re: Individual State Election Odds via 5dimes

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Funny since 2015 study showed that riots made electorate more conservative, but lines are moving opposite that.

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I think that interpretation of that study has a major confounder in that it's hard to determine whether the voting changes in 1968 was a result of changes in political ideology or a result of changes in views of the president/party who was in power at the time of the riot as it reflects more poorly (right or wrong) on the leadership at that time.

In other words, the study does support the idea that Nixon got more votes as a result of the riots, but it's hard to determine whether that was because people's ideological views changed and became more congruent with Nixon's and the GOP platform OR if people viewed that as a leadership failure of those who were in power at the time.

Just like the leader/party in power gets blame when there is economic unrest/problems, whether they deserve it or not (usually most of it is outside any individual's control), I would think that civil unrest would be viewed similarly. Add a pandemic and economic recession on top of that, and even though they were probably all inevitable regardless of who was in power, those in power are more at risk for blame (although I think the federal government does deserve blame for its response to the pandemic, particularly the FDA and CDC botching the testing and recommendations).