• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

2020 Presidential Election part 2

Status
Not open for further replies.
PhantomWolf said:
Just be aware that all three of these states have a large number of votes outstanding in what are key Democrat demographics. Biden is only 12,000 votes behind in MI, but Wayne County is reporting only 64% complete in a race that is currently going 67.1% to 35.1% to Biden. They potentially have another 200,000 to 300,000 votes to count there, easily enough to flip the State.

It's not over yet.
Click to expand...

Guardian reports that in Michigan, Trump leads by just 13,057, and there are around 540,000 votes still to be counted.
 
Last edited:
KDLarsen said:
In any case, the night has already been a disaster for the Democrats, what with them losing seats in the House and at most gaining two seats in the Senate, thus staying in minority.

It can't be chalked up to a poor effort at getting out the vote, as Biden should cross 70 million votes, more than Obama got in 2008. But somehow, the shy trump voters were evidently also out in force, as he's currently just short of 67 million votes - way beyond what has won previous elections.

Is it the death of the notion that a higher turnout favours Democrats?
Click to expand...

And one of the biggest disasters especially for all the projection companies. They can all shut down, their work is practically worthless. I could also hire a monkey for showing any trend. Heck, at least a horde of monkeys would show equal trends for both sides and cancel each other out, which would be closer to the result than all these projections.
 
Same basic issue in PA with 2.6m ballots and delays in counting and rulings in place that will be re-heard soon. This is also the biggest trailing Biden appears to have without the mail-in numbers.

I think we have our new Florida.
 
newyorkguy said:
The problem is, Biden is trailing in Georgia and Michigan and trump has a huge (12%) lead in Pennsylvania.
Click to expand...

That's tue, but...

Absentee votes are still the ones that need to be counted. In PA the absentee/mail-in votes counted so far Biden is winning ~80/20. If that holds true of the remaining votes (and there is every reason to think that it will) Biden wins PA by a point or 2.

PA will be a very late call and by then it probably won't matter, Biden is on track to win Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin, for the same reasons as the PA vote being very close by the end (i.e. the votes yet to be counted are highly likely to skew heavily in Bidens favour) in which case Biden will already have 270+ EC votes by the time PA is called.
 
Ambrosia said:
PA will be a very late call and by then it probably won't matter, Biden is on track to win Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin, for the same reasons as the PA vote being very close by the end (i.e. the votes yet to be counted are highly likely to skew heavily in Bidens favour) in which case Biden will already have 270+ EC votes by the time PA is called.
Click to expand...

He'd need Nevada as well.
 
carlosy said:
And one of the biggest disasters especially for all the projection companies. They can all shut down, their work is practically worthless. I could also hire a monkey for showing any trend. Heck, at least a horde of monkeys would show equal trends for both sides and cancel each other out, which would be closer to the result than all these projections.
Click to expand...
People (especially those leaning right) lie on polls. They game them, and enjoy more than anything making them wrong.
We knew this after 2016, yet went along like somehow it was different this time- and the polls were accurate.
Further polls will be even less accurate, as the left adopts the "gaming the polls" strategy as well.
 
Remember, there's confusing, contentious, litigious messy elections with normal people, the there's all that with Trump on one side.

When one or two states are "stolen" what will he call on his sycophant truck flag army to do?
 
Delphic Oracle said:
Remember, there's confusing, contentious, litigious messy elections with normal people, the there's all that with Trump on one side.

When one or two states are "stolen" what will he call on his sycophant truck flag army to do?
Click to expand...
A repeat of the Brooks Brothers riot?

Edit: Just read that Roger Stone was part of the original riot, quelle surprise.
 
Last edited:
Gee whiz!

I was really expecting that Biden would win decisively. Currently, Biden is winning and he may well win eventually.

But at the same time, I sure am amazed that Trump has done as well as he has.
 
KDLarsen said:
In any case, the night has already been a disaster for the Democrats, what with them losing seats in the House and at most gaining two seats in the Senate, thus staying in minority.

It can't be chalked up to a poor effort at getting out the vote, as Biden should cross 70 million votes, more than Obama got in 2008. But somehow, the shy trump voters were evidently also out in force, as he's currently just short of 67 million votes - way beyond what has won previous elections.

Is it the death of the notion that a higher turnout favours Democrats?
Click to expand...

