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Thursday, 5 November 2020

Why Georgia was so competitive for Democrats this year

Fulton County Elections Director Richard Barron speaks to reporters about the ballot count in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 4. | Brynn Anderson/AP

How Georgia became a swing state in 2020.

Georgia could be on track to vote for its first Democratic presidential candidate since 1992. With about 98 percent of the vote counted Thursday, former Vice President Joe Biden is only about 0.07 percentage points behind President Donald Trump — and the remaining ballots are expected to favor the Democrat.

It’s striking that this traditionally conservative state appears poised to elect Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris, but the result is also notable given the state will be the site of two competitive runoff elections — featuring Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock — that could decide which party controls the US Senate.

It’s also a result that defies conventional wisdom.

About a month ago, I talked to Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who predicted that even with the rapid demographic change taking place in reliably Republican-leaning Sun Belt states, it would take at least one more political cycle to turn Texas and Georgia into true swing states.

Ayres’s prediction turned out to be true for Texas, where Republicans had a good night on Tuesday. But it seems there could be a surprising result in Georgia.

Supporters of President Trump demonstrate outside the State Farm Arena, where Fulton County has its vote-counting operation, on November 5.

Democratic and Republican representatives review absentee ballots at the Fulton County Election preparation Center in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 4.

A traditionally Republican Southern state, Georgia has been growing more competitive for Democrats year after year, buoyed by the growing Atlanta metro area. Just 5 percentage points — or about 211,000 votes — separated Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the 2016 election. In 2018, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams came within less than 55,000 votes of winning the governor’s mansion.

There’s a simple explanation, according to University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock, a Georgia politics expert: In Georgia, there are conservative rural voters and there more diverse Democratic urban and suburban voters, who are becoming more reliably Democratic with time.

“Urban areas are growing, and as they grow, Democrats inch closer and closer to getting 50 percent,” Bullock said.

The political influence of Atlanta’s suburbs, explained

The pockets of blue visible below on Georgia’s 2020 electoral map are around its major cities of Atlanta, Savannah, Columbus, and Augusta. But political observers say there’s no question Atlanta wields the most political power.

There are 10 suburban counties in the metro Atlanta area that are all blue.

A map of Georgia divided by county; most of the counties are shaded red, but there are four clusters of blue in the counties surrounding Atlanta, Savannah, Columbus, and Augusta.

Some of these counties are where much of the outstanding vote in 2020 is concentrated; they’re a large part of the reason Biden is doing so well, and why Senate Democratic candidates also had relatively good nights in Georgia.

“Counties and suburbs of Atlanta are moving at light speed away from Republicans,” said Cook Political Report Senate editor Jessica Taylor, who rated both Georgia races as toss-ups. “Trump has accelerated a more natural evolution, but that has made it hard.”

Atlanta’s diversifying suburbs were already worrisome for Republicans before 2020, but they appear to be the epicenter of Democratic strength this year. The GOP is also watching as existing trends are being hastened by a combination of white suburban voters moving away from Trump and increased turnout among Black voters.

The metro Atlanta area is booming, and a lot of people moving there are young and diverse. Increasingly, they’re voting Democratic.

Analysis of the Black youth vote from Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement found that 90 percent of Black voters ages 18 to 29 cast ballots for Biden in Georgia, compared to just 33 percent of young white voters in that state. The center also found that Biden did significantly better in Georgia counties with a higher concentration of young Black voters.

Between 2010 and 2019, the area’s population shot up from about 5.3 million people to over 6 million, according to data from the US Census, reported by Curbed. That growth put the Atlanta metro area fourth in growth nationwide, behind Houston and Dallas, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona (Senate seats in Texas and Arizona were also considered Democratic targets this year).

Rev. Raphael Warnock, Democratic candidate for Georgia Senate, and Stacey Abrams campaign on November 3. Abrams’s group Fair Fight and other voting rights groups have been putting a lot of effort into registering Black voters at high rates this year.

“Every area in metro Atlanta is growing,” state Rep. Angelika Kausche, a Democrat, recently told Vox. “People come here for the education, for the schools, for the quality of life.” That has brought legions of diverse, younger voters to Atlanta’s metro area. As the New York Times recently reported, “white residents now make up fewer than three in five voters in Georgia.”

Abrams’s group Fair Fight and other voting rights groups like the New Georgia Project have been putting a ton of effort into registering and turning out Black voters at high rates this year. And those efforts have been successful. The state has already hit record registration levels, with about 7.6 million voters registered. And since early voting started, more than 2.7 million voters have cast ballots — at least 1 million of whom were Black.

Those results are a reminder, as Abrams told Vox in a recent email interview, that “Georgia has by far the largest percentage of Black voters of any battleground state.”

“We’re going to have record turnout,” Abrams told Vox. “There is tremendous enthusiasm, particularly on the Democratic side, and Black voters and voters of color writ large have been hit hard by the pandemic and economic crises that Donald Trump has so badly mishandled.”

Georgia will take center stage in national politics for the next few months

All eyes — and fundraising dollars — are about to shift to Georgia for the next two months.

It’s now increasingly likely that both of Georgia’s Senate races will go to a runoff election, set for January 5, 2021. With votes still to be counted in Georgia, particularly in the Democratic-leaning Atlanta suburbs, it Republican Sen. David Perdue has not hit the 50 percent threshold he needed to avoid a runoff race with Democrat Jon Ossoff.

The prolonged Ossoff/Perdue matchup will be runoff No. 2 for Georgia voters. Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock are also headed to a runoff in the special election for a Senate seat vacated in 2019 by retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson. That special election initially featured 20 candidates in an all-party “jungle primary,” and with the vote set to be split between so many candidates, it was all but guaranteed it would go to a runoff.

Sen. Kelly Loeffler, Rev. Raphael Warnock, Sen. David Perdue, and Jon Ossoff.

The runoffs are a direct result of population growth — particularly amid the influx to the Atlanta suburbs, political observers in Georgia have been watching elections get closer and closer. The 2018 governor’s race, for example, was a scare for Georgia Republicans. And Georgia provided congressional Democrats some good news during an otherwise dismal night; House Democrats appear to be on track to flip the state’s Seventh Congressional District, and the potential runoffs are the only ray of hope Senate Democrats have left to win back a majority.

That said, the Senate runoffs could become difficult for Democrats: The party’s strategy in Southern states like Georgia has generally involved harnessing the large voter turnout that typically accompanies presidential elections. It could be hard for the candidates to muster the same level of enthusiasm for these runoff elections, a difficulty that has often given Republicans the edge in past years.

“We haven’t had many general election runoffs. The one constant has been Republicans won all of them,” Bullock told Vox. “Republicans have done a better job of getting their voters back to the polls.”

But, he added: “There being two high-profile runoffs this year may help Democrats get their voters out.”

from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/21551547/georgia-competitive-democrats-biden-2020
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The future of the Senate majority could hinge on two Georgia runoffs

Sen. Kelly Loeffler, Rev. Raphael Warnock, Sen. David Perdue and Jon Ossoff. | Justin Sullivan; Jessica McGowan; Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call; Paras Griffin via Getty Images

It will take about two more months to know which party controls the Senate.

