2020 US Election (Part Two)

[Lexicus]

Sure, I don't have a negative view of socialism either. My post was about using "utopia" as something possible and at the same time negative. Which makes no sense.

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”

-Oscar Wilde

(stuff)

I just don't find any of this particularly comforting. I don't believe the conventional wisdom about elections is accurate anymore: Trump's hard core of ~40% is going to vote for him come hell or high water (tip of the hat to @Sommerswerd for his post a while back positing that the more voters in this hard 40% suffer under Trump, the more they will double down on their support) and the Democrats can only win if they can get more people than that 40% to vote, with the additional caveat that their votes have to be properly distributed in the electoral college - meaning that, in practice, they must win the popular vote by a large margin, as large as 5% or even higher. I can envision Biden losing the election even if the popular vote is something like 49%-42%, as the national polls have it right now.

The problem is that Trump and the Republicans are going to cheat, everyone knows they're going to cheat, and the only answer the Democrats have for this cheating is urging people to vote in ever-more-apocalyptic terms. I don't believe it's a winning formula.

 

[Zardnaar]

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”

-Oscar Wilde




I just don't find any of this particularly comforting. I don't believe the conventional wisdom about elections is accurate anymore: Trump's hard core of ~40% is going to vote for him come hell or high water (tip of the hat to @Sommerswerd for his post a while back positing that the more voters in this hard 40% suffer under Trump, the more they will double down on their support) and the Democrats can only win if they can get more people than that 40% to vote, with the additional caveat that their votes have to be properly distributed in the electoral college - meaning that, in practice, they must win the popular vote by a large margin, as large as 5% or even higher. I can envision Biden losing the election even if the popular vote is something like 49%-42%, as the national polls have it right now.

The problem is that Trump and the Republicans are going to cheat, everyone knows they're going to cheat, and the only answer the Democrats have for this cheating is urging people to vote in ever-more-apocalyptic terms. I don't believe it's a winning formula.

I've read to decisively beat Trump they need to win by 7%.

What's the % of 3 million votes? 150 million votes iirc was the number cast so she won by 2% but lost via EC.

40000 voters in 3 states vote differently bye bye Trump.

As I understand it he's behind a lot in mid west and Florida, Texas, Ohio and Georgia are competitive.

That's a lot of cheating required.

One big state lost he's goneburger.

I don't think there's any viable pick ups. He can afford to lose one of those 3 mid west states.

 

[innonimatu]

Boy... I gotta say... If all the progressive folks that are reluctant to vote for Biden had no information but what the Republican speakers were saying tonight about Biden and Harris, they would think it was the dream ticket.

Keynote speaker, quote "If you let them, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will turn this country into a socialist utopia" Really? They will?? Uhhh, soooo...

It's ridiculous - you have two parties each making their best efforts to cause the to other win...

 

[Zardnaar]

It's ridiculous - you have two parties each making their best efforts to cause the to other win...

USA, USA,USA.

Imcumbants advantage. You don't have to win just not lose. In addition to the other benefits.

Policies don't matter, it's usually about who leads the parties. Not just in the US.

 

[Farm Boy]

It's ridiculous - you have two parties each making their best efforts to cause the to other win...

Nobody watches those things unless they're shoulder deep in the mud already and like it. Normies might watch a debate. Maybe.

 

[Commodore]

As I understand it he's behind a lot in mid west and Florida, Texas, Ohio and Georgia are competitive

According to polls. However, seeing as Trump won all four of those states in 2016 when polling data back then said those states were "competitive", we now know polling data means precisely nothing when it comes to predicting elections. There's just too much that can go wrong with polling data for it to be reliable. The biggest problem being that a lot of people simply don't give honest answers to pollsters.

 

[IglooDame]

According to polls. However, seeing as Trump won all four of those states in 2016 when polling data back then said those states were "competitive", we now know polling data means precisely nothing when it comes to predicting elections. There's just too much that can go wrong with polling data for it to be reliable. The biggest problem being that a lot of people simply don't give honest answers to pollsters.

(bolding mine)
This is, respectfully, complete BS. You can't take one bad event and say it's therefore all worthless. Pollsters have largely identified the flaws in the 2016 polls that led to bad predictions of a Hillary win. And generally, the closer you get to an election, the better the polls' predictive usefulness. Much like sportsbetting odds, when you think about it. Or hurricane track predictions.

 

[EgonSpengler]

According to polls. However, seeing as Trump won all four of those states in 2016 when polling data back then said those states were "competitive", we now know polling data means precisely nothing when it comes to predicting elections. There's just too much that can go wrong with polling data for it to be reliable. The biggest problem being that a lot of people simply don't give honest answers to pollsters.

In the case of something like an election, there's also a weird Ouroboros quality (the snake eating its own tail) where people are looking at predictions of their behavior to try to decide what they're going to do. Some people try to be strategic. Other people just want to be on the winning team. Some people might decide not to vote at all if they figure the vote in their state is going to go one way, with or without them (this could apply to someone who supports the popular candidate, as well as someone in their state's minority).

(bolding mine)
This is, respectfully, complete BS. You can't take one bad event and say it's therefore all worthless. Pollsters have largely identified the flaws in the 2016 polls that led to bad predictions of a Hillary win. And generally, the closer you get to an election, the better the polls' predictive usefulness. Much like sportsbetting odds, when you think about it. Or hurricane track predictions.

