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Northern Ireland26771 Posts
On September 07 2020 10:39 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On September 07 2020 09:26 Wombat_NornIron wrote:On September 07 2020 07:24 Introvert wrote:On September 07 2020 05:57 Wombat_NornIron wrote:On September 07 2020 05:40 Introvert wrote:On September 07 2020 05:15 Wombat_NornIron wrote:On September 07 2020 04:30 Introvert wrote:On September 07 2020 02:37 Gorsameth wrote:On September 07 2020 02:13 reborn8u2 wrote:On September 06 2020 20:03 iamthedave wrote:
[quote]
Didn't 100% of the polls in 2016 show a clear Hilary lead though?
I thought after 2016 we all admitted that polling doesn't work because of how the data is collected (either the sample size isn't good enough or the questions are too simplistic). Just want to share my Boss's experience with polling. A bit of background, he is in his early 50's and was a lifelong democrat until Trump. As he put's it, he was a "Blue dog" democrat. He's been following and interested in politics his whole life, he literally studies all the local/state politics as well, we've had a lot of state constitution changes on the ballot in the last few years (he can talk about those alone for hours). Even as a teenager he couldn't wait to turn 18 so he could vote. He's always been very outspoken about his views/values. He's taken hundreds of polls in his life, but no more. When he decided in 2016 he was voting for Trump, he took 2 polls just before the election (over the phone). After that experience he says "I'll never take another poll again". He says that as soon as he stated he intended to vote for Trump the person giving the poll on the phone became extremely condescending and flat out rude. The other thing that really pissed him off was how loaded the questions were. He says there was no way for him to voice his opinions because all of the questions and answers were worded in such a way that there were no responses he could make that showed his opinion. He says he's now a "shy tory" en.wikipedia.org , and if you told him 10 years ago he'd be where he is now he would have "called you an idiot". With so many calling Trump supporters racists and nazi's, who can blame him for no longer sharing his politics. He says he would never even put a Trump bumper sticker on his car or wear a maga hat, for fear of vandalism, or violence. I think there are a lot of people who are in the same mindset. There has been a lot of suppression, vandalism, and violence against Trump supporters in the last 4 years. If you have been following mainstream media, you probably don't realize how bad the problem is, they don't give it any attention. The media as well as most major online platforms have been very one sided in what and how they cover stories, and have been flat out censoring conservative voices for years now. I don't think we can have any confidence in the polls. There certainly is a group of 'independents' who are just shy/ashamed Republicans who don't want to come out for Trump but what interests me most about this is how a 'life long democrat' could look at 2016 Trump and think 'this is the guy for the job', let alone 2020 Trump. What sort of political values and beliefs that match with Democrats for decades matches up with Trump? Jus to put this in the most straightforward way possible: Have you been paying attention to how each party has changed in the last decade? Maybe not very intentional, but this post comes off as highly skeptical that there is such a thing as a "Trump Democrat" when we can see entire regions and populations that have altered their voting patterns over the years, some of them drastically in 2016. Also recall that in 2016 Trump was seen as the most moderate GOP candidate in years (and he was certainly the one closest to the Democrats many times when he spoke). Meanwhile, progressive whining aside, the Democrat party has moved left on almost every issue even from Obama. It's why even "moderate" Joe Biden doesn't sound like his 1970s, 80s, 90s, or 00s self. He moves with the partly and they have moved left. In 2020 I would be pretty skeptical. 2016 I guess, although even then he was a bit of a strange outlier and difficult for some to piece together. His whole ostensible platform was a bit of a departure in a fair few areas, his past utterances on say same-sex marriage were a bit ahead of even his Dem opponents, so I do recall some commentary on him being socially liberal in certain areas. On the other hand you got plenty of glimpses of the Trumpian playbook to playing to the gallery and scapegoating various marginalised peoples. Or picking Pence as a VP which kind of wipes out him being on the right side of that issue back in the day. Which made people rather worried about him even when he was seen as a no-hoper to actually win. It’s hard to remember exactly what the kind of consensus was back through time like that, my recollection was not that he was seen as one of the most moderate GOP candidates in a few cycles, but that he had some moderate tendencies amidst a lot of really worrying tendencies. Perhaps a moderate candidate with extremism as a methodology. Like many, you focus far too much on the political game aspect of this, e.g. "the Trumpian playbook." Not that I'm going to scrap it up, but polling back then had him perceived as more of a moderate. Trump did in fact sign a more-or-less mainline Republican tax law (which, if you want another example of how parties change, see how the Democrats are currently trying to reinstate the biggest tax break for the well off that the bill eliminated). However, he has been relatively consistent in his overall messages on trade, Social Security, foreign policy, immigration, abortion, and other issues. Trump is not a typical Republican. He has promised to not touch Social Security, has been restrained in his use of force overseas, has sold out far less often on immigration, isn't afraid to talk up his pro-life stances, has acted on trade, etc. I think the people who hoped he would tone down his rhetoric in office are disappointed, but I'm not sure how many people who actually supported his ideas are really that bummed out. (And for me at least, it's a welcome surprise). Point being, the inability to see how there could be such a thing as a "Trump Democrat" comes off as far-too-common left wing arrogance and ignorance. The question "how could people possibly support Trump" is clearly offered only as a sardonic and dismissive quip instead of a question genuinely asked. But then again, apparently it's hard for many to even understand how someone could think that burning down buildings is bad, so maybe there is even more work to do. It’s not dismissive, there are understandable reasons for some flipping camps back in the day, or continuing to do so. I believe this discussion was prompted re appealing to undecided voters of which the ‘Trump Democrat’ would be one. If we’re talking trying to win those votes I mean how do you do that without completely gutting your own platform and alienating your own base? And do you even drag those ones back? It’s a bit nitpicky but even if you’ve voted blue for donkeys, you’re not really a Trump Democrat, more a Nouveau Republican. Or a Trumpublican. He has changed that party’s direction in certain areas, so assuming these people stay on board I’d consider them new Republican converts rather than lapsed Democrats, given the directions taken by both parties. I mean, those two things aren't mutually exclusive. Platforms change based on issues. When the Republican party was born it was also the party of tariffs, and remained that way for a long time. Maybe at the time they made sense! Then it wasn't. Now, it's having an internal fight about it. I don't really think this is about undecided voters, this is about figuring out why people who formerly voted for your party would "vote against their own interests." Of course that phrase is exactly the type of arrogance I describe, and the fact it gets so much use is demonstrative. Even now, you grant "there are understandable reasons for some flipping camps back in the day, or continuing to do so." Can you describe any without tying in, say, racism? Xenophobia? "I got mine"? I think you might actually be able to. But many can't. Could certainly give it a shot like. Legitimate immigration concerns, decline of particular industries and indeed a sneering, rather dismissive attitude from the other side that’s attempting to win your vote. Amongst others. The rather infamous ‘just learn to code’ article springs to mind. Actually have bold policies that are targeted to the needs and wants of particular areas and your wider platform. And push it harder too. Messaging is important after all. Go green but frame it as American jobs in making the technologies of the future and you will help build it. Ticks a bunch of boxes. Over in the UK we had areas of post-industrial decline for decades. Plenty of space and time to do a bold strategy of incentivising industry to move operations to those regions struggling economically. Never really happened to stall the brain drain and lo and behold Brexit happened and we got the ‘why did these historic Labour areas vote to leave, must be racist’ kind of ridiculous handwringing. The US is even more diverse economically and culturally than we are over here, a one-size fits all kind of strategy, or at least one not having regional-specific kind of policy is missing a trick. You did list a few things and that's better than most, and crucially, it's better than most Democrats people hear from in the media. Many of these people don't think the Democrats care, and so why should they trust them? Trump's idgaf attitude provided, and provides, some hope that he'll listen. And at the very least he doesn't appear to hate the people who vote for him. There are lots of criticisms of the American voter that have merit, but they notice when they were promised they would get to keep their insurance, and then don't. They notice when Democrats advocate for massive amnesty that will bring in low wage earners, and block attempts to stop illegal immigration. They notice when a party once agreed to the Hyde amendment, and now has almost no supporters among Democrat elected representatives. The party should consider that maybe these voters used to vote for them not because of their coastal attitudes and preferences, but in spite of them. Which brings us back to my first reply in this chain. It's actually really easy to see how you could have "Trump Democrats" if you actually knew or cared about who people who called themselves "Democrat" actually were. The Republican party often governs and campaigns for the voters it wishes it had, and while I don't think Trump is a genius, I think he realized he could win by campaigning for the voters he actually had. Meanwhile the Democrats were going to shame you into voting for them then promising you more government supply of services. What happens when a Republican comes along who promises not to touch them?
The flip side of that coin is the Democrats campaigning for the votes that they have.
I’m not particularly disputing the existence of the Trump Democrat, that such a phenomenon is a thing attests to the relative historic centrism of the Dems that I and others aren’t exactly massive fans of. More questioning the wisdom of attempting to tempt such folks back.