The battle for control of the US Senate could come down to Georgia.

Both of Georgia’s Senate races will go to a runoff election to be held on January 5, 2021. With a small number of votes still to be counted in Georgia, particularly in the Democratic-leaning Atlanta suburbs, Republican Sen. David Perdue did not hit the 50 percent threshold he needed to avoid a runoff race with Democrat Jon Ossoff.

As of 7 pm ET on November 5, Perdue was sitting at 49.89 percent, compared to 47.80 percent for Ossoff, according to Decision Desk.

That’s runoff No. 2 for Georgia voters. That result has already been determined for the race between Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock in the special election for a Senate seat vacated in 2019 by retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson. That special election initially featured 20 candidates in an all-party “jungle primary,” so a runoff was all but guaranteed.

Sen. Kelly Loeffler speaks to her supporters in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 3.

Rev. Raphael Warnock arrives at his campaign’s election night event in Atlanta on November 3.

At first glance, this might be a surprise for national political observers. Georgia has a long history of being conservative. Even though it has elected statewide Democrats more recently than some of its Southern peers, they were often conservative white Democratic men.

But Georgia has the potential to flip for former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris, and now they have a shot at not one but two Democrats making competitive runs for the Senate.

“Democrats are going to be very excited in Georgia but also nationally,” University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock told Vox. “Ossoff and Warnock, any kind of resource or help they need, they’re going to get.”

Senate Democrats are still a few seats short of a Senate majority, but the fact that both Senate races in Georgia will go to a runoff means the battle for control of the Senate is not over just yet.

All eyes — and all fundraising dollars — are about to shift to Georgia for the next two months.

Why Georgia is so competitive this year

A traditionally Republican Southern state, Georgia has become more competitive for Democrats year after year.

“Counties and suburbs of Atlanta are moving at light speed away from Republicans,” said Cook Political Report Senate editor Jessica Taylor, who rates both Georgia races as toss-ups. “Trump has accelerated a more natural evolution, but that has made it hard.”

The metro Atlanta area is booming, and a lot of people moving there are young and diverse. Increasingly, they’re voting Democratic.

Between 2010 and 2019, the area’s population grew from about 5.3 million people to more than 6 million, according to data from the US Census Bureau, reported by Curbed. That growth put the Atlanta metro area fourth in growth nationwide, behind Houston, Dallas, and Phoenix (Senate seats in Texas and Arizona were also considered Democratic targets this year).

As the New York Times recently reported, “white residents now make up fewer than three in five voters in Georgia, and a wave of migration to the Atlanta area over the past decade has added roughly three quarters of a million people to the state’s major Democratic stronghold.”

Amid the influx to the Atlanta suburbs, political observers in Georgia have been watching elections get closer and closer. In the 2018 governor’s race, Democrat Stacey Abrams lost to then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp by a little more than 50,000 votes — a scare for Georgia Republicans. Still, Perdue’s campaign believes the Republican’s ability to draw more votes will boost him in the runoff.

“Perdue will finish this election in first place with substantially more votes than his Democrat opponent,” Perdue campaign manager Ben Fry said. “Currently, Perdue’s lead is double the margin of defeat that Stacey Abrams faced for governor just two years ago.”

Sen. David Perdue speaks to supporters in Atlanta on November 2.

Jon Ossoff waves to supporters on November 3 in Atlanta.

The runoff could prove difficult for Democrats to win; the party’s strategy in Southern states like Georgia involved harnessing the large voter turnout that typically accompanies presidential elections. It could be hard for the candidates to muster the same level of enthusiasm for these runoff elections, which has often given Republicans the edge in past years.

“We haven’t had many general runoffs. The one constant has been Republicans won all of them,” Bullock told Vox. “Republicans have done a better job of getting their voters back to the polls.”

But, he added, “There being two high-profile runoffs, this may help Democrats get their voters out.”

Abrams’s group Fair Fight and other voting rights groups like the New Georgia Project have been putting a ton of effort into registering and turning out Black voters at high rates this year. The state has already hit record registration levels, with about 7.6 million voters registered. And since early voting started, more than 2.7 million voters have cast ballots — at least 1 million of whom were Black.

“Georgia has by far the largest percentage of Black voters of any battleground state,” Abrams told Vox in a recent email interview.

Where the battle for control of the Senate stands

Georgia represents the narrowest of paths for Democrats to flip the Senate, and it could still be a tricky feat to pull off.

The North Carolina Senate race between Republican Sen. Thom Tillis and his Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham has also not been called and likely won’t be before November 12, which is the final date for mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received in that state. Votes are also still being counted in the Republican-leaning state of Alaska, which also has a contested Senate race (albeit one that Republicans are favored to win).

Democrats needed a net gain of three seats to flip the Senate to blue if Biden wins, which is looking more likely. The race for the Senate came down to 10 or so competitive races, but Republican incumbents won the vast majority of them.

As expected, Democrats lost Sen. Doug Jones’s seat in Alabama and flipped a Republican seat in Colorado. Democrats hung on to vulnerable incumbent Gary Peters’s seat in Michigan and are expected to flip another seat in Arizona, although Vox’s partner Decision Desk hasn’t yet called that race. Longtime Maine Sen. Susan Collins (R) won her race for reelection, a major blow to Democrats’ hopes of flipping the majority.

Georgia represents the narrowest of paths for Democrats to flip the Senate; it could be a very tricky feat to pull off.

Democrats can afford to lose North Carolina only if they flip both Georgia seats. But it’s worth repeating just how tough this could be. Throughout the year, Democrats saw North Carolina as more competitive for them than Georgia. Even though Perdue hasn’t avoided a runoff, he has more votes than Ossoff. And runoff elections historically have been worse for Democrats because turnout will likely be lower than a high-turnout presidential election.

“If overtime is required when all of the votes have been counted, we’re ready, and we will win,” Perdue campaign manager Fry said in a statement.

Ossoff’s campaign also released a defiant statement on Thursday.

“The votes are still being counted, but we are confident that Jon Ossoff’s historic performance in Georgia has forced Senator David Perdue to continue defending his indefensible record of unemployment, disease, and corruption,” Ossoff campaign manager Ellen Foster said.

The race in Georgia isn’t over yet.

from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/2020/11/5/21550870/democrats-senate-majority-two-georgia-runoffs
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What the remaining swing states would look like as a TV show

Protests Continue In Philadelphia As Pennsylvania Counts Votes

Someone in an Elmo costume attends a Count Every Vote protest on November 5 in Philadelphia. | Chris McGrath/Getty Images

If we have writers, election 2020 is a pretty wild season finale.

As I write this, there are six states left to be called by most major news organizations. Of those six, four — Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania — have sucked up the lion’s share of attention. (Fox News and the Associated Press have called Arizona for Joe Biden.)

I don’t know anything more about politics than what MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki tells me to know (so dreamy!), but I do know a lot about television, and I know that when you have four separate storylines in a prestige drama, they inevitably get sorted in order of importance by the showrunner.

Obligatory note that, yes, “God, 2020’s writers are off the chain!” is kind of a tired meme at this point, but let’s beat that particular drum one more time, this time with story structure.