Assuming that there really was no significant fraud, the most telling result is that a large number of Americans decided to deliberately lie to Pollsters, thereby hammering the efforts of Democrats to target potential voters.
I think this is a clear sign that these voters no longer want to be in a democracy.
 
TahiniBinShawarma said:
Biden crapped out in Miami-Dade.
Click to expand...

Trump is a proven master of branding. His instinctive labeling of Biden/Harris as “socialists” turned out to be very effective across the board, but especially among Cuban Hispanics for whom Castro remains a literal devil. I lived in both Miami-Dade and Broward, and those feelings still run very deep, even in second- and third-generation Cuban refugees.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
Trump is a proven master of branding. His instinctive labeling of Biden/Harris as “socialists” turned out to be very effective across the board
Click to expand...

Yet there are people that think Sanders would be more electable. Imagine mental pretzel that would be required to justify such inanity, but from I've seen, they don't even bother trying justify that.

It is also hilarious - from European perspective, both USA parties are rightwing. Though one is reasonable and other is far-rightwing loony with rising authoritarian tendencies, as evidenced by demands for stopping count when it is convenient for Rethuglicans.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Assuming that there really was no significant fraud, the most telling result is that a large number of Americans decided to deliberately lie to Pollsters, thereby hammering the efforts of Democrats to target potential voters.
I think this is a clear sign that these voters no longer want to be in a democracy.
Click to expand...
Wishing to participate in a Democracy does not imply a willingness to cooperate with (or even a reluctance to deliberately undermine) polls.
 
FiveThirtyEight is updating that map where you can play with state results live, and it currently estimates an 84% chance of victory for Biden.
 
I doubt there was any conscious effort to skew polls. It's just that most people don't really want to participate in polls, and we end up with some weird margins of error.
 
Olmstead said:
I doubt there was any conscious effort to skew polls. It's just that most people don't really want to participate in polls, and we end up with some weird margins of error.
Click to expand...


Right. There are different types of people who are more or less likely to answer polls, and different types who are more or less likely to vote than they believe themselves. You can account for that but not completely, and it is a moving target.
 
Crossbow said:
Gee whiz!

I was really expecting that Biden would win decisively. Currently, Biden is winning and he may well win eventually.

But at the same time, I sure am amazed that Trump has done as well as he has.
Click to expand...

Maybe we shouldn't be. Someone at the FiveThirtyEight live update feed pointed out that he's actually doing terribly for an incumbent president. Had this been a regular, low-stakes election, we'd just have been overjoyed by how well our side was doing.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Assuming that there really was no significant fraud, the most telling result is that a large number of Americans decided to deliberately lie to Pollsters, thereby hammering the efforts of Democrats to target potential voters.
I think this is a clear sign that these voters no longer want to be in a democracy.
Click to expand...

Two things.

First, I'm not sure there is any evidence of large scale lying. What there is evidence of is large scale refusing to talk to pollsters. When you see an unknown number on your cell phone, which is probably your only phone, do you answer it? I don't. Polling isn't polling anymore. It's a combination of survey data and mathematical modelling. The models weren't correct. For people interested in the subject, read about the Trafalgar Group, and their polling methods. They didn't get this year quite correct. They said Trump would win, but they were closer than others. Look at what they did compared to other pollsters.

I've been reading stuff from Nate Sliver et. al. about why they got 2016 wrong, and they assured us that they had fixed it, but I didn't buy their explanations. Why not? Because I never heard any pollsters saying, "In the modern world, it's just impossible to conduct an accurate survey." No pollster said that polling is impossible. Go figure.

As for lying to pollsters, In my youth, I lied to pollsters, and my motivation was quite the opposite of what you describe. It was my opinion, and still is, that there was far too much reliance on polling data. Instead of saying what they think, politicians will watch the polls. I wanted to create uncertainty in that, so that they couldn't rely on them. Also, I thought of election night as kind of a Super Bowl night. The votes were in. Watching the results get counted was just entertainment. In 1980, the use of exit polling had gotten good enough that they called the races too soon and spoiled the entertainment value.

And, finally, my favorite opinion columnist of all time, Mike Royko of Chicago, wrote a column urging people to lie to pollsters, especially exit pollsters. Ahhh, I wish there were a Mike Royko around today.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom