Election 2020
Leo
Well-known member
I hate to jinx anything, so my level of confidence isn't as high as others here.
a big factor is that trump ran in 2016 as the outsider; this time he's the incumbent. regardless of what stump speech talking points they use, incumbents are judged predominantly on their record. lots of people took a chance in 2016, now they have a record to look at. and believe me, Sudan saying they'll sign some treaty with Israel ain't a motivating factor when voters see a mismanaged pandemic response and tanking economy.
a big factor is that trump ran in 2016 as the outsider; this time he's the incumbent. regardless of what stump speech talking points they use, incumbents are judged predominantly on their record. lots of people took a chance in 2016, now they have a record to look at. and believe me, Sudan saying they'll sign some treaty with Israel ain't a motivating factor when voters see a mismanaged pandemic response and tanking economy.
luka
Well-known member
Woah!
IdleRich
IdleRich
But let's leave aside the merits of the candidates at the moment, I think we all know where we stand on those. Those are what you use for picking the candidate that you want to win or that you are going to vote for..............
My question is, what makes you think the polls are wrong? Really really wrong. I mean regardless of whether you think Biden or Trump is the most racist - right now, when they've asked loads of people, using methods that are normally correct, and which are being refined all the time, to correct for errors that have crept in before, the evidence suggests that Biden is gonna win the states he needs to by a long way, what makes you think that is wrong?
To me that evidence is quite strong. Also, it ties in with reasoning. Last time Trump had a huge boost from the Comey investigation thing just before the election, with that, and with the ability to portray himself as an unknown quantity he scraped wins in the states he needed and - despite losing the popular vote quite convincingly - due to the foibles of the electoral college he won.
Now since then he has been president and thus loses the "unknown quantity" card, more than that, his presidency has seen countless members of his circle arrested charged and jailed, he's been impeached (and no evidence was produce to argue that he didn't attempt to get a foreign power to help him swing a US election) he has presided over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of US ciitzens and a disastrously collapsing economy, he has been ordered to pay money back to a charity that he presided over, he called the army suckers and losers, he ignored the information that Putin put bounties on US troops, he has been revealed as paying more tax in China than in the US and having a secret Chinese bank account he has wished the best to paedo-madame Ghislaine Maxwell and he has been humiliatingly caught in countless lies. I accept that he has a hard core base that simply will never desert him, but I find it very hard to accept that the above would have gained him any new votes, in fact I would assume that that litany of disasters and worse is likely to cost him votes from the group of people who are not fixed to either side.
And all the empirical polls seems to suggest that that is precisely what is happening. What am I missing here? What is the argument against that?
My question is, what makes you think the polls are wrong? Really really wrong. I mean regardless of whether you think Biden or Trump is the most racist - right now, when they've asked loads of people, using methods that are normally correct, and which are being refined all the time, to correct for errors that have crept in before, the evidence suggests that Biden is gonna win the states he needs to by a long way, what makes you think that is wrong?
To me that evidence is quite strong. Also, it ties in with reasoning. Last time Trump had a huge boost from the Comey investigation thing just before the election, with that, and with the ability to portray himself as an unknown quantity he scraped wins in the states he needed and - despite losing the popular vote quite convincingly - due to the foibles of the electoral college he won.
Now since then he has been president and thus loses the "unknown quantity" card, more than that, his presidency has seen countless members of his circle arrested charged and jailed, he's been impeached (and no evidence was produce to argue that he didn't attempt to get a foreign power to help him swing a US election) he has presided over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of US ciitzens and a disastrously collapsing economy, he has been ordered to pay money back to a charity that he presided over, he called the army suckers and losers, he ignored the information that Putin put bounties on US troops, he has been revealed as paying more tax in China than in the US and having a secret Chinese bank account he has wished the best to paedo-madame Ghislaine Maxwell and he has been humiliatingly caught in countless lies. I accept that he has a hard core base that simply will never desert him, but I find it very hard to accept that the above would have gained him any new votes, in fact I would assume that that litany of disasters and worse is likely to cost him votes from the group of people who are not fixed to either side.
And all the empirical polls seems to suggest that that is precisely what is happening. What am I missing here? What is the argument against that?
IdleRich
IdleRich
Also, last time his campaign had some zingers in it - slogans that resonated with the deplorables such as MAGA, build that wall, lock her up, her emails etc Now we can clearly see that he hasn't built the wall, Clinton has not been locked up and, saddest and most desperate of all, he's actually still talking about her emails. The scandals he's made up this time (does anyone remember Obamagate or know what was supposed to be about?) and Bidenlaptopgate just don't seem to be landing. How is he gonna win? Other than by cheating like an absolute motherfucker.
IdleRich
IdleRich
No that's not what happened. It was the same with Brexit, the polls were wrong but really the pro-Brexit vote was predicted to be about 51 percent and it went down to 48 percent. It's weird cos everyone seemed so certain that you couldn't lose a vote from the position of 51, that seems kinda crazy when you look back on it.
Or, if you prefer, let's say the polls were insanely wrong last time. So this time they have to be five times as insane. Do you think that will happen? It seems like in Space Balls when they have all those more and more stupidly named speeds until you get to ludicrous speed. What word are we gonna use for something that is five times as crazy as "historically insanely wrong"?
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
no, there was a margin of error last time
there would be have to be a much greater margin of error this time
which is possible, but you don't just throw up your hands and say well all polls are all useless from now on
and again, I'd point to betting markets as a solid backup indicator
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
I'm not supremely confident
in a relatively straight up and down election (as much as they ever are), Biden wins 80 out of 100 times or so
I'm less confident that's the kind of election we're going to get
in a relatively straight up and down election (as much as they ever are), Biden wins 80 out of 100 times or so
I'm less confident that's the kind of election we're going to get
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Not really. They said Clinton would get more votes, and she did. She just didn't get them distributed across the states in the right way to win the electoral college.