In the final YouGov poll before the election, Kamala Harris is leading Trump by only one percentage point:
This strikes me as overly pessimistic, possibly because it's a poll of registered voters, not likely voters. But we'll find out for sure in six days.
538 has her ahead by 1.2%. Princeton Election Consortium has had Trump ahead for weeks; currently has Harris with 261 EVs.
PEC also has 48 Dems in the Senate and the GOP winning the House for the first time in months.
Pretty bleak.
Princeton EC? After getting it really wrong the last few times, I'm surprised that they think people will take them seriously.
Not so bleak: A new CNN poll shows Kamala Harris leading over Trump by 6 points in Wisconsin and 5 points in Michigan, key battleground states.
I agree with you Kevin. On the whole the Democrats have banked a ton of early votes while the GOP bashed early voting and now the GOP trashed a bunch of the groups they needed votes from at their MSG rally. Their voters might not show up at all next Tuesday.
It's clear cut that Harris/Walz will win the popular vote, probably even 270 or more of the electoral college.
My grave fear is that GOP will find a way to prevent Madam President from taking office.
My grave fear is that GOP will find a way to prevent Madam President from taking office.
That could happen, and it's worth worrying about, but I reckon a much more likely scenario is that Trump simply wins more electoral votes than Harris. That's a far bigger worry for me.
Heads we keep our Republic. Tails we lose it.
I live in ME 02, and I've been thinking a lot about this.
What gives me hope is that women have voted early. A lot of Republican women have voted early; and I believe some large percentage of that is so that the Trump supporting men in their lives can no longer pressure them to change their votes.
And while I know a lot of conservative women who don't like liberals and would happily put us in our pansy-assed places, only a few of them like Trump. And all of them know that pregnancy is dangerous business.
All women know pregnancy is dangerous, and this election is about that danger.
So I feel hope. And I don't care if anyone else thinks I'm deluding myself. I did that with Clinton, and recognize the differences.
The scenario I kinda want to see is Trump slightly edge Harris in the popular vote but Harris win the Electoral College.
The GOP contortions on the issue would be funny as hell.
Trump campaigns on destroying the economy, and his poll numbers go UP!
How do you even begin to fight against that sort of delusional destructiveness?
You can't. Unfortunately. Trump supporters are so wrapped up in their hate, anger and bigotry they refuse to see or acknowledge reality.
But it's not the "Trump supporters" that are creating this debacle! It's the dimwits that still think he's a successful businessman (he's not), or a fellow who "speaks his mind" (it's all a con), or that he's strong (not).
Our information ecosystem is truly broken.
He's all hype. If he wins that only proves the number of dimwitted people in this country is considerably higher than anyone would want to admit to. Although for the GOP the more dimwitted the better.
NYRB discussion with Tim Garton Ash, Natalya Gumenyuk, and Timothy Snyder, on zoom now. TGA just said of three very polarized countries over last decade, only one, UK, is past it; Poland and USA not. Why? His answer: the BBC. One reliable national news service.
If they're dimwits it's because they want to be. They don't want to admit they like the racism and misogyny so they fall back to these feeble excuses. As someone just said, they're garbage.
So, is Buzz Aldrin a dimwit? Or is he supporting Trump just out of personal interest in the space programs that Trump has supported?
Buzz Aldrin is well into his nineties, which, as we learned recently, is far beyond the Biden Line of mandatory dementia.
What has happened to produce these swings? I can't see it. Why would people who voted for Obama and Biden just now be switching their votes?
How can the Harris campaign be outspent in swing states when Harris has outraised Trump by a big margin?
Part of the game plan for Republicans is to demoralize the opponent, make them believe they are losing. I don't see how this could play out in the numbers above, though.
I just have to keep the faith and plow ahead.
There are a lot of people - probably on the order of 75-100m or so - who literally don’t see much if any change in their personal lives, no matter who is in national office. While the Dems do more than the GOP for the middle class, neither party really does much to noticeably materially improve the lives of the middle class… which is why there’s all this focus on culture wars. (“Well, if neither party is going to do anything noticeably* positive for me, I might as well smite my enemies or get all hyped up on a fringe social issue like whether the 4 trans athletes in all of Utah can compete in the “wrong” gender’s sports.”)