I’d say the only cohort you could tempt back without pissing off your own base are blue collar manufacturing types, as I previously crudely outlined.
The rest are kind of binary issues, be it abortion or immigration or what have you that people particularly weigh highly. You don’t have a huge amount of wriggle room in reaching out, if any, without losing the support of your base.
I’m not a huge fan at all of illegal immigration, or immigration or indeed ‘immigration is our strength’ rhetoric for a ton of reasons. Even within my own social circles this is not a position that is particularly popular at all, even if I lay out my rationales. I’m unsure how that scans in the American context mind you.
Another cohort is those who are traditional Dems going back but think the left/the culture war and the SJWs have gone too far or whatever, or are soft on law and order. Again I’m not sure how you court that crowd without alienating your own existing base.
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Northern Ireland26771 Posts
On September 08 2020 01:02 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On September 07 2020 09:26 Wombat_NornIron wrote:On September 07 2020 07:24 Introvert wrote:On September 07 2020 05:57 Wombat_NornIron wrote:On September 07 2020 05:40 Introvert wrote:On September 07 2020 05:15 Wombat_NornIron wrote:On September 07 2020 04:30 Introvert wrote:On September 07 2020 02:37 Gorsameth wrote:On September 07 2020 02:13 reborn8u2 wrote:On September 06 2020 20:03 iamthedave wrote:
[quote]
Didn't 100% of the polls in 2016 show a clear Hilary lead though?
I thought after 2016 we all admitted that polling doesn't work because of how the data is collected (either the sample size isn't good enough or the questions are too simplistic). Just want to share my Boss's experience with polling. A bit of background, he is in his early 50's and was a lifelong democrat until Trump. As he put's it, he was a "Blue dog" democrat. He's been following and interested in politics his whole life, he literally studies all the local/state politics as well, we've had a lot of state constitution changes on the ballot in the last few years (he can talk about those alone for hours). Even as a teenager he couldn't wait to turn 18 so he could vote. He's always been very outspoken about his views/values. He's taken hundreds of polls in his life, but no more. When he decided in 2016 he was voting for Trump, he took 2 polls just before the election (over the phone). After that experience he says "I'll never take another poll again". He says that as soon as he stated he intended to vote for Trump the person giving the poll on the phone became extremely condescending and flat out rude. The other thing that really pissed him off was how loaded the questions were. He says there was no way for him to voice his opinions because all of the questions and answers were worded in such a way that there were no responses he could make that showed his opinion. He says he's now a "shy tory" en.wikipedia.org , and if you told him 10 years ago he'd be where he is now he would have "called you an idiot". With so many calling Trump supporters racists and nazi's, who can blame him for no longer sharing his politics. He says he would never even put a Trump bumper sticker on his car or wear a maga hat, for fear of vandalism, or violence. I think there are a lot of people who are in the same mindset. There has been a lot of suppression, vandalism, and violence against Trump supporters in the last 4 years. If you have been following mainstream media, you probably don't realize how bad the problem is, they don't give it any attention. The media as well as most major online platforms have been very one sided in what and how they cover stories, and have been flat out censoring conservative voices for years now. I don't think we can have any confidence in the polls. There certainly is a group of 'independents' who are just shy/ashamed Republicans who don't want to come out for Trump but what interests me most about this is how a 'life long democrat' could look at 2016 Trump and think 'this is the guy for the job', let alone 2020 Trump. What sort of political values and beliefs that match with Democrats for decades matches up with Trump? Jus to put this in the most straightforward way possible: Have you been paying attention to how each party has changed in the last decade? Maybe not very intentional, but this post comes off as highly skeptical that there is such a thing as a "Trump Democrat" when we can see entire regions and populations that have altered their voting patterns over the years, some of them drastically in 2016. Also recall that in 2016 Trump was seen as the most moderate GOP candidate in years (and he was certainly the one closest to the Democrats many times when he spoke). Meanwhile, progressive whining aside, the Democrat party has moved left on almost every issue even from Obama. It's why even "moderate" Joe Biden doesn't sound like his 1970s, 80s, 90s, or 00s self. He moves with the partly and they have moved left. In 2020 I would be pretty skeptical. 2016 I guess, although even then he was a bit of a strange outlier and difficult for some to piece together. His whole ostensible platform was a bit of a departure in a fair few areas, his past utterances on say same-sex marriage were a bit ahead of even his Dem opponents, so I do recall some commentary on him being socially liberal in certain areas. On the other hand you got plenty of glimpses of the Trumpian playbook to playing to the gallery and scapegoating various marginalised peoples. Or picking Pence as a VP which kind of wipes out him being on the right side of that issue back in the day. Which made people rather worried about him even when he was seen as a no-hoper to actually win. It’s hard to remember exactly what the kind of consensus was back through time like that, my recollection was not that he was seen as one of the most moderate GOP candidates in a few cycles, but that he had some moderate tendencies amidst a lot of really worrying tendencies. Perhaps a moderate candidate with extremism as a methodology. Like many, you focus far too much on the political game aspect of this, e.g. "the Trumpian playbook." Not that I'm going to scrap it up, but polling back then had him perceived as more of a moderate. Trump did in fact sign a more-or-less mainline Republican tax law (which, if you want another example of how parties change, see how the Democrats are currently trying to reinstate the biggest tax break for the well off that the bill eliminated). However, he has been relatively consistent in his overall messages on trade, Social Security, foreign policy, immigration, abortion, and other issues. Trump is not a typical Republican. He has promised to not touch Social Security, has been restrained in his use of force overseas, has sold out far less often on immigration, isn't afraid to talk up his pro-life stances, has acted on trade, etc. I think the people who hoped he would tone down his rhetoric in office are disappointed, but I'm not sure how many people who actually supported his ideas are really that bummed out. (And for me at least, it's a welcome surprise). Point being, the inability to see how there could be such a thing as a "Trump Democrat" comes off as far-too-common left wing arrogance and ignorance. The question "how could people possibly support Trump" is clearly offered only as a sardonic and dismissive quip instead of a question genuinely asked. But then again, apparently it's hard for many to even understand how someone could think that burning down buildings is bad, so maybe there is even more work to do. It’s not dismissive, there are understandable reasons for some flipping camps back in the day, or continuing to do so. I believe this discussion was prompted re appealing to undecided voters of which the ‘Trump Democrat’ would be one. If we’re talking trying to win those votes I mean how do you do that without completely gutting your own platform and alienating your own base? And do you even drag those ones back? It’s a bit nitpicky but even if you’ve voted blue for donkeys, you’re not really a Trump Democrat, more a Nouveau Republican. Or a Trumpublican. He has changed that party’s direction in certain areas, so assuming these people stay on board I’d consider them new Republican converts rather than lapsed Democrats, given the directions taken by both parties. I mean, those two things aren't mutually exclusive. Platforms change based on issues. When the Republican party was born it was also the party of tariffs, and remained that way for a long time. Maybe at the time they made sense! Then it wasn't. Now, it's having an internal fight about it. I don't really think this is about undecided voters, this is about figuring out why people who formerly voted for your party would "vote against their own interests." Of course that phrase is exactly the type of arrogance I describe, and the fact it gets so much use is demonstrative. Even now, you grant "there are understandable reasons for some flipping camps back in the day, or continuing to do so." Can you describe any without tying in, say, racism? Xenophobia? "I got mine"? I think you might actually be able to. But many can't. Could certainly give it a shot like. Legitimate immigration concerns, decline of particular industries and indeed a sneering, rather dismissive attitude from the other side that’s attempting to win your vote. Amongst others. The rather infamous ‘just learn to code’ article springs to mind. Actually have bold policies that are targeted to the needs and wants of particular areas and your wider platform. And push it harder too. Messaging is important after all. Go green but frame it as American jobs in making the technologies of the future and you will help build it. Ticks a bunch of boxes. Over in the UK we had areas of post-industrial decline for decades. Plenty of space and time to do a bold strategy of incentivising industry to move operations to those regions struggling economically. Never really happened to stall the brain drain and lo and behold Brexit happened and we got the ‘why did these historic Labour areas vote to leave, must be racist’ kind of ridiculous handwringing. The US is even more diverse economically and culturally than we are over here, a one-size fits all kind of strategy, or at least one not having regional-specific kind of policy is missing a trick. I mean... a lot of it was racist. I'm a North-easterner and I can assure you that the place where I grew up was and is phenomenally racist. I didn't meet a black man until I was in my 20s and didn't see one until my deep teens. My grandmother refused to shop in Marks and Spencers because she one day saw a black man at the till. There were other elements that contributed, but that explicitly racist rhetoric used by the papers against immigrants has very strong resonance in certain areas of the UK. One of the most worrying elements of modern discourse is how a) people on the left are too quick to call racism and b) how people on the left are too cautious to actually talk about it because 'it isn't helping the discourse'. The racists don't give a shit. They hate brown people and that's the end of it. To this day we still have the 'coming over here and taking our jobs' rhetoric against Pakistanis and Indians yet weirdly the - coincidentally white - Polish immigrants barely get mentioned in the papers despite the fact they definitely are taking up our jobs because they come here to work and send money home to the family, in the majority (or at least that specific segment of Polish immigrants do)..
The Polish and other Eastern bloc immigrants weren’t exactly popular if you go back to when they joined the EU. And by not popular I mean at least in my native Belfast they frequently got intimidated out of their houses. The likes of the Daily Mail weren’t particularly effusive about those migrant communities either.
Over time I think that did moderate through exposure, but equally that they’re not brown as well definitely helps.
Of course we’re expecting some degree of rationality, the EU exit isn’t great for the racists. Presumably we’ll turn more to the former colonies to fill the gaps in the NHS et al and cultivate more links there to compensate for Europeans being able to migrate rather smoothly.
Was my standard tailored racist argument for racist people back in the day to vote Remain really.
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On September 06 2020 20:03 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On September 06 2020 14:49 StalkerTL wrote:
For better or worse, the polls themselves suggest a pretty clear Biden lead that isn't really shifting unless you're taking into account pollsters that use a large amount of online methods such as using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. A lot of those same polls have extremely odd results, such as that Atlas Intel poll suggesting 48% of white Americans support Biden (that would be the largest white support for any Democratic candidate since LBJ) and 30% black support Trump (that would be a ~20 point improvement vs the 2018 midterm elections).
The polling itself, ignoring online heavy pollsters who put out polls in the immediate aftermath of the RNC and DNC, has shown a very consistent Biden lead of 6-10 points. Its a referendum on Trump's presidency and his method of governance has in him in the media every single day of the 4 years. There's just not many undecideds this election because there's no way you can avoid hearing about Trump, whether through the media or through social media.
There's a lot of garbage happening all around America to delegitimize the election, such as the Trump Administration doing their very best efforts to cripple the USPS so mail voting may come in later than sooner. So obviously Biden can lose pretty easily. But the polling wouldn't suggest this at all and obviously can't take into account things like voter suppression and the voting behaviour during the coronavirus.
I don't believe third parties are going to spoil the election for either side. Name recognition of the Greens and Libertarian candidate is close to non-existent in polling and more importantly there's few undecideds compared to 2016 where both Trump and Clinton were polling in the low 40s (and even the 30s in some states!). If there was ever a sign that Clinton was in trouble, it was the sheer number of undecideds and her inability to poll higher than something like 45%.
Compare that to the consistent low-mid 40s for Trump and Biden consistently hitting 50. Even the single Kanye presidential poll I've seen suggests he has little pull and if he does have any pull he probably pulls more Trump voters than Democratic voters (not surprising, his campaign has been extremely evangelical). Didn't 100% of the polls in 2016 show a clear Hilary lead though? I thought after 2016 we all admitted that polling doesn't work because of how the data is collected (either the sample size isn't good enough or the questions are too simplistic).
People who think polls are bad don't understand why 2016 went the way it did. The three main factors is not weighting by education properly, hence underestimating lower education turnout/support, the extremely low approvals and high disapprovals for both candidates as well as Comey's announcement. Polling can't really accurately measure the impact of extremely late and sudden movement, that's why polling in the immediate aftermath of the DNC and RNC is worthless.
Its a reasonable stance that, looking at both candidate's low support, that the Comey announcement probably cost Clinton an election that was won by like 100,000 votes across the Midwest. She wasn't popular and there were high undecideds. 538 gave Trump around 30% of winning in 2016. If I told you had a 30% chance of winning $1 million and 70% chance of dying, would you take those odds?
National polls basically got the popular vote correct. Most state polls were within the margin of error anyway despite that. There were number nerds who played pundit like Sam Wang, who gave you that stupid 101% percent Clinton win chance. Obviously those people were stupid then and stupid now.
Polls got the 2018 midterm elections perfectly fine and within acceptable margins of error. The only real miss would be Florida. Getting the winner wrong in extremely tight races isn't a sign that polling is wrong, they only give you a good idea of public support at a given time. There's always a margin of error and being wrong by like 10,000 votes isn't a sign that your poll methodology is flawed.
The biggest difference between Biden's lead in 2020 and Clinton's lead in 2016 is Clinton's huge disapprovals and the high number of undecideds. Biden is consistently hitting high 40s and low 50s and sometimes has a positive approval rating. Clinton could never break past the low 40s and had two digit net disapproval at all times. In an early New Mexico poll, Clinton was hitting the 30s (!) because Gary Johnson had the name recognition of being governor. 538 was absolutely correct to not overrate Clinton's chances because Trump is the political representation of the Three Stooges Syndrome, unlike a lot of other number nerds.
Biden could lose in November but you'd be an idiot to bet against Biden if the election was held today and you had a gun pointed to your head. You would be hoping for systematic polling errors of around 6-10 points. That's astronomical and I don't buy the shy Trump voter narrative either seeing Trump supporters are anything but quiet. Even the 2019 UK General Election, the most recent time people bring up the shy Tory voter mythology, showed a comfortable ~10 point Conservative win from every pollster. I think lefties legitimately thought youth turnout would save them (shy young voter?) but the polling got the national numbers pretty right.
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On September 08 2020 10:06 StalkerTL wrote:Show nested quote +On September 06 2020 20:03 iamthedave wrote:On September 06 2020 14:49 StalkerTL wrote:
For better or worse, the polls themselves suggest a pretty clear Biden lead that isn't really shifting unless you're taking into account pollsters that use a large amount of online methods such as using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. A lot of those same polls have extremely odd results, such as that Atlas Intel poll suggesting 48% of white Americans support Biden (that would be the largest white support for any Democratic candidate since LBJ) and 30% black support Trump (that would be a ~20 point improvement vs the 2018 midterm elections).
The polling itself, ignoring online heavy pollsters who put out polls in the immediate aftermath of the RNC and DNC, has shown a very consistent Biden lead of 6-10 points. Its a referendum on Trump's presidency and his method of governance has in him in the media every single day of the 4 years. There's just not many undecideds this election because there's no way you can avoid hearing about Trump, whether through the media or through social media.
There's a lot of garbage happening all around America to delegitimize the election, such as the Trump Administration doing their very best efforts to cripple the USPS so mail voting may come in later than sooner. So obviously Biden can lose pretty easily. But the polling wouldn't suggest this at all and obviously can't take into account things like voter suppression and the voting behaviour during the coronavirus.
I don't believe third parties are going to spoil the election for either side. Name recognition of the Greens and Libertarian candidate is close to non-existent in polling and more importantly there's few undecideds compared to 2016 where both Trump and Clinton were polling in the low 40s (and even the 30s in some states!). If there was ever a sign that Clinton was in trouble, it was the sheer number of undecideds and her inability to poll higher than something like 45%.
Compare that to the consistent low-mid 40s for Trump and Biden consistently hitting 50. Even the single Kanye presidential poll I've seen suggests he has little pull and if he does have any pull he probably pulls more Trump voters than Democratic voters (not surprising, his campaign has been extremely evangelical). Didn't 100% of the polls in 2016 show a clear Hilary lead though? I thought after 2016 we all admitted that polling doesn't work because of how the data is collected (either the sample size isn't good enough or the questions are too simplistic). People who think polls are bad don't understand why 2016 went the way it did. The three main factors is not weighting by education properly, hence underestimating lower education turnout/support, the extremely low approvals and high disapprovals for both candidates as well as Comey's announcement. Polling can't really accurately measure the impact of extremely late and sudden movement, that's why polling in the immediate aftermath of the DNC and RNC is worthless. Its a reasonable stance that, looking at both candidate's low support, that the Comey announcement probably cost Clinton an election that was won by like 100,000 votes across the Midwest. She wasn't popular and there were high undecideds. 538 gave Trump around 30% of winning in 2016. If I told you had a 30% chance of winning $1 million and 70% chance of dying, would you take those odds? National polls basically got the popular vote correct. Most state polls were within the margin of error anyway despite that. There were number nerds who played pundit like Sam Wang, who gave you that stupid 101% percent Clinton win chance. Obviously those people were stupid then and stupid now. Polls got the 2018 midterm elections perfectly fine and within acceptable margins of error. The only real miss would be Florida. Getting the winner wrong in extremely tight races isn't a sign that polling is wrong, they only give you a good idea of public support at a given time. There's always a margin of error and being wrong by like 10,000 votes isn't a sign that your poll methodology is flawed. The biggest difference between Biden's lead in 2020 and Clinton's lead in 2016 is Clinton's huge disapprovals and the high number of undecideds. Biden is consistently hitting high 40s and low 50s and sometimes has a positive approval rating. Clinton could never break past the low 40s and had two digit net disapproval at all times. In an early New Mexico poll, Clinton was hitting the 30s (!) because Gary Johnson had the name recognition of being governor. 538 was absolutely correct to not overrate Clinton's chances because Trump is the political representation of the Three Stooges Syndrome, unlike a lot of other number nerds. Biden could lose in November but you'd be an idiot to bet against Biden if the election was held today and you had a gun pointed to your head. You would be hoping for systematic polling errors of around 6-10 points. That's astronomical and I don't buy the shy Trump voter narrative either seeing Trump supporters are anything but quiet. Even the 2019 UK General Election, the most recent time people bring up the shy Tory voter mythology, showed a comfortable ~10 point Conservative win from every pollster. I think lefties legitimately thought youth turnout would save them (shy young voter?) but the polling got the national numbers pretty right.
