Mega-Thread: 2020 United States General Election

[Poopymonster]

I'm 90% certain that there were some implied racial slurs at her...

That's really odd. Usually they use overt racial slurs.

[tehealadin]

I said earlier I hope he has a tandrum and runs to his Hotel in Flordia or New York and just doesn't do anything but tweet nonesense.

That could be very damaging still, he can get his base very amped up via twitter, which is concerning for the potential for violence.

[Narkra]

So, what are the chances that PA flips to trump with the remaining mail-ins and provisionals? I got a friend who's a bit worried about it (based on trends, it seems like Biden has it but I didnt realize provisionals were coming.) Just asking for some opinons so she can stop worrying lol!

[ati87]

They knew that from 2016, they were supposed to adjust for it. I think it boils down to both Trump and Biden got more Non-Voters to vote this year. Honestly I've never gotten a call, but I would probably be honest. I can see people who hate Pollsters choosing to lie to try and help Trump or simple because they don't trust them. I want to see the how far off the national polls were. Also to see what roll non-voters played and how they helped either Biden and Trump.

I think the problem lies with how many people actually voted and to be more specific, how many people Trump managed to get to vote for him.
That people where motivated to vote against Trump was clear, Biden got ALMOST 75M votes which is almost 10M votes more than what Clinton got in 2016.
Trump on the other hand got, as of now, 8M votes more compared to 2016.

Republican votes as a term of percentage always had a high turnout and my guess is that what your seeing now is the absolute cap of Republican turnout. I reckon that the polster just didn't expect this part, if you have a 90% turnout on average you don't thing that will turn out to be 100%.
At the same time, Democrat turnout blows republican away in terms of absolute numbers.

[Kiri]

So, here's some early speculative research that might confirm that the reason why the polls were so off is that people were in fact lying to the pollsters.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/t...ng-errors.html

Look, I don't want to be that person - and I do think that pollsters were lied to - but the source actually doesn't say that people lied, per se. The study, at least according to the article, instead suggests that those believing in QAnon theories may have chosen not to participate in said polls in the first place and that those who do not worry about Corona were less likely to be home to be reached by pollsters.
Mind you, there might be an implication that some such believers might have lied - since the results seem to be high QAnon activity~Trump overperforms - but that is not something explicitly stated by this research, at least according to the article.

I don't want to deride anything or the like, but we should always accurately present what we use as the basis for our arguments, especially when it is behind a paywall.

That being said, the hypothesis seems quite reasonable to me. Those who already distrust 'the media' and polls to begin with self-select out of the pool and are therefore underrepresented.

[Acidbaron]

That many? That's honestly pretty scary.

I live in Belgium and work just across the Border so i try to remain informed what goes on over there. This information is from Zondag Met Lubach.

Sorry for the english readers here, this is the episode in question it is rather shocking it.



he also goes on to show that it only takes you about 3 clicks on Youtube to go down that rabbithole of madness, so the same will be true for facebook. People stuck inside with the internet and misinformation and this is what you get really.

/end derailment

[szechuan]

These Trumpers are in a Cult.

[nonameelf]

These Trumpers are in a Cult.

They really think Democrats would rig an election and keep people like McConnel, McCarthy, Nunes, Gaetz, and Graham in power?

[Timester]

They really think Democrats would rig an election and keep people like McConnel, McCarthy, Nunes, Gaetz, and Graham in power?

Does the Party of Trump cult members actually care about facts and Republicans?

I mean, if there is a thing this Election confirmed, it was all about Trump and his cult of personality.

[ati87]

Look, I don't want to be that person - and I do think that pollsters were lied to - but the source actually doesn't say that people lied, per se. The study, at least according to the article, instead suggests that those believing in QAnon theories may have chosen not to participate in said polls in the first place and that those who do not worry about Corona were less likely to be home to be reached by pollsters.
Mind you, there might be an implication that some such believers might have lied - since the results seem to be high QAnon activity~Trump overperforms - but that is not something explicitly stated by this research, at least according to the article.

I don't want to deride anything or the like, but we should always accurately present what we use as the basis for our arguments, especially when it is behind a paywall.

That being said, the hypothesis seems quite reasonable to me. Those who already distrust 'the media' and polls to begin with self-select out of the pool and are therefore underrepresented.

You should be able to account for those that are hard to reach or lie, I mean how hard can it be to look at the data and draw the conclustion that your numbers don't add up.

What I'm more interested in is the turnout of Republican voters. Texas in 2016 Trump got 4,685,047 votes and in 2020 as of now 5.865.248.
Clinton got 3,877,868 and Biden got 5.217.656.

Probably the turnout is the biggest error this time around. I would not be surprised if Republican voters got extra motivated to show up when reports came out of record number of early voting.