Don’t get me wrong: I, as a political junkie, totally know that things are always materially worse for more people under Republican leadership, but it’s impossible to prove a negative: that everything would be demonstrably better for those same people under Democratic leadership. And given how even voting for all Democrats all the time doesn’t lead to Democrats having enough power more than once every 10-16 years to implement the popular stuff on the Democratic agenda, thanks to gerrymandering, filibustering and SCOTUS rulings constantly whittling down Anything Positive That Can Be Done For The Middle Class… it doesn’t shock me that comfortable-now but precarious-always middle class people respond to all this by simply rolling dice on who they prefer in power. It’s increasingly unclear how exactly stuff that even has 80-90% support will ever survive getting through Congress or SCOTUS… and if that’s really the case, then the only point left for voting is to get good judges and keep everything from falling apart further.
All of that is to say, I’m coming around to the whole “vote everybody out all the time” strategy, and I actually hold a poli sci degree and make six figures. God knows what the typical irrational American is thinking when they enter the voting booth.
*A lot of what Dems do to improve lives is either means-tested and complicated or hidden from view in the tax code. So they get zero credit for it from non political junkies aka regular folk.
Thing is, everything you talk about is very long-term. It's all been there since forever. And we're seeing a change in the data now.
Best guess - it's just noise, statistical noise.
Paranoia - somebody's playing some game somewhere. Maybe multiple somebodies.
This is horrifying. There is no other spin to put on it. If Harris wins the popular vote by 1% then Trump will almost certainly be the president. So all we can hope is that the polls are mostly biased in Trump's favor. When will this nightmare end?
If Harris wins the popular vote by 1% then Trump will almost certainly be the president.
I won't lie: if I were going to lay ten grand on this race, I'd probably put my money on Trump.* But I think your "almost certainly" is doing some heavy lifting. By now it's pretty old news that his Electoral College advantage appears weaker this cycle than in past years. Possibly quite a bit weaker.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/upshot/electoral-college-trump-2024.html
*It wouldn't be a confident bet, though. The main evidence we have about the state of the race is the polls, but the polls aren't super reliable when they're this close, and we know from past cycles they tend to be off by three points on average. But sure, if these polls are accurate and if this is what we see next Tuesday and if the old conventional wisdom about the GOP Electoral College advantage holds, then, yes, Trump will win. But that's multiple if's!
Add this to the things that don't make sense. Trump has gained support - in places where it won't matter - over the past four years?
Add this to the things that don't make sense. Trump has gained support - in places where it won't matter - over the past four years?
Past twelve years.
We've seen evidence of a weakening of racial polarization of voting since at least 2012. So, it "makes sense" if Trump has made inroads among non-White voters that he may be able to bump up his margins in less white states. But the bulk of those are either way beyond being winnable for Trump (eg California, New York) or are already safely in his column (ie, Texas, Florida).
Democrats, by contrast, have been doing better with white voters, which may pay dividends in, say, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin.
but the polls aren't super reliable when they're this close,
The polls are never super reliable. I suspect that there are an appreciable number of R pollsters who weight the polls in favor of R candidates. Doesn't that sound like something Republicans would do? Rasmussen comes to mind.
But final polls (especially state polls) have been way off in the past. I'm betting they will be off in Harris's favor this time.
The polls are never super reliable.
My point is, the unreliability isn't a factor if the margin is big enough. Polls in 2020 significantly underestimated Trump's support. By about 3 points, I think. But Biden's actual margin was so large (around 4 points) that the fact that the projections (up 6-7) were fairly widely off didn't change the outcome.
To my eyes it looks mathematically infeasible that a similar degree of inaccuracy this time around won't be decisive. If the polls are underestimating Trump's support by three points, he wins. If the polls are underestimating Harris's support by three points, she wins. Relatedly, there's a lot of speculation to the effect that the eventual winner will take 6-7 of the swing states. This would very likely be the case if herding effects are introducing inaccuracy into the polling.