And yet I sense zero enthusiasm from anyone to vote for Biden. It's voting against Trump. There's zero passion or even particularly interest.
Barack Obama didn't win because people hated Mitt Romney, he won because people wanted him to win. When it comes to voting day, that matters. Despite Wegandi seemingly believing that voting is easy peasy lemon squeezy, it takes physical effort, even if not much, to vote. That's where enthusiasm matters. How many people are going to wake up on election day and think 'God I can't wait to vote for Biden! The future's gonna be great!' Even HERE, where the predominant left-aligned viewpoint is 'get Trump out no matter what' there is zero actual interest in Biden or enthusiasm towards the idea of a Biden presidency.
People will be enthused to vote for Trump. I think Biden's only real advantage is Trump can't hold his preferred style of election by going around and having tons of campaign rallies because of COVID, so he can't rabble rouse the way he'd like to.
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People are super enthused to vote against Trump. Much more so than any Trump voter is for him.
Here, I'll just quote the 538 article on the subject :
But the significance of this “enthusiasm gap” is exaggerated. Enthusiastic votes count just as much as unenthusiastic ones, meaning an enthusiasm gap would only really matter in a close election. And right now, it isn’t a close election: Biden leads Trump in national polls by nearly 9 points. No enthusiasm advantage — no matter how big — could possibly make up for that kind of a gap.
Let’s pretend, though, that voter enthusiasm is an important metric for understanding Trump and Biden’s candidacies. The Trump campaign would still have a problem, and that’s because the 2020 enthusiasm gap is mostly a myth.
First, while Biden voters may not be all that excited about voting for Biden, they’re very enthusiastic about voting against Trump. And that gives Biden a pretty strong edge, because Trump supporters don’t despise Biden the way they despised Hillary Clinton in 2016. In fact, according to survey data from the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape project, the share of Trump voters who rate Biden unfavorably is consistently much lower than the share of Biden voters who rate Trump negatively — nearly 30 percentage points lower as of the last survey conducted at the end of June.
Second, because Trump voters don’t dislike Biden as much as Biden voters dislike Trump, Biden actually has an advantage in net enthusiasm (calculated as the difference between a candidate’s “very favorable” and “very unfavorable” rating). The gap on this metric has widened between the two in the past month, too.
What’s especially notable here is that Biden’s net enthusiasm rating is near zero, which is similar to most major-party presidential candidates’ ratings from 1980 to 2012. Trump’s current score of around -20, on the other hand, has only one historical comparison other than his own campaign four years ago: Hillary Clinton in 2016.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-trump-not-biden-might-have-an-enthusiasm-problem/
Biden does also have some super fans, though they aren't going to be found online. They tend to be older black democrats. Recall how there wasn't really any real blowback about his "vote for Trump and you're not black" comments?
I do recall reading another article that Trump has experienced some enthusiasm issues lately - his very favorables have been declining to somewhat favorables.
For Trump to win if the vote were held today, there would need to be an error of two orders of magnitute of polling errors (Silver stated it would be 10% chance for a Trump win if election were held today).
For Trump to win on election day, he needs to bring Biden's lead from ~7.5% down to 3%, at which point it's still only somewhat Trump favored - Biden can still win at a 3% lead, though it'd be a nail-biter. This isn't impossible - 538 is giving Trump a 30% chance. That is based on the fact that races have swung by that margin in the past this far out. I'm using 538's averages here, who do take int account the pollsters who are hypothesizing a shy Trump effect exists - Rasmussen and Trafalgar.
Trump needs several unforced errors from Biden, or events outside of his control to align in his favor (things like the pulse nightclub shooting in 2016). I'm not sure it's possible, based on Trump's personality, for him to actually take advantage of those, but we'll see. There are also no undecideds to break for Trump at a 2 to 1 margin, which is what happened last election.
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On September 08 2020 11:41 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2020 10:06 StalkerTL wrote:On September 06 2020 20:03 iamthedave wrote:On September 06 2020 14:49 StalkerTL wrote:
For better or worse, the polls themselves suggest a pretty clear Biden lead that isn't really shifting unless you're taking into account pollsters that use a large amount of online methods such as using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. A lot of those same polls have extremely odd results, such as that Atlas Intel poll suggesting 48% of white Americans support Biden (that would be the largest white support for any Democratic candidate since LBJ) and 30% black support Trump (that would be a ~20 point improvement vs the 2018 midterm elections).
The polling itself, ignoring online heavy pollsters who put out polls in the immediate aftermath of the RNC and DNC, has shown a very consistent Biden lead of 6-10 points. Its a referendum on Trump's presidency and his method of governance has in him in the media every single day of the 4 years. There's just not many undecideds this election because there's no way you can avoid hearing about Trump, whether through the media or through social media.
There's a lot of garbage happening all around America to delegitimize the election, such as the Trump Administration doing their very best efforts to cripple the USPS so mail voting may come in later than sooner. So obviously Biden can lose pretty easily. But the polling wouldn't suggest this at all and obviously can't take into account things like voter suppression and the voting behaviour during the coronavirus.
I don't believe third parties are going to spoil the election for either side. Name recognition of the Greens and Libertarian candidate is close to non-existent in polling and more importantly there's few undecideds compared to 2016 where both Trump and Clinton were polling in the low 40s (and even the 30s in some states!). If there was ever a sign that Clinton was in trouble, it was the sheer number of undecideds and her inability to poll higher than something like 45%.
Compare that to the consistent low-mid 40s for Trump and Biden consistently hitting 50. Even the single Kanye presidential poll I've seen suggests he has little pull and if he does have any pull he probably pulls more Trump voters than Democratic voters (not surprising, his campaign has been extremely evangelical). Didn't 100% of the polls in 2016 show a clear Hilary lead though? I thought after 2016 we all admitted that polling doesn't work because of how the data is collected (either the sample size isn't good enough or the questions are too simplistic). People who think polls are bad don't understand why 2016 went the way it did. The three main factors is not weighting by education properly, hence underestimating lower education turnout/support, the extremely low approvals and high disapprovals for both candidates as well as Comey's announcement. Polling can't really accurately measure the impact of extremely late and sudden movement, that's why polling in the immediate aftermath of the DNC and RNC is worthless. Its a reasonable stance that, looking at both candidate's low support, that the Comey announcement probably cost Clinton an election that was won by like 100,000 votes across the Midwest. She wasn't popular and there were high undecideds. 538 gave Trump around 30% of winning in 2016. If I told you had a 30% chance of winning $1 million and 70% chance of dying, would you take those odds? National polls basically got the popular vote correct. Most state polls were within the margin of error anyway despite that. There were number nerds who played pundit like Sam Wang, who gave you that stupid 101% percent Clinton win chance. Obviously those people were stupid then and stupid now. Polls got the 2018 midterm elections perfectly fine and within acceptable margins of error. The only real miss would be Florida. Getting the winner wrong in extremely tight races isn't a sign that polling is wrong, they only give you a good idea of public support at a given time. There's always a margin of error and being wrong by like 10,000 votes isn't a sign that your poll methodology is flawed. The biggest difference between Biden's lead in 2020 and Clinton's lead in 2016 is Clinton's huge disapprovals and the high number of undecideds. Biden is consistently hitting high 40s and low 50s and sometimes has a positive approval rating. Clinton could never break past the low 40s and had two digit net disapproval at all times. In an early New Mexico poll, Clinton was hitting the 30s (!) because Gary Johnson had the name recognition of being governor. 538 was absolutely correct to not overrate Clinton's chances because Trump is the political representation of the Three Stooges Syndrome, unlike a lot of other number nerds. Biden could lose in November but you'd be an idiot to bet against Biden if the election was held today and you had a gun pointed to your head. You would be hoping for systematic polling errors of around 6-10 points. That's astronomical and I don't buy the shy Trump voter narrative either seeing Trump supporters are anything but quiet. Even the 2019 UK General Election, the most recent time people bring up the shy Tory voter mythology, showed a comfortable ~10 point Conservative win from every pollster. I think lefties legitimately thought youth turnout would save them (shy young voter?) but the polling got the national numbers pretty right. And yet I sense zero enthusiasm from anyone to vote for Biden. It's voting against Trump. There's zero passion or even particularly interest. Barack Obama didn't win because people hated Mitt Romney, he won because people wanted him to win. When it comes to voting day, that matters. Despite Wegandi seemingly believing that voting is easy peasy lemon squeezy, it takes physical effort, even if not much, to vote. That's where enthusiasm matters. How many people are going to wake up on election day and think 'God I can't wait to vote for Biden! The future's gonna be great!' Even HERE, where the predominant left-aligned viewpoint is 'get Trump out no matter what' there is zero actual interest in Biden or enthusiasm towards the idea of a Biden presidency. People will be enthused to vote for Trump. I think Biden's only real advantage is Trump can't hold his preferred style of election by going around and having tons of campaign rallies because of COVID, so he can't rabble rouse the way he'd like to.
