🧩 BND Motif Index · M1647
Bad candidates win in a wave
In a wave election the national tide is said to decide the races, so weak candidates win seats they shouldn't and strong ones lose, and the candidates themselves hardly matter.
🪨 Beliefs🗂️ Horserace🗂️ Elections
- 2claims filed under it
- 2left shows it came up on
- 2right shows it came up on
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🪜 Its family
what it rests on, what rests on it, and the motifs that answer it
↔️ answers and mirrors:
- 🧩 Candidate quality its counter
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (2 left-leaning, 0 center, 2 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- left-leaning
- right-leaning
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
🗣️ In so many words
the words that carry it
💬 the tellers' own words: “in a wave, bad candidates win when they shouldn't, and good candidates lose when they shouldn't because the environment is so bad” “subpar candidates win in wave elections because it's really ultimately not about them.” “the candidate quality argument is interesting because it can be both true and not the cause.” “there were Democrats who suspended their campaign three months ago who won”
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 0
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the left so far.
Told on the right 0
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the right so far.
Told on both sides 2
claims heard on left- and right-leaning shows alike
- 2026-11-07 “Republicans are attempting to avoid responsibility for the current state of the party by blaming candidate quality or specific issues.” 2
- 2026-11-06 “Subpar candidates win in wave elections because the outcome is driven by larger political forces.” 2
M1647 · first seen 2026-11-06 · what this is · how the index works