Of course, the polling may be far more accurate this cycle. We'll find out soon enough. I'd guess if that's the case it's bad news for Kamala Harris, but then again there's that "erosion of Electoral College advantage for Trump" factor, so, who knows? Maybe she could pull of a straight flush and win the election if she only wins the popular vote by, say, 0.8. You never know.
I think the appropriate sentiments are:
(1) Fear: it's perfectly rational to fear consequences of the return to power of a lunatic mafioso, and
(2) Hope: Harris may well win.
Yes, it is perfectly rational to fear a Trump win, and I admit that I do. I do hope, and also do think, that Harris will win.
That this election is even close reflects, using Jimmy Carter's famous word, a malaise in our country. And a disturbing tendency for people to be influenced by the lies of a salesman turned demagogue.
But it's the country we live in. And we need to find a way to live in it, regardless of the outcome.
But the last two elections have shown that Trump is extremely good at motivating the "Never Vote" caucus to get up once every four years and vote for him. Some of them find they like the experience and become Regular Voters; some of them actually start to do real investigation and slowly drift toward the Democrats. As we all know, Reality has a Liberal bias.
But the amazing thing is that Trump seems able to find new pockets of such holdouts each election, so he "over-performs" his polls in heavily Euro-American states. Perhaps he's running out this time and the polls are not under-counting his support. We'll know in a week, but I'm not optimistic about it.
". . . find out in 6 days????
We'll be lucky to know in 60!
Yeah, I don’t think any republican who loses a close race will concede and even when they lose by a lot they will claim fraud and fight the result. We are in for a tough time.
One other thing, which I have noted here before, if I'm not mistaken. Trump is acting like he's done. This is is last hurrah. They are escalting rhetoric like crazy, and you only do that if you think you are losing.
And yet there are these numbers. I don't know what's going on.
I do not know.
They are escalting rhetoric like crazy, and you only do that if you think you are losing.
I think we need to be careful about making conclusions about Trump's behavior. Maybe he's acting desperate because he thinks there's a decent chance he could lose. And he would be right to think that. But I really doubt Trump has any more insight into the state of the race than 538 or Silver or Yougov.
"But I really doubt Trump has any more insight into the state of the race than 538 or Silver or Yougov"
This. I'd argue that Trump has significantly less insight into the race than most anybody else. He's an idiot, is convinced that he's always right, and surrounds himself with sycophants who are either *also* idiots or actively manipulating him.
Trump acting like a crazy fascist weirdo is first and foremost evidence that he is a crazy fascist weirdo; there are far better sources of information about likely electoral outcomes.
+1 ldoushickman
+1
I'd argue that Trump realizes that there's very little he can do to change the outcome at this point, especially with all the early votes cast, so he doesn't even bother to try anymore and he's just winging it because he knows it won't make much difference.
I would never conclude that he thinks he's going to lose to Harris. And even if he does, he's secure in the belief that he will be able to overturn it with all his MAGA minions and supporters from SCOTUS on down.
I am quite certain that campaigns in general have far more detailed and accurate polling information available to them than the general public does.
Sure, maybe Trump doesn't have that. It would be very strange, but who knows. He can be such a tightwad.
I am quite certain that campaigns in general have far more detailed and accurate polling information available to them than the general public does.
I am quite certain that campaigns in general do not have far more detailed and accurate polling information available to them than Nate Silver or Harry Enten (538) or Economist/Yougov do.
We see conclusive evidence of this, by the way, in the various strategic errors that campaigns make with respect to messaging, ad spending, and so forth.
One sees that claim in the press from time to time, and I tend to doubt it also. I would think that the public polls are accurate enough for the campaigns’ purposes, i.e. to know where the race is close; historical voting patterns are also informative. Reducing margins of error is costly; I would think campaigns would apply their resources to more action-oriented questions: which voters are persuadable, what issues/messages will reach and perhaps persuade/motivate them?
One sees that claim in the press from time to time, and I tend to doubt it also. I would think that the public polls are accurate enough for the campaigns’ purpose...
