and human rights abusers from the Gritz years, Lugar repeatedly lobbies Truth and Reconciliation Committee to be more liberal with granting amnesty to alleged human rights abusers. His willingness to rehire Gritz administration veterans with technical experience, much moreso than any of his successors, also alarms some at home and abroad.

Nevertheless, Lugar leaves office with high approval ratings, and hands off power to his preferred successor, his vice president Paul O'Neill. O'Neill is a technocrat whose economic advise is widely seen as responsible for the post-war economic boom as the country rebuilds itself. Unlike Lugar, whose experience as a legislator and cross-partisan respect allowed him to influence the creation of legislation and crafting of policy, O'Neill proves unable to be effective on the same scale in the legislature-dominated policy arena. Clumsy attempts to persuade Congress to move in his direction backfire, with legislators in the post-Gritz era (perhaps rightly) reacting hostilely to any attempts at what they perceive as the executive attempting to displace them as the main policymaker. As a result, O'Neill becomes a managerial president, largely focusing on restoring America's economic links to nations still wary of it. He announces he will not seek re-election, citing his age (he turns 80 mere days after leaving office).

Jon Huntsman Jr. is seen as a breath of fresh air when he takes office in December 2015. Helped by his comparative youth (at 55, he was nearly two decades younger than his Alliance opponent Bernie Sanders), voters seem to believe that his election marks a break from the increasingly elderly generation of pre-Gritz politicians who remained active into the second decade of the Third Constitution. However, the sheen begins to come off Huntsman as his term goes on: the economy slows after nearly two straight decades of growth, and the scale of Huntsman and his family's involvement with the Freedom Party, either directly or indirectly through the Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) church becomes known during his presidency. His government's response to the waves of strikes and protest in the final year of his term alienates many voters, and only adds to the fatigue voters have begun to have with the Nationals.

When his term is up in 2019, Huntsman becomes the first president since Gerald Ford, and the first elected president since Herbert Hoover, to lose his bid for re-election. He leaves office, but restores an important tradition of the peaceful transfer of power between presidents of different parties, the first time it has happened in three decades.

Bill de Blasio is the first president in United States history to be a self-identified socialist. The nation's 46th president was born Warren Wilhelm Jr., and adopted his current name in exile shortly after fleeing New York in the early Gritz era, having been a left-wing organizer and open democratic socialist. Unlike the previous Alliance nominees, de Blasio had not been an active politician before the rise of the Freedom Party, and rose through the ranks gradually until he was governor of New York during his defeat of Huntsman.

Even if he does not win a second term in 2023, de Blasio has already made an impact in Americans' lives: under his leadership, the Alliance permanently extended Medicare to cover every American, replacement of fossil fuel power plants with ones fueled by renewable energy has been greatly accelerated, and several pension funds (for the spouses and children of soldiers killed in the Second Civil War, victims of Freedomite human rights abuses, public sector workers unjustly purged by the Gritz regime, etc.) that have been arguably underfunded for years have now been replenished and paying out much higher benefits to recipients.

These reforms, and many more the de Blasio administration has carried out, have not gone uncontested even within his own (fractious) party. Defections and special election defeats have left the president with an incredibly small majority in Congress with which to work. In this new political era, the specter of a divided government looms large in the United States as the country heads towards 2023...
 
Last edited:
Back
Top