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2020 Presidential Election part 2

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The Don said:
The popular vote is a little misleading. There may be hundreds of thousands of Republicans who don't bother turning out in California and New York. If they did, the popular vote would be significantly closer.
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However, many of them will live in areas where e.g. the congressional district, state senate seat or the county dogcatcher's post is not a shoo-in for the Democrats. I wonder how much that really affects the overall numbers.
 
The Don said:
The popular vote is a little misleading. There may be hundreds of thousands of Republicans who don't bother turning out in California and New York. If they did, the popular vote would be significantly closer.
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I can see that, but doesn't it also work the other way? There must be Democrats who don't bother to vote because of where they live, especially given the obstacles the Republicans put in front of many of them.
 
Zooming out, this Election was invaluable, since it provides the clearest view of voter preferences in decades: I doubt we will see a similar turnout for years and years to come.
 
Pixel42 said:
I've seen an estimate that Biden will end up with about 80 million votes and Trump 73-75 million. That may not be as big a margin Trump deserved to be beaten by, but it also doesn't sound like Biden "barely scraping through".
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Yeah, it's also worth noting that while we can't yet say for sure that Biden will get the 270 votes in the EC that he needs in order to declare victory, that it's possible he will get more than that. 306 is possible at this stage, which would be quite resounding.

I don't think that's likely, but it's too early to start doing a post-match analysis like some are trying to do.
 
Pixel42 said:
I've seen an estimate that Biden will end up with about 80 million votes and Trump 73-75 million. That may not be as big a margin Trump deserved to be beaten by, but it also doesn't sound like Biden "barely scraping through".
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You are presupposing that the 73 will be "beaten" by the 80.
Not necessarily a forgone conclusion, unfortunately.
 
Sideroxylon said:
Trump is more than an incumbent. That such a person with such a record could win a second term is remarkable.
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It's deeply worrying how successful his strategy has been. He shouldn't have won in 2016 and he shouldn't have gotten as many votes as he did in 2020.

That he's succeeded as well as he has speaks novels about the state America is in. Not just America, either, we see the same tendencies elsewhere in the Western world.

Getting people back out of their echo chambers and restoring proper public discourse is going to be really, really difficult.
 
Checkmite said:
The thing I look forward to the most should Biden win is that in January this forum stops becoming an archive and dissemination vector for Trump's official propaganda courtesy of Captain_Swoop.
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This forum has long been an archive and dissemination vector for propaganda of all sorts. That is pretty much an inevitable side effect of discussing politics.

What I will be glad to see is the end or even diminishment of Trump's use of Twitter as such a vector, since without the shield of being POTUS I suspect that Twitter will feel less obligated to carry his twits. He'll have to conform to their User Agreement without that shield, and I don't think he's capable of that.

I too am hopeful that the good Capt'n will be relieved of the onerous task he has so generously undertaken on our behalf. It certainly couldn't have been pleasant to sink into the sewers of Trump accounts and sort out the effluvia most relevant to our discussions.

A nasty job, which I for one would have been reluctant to assume, and he continues to have my respect and gratitude.
 
The Don said:
It's down to the peculiarities of the Electoral College. If he wins it'll be down to a few tens of thousands of people in a couple of swing states. In that case it is "barely scraping through". If he'd already secured the 270 EC votes in states he'd won handsomely then it wouldn't be described that way even if the states that, say, got him to 350 were close.

The popular vote is a little misleading. There may be hundreds of thousands of Republicans who don't bother turning out in California and New York. If they did, the popular vote would be significantly closer.
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Isn't that exactly how Trump won the EC?

Is it somehow worse if Biden does the same thing? At least if he does he'll have done it and won the popular vote.

That's something which seems to be increasingly difficult for Repugnicans.
 
StillSleepy said:
Seeing everyone else as NPCs would explain the strange conversations he claims to have...
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I already told somewhere he is Gamer. And he is bored. And he is losing game. Next two months before his "Game Over" screen will be fuuuun.