I think it's pretty well known that campaigns do spend a fair amount of money on their internal polling operations. I don't see any reason to think they're not usually reasonably sophisticated. My only real point, though, was that there's no reason to think that Yougov or Times/Siena or Gallop et al aren't likewise reasonably sophisticated, and, relatedly, even if the campaign pollsters end up being closer to the mark, there's no way for them to be certain of this until after the election. There certainly aren't any "secret sauce" polling techniques, I'm pretty sure, given the revolving door between polling firms and political campaigns.
So it doesn't seem possible for either Trump or Harris to truly "know" what the outcome is for the simple reason that nobody can know a future election result with absolute certainty—at least when it's this close. The future is hard to predict!
This.
I think he knew Harris had won it the day his staff said he was exhausted.
His tone at MSG reinforces that; it was the grand finale at the very top of the escalator.
I like your take. And I appreciate how you handily transform a grotesque thing, the golden descent that even Obama referred to at the DNC, a phrase/scene that sullies you just mentioning or picturing it. But you make it a plain exit vehicle—to him, go, be gone!. I thought I might hate the word “escalator,” but you make it better.
djt down 19% for the day currently. Maybe that shows something?
https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/djt
I just looked. ^DJT was bid back up overnight, then fell off the cliff again at open. Somebody’s propping it up in thin off-hours trading.
This strikes me as overly pessimistic, possibly because it's a poll of registered voters, not likely voters
A one point lead is basically the polling "consensus," Kevin, which you might recognize if you looked at aggregators instead of a single poll. Harris's lead has shrunk from approximately three points to approximately one point over the course of October.
She may win this thing yet—the polls have been off by an average of about three points in recent cycles—but to state the obvious, the polling error needs to be in her favor, or it's Trump Redux. (Nate Silver claims there's about a 50% chance the inevitable gap between the polls and the vote will indeed favor the Democrats.)
There's also a lot of chatter to the effect that Trump's Electoral College advantage may be weaker than in previous cycles, so, perhaps Harris could win if she only beats him in the popular vote by a point or so. Maybe! Here's to hoping...
I think there's a perfectly fine chance the polls will end up being off by enough for her to win. I'm not scared because I'm convinced Trump is going to win. I'm scared because (1) a second Trump term would be a disaster, and (2) it's basically a coin toss (like it's been since August).
What do you mean by 'the polls are off'? I thought you were one of the more statistically literate regulars.
I'm referring to the gap between (1) what the final polls in the aggregate predict about the vote, and (2) the actual vote. If the current consensus is accurate, things do look grim, at least according to the old conventional wisdom about the margin she needs to prevail by to win the Electoral College. That CW says something like: if she falls much below 2.5 points, Trump probably flips multiple swing states. So. yeah, a one point win by Harris in the popular vote very likely means a second Trump term (though, as I mention elsewhere on this thread, I don't think it's quite the slam dunk it's been the last two cycles).
But in any event, recent presidential elections on average have been characterized by a roughly three point gap between the final polls and the actual popular vote result. There's no reason it couldn't be the Democratic nominee who gets a welcome surprise this cycle (Trump outperformed the polling in both 2016 and 2020).
The problem is actual vote count doesn't win the election, the electoral vote count does, ending with candidates who win office without a majority of voter support. I believe you need a parliamentary system for that to work; coalitions.
I live in Maine, where we rank our ballots because of this problem.
I wish I knew from whom I heard this (probably a public-radio interview), but a commentator said the parliamentary process is, hold an election, form a coalition, then govern. The US system is, form a coalition, hold an election, govern.
An advantage of the US system is that it spares the nation caretaker governments and long periods of post-election negotiations and uncertainty (looking at you, Belgium and Netherlands). A disadvantage is that it often delivers divided government. Well, that advantages the less-government (more oligarchy!) minority.
Polls of registered voters have always shown a tighter race than one for "likely voters", which are the most important ones. Pollsters have a hell of a time these days creating likely voter models because turnout has been so all over the place the past couple of years and just contacting people for polls is a near-impossible task.
The same You Gov poll Kevin quotes has Harris up 2 among likely voters. There are lots of reasons to believe that the polls are understating Harris support but obviously we won't know until Tuesday (or later). If she has a 2 point lead and the late deciders break her way (as some polls say they are) and if indeed she has the better ground game (as most commentators say she does) then the 2 point lead could easily be 4 or 5. I'm predicting 51-47.