Honestly, even Clinton had a much more substantial fanbase than Biden does. Plenty more people who actively disliked her, certainly, but a genuine fanbase as well. Biden is just the stand-in for an unenthusiastic mix of anti-Trump and the small fragments of surviving Obama nostalgia.
There are plenty of party-line Democrats, the folks who constantly sing the song of how bad Trump is, who will vote against him no matter what. But there's also a substantial contingency of folks who will ask what Biden will do to make their own lives better, who might just fail to find anything given that Biden doesn't really stand for anything. The electoral college lead is fragile and there's plenty of time for polls to edge Trumpward (as they already kind of have). Feels like just a couple of bad Biden flubs is all it would take, and knowing Biden he might just deliver.
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On September 08 2020 14:00 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2020 11:41 iamthedave wrote:On September 08 2020 10:06 StalkerTL wrote:On September 06 2020 20:03 iamthedave wrote:On September 06 2020 14:49 StalkerTL wrote:
For better or worse, the polls themselves suggest a pretty clear Biden lead that isn't really shifting unless you're taking into account pollsters that use a large amount of online methods such as using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. A lot of those same polls have extremely odd results, such as that Atlas Intel poll suggesting 48% of white Americans support Biden (that would be the largest white support for any Democratic candidate since LBJ) and 30% black support Trump (that would be a ~20 point improvement vs the 2018 midterm elections).
The polling itself, ignoring online heavy pollsters who put out polls in the immediate aftermath of the RNC and DNC, has shown a very consistent Biden lead of 6-10 points. Its a referendum on Trump's presidency and his method of governance has in him in the media every single day of the 4 years. There's just not many undecideds this election because there's no way you can avoid hearing about Trump, whether through the media or through social media.
There's a lot of garbage happening all around America to delegitimize the election, such as the Trump Administration doing their very best efforts to cripple the USPS so mail voting may come in later than sooner. So obviously Biden can lose pretty easily. But the polling wouldn't suggest this at all and obviously can't take into account things like voter suppression and the voting behaviour during the coronavirus.
I don't believe third parties are going to spoil the election for either side. Name recognition of the Greens and Libertarian candidate is close to non-existent in polling and more importantly there's few undecideds compared to 2016 where both Trump and Clinton were polling in the low 40s (and even the 30s in some states!). If there was ever a sign that Clinton was in trouble, it was the sheer number of undecideds and her inability to poll higher than something like 45%.
Compare that to the consistent low-mid 40s for Trump and Biden consistently hitting 50. Even the single Kanye presidential poll I've seen suggests he has little pull and if he does have any pull he probably pulls more Trump voters than Democratic voters (not surprising, his campaign has been extremely evangelical). Didn't 100% of the polls in 2016 show a clear Hilary lead though? I thought after 2016 we all admitted that polling doesn't work because of how the data is collected (either the sample size isn't good enough or the questions are too simplistic). People who think polls are bad don't understand why 2016 went the way it did. The three main factors is not weighting by education properly, hence underestimating lower education turnout/support, the extremely low approvals and high disapprovals for both candidates as well as Comey's announcement. Polling can't really accurately measure the impact of extremely late and sudden movement, that's why polling in the immediate aftermath of the DNC and RNC is worthless. Its a reasonable stance that, looking at both candidate's low support, that the Comey announcement probably cost Clinton an election that was won by like 100,000 votes across the Midwest. She wasn't popular and there were high undecideds. 538 gave Trump around 30% of winning in 2016. If I told you had a 30% chance of winning $1 million and 70% chance of dying, would you take those odds? National polls basically got the popular vote correct. Most state polls were within the margin of error anyway despite that. There were number nerds who played pundit like Sam Wang, who gave you that stupid 101% percent Clinton win chance. Obviously those people were stupid then and stupid now. Polls got the 2018 midterm elections perfectly fine and within acceptable margins of error. The only real miss would be Florida. Getting the winner wrong in extremely tight races isn't a sign that polling is wrong, they only give you a good idea of public support at a given time. There's always a margin of error and being wrong by like 10,000 votes isn't a sign that your poll methodology is flawed. The biggest difference between Biden's lead in 2020 and Clinton's lead in 2016 is Clinton's huge disapprovals and the high number of undecideds. Biden is consistently hitting high 40s and low 50s and sometimes has a positive approval rating. Clinton could never break past the low 40s and had two digit net disapproval at all times. In an early New Mexico poll, Clinton was hitting the 30s (!) because Gary Johnson had the name recognition of being governor. 538 was absolutely correct to not overrate Clinton's chances because Trump is the political representation of the Three Stooges Syndrome, unlike a lot of other number nerds. Biden could lose in November but you'd be an idiot to bet against Biden if the election was held today and you had a gun pointed to your head. You would be hoping for systematic polling errors of around 6-10 points. That's astronomical and I don't buy the shy Trump voter narrative either seeing Trump supporters are anything but quiet. Even the 2019 UK General Election, the most recent time people bring up the shy Tory voter mythology, showed a comfortable ~10 point Conservative win from every pollster. I think lefties legitimately thought youth turnout would save them (shy young voter?) but the polling got the national numbers pretty right. And yet I sense zero enthusiasm from anyone to vote for Biden. It's voting against Trump. There's zero passion or even particularly interest. Barack Obama didn't win because people hated Mitt Romney, he won because people wanted him to win. When it comes to voting day, that matters. Despite Wegandi seemingly believing that voting is easy peasy lemon squeezy, it takes physical effort, even if not much, to vote. That's where enthusiasm matters. How many people are going to wake up on election day and think 'God I can't wait to vote for Biden! The future's gonna be great!' Even HERE, where the predominant left-aligned viewpoint is 'get Trump out no matter what' there is zero actual interest in Biden or enthusiasm towards the idea of a Biden presidency. People will be enthused to vote for Trump. I think Biden's only real advantage is Trump can't hold his preferred style of election by going around and having tons of campaign rallies because of COVID, so he can't rabble rouse the way he'd like to. Honestly, even Clinton had a much more substantial fanbase than Biden does. Plenty more people who actively disliked her, certainly, but a genuine fanbase as well. Biden is just the stand-in for an unenthusiastic mix of anti-Trump and the small fragments of surviving Obama nostalgia. There are plenty of party-line Democrats, the folks who constantly sing the song of how bad Trump is, who will vote against him no matter what. But there's also a substantial contingency of folks who will ask what Biden will do to make their own lives better, who might just fail to find anything given that Biden doesn't really stand for anything. The electoral college lead is fragile and there's plenty of time for polls to edge Trumpward (as they already kind of have). Feels like just a couple of bad Biden flubs is all it would take, and knowing Biden he might just deliver.
This election is not really about Biden. It's a referendum about Trump, and his systematic destruction of every norm the american democracy is built upon.
There will always be people who say "I don't like fish, I am pissed off I am not offered meat so I am not going to chose between eating fish and eating dog poo". But they are a minority. Most people are quite passionate about not being served dog poo.
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On September 08 2020 11:41 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2020 10:06 StalkerTL wrote:On September 06 2020 20:03 iamthedave wrote:On September 06 2020 14:49 StalkerTL wrote:
For better or worse, the polls themselves suggest a pretty clear Biden lead that isn't really shifting unless you're taking into account pollsters that use a large amount of online methods such as using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. A lot of those same polls have extremely odd results, such as that Atlas Intel poll suggesting 48% of white Americans support Biden (that would be the largest white support for any Democratic candidate since LBJ) and 30% black support Trump (that would be a ~20 point improvement vs the 2018 midterm elections).
The polling itself, ignoring online heavy pollsters who put out polls in the immediate aftermath of the RNC and DNC, has shown a very consistent Biden lead of 6-10 points. Its a referendum on Trump's presidency and his method of governance has in him in the media every single day of the 4 years. There's just not many undecideds this election because there's no way you can avoid hearing about Trump, whether through the media or through social media.
There's a lot of garbage happening all around America to delegitimize the election, such as the Trump Administration doing their very best efforts to cripple the USPS so mail voting may come in later than sooner. So obviously Biden can lose pretty easily. But the polling wouldn't suggest this at all and obviously can't take into account things like voter suppression and the voting behaviour during the coronavirus.
I don't believe third parties are going to spoil the election for either side. Name recognition of the Greens and Libertarian candidate is close to non-existent in polling and more importantly there's few undecideds compared to 2016 where both Trump and Clinton were polling in the low 40s (and even the 30s in some states!). If there was ever a sign that Clinton was in trouble, it was the sheer number of undecideds and her inability to poll higher than something like 45%.