Skeptic Tank said:
Dead people voting in Michigan:

https://twitter.com/fleccas/status/1324237476186202113?s=20
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I thought voter fraud is impossible to prove? At least, that was gist of paranoid drivel you spewed the other day.

psionl0 said:
Serves the Democrats right for putting up the worst candidate they could find for the top job.
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Biden is doing very well, considering circumstances, so I reject your silly notion.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
Getting people back out of their echo chambers and restoring proper public discourse is going to be really, really difficult.
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Restoring public discourse can't just be left to the, potentially, new administration though.

In the event Biden wins, liberals, despite their visceral dislike of trump and his antics, will need to try and resist the urge to rub both trump's and his supporters' noses in it.
 
Mader Levap said:
Biden is doing very well, considering circumstances, so I reject your silly notion.
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Agreed, and frankly, I think it's time to put this particular grievance to rest. Yes, we could have had a better candidate than Biden. No, we didn't. Yes, he still looks like he will make it to 270 electoral votes and then some (knock on wood). In the words of the Führer, it is what it is.

When the election is over, provided Trump doesn't manage to steal it, Biden-Harris is who we have. Time to look forward and start thining about 2020-2024.
 
Pixel42 said:
I've seen an estimate that Biden will end up with about 80 million votes and Trump 73-75 million. That may not be as big a margin Trump deserved to be beaten by, but it also doesn't sound like Biden "barely scraping through".
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There's so many ways of looking at this, most of them valid from a certain point of view.

Yeah a 5 to 7 million vote margin would be massive margin against a traditional Republican or even an "insane and evil within normal parameters" one.

But Trump's entire campaign has been one long intentional performance art affect of being the worst possible candidate imaginable. Like time has made us forget this but "Trump is so over the top and cartoonish he has to be a deep state liberal plant to make a candidate it's impossible to lose again" was such a common conspiracy that Jeb Bush believed it prior to the election.

He's near literally done something that should have ended his Presidency every 2-3 days if you average out for 4 years. His impeachment probably isn't in the top 10 things that have should have taken him down. That's weird.

And when you look at it from that point of view this should be affecting change somewhere other than the margins.
 
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TofuFighter said:
Restoring public discourse can't just be left to the, potentially, new administration though.

In the event Biden wins, liberals, despite their visceral dislike of trump and his antics, will need to try and resist the urge to rub both trump's and his supporters' noses in it.
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I think that's very true. Time to try and reconcile. Biden and Harris (provided they win) have four-eight years to try to build bridges and combat polarisation.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the trumpers react once the Biden win is secured. If they abandon trumpism, they'll be a whole lot easier to reach. A bitter, angry ex-Trump base bent on revenge would be a whole other story.

Still, I hope there's healing the next four years.
Also - hey, we can hope - maybe some more moderate candidate wins the GOP primaries next year and the election is between two adults, neither of whom is bent on facsm. No one says it has to be another Trump.

Heck, may it not be possible that the GOP could find a moderate more electable, and better for the image of their party? Or will they not dare do it without the gravy seal/QAnon/far right part of their base?
 
TofuFighter said:
Restoring public discourse can't just be left to the, potentially, new administration though.
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Any talk of restoring public discourse must, of necessity, point directly and clearly at the organizations and vectors that have actively been undermining it. While there is some of that on the left, right wing propaganda organizations like Fox are, immensely greater causes for the deterioration there and need to be held to account.
 
quadraginta said:
Isn't that exactly how Trump won the EC?
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Yes it is and I think most people on the left would consider that President barely scraped through.

quadraginta said:
Is it somehow worse if Biden does the same thing? At least if he does he'll have done it and won the popular vote.
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Yes he will have.

quadraginta said:
That's something which seems to be increasingly difficult for Repugnicans.
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Yes it is.

Then again, President Trump somehow persuaded an unprecedented number of people to turn out and vote Republican. :confused:
 
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