Yeah, I think a lot of people don't understand what data like polling or statistical analysis is or means, or what it's predictive value is. I see this with statistics a lot. I imagine it's also true of polling. (To be fair, I don't always know what to make of statistical analyses or polling data, either. It's not always clear, which is where some people get tripped up, thinking that these data are some kind of Oracle.)

p.s. A lot of people don't understand betting odds, either. They're not strictly a prediction of the outcome of the competition, they're an effort to lure people to taking the other side. Betting odds are deliberately manipulative; if they're also informative, it's by coincidence.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I've read to decisively beat Trump they need to win by 7%.

What's the % of 3 million votes? 150 million votes iirc was the number cast so she won by 2% but lost via EC.

40000 voters in 3 states vote differently bye bye Trump.

As I understand it he's behind a lot in mid west and Florida, Texas, Ohio and Georgia are competitive.

That's a lot of cheating required.

One big state lost he's goneburger.

I don't think there's any viable pick ups. He can afford to lose one of those 3 mid west states.

Per Wikipedia there were 128,838,342 votes cast between the two of them, with her getting about 2% more than he did. Obama bested Romney by about 4%, so its possibly not as bleak as 7%, but the Democrats definitely need to have a large popular vote margin to also win the EC.

Nobody watches those things unless they're shoulder deep in the mud already and like it. Normies might watch a debate. Maybe.

We're all shoulder deep in the mud, like it or not.

According to polls. However, seeing as Trump won all four of those states in 2016 when polling data back then said those states were "competitive", we now know polling data means precisely nothing when it comes to predicting elections. There's just too much that can go wrong with polling data for it to be reliable. The biggest problem being that a lot of people simply don't give honest answers to pollsters.

To me it seems like the bottom line is Wisconsin. If Biden wins there, he edges Trump out, barely. If he loses Wisconsin, Trump is re-elected.

 

[Farm Boy]

"...and likes it."

You usually need both to tune into that thing.

But yes, we're either getting Assclown or Killbot, they still don't get another 3 evenings of my life.

 

[Sommerswerd]

"...and likes it."

We all "likes it"... Where do you think "the mud" comes from? To paraphrase George Carlin..."it didn't fall from the sky, it didn't pass through some membrane from some alternate reality." We all shoveled it in.

 

[Farm Boy]

Well, and maybe everyone with a shovel needs a rimfire.

Bacon.

 

[Sommerswerd]

The current candidates are Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The previous candidates were Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Anyone who thinks that "we" don't "likes it" is being naïve... or lying.​

 

[Farm Boy]

Probably. We're back to the rimfire being more than earned, then.

 

[El_Machinae]

(bolding mine)
Or hurricane track predictions.

I used to have trouble with those, but now I just sharpie over them when no one is watching

 

[Sommerswerd]

Probably. We're back to the rimfire being more than earned, then.

Preferring the anonymous glory hole to being taken out to dinner and gazed into your eyes and told you're pretty before you get bent over and given what for doesn't give anyone a shred of moral high ground. Not an ounce. Not an iota.

I'm going to vote for, and/or against these *******s. I want to hear what they have to say before I do so. Otherwise its just team sports. BTW ,how did we find out about the "Killbot" status? Did that nugget of knowledge come to us in a dream? Or were we wallowing in "the mud" in order to get that bit of information?

 

[Kyriakos]

Preferring the anonymous glory hole to being taken out to dinner and gazed into your eyes and told you're pretty before you get bent over and given what for doesn't give anyone a shred of moral high ground. Not an ounce. Not an iota.

I'm going to vote for, and/or against these *******s. I want to hear what they have to say before I do so. Otherwise its just team sports. BTW ,how did we find out about the "Killbot" status? Did that nugget of knowledge come to us in a dream? Or were we wallowing in "the mud" in order to get that bit of information?

You are already in teamsports mentality. Why else do you think you will vote for Joe -Dementia - Biden?
If I could vote I'd vote for Biden for other reasons, but you know very well you'd be voting for Trump if Trump run as a democrat.

If the republicans run someone who doesn't scare the center away, their next win will be a landslide - this is what the dnc has managed to accomplish: risk losing to Trump for the second time.

 

[Farm Boy]

I looked up Killbot to figure out a position in a conversation with somebody I generally value, online. Found out a lot more than I bargained for, as you've gathered. And apparently I'm "spammy" for having figured out exactly how rimfirey a major party platform is.

 

[Socrates99]

It's ridiculous - you have two parties each making their best efforts to cause the to other win...

Takeaway from the DNC was: "Look at all these great Republicans who like Joe because hes not significantly different from a moderate Republican. Republican ideas really aren't that bad."

Takeaway from the RNC: "Vote for us because the Democrats are bad guys who want to expand healthcare coverage, education, save the environment and keep the USPS running. Those crazy socialists Harris and Biden are going to do stuff for people. Terrible, just terrible."

 

[Sommerswerd]

You are already in teamsports mentality. Why else do you think you will vote for Joe -Dementia - Biden?

Its amusing that you can't see the irony/contradiction between this statement

If I could vote I'd vote for Biden for other reasons

and this one.

You alone are different. You alone have the amazing ability to find nuanced reasons to vote for Biden, unlike all the blind partisan sheeple. Whatever, lmfao. ​