Timsup2nothin
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2013
- Messages
- 46,737
Looking back on my own congressional districts election in 2018, and looking at projections regarding November, I am seeing an inevitable disaster. Like many California districts, in 2018 the election day vote tallies here favored the Republican but shifted as the mail in vote was counted over the following days. Plenty of people here knew exactly what was going to happen, since people voting by mail skew Democrat here by a very wide margin. However that "plenty of people" did not include the intentionally ignorant and the media that plays to them, so Republicans widely believe that the election was "stolen."
So with mail in voting anticipated to account for as much as thirty percent of the vote, and mail in voting skewing heavily to Democrats, it is predictable that election day vote tallies across the board are going to indicate a complete wipe out in favor of the GOP. This is something the Trump faithful expect and something that their favored media will undoubtedly report as genuinely happening. Trump will almost certainly make a false claim of a sweeping victory sometime in the evening of election day.
At that time there are unlikely to be any facts available to counter that claim. In 2018 the percentages of mail in ballots and how they would skew could be forecast with some reasonable expectation of accuracy, so legitimate predictions could be made. In my district the election day counts were very nearly a tie, for example, so everyone except the most obtusely insistent on ignoring the facts knew the Democrat would take the seat (ultimately by over five points). But the credible news services in November are going to be forced to report "yeah, this is unprecedented so estimates and predictions of final tallies at this point would just be irresponsible." This will not be an effective counter to the predictable irresponsibility of Trump and the right wing news sources that will be telling their followers exactly what they want and expect to hear.
How do we counter what will undoubtedly be several days of Trumpist celebrations? What backlash can we expect from them as votes are counted and reality slowly overtakes their happy place of ignorance?
So with mail in voting anticipated to account for as much as thirty percent of the vote, and mail in voting skewing heavily to Democrats, it is predictable that election day vote tallies across the board are going to indicate a complete wipe out in favor of the GOP. This is something the Trump faithful expect and something that their favored media will undoubtedly report as genuinely happening. Trump will almost certainly make a false claim of a sweeping victory sometime in the evening of election day.
At that time there are unlikely to be any facts available to counter that claim. In 2018 the percentages of mail in ballots and how they would skew could be forecast with some reasonable expectation of accuracy, so legitimate predictions could be made. In my district the election day counts were very nearly a tie, for example, so everyone except the most obtusely insistent on ignoring the facts knew the Democrat would take the seat (ultimately by over five points). But the credible news services in November are going to be forced to report "yeah, this is unprecedented so estimates and predictions of final tallies at this point would just be irresponsible." This will not be an effective counter to the predictable irresponsibility of Trump and the right wing news sources that will be telling their followers exactly what they want and expect to hear.
How do we counter what will undoubtedly be several days of Trumpist celebrations? What backlash can we expect from them as votes are counted and reality slowly overtakes their happy place of ignorance?