So, what if the 2020 presidential election is a prestige drama? What if the showrunner is, like, some woman in a parallel timeline who doesn’t realize she’s literally creating our reality right now? What would she select as the A-story (a.k.a. the biggest, most pivotal storyline of them all — think Game of Thrones’ Red Wedding)? What would she think had the highest potential for character stakes (basically every Arya storyline on Game of Thrones) and insert into the B-story slot?

What would be her C-story, wherein she could go absolutely buck wild in upending expectations (as with, say, Daenerys using her dragons to burn people on Game of Thrones … IF YOU’RE SENSING A THEME, YOU’RE RIGHT)? What would she deem less important, making it the D-story (think of, like, Bran wandering around in any given season)?

Here’s how she might weigh the current top storylines of the 2020 election.

Pennsylvania: The A-story with the most drama

As the remaining state with the most electoral votes (20), Pennsylvania has been the focus of much drama over the past several days. Most TV news networks have sent one of their top reporters to the state, and growing protest efforts by supporters of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are pushing to, respectively, stop counting the votes and keep counting the votes.

It’s not hard to imagine what’s happening in Pennsylvania as, like, the storyline in the season finale of election 2020, which would probably follow a couple of beleaguered operatives behind the scenes as they work to make sure their boss claims every advantage he can in the coming battle for the nation. If I were running this show, they would kiss at some point, but let’s be honest — they’re too busy for kissing.

But maybe the main character is wild-eyed Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty, standing alone against the political operatives about to overwhelm his city. “Count the votes!” he howls. (Okay, he doesn’t say that, because Gritty can’t talk, but he’s definitely involved in this storyline somehow.)

Here are some other things I know about Pennsylvania that we can work into this storyline: cheesesteaks, the Liberty Bell, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Phillie Phanatic, the “Iggles” (another name for the Eagles, for some reason — go birds!), water ice, “this jawn over here,” “yinz,” the Rocky statue, the state capital of Harrisburg, Penn State, Sheetz versus Wawa, and Punxsutawney Phil.

Arizona: The B-story where things peaked too early

The real excitement out of Arizona came when Fox News and the Associated Press called the state in Biden’s favor well before any other news organization. (Indeed, most news organizations still haven’t called Arizona at all.) But the Fox News call happened Tuesday night, and the state has mostly followed a predictable pattern ever since: Results dribble in every so often, some show Trump making up some ground but probably not enough, and others show Biden holding steady.

On Wednesday night, the count in pivotal Maricopa County was briefly suspended when pro-Trump protestors — some of whom brandished firearms — gathered outside of the elections center demanding to be given access to the room where the votes were being counted. The situation was an incredibly scary one that I don’t want to minimize in the slightest by joking about it as a plotline on TV show; that it seems to have ultimately been resolved safely is a good thing.

Otherwise, Arizona continues to trudge along, with the foremost non-electoral stakes now being that someone on the Fox News decision desk will either be vindicated by a Biden win or humiliated by a Trump win. When that happens, the show would cut to that character, and you’d be like, “Oh, yeah, that person. I forgot about them.”

Georgia: The C-story that constantly flirts with being the A-story

Georgia is where the writers just went wild. Traditionally a Republican state (it’s gone for a Democrat only once — in 1992 — since Jimmy Carter, the former governor, headed up the ticket in 1976 and 1980), Georgia is one of several states Democrats thought they could turn into a new battleground in 2020. But where the party’s hopes in states like Texas mostly fizzled out, they’ve turned out to bear fruit in Georgia, where the margin has become agonizingly close with less than 100,000 ballots left to count.

Considering how much of a nail-biter this C-story is, don’t be surprised if it abruptly becomes the A-story without much prelude, which could happen if everything comes down to a handful of ballots in Georgia, a thing that remains unlikely but is still theoretically possible. (The main character here is obvious: Stacey Abrams, who spearheaded Democrats’ efforts in the state. I’ve been trying not to use real people in this article, but Abrams loves television and would, I hope, be pleased by being a much-loved fictional character in an alternate universe.)

Nevada: The D-story that drops in every so often with little rhyme or reason

I occasionally forget that votes are still being counted in Nevada, because the count is going so slowly and because the remaining ballots are mostly in Clark County — home of Las Vegas, where Joe Biden is heavily favored — so there’s less potential for drama in Nevada compared to the three states above.

But as a D-story, Nevada gets to be absolutely wild sometimes. Look at this guy.

NEW: A conspiracy theorist wearing a t-shirt that says "BBQ, Beer, Freedom" interrupts a press conference by the Clark County, Nevada Registrar of Voters. [KSNV-TV] #Election2020 pic.twitter.com/Rz2FgK38vZ
— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) November 4, 2020

I don’t get to chuckle politely about this because I live in our reality, and that man is emblematic of a right-wing media apparatus that is too often built atop lies and obfuscation, something I find absolutely terrifying. But if I lived in a different universe where everything was great, and I was just watching this election unfold on a prestige drama, I would be, like, “Heh. That’s Nevada for you!”

Bonus round: Did you know there are two other states left to call?

Technically, North Carolina and Alaska haven’t been called yet either. Trump seems likely to win both (though the count in North Carolina is very close), but let’s presume they’re our E- and F-stories. (Think of everything Samwell Tarly and Gilly got up to on — you guessed it — Game of Thrones.)

North Carolina is the E-story where the writers just stopped really trying: In a world where more states had been called, the slow count in North Carolina would have been filled with drama, but it just can’t compete. Yet don’t be surprised if it sneaks up the ranks and becomes the D-story in the event of, say, Arizona or Nevada being called soon.

Alaska is the F-story meant for comic relief: Alaska hasn’t been called because mail-in ballots have yet to be counted. (Alaska is such a big state! It has so many square miles in it! Good luck to the US Post Office!) If it goes for Joe Biden, that would be hugely unprecedented. Alaska has voted for a Democrat exactly once since it became a state. (That would be Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.) Anyway, if Alaska is a storyline, it’s the one where you keep cutting to the comic-relief character who has been sent to monitor the vote counting and keeps complaining about how bored they are. There’s probably a moose, because when people think “Alaska,” they think, “Moose, right? There are moose there?” and TV never met a cliché it couldn’t play into. (Sorry to Alaska, a beautiful, diverse state that has so much more than moose but does — yes, you have to admit it — have moose.)

from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/2020/11/5/21551595/swing-states-election-2020-tv-show-writers
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Why you should update your iPhone right now. And no, it's not just for the emoji.

With everyone's mind currently elsewhere, it'd be easy to overlook the little prompt on your iPhone telling you it's time to update. That would be a mistake.

On Nov. 5, Apple introduced the latest series of updates to iOS. And included along with the 117 new emoji are some very important security patches. Specifically, the fixes included in iOS 14.2 address real security vulnerabilities being actively exploited right now. That means someone is currently using them against iPhone owners.

We know this because Ben Hawkes, the technical lead of Google's Project Zero bug hunting group, was kind enough to let the world know. Read more...