Compare that to the consistent low-mid 40s for Trump and Biden consistently hitting 50. Even the single Kanye presidential poll I've seen suggests he has little pull and if he does have any pull he probably pulls more Trump voters than Democratic voters (not surprising, his campaign has been extremely evangelical). Didn't 100% of the polls in 2016 show a clear Hilary lead though? I thought after 2016 we all admitted that polling doesn't work because of how the data is collected (either the sample size isn't good enough or the questions are too simplistic). People who think polls are bad don't understand why 2016 went the way it did. The three main factors is not weighting by education properly, hence underestimating lower education turnout/support, the extremely low approvals and high disapprovals for both candidates as well as Comey's announcement. Polling can't really accurately measure the impact of extremely late and sudden movement, that's why polling in the immediate aftermath of the DNC and RNC is worthless. Its a reasonable stance that, looking at both candidate's low support, that the Comey announcement probably cost Clinton an election that was won by like 100,000 votes across the Midwest. She wasn't popular and there were high undecideds. 538 gave Trump around 30% of winning in 2016. If I told you had a 30% chance of winning $1 million and 70% chance of dying, would you take those odds? National polls basically got the popular vote correct. Most state polls were within the margin of error anyway despite that. There were number nerds who played pundit like Sam Wang, who gave you that stupid 101% percent Clinton win chance. Obviously those people were stupid then and stupid now. Polls got the 2018 midterm elections perfectly fine and within acceptable margins of error. The only real miss would be Florida. Getting the winner wrong in extremely tight races isn't a sign that polling is wrong, they only give you a good idea of public support at a given time. There's always a margin of error and being wrong by like 10,000 votes isn't a sign that your poll methodology is flawed. The biggest difference between Biden's lead in 2020 and Clinton's lead in 2016 is Clinton's huge disapprovals and the high number of undecideds. Biden is consistently hitting high 40s and low 50s and sometimes has a positive approval rating. Clinton could never break past the low 40s and had two digit net disapproval at all times. In an early New Mexico poll, Clinton was hitting the 30s (!) because Gary Johnson had the name recognition of being governor. 538 was absolutely correct to not overrate Clinton's chances because Trump is the political representation of the Three Stooges Syndrome, unlike a lot of other number nerds. Biden could lose in November but you'd be an idiot to bet against Biden if the election was held today and you had a gun pointed to your head. You would be hoping for systematic polling errors of around 6-10 points. That's astronomical and I don't buy the shy Trump voter narrative either seeing Trump supporters are anything but quiet. Even the 2019 UK General Election, the most recent time people bring up the shy Tory voter mythology, showed a comfortable ~10 point Conservative win from every pollster. I think lefties legitimately thought youth turnout would save them (shy young voter?) but the polling got the national numbers pretty right. And yet I sense zero enthusiasm from anyone to vote for Biden. It's voting against Trump. There's zero passion or even particularly interest. Barack Obama didn't win because people hated Mitt Romney, he won because people wanted him to win. When it comes to voting day, that matters. Despite Wegandi seemingly believing that voting is easy peasy lemon squeezy, it takes physical effort, even if not much, to vote. That's where enthusiasm matters. How many people are going to wake up on election day and think 'God I can't wait to vote for Biden! The future's gonna be great!' Even HERE, where the predominant left-aligned viewpoint is 'get Trump out no matter what' there is zero actual interest in Biden or enthusiasm towards the idea of a Biden presidency. People will be enthused to vote for Trump. I think Biden's only real advantage is Trump can't hold his preferred style of election by going around and having tons of campaign rallies because of COVID, so he can't rabble rouse the way he'd like to.
I don't think Biden himself is enthusiasm worthy, but let's not forget that there are going to be a ton of important appointees that he will be responsible for. Unlike Trump I have confidence that Biden and his team will appoint people who are competent and qualified for their jobs. I have some hope at least that he'll restore the EPA, and recruit people experienced in foreign policy to help reconnect us to the rest of the world again. So there are some reasons for enthusiasm even if this candidate is personally uninspiring.
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On September 08 2020 16:44 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2020 14:00 LegalLord wrote:On September 08 2020 11:41 iamthedave wrote:On September 08 2020 10:06 StalkerTL wrote:On September 06 2020 20:03 iamthedave wrote:On September 06 2020 14:49 StalkerTL wrote:
For better or worse, the polls themselves suggest a pretty clear Biden lead that isn't really shifting unless you're taking into account pollsters that use a large amount of online methods such as using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. A lot of those same polls have extremely odd results, such as that Atlas Intel poll suggesting 48% of white Americans support Biden (that would be the largest white support for any Democratic candidate since LBJ) and 30% black support Trump (that would be a ~20 point improvement vs the 2018 midterm elections).
The polling itself, ignoring online heavy pollsters who put out polls in the immediate aftermath of the RNC and DNC, has shown a very consistent Biden lead of 6-10 points. Its a referendum on Trump's presidency and his method of governance has in him in the media every single day of the 4 years. There's just not many undecideds this election because there's no way you can avoid hearing about Trump, whether through the media or through social media.
There's a lot of garbage happening all around America to delegitimize the election, such as the Trump Administration doing their very best efforts to cripple the USPS so mail voting may come in later than sooner. So obviously Biden can lose pretty easily. But the polling wouldn't suggest this at all and obviously can't take into account things like voter suppression and the voting behaviour during the coronavirus.
I don't believe third parties are going to spoil the election for either side. Name recognition of the Greens and Libertarian candidate is close to non-existent in polling and more importantly there's few undecideds compared to 2016 where both Trump and Clinton were polling in the low 40s (and even the 30s in some states!). If there was ever a sign that Clinton was in trouble, it was the sheer number of undecideds and her inability to poll higher than something like 45%.
Compare that to the consistent low-mid 40s for Trump and Biden consistently hitting 50. Even the single Kanye presidential poll I've seen suggests he has little pull and if he does have any pull he probably pulls more Trump voters than Democratic voters (not surprising, his campaign has been extremely evangelical). Didn't 100% of the polls in 2016 show a clear Hilary lead though? I thought after 2016 we all admitted that polling doesn't work because of how the data is collected (either the sample size isn't good enough or the questions are too simplistic). People who think polls are bad don't understand why 2016 went the way it did. The three main factors is not weighting by education properly, hence underestimating lower education turnout/support, the extremely low approvals and high disapprovals for both candidates as well as Comey's announcement. Polling can't really accurately measure the impact of extremely late and sudden movement, that's why polling in the immediate aftermath of the DNC and RNC is worthless. Its a reasonable stance that, looking at both candidate's low support, that the Comey announcement probably cost Clinton an election that was won by like 100,000 votes across the Midwest. She wasn't popular and there were high undecideds. 538 gave Trump around 30% of winning in 2016. If I told you had a 30% chance of winning $1 million and 70% chance of dying, would you take those odds? National polls basically got the popular vote correct. Most state polls were within the margin of error anyway despite that. There were number nerds who played pundit like Sam Wang, who gave you that stupid 101% percent Clinton win chance. Obviously those people were stupid then and stupid now. Polls got the 2018 midterm elections perfectly fine and within acceptable margins of error. The only real miss would be Florida. Getting the winner wrong in extremely tight races isn't a sign that polling is wrong, they only give you a good idea of public support at a given time. There's always a margin of error and being wrong by like 10,000 votes isn't a sign that your poll methodology is flawed. The biggest difference between Biden's lead in 2020 and Clinton's lead in 2016 is Clinton's huge disapprovals and the high number of undecideds. Biden is consistently hitting high 40s and low 50s and sometimes has a positive approval rating. Clinton could never break past the low 40s and had two digit net disapproval at all times. In an early New Mexico poll, Clinton was hitting the 30s (!) because Gary Johnson had the name recognition of being governor. 538 was absolutely correct to not overrate Clinton's chances because Trump is the political representation of the Three Stooges Syndrome, unlike a lot of other number nerds. Biden could lose in November but you'd be an idiot to bet against Biden if the election was held today and you had a gun pointed to your head. You would be hoping for systematic polling errors of around 6-10 points. That's astronomical and I don't buy the shy Trump voter narrative either seeing Trump supporters are anything but quiet. Even the 2019 UK General Election, the most recent time people bring up the shy Tory voter mythology, showed a comfortable ~10 point Conservative win from every pollster. I think lefties legitimately thought youth turnout would save them (shy young voter?) but the polling got the national numbers pretty right. And yet I sense zero enthusiasm from anyone to vote for Biden. It's voting against Trump. There's zero passion or even particularly interest. Barack Obama didn't win because people hated Mitt Romney, he won because people wanted him to win. When it comes to voting day, that matters. Despite Wegandi seemingly believing that voting is easy peasy lemon squeezy, it takes physical effort, even if not much, to vote. That's where enthusiasm matters. How many people are going to wake up on election day and think 'God I can't wait to vote for Biden! The future's gonna be great!' Even HERE, where the predominant left-aligned viewpoint is 'get Trump out no matter what' there is zero actual interest in Biden or enthusiasm towards the idea of a Biden presidency. People will be enthused to vote for Trump. I think Biden's only real advantage is Trump can't hold his preferred style of election by going around and having tons of campaign rallies because of COVID, so he can't rabble rouse the way he'd like to. Honestly, even Clinton had a much more substantial fanbase than Biden does. Plenty more people who actively disliked her, certainly, but a genuine fanbase as well. Biden is just the stand-in for an unenthusiastic mix of anti-Trump and the small fragments of surviving Obama nostalgia. There are plenty of party-line Democrats, the folks who constantly sing the song of how bad Trump is, who will vote against him no matter what. But there's also a substantial contingency of folks who will ask what Biden will do to make their own lives better, who might just fail to find anything given that Biden doesn't really stand for anything. The electoral college lead is fragile and there's plenty of time for polls to edge Trumpward (as they already kind of have). Feels like just a couple of bad Biden flubs is all it would take, and knowing Biden he might just deliver. This election is not really about Biden. It's a referendum about Trump, and his systematic destruction of every norm the american democracy is built upon. There will always be people who say "I don't like fish, I am pissed off I am not offered meat so I am not going to chose between eating fish and eating dog poo". But they are a minority. Most people are quite passionate about not being served dog poo.