I think the big polls have weighted their samples towards the R's because of the misses in 2016 and 2020. Whether that makes sense this year is a question. I think the outcome might be 50-45 due to 3rd party votes.
Forty-seven percent would be a high-water mark for TFG. I don’t know why being older, more demented, more vindictive, more white-identitarian, more self-obsessed and having multiple felony convictions shouldn’t diminish his appeal, but we’ll see.
For those that missed it, this is a great breakdown of how polling firms can basically "maniplute" results.
Essentially you have a poll that starts off +6 for Harris. But depending on the assumptions that are made, you can have a final result that varies from tied to +9 for Harris.
Given that most pollsters are reporting results that are closer to tied, seems like they're using assumptions that favor Trump (probably in an attempt to not underestimate his support again).
But it also shows that Harris could be leading by a LOT more than what the polling firms are reporting.
https://goodauthority.org/news/election-poll-vote2024-data-pollster-choices-weighting/
This could be pure Dem hopium—I kinda suspect it is—but one theory about possible pro-Trump bias "herding" in the polls is an overcorrection related to a polling technique called "weighting on recall vote" (adjusting the sample to account for 2020's polling undercount of the Trump vote). If the models used by multiple polls have overcorrected in this manner, that could translate into a source of multiple-poll herding that has puffed up Trump's poll numbers. I don't think anyone should bet the farm on this, but stranger things have happened.
https://jasonstanford.substack.com/p/the-big-mistake-polls-are-making?
I think the guy makes some good points. My gut tells me the likely voter pool got a lot more female and females voting in reaction to Dobbs. This could doom Ted Cruz. Also the generalized dysfunction of the GOP nuts and bolts.
But it isn't really really until the AP and other decision desks call the races.
You sure about that? This YouGov has her up by four (4). Came out today.
https://s10294.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/CMC-Rose-National-Poll-Fact-Sheet_RFR.pdf
Many (most?) of the close polls are showing that compared to the 2020 results, Harris has lost a lot of support from black voters and women.
Is this at all realistic?
In spite of sizeable turnout changes post-Dobbs decision, many (most?) of the close polls are showing little change in turnout.
Is this realistic?
Obviously we dont know thr answer to either. But....these both seem unlikely...
I know of no legitimate poll showing Harris lost women compared to 2020. Rather the opposite, a flood of women to Harris, biggest gender gap in polling in the modern polling era.
Also the loss of support from Black Men is small but still concerning given it could affect results in swing states. Also some loss of support by Latinx voters but late breakers are all going to brake for Harris, I mean Trump?
Many of the polls in the aggregation sites show exactly this.
I don't think it makes the poll illegitimate, but it seems hard to believe.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that bogus polls by GOP friendly firms are flooding the aggregates to make it look like a closer race. See here: https://bad-faith-times.ghost.io/you-are-being-manipulated-by-bad-faith-pollsters/
That piece has a lot of links to other sources as well. Don't get me wrong, I'm still very nervous, but these aggregate polls are probably bullshit at this point.
I'm sticking with my long held view that the election itself is just the prelude to the chaos in December. Rural Counties where the election was close will prevent certification of the result and cause electoral college chaos. More of this is required.
"Two local election officials in Michigan have been removed from overseeing the vote, state officials said on Tuesday, in a forceful move to keep Trump-aligned officials from trying to subvert election rules. Tom Schierkolk, the clerk of Rock River Township in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and his deputy, David LaMere, were removed after telling state officials that they intended to hand count ballots before sending their tally on for the county canvass, according to a letter that Jonathan Brater, Michigan’s elections director, sent to Mr. Schierkolk on Monday informing him of the decision."
Good for Michigan getting ahead of this.
"I'm sticking with my long held view that the election itself is just the prelude to the chaos in December."
If Harris wins by a small margin that is certain to happen. And it is not going to be just chaos, it will also be violence, threats and other criminal activities (e.g. destroying ballots).
Indeed… I have the weekend planned to stock up as if a blizzard were on its way. Or a pandemic! Toilet paper, canned goods, bottled water etc.
You can just move to a blue state. Like CA. No need to stock up here.