More about Apple, Iphone, Tech, and Cybersecurity

from Mashable https://mashable.com/article/apple-iphone-ios-security-update/
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Trump Defends Lawsuits: “No One Knows More About Fraud Than Me”

“People forget that, right when I became President, I settled a twenty-five-million-dollar fraud case against me,” he said. “You can’t beat experience like that.”

from Everything https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-defends-lawsuits-no-one-knows-more-about-fraud-than-me
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New top story on Hacker News: Travis CI's new pricing plan threw a wrench in my open source works

Travis CI's new pricing plan threw a wrench in my open source works
5 by geerlingguy | 0 comments on Hacker News.

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New top story on Hacker News: Rebuilding from scratch after a cease and desist

Rebuilding from scratch after a cease and desist
3 by khuknows | 0 comments on Hacker News.

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David Perdue and Jon Ossoff advance to Georgia Senate runoff

David Perdue, left, and Jon Ossoff are headed to a Senate runoff. | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images; Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Georgia now has two Senate runoffs that will be decided in January.

Republican Sen. David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff are headed to a Georgia Senate race runoff after both candidates failed to clear the state’s 50 percent vote threshold to win outright.

Georgia now has two Senate runoffs, both to be decided on January 5, 2021. Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler will face Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock in the runoff for Georgia’s special election Senate race.

These runoffs underscore just how competitive the traditionally Republican state of Georgia has become for both parties.

The races also represent one of Senate Democrats’ last remaining paths to securing a Senate majority. Democrats had a disappointing result for congressional races during the general election, losing some seats in the House, as well as key Senate races including Maine. The result in the North Carolina Senate race has not yet been called, as election officials there are counting ballots, potentially into next week.

The runoff could become difficult for Democrats; the party’s strategy involved harnessing the large voter turnout that typically accompanies presidential elections. It could be hard for the candidates to muster the same level of enthusiasm for these runoff elections — which has often given Republicans the edge in past years.

Perdue, the millionaire former CEO of Reebok and Dollar General, entered the cycle viewed as one of the safer GOP senators up for reelection. The race tightened in large part due to President Donald Trump’s lagging poll numbers and Georgia’s diversifying electorate. Georgia’s Black vote was higher than in 2016, and Democratic strength came from the booming Atlanta suburbs.

Democrats primarily tried to cast Perdue as an out-of-touch elitist who had failed over his term to stay connected to regular voters. The Ossoff campaign centered anti-corruption reforms — including a ban on stock trading by lobbyists — as the candidate’s top priority.

Both Perdue and Loeffler have taken heat for stock trades made after they received classified briefings on the Covid-19 pandemic while they were in office. Both have denied the allegations of wrongdoing, and say that the trades were made by outside advisers, without their knowledge.

“The necessity of anti-corruption reforms also cuts through the partisan divide because everyone recognizes the political system is corrupt,” Ossoff said in a Vox interview. “Everyone recognizes that it’s a systemic issue more than it’s a partisan issue.”

Democrats had good reason to invest in Georgia. Perdue broadcast his concerns about his race on an off-the-record April call obtained by CNN. On it, the senator issued a warning to Republican activists: “Here’s the reality: The state of Georgia is in play. The Democrats have made it that way.” The senator also highlighted the demographic trends that made the political environment friendlier to Democrats.

As the New York Times reported, “white residents now make up fewer than three in five voters in Georgia, and a wave of migration to the Atlanta area over the past decade has added roughly three quarters of a million people to the state’s major Democratic stronghold.”

Voter enthusiasm in Georgia was high this year. Long lines reported during the early voting period were both a sign of voter excitement and longstanding disinvestment in election infrastructure, particularly in predominantly Black neighborhoods. As of October, the state hit record registration levels, with about 7.6 million registered voters. At least 1 million Black voters cast ballots in 2020, an increase from 712,000 in 2016.

“Georgia has by far the largest percentage of Black voters of any battleground state,” said 2018 gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, also the founder of voting rights group Fair Fight in an email the week before the election. “We’ve already had half a million more Georgians cast their ballots than did for the entire early voting period of 2016.”

Trump’s lagging statewide poll numbers did not help Perdue. In 2016, Trump won Georgia by 5 points. That lead evaporated in the run-up to the 2020 election. Early polls this year showed Trump leading former Vice President Joe Biden by nearly 4 points in Georgia. In the final week before Election Day, the two men were in a statistical tie. And as final ballots were counted, it appeared the winner’s margin of victory could be as small as a few thousand votes.

As the battle for two Georgia Senate seats continues, Democrats and Republicans alike are likely to pour heavy resources into these races — two that could make or break a Senate majority. But both parties will have to wait a little longer to know the final outcomes.

from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/2020/11/5/21537684/senate-results-georgia-perdue-jon-ossoff-runoff
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We proudly present Baby Yoda Cuteness Bingo

If you're only watching The Mandalorian for a brief respite from reality in the Force-sensitive arms of gentle baby Yoda... we forgive you.

Seriously, you don't have to care at all about the wider Star Wars canon (though that is pretty cool). We see you, and we accept you. What is The Child if not the best and most adorable unifying force in our galaxy?

In fact, we thought we'd make a little game out of the antics of our favorite green goober: Baby Yoda Cuteness Bingo. Cover a square for each cute the thing The Child does, whether it's in this week's episode, the whole season, the entire series, or those fan fics you read on weekends. We just want you to be happy. Read more...

More about Art, The Mandalorian, Disney Plus, Entertainment, and Star Wars

from Mashable https://mashable.com/article/mandalorian-baby-yoda-cuteness-bingo/
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Newly elected QAnon supporter is drowning in Twitter warnings

Nineteen — that’s how many of Republican Congresswoman-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter posts were slapped with an election misinformation warning label by the company on November 4.

Over the past few days, Greene has been spreading quite a few falsehoods on Twitter containing misinformation about election results and untrue claims of voter fraud and “stolen” elections.

Joe Biden Said On Video That Democrats Built the Biggest "Voter Fraud" Operation in History.

We're seeing it on full display right now!

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) November 4, 2020

The Fake News Media wants you to believe that Joe Biden (who didn’t campaign AT ALL) isn’t involved in VOTER FRAUD.

He literally said he built the “BIGGEST” voter fraud organization in American history.

We aren’t going to let Democrats STEAL this election.#StopTheSteal https://t.co/spmRgHQJUS

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) November 4, 2020 Read more...

More about Misinformation, Qanon, 2020 Election, Tech, and Social Media Companies

from Mashable https://mashable.com/article/marjorie-taylor-greene-twitter-election-misinformation/
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Save $180 on a MSI gaming laptop in Walmart's early Black Friday event

SAVE $180: Black Friday hasn't officially begun just yet, but the deals are already starting to trickle in — as of 7 p.m. EST Nov. 4, you can save $180 on a MSI GF65 gaming laptop in Walmart's early Black Friday event.

Black Friday is officially here. Well, kind of. It would be more accurate to say that Black Friday is here for Walmart, because it is kicking off the yearly shopping extravaganza with an early batch of deals that you can save on from Nov. 4.

One of our top picks from the Walmart event is this MSI GF65 gaming laptop for $180 off the usual price (normally $979). It's a great starter computer for those looking to dip their toes into the world of PC gaming. Read more...