I agree with you that those are the two choices. However, there are other people who obviously don't see it that way, andI don't think it's a very fair classification for people who dislike Biden. I don't think GH sees it as a choice between fish and dog poo. At best he sees it as a choice between dog poo and dog diarrhea, and eating either is so thoroughly unpleasant and hazardous to your health that he'd rather flip the table than choose either of those two plates.
Similarly, people who like Trump obviously don't think they are eating dog poo. They probably see it as a choice between a prime beef American hamburger and fish.
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Andrew Yang's fanbase was pretty enthusiastic. I remember going to the DNC rally in Iowa, and though Yang's fan section was smaller, it was one of the loudest and most enthusiastic in the stadium. Within Yang's most fervent fanbase, there was a good deal of talk about things like voter enthusiasm and his appeal to people who don't traditionally vote as hopes that he would outperform the polls. It didn't happen. (In retrospect, appealing to people who don't vote sounds pretty stupid. It would be great if people were more engaged in politics, and Yang tried that, but well...)
Bernie Sanders' fanbase is most famous for having high enthusiasm. By mid March, Bernie was essentially done, and all that was left were his most "enthusiastic" voters who didn't want to read the writing on the wall.
Enthusiasm doesn't win elections. It's as simple as that. And if you can think of an example where a candidate won with high enthusiasm - that's not why they won. They won because they got the votes. The enthusiasm was coincidental. It's just that enthusiastic people are much easier to notice than your average voter.
At best, enthusiasm gets you more volunteers for your ground game, your phone banks, your rallies etc., which saves a bit of money. But at the end of the day you're hoping that it converts to votes, and it often doesn't.
All of this is to say, I think talking about voter enthusiasm is a complete waste of time. Voter enthusiasm is a myth that people delude themselves with to feel better about their chances.
And, is politics something we're supposed to be enthusiastic about? Politics isn't shouldn't be sports. Maybe the readers and contributors of this thread are enthusiastic about politics, but that should be far from the norm IMO.
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appealing to people who don't vote sounds pretty stupid.
This only makes sense in the last months before the election. It just sounds anti-democratic when you think about how it has been hegemonic gospel for decades. Moreover it undermines the very foundation on which democracy is built.
US voting participation isn't an excuse to write-off people that don't vote in a rigged duopoly, it's a neon red flag that our democracy is dying.
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While you are certainly right that low voting turnout is a red flag, I see very little reason to believe the only or at least the biggest reason for that is due to your two party system. The number of people that don't vote because they understand the system too well is usually outnumbered greatly by those who are too lazy or uninformed or stressed to bother. Not everything is the democrats fault.
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On September 08 2020 17:40 Dromar wrote:
Andrew Yang's fanbase was pretty enthusiastic. I remember going to the DNC rally in Iowa, and though Yang's fan section was smaller, it was one of the loudest and most enthusiastic in the stadium. Within Yang's most fervent fanbase, there was a good deal of talk about things like voter enthusiasm and his appeal to people who don't traditionally vote as hopes that he would outperform the polls. It didn't happen. (In retrospect, appealing to people who don't vote sounds pretty stupid. It would be great if people were more engaged in politics, and Yang tried that, but well...)
Bernie Sanders' fanbase is most famous for having high enthusiasm. By mid March, Bernie was essentially done, and all that was left were his most "enthusiastic" voters who didn't want to read the writing on the wall.
Enthusiasm doesn't win elections. It's as simple as that. And if you can think of an example where a candidate won with high enthusiasm - that's not why they won. They won because they got the votes. The enthusiasm was coincidental. It's just that enthusiastic people are much easier to notice than your average voter.
At best, enthusiasm gets you more volunteers for your ground game, your phone banks, your rallies etc., which saves a bit of money. But at the end of the day you're hoping that it converts to votes, and it often doesn't.
All of this is to say, I think talking about voter enthusiasm is a complete waste of time. Voter enthusiasm is a myth that people delude themselves with to feel better about their chances.
And, is politics something we're supposed to be enthusiastic about? Politics isn't shouldn't be sports. Maybe the readers and contributors of this thread are enthusiastic about politics, but that should be far from the norm IMO.
Maybe enthusiasm is the wrong word and motivation is a better word. Motivation is definitely an important factor in elections i think.
There is like 2 different types of motivation maybe when it comes to elections:
-the motivation to vote in general (which i think will be very high this elections due to the polarized society)
-the motivation to vote for (and in this case also against) a particulary candidate (which probably isnt particulary high for either of the candidates for now besides for their hardcore fanbase as they both have their drawbacks).
This would then more or less imply that this will be an election that is very difficult to predict and which really can go both ways despite a rather large margin in the polls. A lot of people very motivated to vote but still not very motivated to vote for (or against) either candidate,a high number of potential swing voters.
What will happen during the last month and possibly even the last week or day will be decisive i think.
@below:yes that is true i think,obama created a lot of enthusiasm amongst voters.
And its probably also true that positive motivation (the motivation to vote for a specific candidate) is a much stronger force then negative motivation (the motivation to vote against a particulary candidate).
There is people who are very motivated to vote against trump but i dont think that is a particulary large number of people in the usa. You can see it even in the discussion in this thread over the past weeks. People really dont like trump but dont particulary like biden either and then they say they rather dont vote at all or do something else.
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On September 08 2020 17:40 Dromar wrote:
Andrew Yang's fanbase was pretty enthusiastic. I remember going to the DNC rally in Iowa, and though Yang's fan section was smaller, it was one of the loudest and most enthusiastic in the stadium. Within Yang's most fervent fanbase, there was a good deal of talk about things like voter enthusiasm and his appeal to people who don't traditionally vote as hopes that he would outperform the polls. It didn't happen. (In retrospect, appealing to people who don't vote sounds pretty stupid. It would be great if people were more engaged in politics, and Yang tried that, but well...)
Bernie Sanders' fanbase is most famous for having high enthusiasm. By mid March, Bernie was essentially done, and all that was left were his most "enthusiastic" voters who didn't want to read the writing on the wall.
Enthusiasm doesn't win elections. It's as simple as that. And if you can think of an example where a candidate won with high enthusiasm - that's not why they won. They won because they got the votes. The enthusiasm was coincidental. It's just that enthusiastic people are much easier to notice than your average voter.
At best, enthusiasm gets you more volunteers for your ground game, your phone banks, your rallies etc., which saves a bit of money. But at the end of the day you're hoping that it converts to votes, and it often doesn't.
All of this is to say, I think talking about voter enthusiasm is a complete waste of time. Voter enthusiasm is a myth that people delude themselves with to feel better about their chances.
And, is politics something we're supposed to be enthusiastic about? Politics isn't shouldn't be sports. Maybe the readers and contributors of this thread are enthusiastic about politics, but that should be far from the norm IMO.
Barack Obama literally won because of Black enthusiasm to put the first black man in the white house. You can tut and say 'ah but they have to vote' but they voted because they were enthused to vote. People are far more likely to jump through whatever hoops are necessary to vote when they really really want to, no? When Johnny B Detroit gets home from his long job, tired and sweaty, mom's spaghetti, he may well need a reason to leave the house again and vote for President, and 'I can't wait for Biden to be President' is a much stronger motivation than 'Trump's kind of an asshole'.
Positive motivation gets things done much more than negative motivation.
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On September 08 2020 16:44 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2020 14:00 LegalLord wrote:On September 08 2020 11:41 iamthedave wrote:On September 08 2020 10:06 StalkerTL wrote:On September 06 2020 20:03 iamthedave wrote:On September 06 2020 14:49 StalkerTL wrote:
For better or worse, the polls themselves suggest a pretty clear Biden lead that isn't really shifting unless you're taking into account pollsters that use a large amount of online methods such as using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. A lot of those same polls have extremely odd results, such as that Atlas Intel poll suggesting 48% of white Americans support Biden (that would be the largest white support for any Democratic candidate since LBJ) and 30% black support Trump (that would be a ~20 point improvement vs the 2018 midterm elections).