[CostinR]

Its looking like the national polls will be within the MoE., just like in 2016. In about 2-3 weeks we will see a complete picture of the variation on a state by state level.

No they won't, not by a longshot:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep...iden-6247.html - National Polling. Shows Biden on average winning the popular vote by 7%. He won by over 2%. That is well outside the bounds of ANY MoE, and there's a lot of polls there showing Biden ahead by 10 points, that's just nonsense.

In 2016 the polls were indeed in the MoE and the average of polling was only off by 1% in terms how Hillary would win the popular vote.

As for state polls? They were wrong on average by 7 points in Ohio, 6 points in Wisconsin and Iowa, and in many other states and the picture would look worse if it weren't for pollsters like Trafalgar who were FAR closer ( though wrong in a number of states ) then say NY Times.

America should feel humiliated by this, very few countries have such bad polling and most of those are flawed third world countries!

[ati87]

Does the Party of Trump cult members actually care about facts and Republicans?

I mean, if there is a thing this Election confirmed, it was all about Trump and his cult of personality.

Depends.
How much do facts hate brown people?

[KOUNTERPARTS]

These Trumpers are in a Cult.

Just l-o-l at this. These people are legit insane.


Question though, and probably about to get flamed for this but I don't care: how different or not different is this from 4 years ago when Trump won? Wasn't there a vast majority of people who voted for Hilary that did not accept the election as well?

[Machismo]

No they won't, not by a longshot:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep...iden-6247.html - National Polling. Shows Biden on average winning the popular vote by 7%. He won by over 2%. That is well outside the bounds of ANY MoE, and there's a lot of polls there showing Biden ahead by 10 points, that's just nonsense.

In 2016 the polls were indeed in the MoE and the average of polling was only off by 1% in terms how Hillary would win the popular vote.

As for state polls? They were wrong on average by 7 points in Ohio, 6 points in Wisconsin and Iowa, and in many other states and the picture would look worse if it weren't for pollsters like Trafalgar who were FAR closer ( though wrong in a number of states ) then say NY Times.

America should feel humiliated by this, very few countries have such bad polling and most of those are flawed third world countries!

I guess there were a lot of Trumpsters who were ashamed to admit they supported a white supremacist piece of shit, so they lied to others about it.

[Felya]

p
Question though, and probably about to get flamed for this but I don't care: how different or not different is this from 4 years ago when Trump won? Wasn't there a vast majority of people who voted for Hilary that did not accept the election as well?

No, Hillary conceded on the 7th... Jill Stein of Green Party filed a claim, but Hillary was not part of it.

There has never been a reaction like Trump’s in US history... there is no whataboutism for this...

- - - Updated - - -

I guess there were a lot of Trumpsters who were ashamed to admit they supported a white supremacist piece of shit, so they lied to others about it.

They intentionally lies... one of them admitted it earlier in the thread. Trump supporters hung up or lied on polls...

[Thepersona]

So, what are the chances that PA flips to trump with the remaining mail-ins and provisionals? I got a friend who's a bit worried about it (based on trends, it seems like Biden has it but I didnt realize provisionals were coming.) Just asking for some opinons so she can stop worrying lol!

Short answer: No chance.

Long answer: See Nate Silver/Dave Wasserman take on the remaining provisionals in PA. Even if they are as R leaning as eday voting, gotta remember that there are between 25k-40k of them left in Philly. Before they are counted, Biden will probably have a 60k-70k lead.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

No, Hillary conceded on the 7th... Jill Stein of Green Party filed a claim, but Hillary was not part of it.

There has never been a reaction like Trump’s in US history... there is no whataboutism for this...

Oh okay. Thank you.

[Ursus]

So when it's all said and done, it's looking like Biden will have 306 electoral votes. That is, by Trump's own definition, a landslide. Trump is the first Republican since 1948 to lose both Arizona and Georgia. How embarrassing and pathetic. He couldn't get elected dogcatcher.

The best thing he could do for both himself and the country, is to quietly slink away and never be heard from again. But we all know he is literally incapable of that.

[Felya]

I got my first unsolicited political text yesterday... I think it was Jan, the Bernie supporter, telling me to check if my vote counted. Totally legit, I manually tipped the link in a browser.

Two persnickety things I thought about the text:

1. Bernie instead of Biden is a solid move in Seattle to encourage giving a shit.
2. But, this is seattle... and they knew that... Jan... honey... we are okay...

Oh and my vote didn’t count... I am sending back the signature correction form today. So... +1 to Biden in Seattle on the 16th... lol

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Can PA already be called? 37k ahead. Doesn't matter if Trump concedes or not.