More about Black Friday, Gaming Laptops, Mashable Shopping, Tech, and Gaming

from Mashable https://mashable.com/shopping/early-black-friday-deal-msi-gaming-laptop-walmart/
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Wednesday, 4 November 2020

Hispanic voters helped decide the election — and not just in Miami-Dade

Ricky Hurtado, a Democratic candidate for the North Carolina state House, canvasses voters in a majority-Latino community, in Burlington. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP

The contests in Arizona, Texas, Nevada, and Wisconsin also hinged on Hispanic voters.

As results from Election Day began to roll in, it was clear that former Vice President Joe Biden met a mixed reception from Hispanic voters in some key states where they make up a significant portion of the electorate — a result that has ignited a debate in the Democratic Party about what he could have done to better appeal to such voters, who are critical to the party’s coalition.

Hispanic voters in America — whose political leanings vary with gender, generation, country of origin, religion, and how long they have lived in the US — often defy simple explanations, and this year proved no exception.

Arizona remains close, but Hispanics, mobilized by grassroots groups that have been active in the state for years, have made the race competitive for Biden.

On the other hand, Biden drastically underperformed among Hispanic voters in Florida, who hail from all over Latin America and hold diverse political views. That seemed to confirm longtime Democratic fears about a perceived weakness in his campaign outreach to Hispanic communities, a mistake that, combined with his failure to maintain support among white voters, cost him the state.

In Texas, predominantly Hispanic border counties, previously considered Democratic strongholds, also swung dramatically toward President Trump, and, absent sufficient margins in the suburbs, Biden failed to turn the state blue.

Hispanics have also swayed the results in Nevada and Wisconsin. Here’s what we know so far about how they have voted:

Arizona

Though the race has yet to be called, Hispanics could prove pivotal in bringing home a win for Biden in Arizona, a state that the Republican candidate has carried every year but one since 1952.

His campaign had aimed to win 70 percent of the Hispanic vote — the same percentage that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Arizona in decades, won in her 2018 race. And preliminary data from the polling firm Latino Decisions suggested that the predominantly Mexican American Hispanic population had, in fact, backed him by that overwhelming proportion.

Biden is on track to flip Maricopa County, where onetime Sheriff Joe Arpaio once used his department to target Hispanics. He is ahead by 6 points with between 81 and 97 percent of the vote reported. (Hillary Clinton lost the county, which is the most populous in the state, by about 3 points.)

Hispanics could prove pivotal in bringing home a win for Biden in Arizona.

Biden also appears to be ahead in Pima County, which encompasses Tucson and where there is a large Hispanic population, racking up bigger margins than Clinton.

It’s the product of grassroots organizing in the state’s Hispanic community for the better part of a decade, driven in part by SB 1070, which was passed by the state legislature in 2010 and was one of the “most restrictive anti-immigration bills in the country,” as my colleague Li Zhou explains. Though the most controversial parts of the law have since been invalidated by the courts, it previously allowed police to stop anyone who they believed was an unauthorized immigrant and request that they provide their papers, leading to racial profiling.

Democrats have called for replicating the grassroots efforts to engage Arizona’s Hispanic voters in other states with large Hispanic populations, including Texas.

Texas

Biden came closer to flipping Texas than any Democrat has in decades, but he still lost by 5 points to Trump. That loss was in part due to his drastic underperformance in South Texas counties along the US-Mexico border, where voters are overwhelmingly Hispanic and primarily of Mexican descent. Those counties have historically been neglected by politicians at both the state and national level, and this year was no exception: The Biden campaign waited until the final weeks before Election Day to conduct in-person outreach.

As compared to Hillary Clinton in 2016, Biden won by substantially slimmer margins in Cameron, Starr, Hidalgo, Webb, and Maverick counties, despite a significant jump in turnout. In Hidalgo County, the largest county in the Rio Grande Valley, where Hispanics make up 92 percent of the population, Biden won by 18 points with more than 219,000 people casting votes. Clinton had won the county by a whopping 40-point margin just four years ago, though only 167,000 people voted that year.

Trump also flipped Zapata County, improving his performance by 38 points since 2016, though that only represented a swing of about 1,000 votes.

Nevada

It remains to be seen whether Joe Biden has won Nevada, which would help him reach the 270 electoral votes necessary to become the next US president. Hispanics, who make up about 19 percent of eligible voters in the state and about 70 percent of whom are of Mexican heritage, could significantly influence the outcome.

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, had built a political machine in Nevada that successfully boosted turnout among Hispanics, delivering Clinton a narrow win in the state in 2016. That machine relied in part on an alliance with the largest union in the state, the Culinary Union, which represents Hispanics working on the Las Vegas Strip. But due to business closures amid the pandemic, many Culinary Union workers lost their jobs, which some Democrats feared could limit the political influence of the union.

With about 84 to 99 percent of the vote reported, Biden appears to have held the same share of the votes as Clinton in Clark County, which encompasses Las Vegas. He is also up about 4 points over Clinton’s performance in Washoe County, which is about a quarter Hispanic.

Florida

Biden carried Hispanics in Florida — but not by significant enough margins to win the state. He underperformed in South and Central Florida, including in Miami-Dade County and Osceola County, home to the city of Orlando.

Biden won Miami-Dade County by only 7 points, as compared to Clinton’s 30-point margin in 2016. It’s clear that Trump made headway among the county’s diverse Hispanic population, which accounted for 58 percent of registered voters.

Cuban Americans are the largest contingent among those voters and have historically leaned more Republican than Hispanics from other countries of origin, embittered by John F. Kennedy’s withdrawal of support for an operation against dictator Fidel Castro at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs decades ago. But the county also has significant Colombian, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan communities.

Biden also won by 14 points in Osceola County, where Hispanics account for 48 percent of registered voters and Clinton won by 25 points in 2016. Trump had sought to appeal to Hispanic evangelicals in the county, who are primarily Puerto Rican.

Those gains for Trump — and Biden’s failure to make up for those losses in other parts of the state — were significant enough to tip Florida in the president’s favor in a tight contest.

The Trump campaign had spent months investing heavily in eroding Biden’s margins in Florida, casting him as a socialist and capitalizing on the fears of Hispanics from failed socialist regimes. (Biden has run as a center-left moderate, and even Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s brand of democratic socialism has little relationship to the regimes in Cuba and Venezuela.)

What’s more, disinformation campaigns permeated Florida Hispanics’ WhatsApp chats, Facebook feeds, and radio programs, falsely claiming, for example, that Biden has a pedophilia problem.

Wisconsin

Though Hispanics don’t make up a large proportion of the electorate in Wisconsin (roughly 7 percent), they proved essential in delivering Biden a narrow victory in the state, which has significant Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American communities.

Hispanics appeared to sway the vote in Biden’s favor in Milwaukee and Dane counties, where he racked up massive margins of 40 and 53 points, respectively. While total turnout is still unclear, some 46,000 Hispanics cast early votes in the state, up from about 17,000 in 2016, and 57 percent of those votes were cast by women.

Local Democratic activists had sought to appeal to Hispanic voters in the state, condemning the Trump administration’s immigration policies and handling of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/21549607/latino-hispanic-vote-2020-trump-biden-arizona-florida
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Chris Hayes and Ezra Klein process this wild election

A man at the Cochise County Republican Headquarters in Sierra Vista, Arizona, gestures at the TV as he watches Virginia results come in on November 3. (Virginia was called for Joe Biden, despite early returns showing a Donald Trump lead.) | Ariana Drehsler/AFP via Getty Images

The MSNBC host discusses the problems with the polls, the future of democracy, and Trump’s surprising inroads with Latino voters.