The polling itself, ignoring online heavy pollsters who put out polls in the immediate aftermath of the RNC and DNC, has shown a very consistent Biden lead of 6-10 points. Its a referendum on Trump's presidency and his method of governance has in him in the media every single day of the 4 years. There's just not many undecideds this election because there's no way you can avoid hearing about Trump, whether through the media or through social media.
There's a lot of garbage happening all around America to delegitimize the election, such as the Trump Administration doing their very best efforts to cripple the USPS so mail voting may come in later than sooner. So obviously Biden can lose pretty easily. But the polling wouldn't suggest this at all and obviously can't take into account things like voter suppression and the voting behaviour during the coronavirus.
I don't believe third parties are going to spoil the election for either side. Name recognition of the Greens and Libertarian candidate is close to non-existent in polling and more importantly there's few undecideds compared to 2016 where both Trump and Clinton were polling in the low 40s (and even the 30s in some states!). If there was ever a sign that Clinton was in trouble, it was the sheer number of undecideds and her inability to poll higher than something like 45%.
Compare that to the consistent low-mid 40s for Trump and Biden consistently hitting 50. Even the single Kanye presidential poll I've seen suggests he has little pull and if he does have any pull he probably pulls more Trump voters than Democratic voters (not surprising, his campaign has been extremely evangelical). Didn't 100% of the polls in 2016 show a clear Hilary lead though? I thought after 2016 we all admitted that polling doesn't work because of how the data is collected (either the sample size isn't good enough or the questions are too simplistic). People who think polls are bad don't understand why 2016 went the way it did. The three main factors is not weighting by education properly, hence underestimating lower education turnout/support, the extremely low approvals and high disapprovals for both candidates as well as Comey's announcement. Polling can't really accurately measure the impact of extremely late and sudden movement, that's why polling in the immediate aftermath of the DNC and RNC is worthless. Its a reasonable stance that, looking at both candidate's low support, that the Comey announcement probably cost Clinton an election that was won by like 100,000 votes across the Midwest. She wasn't popular and there were high undecideds. 538 gave Trump around 30% of winning in 2016. If I told you had a 30% chance of winning $1 million and 70% chance of dying, would you take those odds? National polls basically got the popular vote correct. Most state polls were within the margin of error anyway despite that. There were number nerds who played pundit like Sam Wang, who gave you that stupid 101% percent Clinton win chance. Obviously those people were stupid then and stupid now. Polls got the 2018 midterm elections perfectly fine and within acceptable margins of error. The only real miss would be Florida. Getting the winner wrong in extremely tight races isn't a sign that polling is wrong, they only give you a good idea of public support at a given time. There's always a margin of error and being wrong by like 10,000 votes isn't a sign that your poll methodology is flawed. The biggest difference between Biden's lead in 2020 and Clinton's lead in 2016 is Clinton's huge disapprovals and the high number of undecideds. Biden is consistently hitting high 40s and low 50s and sometimes has a positive approval rating. Clinton could never break past the low 40s and had two digit net disapproval at all times. In an early New Mexico poll, Clinton was hitting the 30s (!) because Gary Johnson had the name recognition of being governor. 538 was absolutely correct to not overrate Clinton's chances because Trump is the political representation of the Three Stooges Syndrome, unlike a lot of other number nerds. Biden could lose in November but you'd be an idiot to bet against Biden if the election was held today and you had a gun pointed to your head. You would be hoping for systematic polling errors of around 6-10 points. That's astronomical and I don't buy the shy Trump voter narrative either seeing Trump supporters are anything but quiet. Even the 2019 UK General Election, the most recent time people bring up the shy Tory voter mythology, showed a comfortable ~10 point Conservative win from every pollster. I think lefties legitimately thought youth turnout would save them (shy young voter?) but the polling got the national numbers pretty right. And yet I sense zero enthusiasm from anyone to vote for Biden. It's voting against Trump. There's zero passion or even particularly interest. Barack Obama didn't win because people hated Mitt Romney, he won because people wanted him to win. When it comes to voting day, that matters. Despite Wegandi seemingly believing that voting is easy peasy lemon squeezy, it takes physical effort, even if not much, to vote. That's where enthusiasm matters. How many people are going to wake up on election day and think 'God I can't wait to vote for Biden! The future's gonna be great!' Even HERE, where the predominant left-aligned viewpoint is 'get Trump out no matter what' there is zero actual interest in Biden or enthusiasm towards the idea of a Biden presidency. People will be enthused to vote for Trump. I think Biden's only real advantage is Trump can't hold his preferred style of election by going around and having tons of campaign rallies because of COVID, so he can't rabble rouse the way he'd like to. Honestly, even Clinton had a much more substantial fanbase than Biden does. Plenty more people who actively disliked her, certainly, but a genuine fanbase as well. Biden is just the stand-in for an unenthusiastic mix of anti-Trump and the small fragments of surviving Obama nostalgia. There are plenty of party-line Democrats, the folks who constantly sing the song of how bad Trump is, who will vote against him no matter what. But there's also a substantial contingency of folks who will ask what Biden will do to make their own lives better, who might just fail to find anything given that Biden doesn't really stand for anything. The electoral college lead is fragile and there's plenty of time for polls to edge Trumpward (as they already kind of have). Feels like just a couple of bad Biden flubs is all it would take, and knowing Biden he might just deliver. This election is not really about Biden. It's a referendum about Trump, and his systematic destruction of every norm the american democracy is built upon. There will always be people who say "I don't like fish, I am pissed off I am not offered meat so I am not going to chose between eating fish and eating dog poo". But they are a minority. Most people are quite passionate about not being served dog poo.
Again, some folks will sing the song of how bad Trump is and talk about tacky things like "unprecedented" and "democratic norms." These are people solidly within the Democratic party line, plus their international sympathizers such as yourself.
The voters that matter, i.e. the swing / get-out-the-vote voters, are less concerned with how unsavory Trump is to listen to, and much more concerned with how the president, whoever he may be, will reverse the terminal decline in living conditions that they have experienced over the past few decades. Obama made promises that got him elected but largely failed to deliver, as did Trump, but Biden is hardly offering any change at all. And for them, is Biden really that much better than dog poo?
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People who really liked Bernie are probably not going to enthusiastically vote for Biden, they'll just vote against Trump. Biden doesn't offer a vision of America that's any less awful than the shithole this place has been for decades upon decades
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Nothing to see here, a bunch of very nice, very decent people. Only wanting that "democrat leaders need to be shot dead in the street" at a rally in Salem. QAnon, Patriot Prayers, Proud Boys, all very very nice people, since of course they will vote for one of the candidates. Guess who ?
https://www.newsweek.com/salem-protest-far-right-qanon-democrats-shot-1530230
Of course the police is taking heavy action :
Video posted on social media appears to show one suspected Proud Boys supporter hitting a man with a bat before another repeatedly punches him on the ground. A woman is seen spraying mace on the man's face as he lies on the floor.
Ty Parker, 53, of Durango, Colorado, was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor assault and first-degree intimidation, reported Oregon Live. Trenton Wolfskill, 37, of Eugene, was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor assault. Both were later released.
Probably self defense.
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On September 09 2020 01:03 Nouar wrote:Nothing to see here, a bunch of very nice, very decent people. Only wanting that "democrat leaders need to be shot dead in the street" at a rally in Salem. QAnon, Patriot Prayers, Proud Boys, all very very nice people, since of course they will vote for one of the candidates. Guess who ? https://www.newsweek.com/salem-protest-far-right-qanon-democrats-shot-1530230Of course the police is taking heavy action : Show nested quote +Video posted on social media appears to show one suspected Proud Boys supporter hitting a man with a bat before another repeatedly punches him on the ground. A woman is seen spraying mace on the man's face as he lies on the floor.
Ty Parker, 53, of Durango, Colorado, was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor assault and first-degree intimidation, reported Oregon Live. Trenton Wolfskill, 37, of Eugene, was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor assault. Both were later released. Probably self defense.
You understand that the much-disparaged arguments connecting Antifa, Black Bloc, and various left wing groups to Biden also subsist on "all very very nice people, since of course they will vote for one of the candidates. Guess who?"
Unless you welcome the comparison, with all the burning buildings, and threats against police and restaurant patrons, and general lefty white guys yelling at black business owners and black cops.
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One candidate is openly courting "his" extremists, the other is not. Even if you see neo nazis and antifa as similarly bad, only one parties stance is plenty of good people on both sides, besides the other side consists of terrorists.
Why do you feel the need to defend right wing extremists at all? You have claimed multiple times, that you neither belong to the described groups, nor are you a fan of trump? So why the reflexive what about ism?
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EPT