This is not the post-election breakdown I expected to have, but it’s definitely the one that I needed.

Chris Hayes is the host of the MSNBC primetime show, All In, and the podcast Why Is This Happening? With Chris Hayes. He’s also one of the most insightful political analysts I know. We discuss the purpose of polling, the problems of polling-driven coverage, the epistemic fog of the results, the strategy behind Trump’s inroads with Latino voters, how Democrats might have won the presidency but lost democracy, what happens if Trump refuses to accept the election results, and much more.

More than anything else, this conversation on The Ezra Klein Show has helped me make sense of everything that’s happened in the last few days. I think it will do the same for you.

Subscribe to The Ezra Klein Show wherever you listen to podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

If you want to follow the latest election updates after listening, we’ve got you covered.

There’s no guarantee when we’ll know whether Trump or Biden won the election, but you can track live results here, powered by our friends at Decision Desk.

And this election is not just about the presidency: Whoever wins, their plans depend on the makeup of Congress. You can follow Senate live results here and House live results here.

Finally, here’s how Vox (and other media outlets) are making calls.

from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/2020/11/4/21550380/trump-biden-presidential-election-2020-the-ezra-klein-show
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New top story on Hacker News: GitHub Source Code Leaked Online

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New top story on Hacker News: Google Breaks Gmail on Firefox

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Puerto Ricans have voted in favor of statehood. Now it’s up to Congress.

Christina Animashaun/Vox

Congress hasn’t taken steps to admit Puerto Rico as the 51st state.

Puerto Ricans have again voted in favor of making their island home a US state and they’re hoping that, this time around, their decision will carry actual weight.

Puerto Rico, which has been a US territory for 122 years and is the world’s oldest colony, has held five previous non-binding referendums on the issue. In 2012 and 2017, the island’s 3 million citizens overwhelmingly backed statehood, but Congress never took further action to admit Puerto Rico into the union.

This year, they were asked: “Should Puerto Rico be immediately admitted into the Union as a state?” A majority of voters answered “yes,” according to the AP, New York Times, and the island election commission, as of Wednesday afternoon. With 95 percent of precincts reporting, the margin stood at 52 percent for, and 48 percent against.

As the Times noted, the turnout figures are complicated. But Puerto Ricans are hoping that sends a clear message to Congress regarding their desire to attain the rights and privileges associated with statehood. Though Puerto Ricans are American citizens and pay into federal programs like Social Security and Medicare, they do not hold seats in Congress and cannot cast votes for president. They do vote for a resident commissioner who can introduce legislation and vote on committees in the House of Representatives, but that’s a far cry from full voting privileges.

Congress isn’t under legal obligation to abide by the outcome of the referendum — congressional lawmakers could have passed legislation that would have conferred the island with statehood depending on the outcome of the referendum, but they didn’t.

Statehood proponents hoped for higher turnout than in past referendums, feeling that would make it difficult for US lawmakers to ignore the issue after years of claiming that Puerto Ricans should decide their own fate. Less than a quarter of eligible voters cast ballots in the 2017 referendum, which was boycotted by opposition parties that support either maintaining the status quo or independence. That raised questions about the legitimacy of the vote and allowed US lawmakers to punt the issue.

Puerto Rico has a lot to gain from becoming a state. In addition to having a say in presidential elections, the new state would have two seats in the Senate and five representatives in the House. It would also likely gain federal funding; it would be a lot harder for the federal government to withhold aid, as President Donald Trump, who previously mulled selling the island, did after Hurricane Maria.

But critics have warned that it would also increase federal taxes. (Puerto Ricans and corporations headquartered on the island currently only pay federal taxes in limited circumstances.)

If Puerto Rico becomes a state, it could shake up the political dynamics in Congress. Most Puerto Ricans who have moved to the US mainland have historically backed Democrats. But it’s not clear that the island would be reliably blue. Experts say it’s more likely that it would be a swing state.

from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/11/4/21536603/puerto-rico-status-referendum-statehood-results
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Nevada voters seal renewable energy goals in their state constitution

Christina Animashaun/Vox

The state will target 50 percent renewables by 2030.

As was widely expected, Nevada voters approved Question 6 on the ballot, which amends the state constitution to mandate that the Nevada’s electricity providers shift to at least 50 percent renewable energy by 2030, according to the New York Times and the Associated Press.

The initiative is less about voters changing where their electricity comes from than putting an exclamation point on a decision they’ve already made — Nevadans passed the exact same initiative in 2018. It just so happens that, to amend the state constitution, voters must pass an initiative twice, which landed the issue back on the ballot this year.

There’s been a significant push in recent years for Nevada to quickly move toward renewable energy — one that has seen some setbacks. In 2017, the state legislature passed a bill that would have mandated 40 percent renewable energy by 2030, but then-Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) vetoed it. In 2019, the bill was bumped up to 50 percent, passed again, and newly elected Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) signed it.

The success of Question 6 means there’s now a bill and a constitutional amendment mandating 50 percent renewables.

Given that the target is already law, the most substantial opposition to the initiative came from those leery about inscribing a specific target into the state constitution, not only from those who thought the target was too high, but also from those who thought it was too low — like the Center for Biological Diversity, which opposed the measure.

Nonetheless, most backers will be happy to have a target that can’t be overturned by subsequent administrations, and now, the state’s target appears to be very secure.

from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/2020/11/4/21536321/nevada-question-6-renewable-energy-results
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Michigan Democratic Sen. Gary Peters staves off a strong challenger to keep his Senate seat

Michigan Sen. Gary Peters holds on to his Senate seat against challenger John James. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Peters’s seat was considered a must-keep for Democrats.

Democratic Sen. Gary Peters will keep his US Senate seat in Michigan after defeating Republican challenger John James in the 2020 election.

Peters was one of two Senate Democrats up for reelection in a state that President Donald Trump won in 2016, and the race wound up being a surprisingly tight one. While Peters led in the polls throughout the race, James was able to close in on him in the final months of the race, and political experts thought there was a real chance he might win.

Peters, 61, was elected to the US Senate in 2014 (he was the only non-incumbent Democrat to do so that year). He is currently the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and has said his top priority is job creation and the economy. He worked for 20 years as a financial adviser and has had a long career in Michigan politics, first on the local level and then national, joining the US House of Representatives in 2008.

Despite his long history in Michigan’s political sphere, Peters isn’t a super well-known figure — which wound up being part of the problem for the 2020 Senate race. As Vox’s Andrew Prokop wrote, it’s not that Peters hasn’t done a lot, it’s just that voters haven’t noticed it, or at least, they haven’t noticed him:

He has, however, racked up a record of wonky, low-profile bipartisan accomplishments — he was the lead sponsor of four bills that were signed into law under President Trump. These are a law expanding access to apprenticeship programs for veterans, a law about training programs for small businesses, a law reforming the way the government accounts for cars and laptops, and a law hiring more agricultural inspectors for airports and seaports.

Peters ranks highly as a bipartisan figure, and he touted his ability to work with others in an interview with Vox. “I’m a Democrat, I’m a proud Democrat, but I also know that we have to solve problems and we have to bring folks together to get things done,” he said.

James, 39, gave Peters more of a run for his money than expected. He has a military and business background: After graduating from West Point, he became an aviation officer and served eight years in the Army, including two in Iraq. After that, he went to work at James Group International, a supply chain management company founded by his father. He is now CEO of Renaissance Global Logistics. James challenged Democratic incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2018 and lost.

James ran a pretty Trumpy race in 2018, telling supporters during that election that he supported the president “2,000 percent.” This time around, he has been a lot less Trumpy and a bit more willing to break from the president. During a video conference with Black community leaders, Politico reported in May, he noted he has differed with Trump on “plenty of issues.”

James said those disagreements include cutting Great Lakes funding, Trump referring to certain nations as “shithole countries,” and the president “speaking ill of the dead,” an apparent reference to the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). “And so yes, there’s gonna be places that I disagree with the president, and those are just a couple,” he said.

Projections ahead of the election estimated the Peters-James race would wind up costing about $100 million, rendering it Michigan’s most expensive Senate race ever. Republicans poured money into the race, recognizing the potential to flip the seat, while Democrats spent on trying to hold on to it.

Heading into the 2020 election, the Michigan Senate seat was all but a must-hold for Democrats looking to turn the US Senate blue. And Peters held on.

from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/11/4/21534977/senate-2020-results-michigan-gary-peters-winner
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Maine voters double down on facial recognition ban in win for privacy

Residents of Portland, Maine, can now officially sue the bastards.

In a robust show of doubling down on privacy protections, voters in the Maine city passed a measure Tuesday replacing and strengthening an existing ban on city official's use of facial recognition technology. While city employees were already prohibited from using the controversial tech, this new ban also gives residents the right to sue the city for violations and specifies monetary fines the city would have to pay out.

Oh yeah, and for some icing on the cake: Under the new law, city officials that violate the ban can be fired. What's more, if a person discovers that "any person or entity acting on behalf of the City of Portland, including any officer, employee, agent, contractor, subcontractor, or vendor" used facial recognition on them, that person is entitled to no less than $100 per violation or $1,000 (whichever is greater). Read more...

More about Privacy, Facial Recognition, Tech, and Activism

from Mashable https://mashable.com/article/portland-maine-passes-facial-recognition-ban-fines/
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Which of these 6 time traps is eating up all your time?

There is an 8 out of 10 chance that you are one of the poorest people in the world. However, when I say you’re poor, I’m not talking about your bank account (although material poverty is indeed a pressing concern for many of us).

Rather, I mean you are time poor: You have too many things to do and not enough time to do them. Time poverty affects all cultures and crosses all economic strata. Most of us feel this way.

In 2012, about 50 percent of working Americans reported they were “always rushed,” and 70 percent “never” had enough time. In 2015, more than 80 percent said they didn’t have the time they needed.

If you’re worried that this is some kind of first-world problem and that you should just get on with it, don’t. Time poverty is a serious problem, with serious costs for individuals and society. The data that I and others have amassed show a correlation between time poverty and misery. People who are time poor are less happy, less productive and more stressed out. They exercise less, eat fattier food and have a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease. Time poverty forces us to compromise. Instead of preparing a nutritious dinner, we grab chips and guac and munch mindlessly while staring at our screens.

The most obvious explanation is that we simply spend more time working than previous generations but evidence doesn’t support this theory. Time diaries show that men’s leisure time in the US, for instance, has increased six to nine hours a week in the past 50 years, while women’s has increased four to eight hours a week.

Why, then, do we feel more time poor than ever?

Time poverty doesn’t arise from a mismatch between the hours we have and the hours we need; it results from how we think about and value those hours. It’s as much psychological as it is structural. We are ceaselessly connected. When free time arrives, we are unprepared to use it so we waste it. Or, we tell ourselves we shouldn’t take a break so we work right through it.

The first step to becoming time smart is to identify the time traps in your life.

Time trap #1: Technology interruptions break our hours into confetti

Technology saves us time, but it also takes it away — this is known as the autonomy paradox. We adopt mobile technologies to gain autonomy over when and how long we work, yet ironically we end up working all the time. Long blocks of free time that we used to enjoy are now interrupted constantly by our devices. This situation taxes us cognitively and fragments our leisure time in a way that makes it hard to use.

I and other researchers call this phenomenon “time confetti”, the little bits of seconds and minutes lost to unproductive multitasking. Each bit alone is not very bad, but all that confetti adds up to something more pernicious.

Consider this example. Let’s say you have one hour of leisure at 7PM. During that hour, you receive two emails, check both and respond to one; four Twitter notifications, and you thumb through the replies for one of them; three Slack notifications from colleagues asking you questions or a favor, of which you answer one and ignore two; one alarm reminding you to call your mother tomorrow on her birthday; and four texts from a friend trying to make plans for next weekend, all four of which you reply to.

Each of these events takes only seconds — but collectively they create two negative effects. The first is the sheer volume of time they take away from your hour. A few seemingly harmless interruptions can usurp 10 percent of this leisure time. However, research shows that our estimates of interruptions is conservative, so typically it may be worse than this.

The second and more invasive effect of time confetti is the way it fragments an hour of leisure. Most likely, these interruptions are randomly distributed throughout your hour so the hour of leisure becomes several smaller chunks, sometimes only five or six minutes long. Even if you’re disciplined about not responding or not responding very quickly, the interruptions undermine the quality of those chunks of leisure time by reminding you of all the activities that you could or should be doing.

It also takes time to cognitively recover from shifting our minds from the present to a stress-inducing activity. People end up enjoying their free time less and, when asked to reflect on it, estimate that they had less free time than they actually did. Time confetti makes us feel even more time impoverished than we actually are.

Time trap #2: We focus too much on money

Another trap is a cultural obsession with work and making money. We are taught — incorrectly — that money, not time, will bring greater happiness.

Research shows that money protects against sadness but doesn’t buy joy. Once we make enough money to pay our bills, save for the future and have some fun, making more does little for our happiness.

In data from 1.7 million people in 165 countries, researchers figured out the exact dollar amount at which added money no longer increases happiness. After we make USD$65,000/year — or $60,000 globally — money stops predicting how much we laugh or smile each day. After we make USD$105,000/year ($95,000 globally), money stops predicting how well we think we are doing in life.

If anything, once people make a lot of money — $105,000/year in the United States — they start thinking they are doing worse in life. When we become rich, we begin to compare our lives to people even richer than we are.

Having money definitely shields us from stress. When your car breaks down, money provides a solution. And having cash on hand even provides peace of mind in the absence of a crisis. But staving off negative outcomes is different from creating happier ones.

I will repeat this point, because it’s so important: Money does not buy joy.

A culture obsessed with making more money believes, wrongly, that the way to become more time affluent is to become financially wealthier. We think, “I’ll work hard and make more so that I can afford more leisure time later.” This is the wrong solution. Focusing on chasing wealth leads only to an increased focus on chasing wealth.

Time trap #3: We undervalue our time

Because of a cultural obsession with money, many people protect their money in ways that are counterproductive to time affluence.

In one survey, 52 percent of people who were financially comfortable but extremely time poor — working parents with young kids — said they’d rather have more money than more time. Asked how they would spend a hypothetical $100 prize to increase their happiness, only 2 percent of working parents said they would spend this money to save time, such as by having groceries delivered. People who could clearly afford to value time — people who had an average of $3 million in the bank — still said that they would rather have more money.

It’s hard for us to measure time’s value. Even if we’re making a bad trade-off between time and money — such as driving two miles out of our way to save 10 cents per gallon on gas — it doesn’t feel like a bad choice. That’s because we don’t really know the worth of the time it took.

When you book a trip with connecting flights to get a slightly cheaper price, you are falling into a time trap. Suppose you save $300 on that flight, but it takes 8 hours total out of your vacation time and increases your fatigue and stress because you have to get up early and switch planes. Would you pay $300 for an extra eight hours of vacation — a full workday’s worth — along with less stress and fatigue?

The trap is simple: We reflexively go for the lowest cost when we shouldn’t. Let’s look at the gas example more closely. You consistently drive an extra six minutes to a different station to save 15 cents per gallon, and you go in for a 15-gallon fill-up four times a month. Impulsively it seems worth it — six minutes isn’t that much, and the savings will add up.

15 cents × 15 gallons = $2.25 saved per trip

$2.25 × 4 visits per month = $9.00 saved per month

$9.00 per month over 12 months = $108 saved per year

But someone aware of time traps would see it differently:

6 minutes per trip × 4 visits per month = 24 minutes lost per month

24 minutes per month × 12 months = 4.8 hours lost per year

Looking at it this way, you’ve spent almost five hours to save $108. This doesn’t take into account the opportunity cost of what you could have done with that five hours instead of driving out of your way to save money.

You might still feel that this trade-off is worth it. But doing these calculations puts a different lens on time value, which we tend to grossly underestimate.

Time trap #4: We regard busyness as a status symbol

More than ever, our identities are tied to work. The best data show that people living in the US increasingly look toward work — not friends, families or hobbies — to find purpose. In a 2017 survey, 95 percent of young adults said that having an “enjoyable and meaningful career” was “extremely important” to them.

Given the importance that we place on work, busyness at work carries status. We wear it like a badge of honor. We want to be seen as the employee who works the longest hours, even when these hours aren’t productive.

Financial insecurity also drives workism, and it’s on the rise. As society becomes more unequal, people feel increasingly insecure about their financial future, regardless of their current stature. Those doing well worry about how far they could fall. Those struggling to make ends meet fear falling farther behind.

Most of us cope by working more and trying to make more money. And we feel guilty about spending money on things that make us happy, such as dining out or vacations.

With our self-identity so wrapped up in work and productivity, the social appearance of being busy makes us feel good about ourselves. In contrast, focusing our attention on something other than work can threaten our livelihood and status. We worry we won’t be valued, and, in part, we are right.

Turns out employers are mostly rewarding the cult of busyness. Research shows that employees who boast about working nonstop and being extremely busy are seen by others as better workers who have more money and prestige, even if they don’t. They’re even thought to be more physically attractive.

Even if it feels good in the moment for someone to see the email you sent on Saturday at 8:30PM, this behavior contributes to an unhealthy, unhappy life.

Time trap #5: We have an aversion to idleness

Even if we lived in a perfectly equal society, we would still create time stress for ourselves because human beings are not built for idleness.

Researchers call this idleness aversion, and it makes us do some strange things. Dan Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, placed some college students in an empty room and gave them nothing to do. Many preferred giving themselves mild electric shocks to being left alone with their thoughts. Another study showed that working parents felt “bored” and “stressed” during leisure activities, signaling that even the most time poor among us don’t know how to relax.

Technology may help us avoid being alone with our thoughts, but it is a trap that contributes to stress and time poverty. Being constantly connected to our devices prevents the brain from recovering, keeps our stress levels elevated and takes us out of the present.

In fact, idleness has been shown to be a valuable form of leisure and can increase time affluence. The physical and mental benefits of disengaging the brain are far more valuable than the stress created by keeping the mind engaged at all times.

Time trap #6: We think we have more time tomorrow than we actually do

Most of us are overly optimistic about our future time. We mistakenly believe that we will have more time tomorrow than we do today. This is sometimes referred to as the “planning fallacy” I call it the “Yes … damn!” effect. Let me explain.

Last Monday, a friend asked if I could help her move on Saturday. No problem. On Tuesday, a colleague asked me to look over her report by Saturday. I said yes. On Wednesday, another friend invited me out for dinner on Saturday at a new restaurant that I wanted to try. I said yes. I said yes over and over and over until Saturday morning, when I woke up and thought, “Damn! What was I thinking!”

Actually, as a happiness researcher, I know what I was thinking: “Even though I’m too busy now, Saturday is a ways off, and I’ll have time to do these things.”

Statistically, the best predictor of how busy we are going to be next week is how busy we are right now. Our minds frequently forget this important point and trick us into believing we’ll have more time later than we do now. This overoptimism means that we’re cavalier with our yeses, even for small stuff we don’t want to do. We also want to say yes; we see it as a way to overcome idleness and feel productive, connected, valued, respected and loved.

But where does the time to fulfill these yeses come from? From the leisure time that we could be using to feel more time affluent, of course. Ironically, perpetual busyness undermines the goals that we set out to achieve with all our busyness in the first place.

While these are the six most common time traps, of course there are many other reasons that we fail to prioritize time. For now, your goal should be to recognize and document the time traps that you fall into most often.

Keep in mind: Your time traps won’t be the same as other people’s. What makes it a trap for you is that it makes you unhappy and steals time that you would otherwise use in a way that makes you happy.

We all have the power to overcome the time traps we have fallen victim to. Like getting fit, increasing your time affluence requires taking small, deliberate steps each day to have more free time and enjoy it. And like getting fit, it’s not easy at first. Both our society and our psychology make these time traps extremely appealing.

Keeping the exercise metaphor going, just as you shouldn’t punish yourself for not being perfect in your workout habits, don’t ever beat yourself up about being bad at prioritizing time. Multiple forces are making it difficult. We don’t naturally respond to time poverty in a way that controls it. In fact, when we feel busy, studies show that we take on small, easy-to-complete tasks because they help us feel more control over our time. In this case, it’s a false sense of control that doesn’t alleviate the root cause of our busyness.

Even though time poverty feels the same for everyone, time affluence looks different for everyone. It could mean spending 15 more minutes strumming the guitar instead of scrolling through your phone, or it could be 10 minutes of meditation or a Saturday morning learning how to invest your savings instead of Slacking about work gossip.

No matter what time affluence looks like for you, the happiest and most time affluent among us are deliberate with their free time. Working toward time affluence is about recognizing and overcoming the time traps in our lives and intentionally carving out happier and more meaningful moments each day.

Excerpted from the new book Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life by Ashley Whillans. Copyright © 2020 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. All rights reserved.

Watch her TEDxCambridge Talk here:

from ideas.ted.com https://ideas.ted.com/which-of-these-6-time-traps-is-eating-up-all-your-time/
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