I live in New Jersey, a blue state. There are so many Trump supporters that it makes me sick. Working class people support a man who couldn't care less about their well being. Union members who support a scab hiring con man. I wish I could move to San Diego, I've been there twice on vacation and love the mild climate.
I'm not sure that CA would be safe from violence. Lots of white supremacists in the state too alas.
That would be in the (mythical) State of Jefferson.
I don't see rural counties as the bugaboo. They can object to the certification of their rural counties but those are the counties that Trump wins by big margins. Up against their own states' statutory canvassing deadlines, one can imagine cases where the state's SOS will tell them either they certify or s/he will exclude them. Would SCOTUS step into the fray and block SOSs from doing their jobs and following the law? Of course; this is an unprincipled Court. But when they do that, all fucking hell will break loose with political violence unleashed because of dueling protests.
That misses the point, because it assumes they will keep the law and order.
The lack of certification is red counties would be an excuse for failing to certify the state, and they will push that using violence and threats.
Failing to certify state elections means an SoS has to break their state's law. I really don't see that happening, regardless of which party the SoS is a member of.
It will not stop them from trying (like it didn't in J6).
An example:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-teen-machete-arrested-voter-intimidation-polling-place/story?id=115310490
After the election there will be more, and they will go to the election officers.
And the outcome is federal, state, and local law enforcement arresting people who do crimes. That's how it works. And SoS breaking the law will be arrested. People attempting to overthrow the government will be arrested.
The Electoral Count Reform Act cleaned up a lot of ambiguities. The legal electors are those certified by the governor. Of the states Harris needs to win (WI, MI, PA), all have Democratic governors. If she loses those she can't win anyway.
The legal electors are those certified by the governor.
The law in question is not as decisively worded in favor of governors as your sentence indicates, at least per Wikipedia:
Emphasis mine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_Count_Reform_and_Presidential_Transition_Improvement_Act_of_2022
I have no idea if any of the critical states may have "otherwise specified" roles for other state officials, but multiple swing states are controlled by the GOP. I sincerely hope they haven't undermined the spirt of this federal law via this loophole. But it does appear to be a loophole.
Also, don't state authorities ultimately have to rely on vote tallies submitted by local or county officials in order to have a result they can then certify? Local elections officials strike me as being another potential weak link in our system of electoral integrity.
I'm personally not overly worried about MAGA efforts to steal the election (maybe that's foolhardy of me), mainly because I'm personally expecting the results next week to be sufficiently decisive either way to put the election beyond the reach of a GOP coup. But if it is hyper-close, my confidence in our elections integrity guardrails is about a 3 on a scale of 1-10, mainly because our judicial overlords on the Supreme Court won't be able to resist the temptation to block Harris from taking office if they're given a plausible opportunity to weigh in. We saw this in 2000, and needless to say the court has gotten a lot more nakedly political in the last quarter century.
I'm personally terrified by the thought of a second Trump term. I haven't had a good night's sleep in six weeks. Except for this blog I refuse to read any more pundits saying it's "too close to call." I turn off the TV news when they start in on the same theme. I'm frustrated and confused to know that the election is considered "close!" At 3AM I lie in bed asking myself how can this be? The very events that show Trump to be a dangerous incompetent seem to boost his standing among his fans. I take solace from the possibility that his supporters are really as stupid as they seem, and therefore a lot of them won't be able to negotiate the ins and outs of actually marking and turning in a ballot. That could add up to a million or more lost votes, but it's only a hope.
I intended to get out and work in the Biden campaign, but I was fooled by what I thought was going to be a big Harris win, so now I'm kicking myself that I didn't volunteer for the Democrats. As others have said here, whoever wins this election, it will be followed by months -- or years -- of chaos, but I'd rather live through that with President Harris than the alternative.
I'm at the point of not even reading this. I've stopped visiting Mother Jones because it's too depressing. Especially after the article about a president Vance giving a theoretical SOTU. Thst shit is too real to deal with now.
His fans ARE "Deplorable". His fans ARE "garbage". His fans ARE "Nazis".
I'm talking about his "fans" here, the "MAGA's". They were the backbone of the Democratic Party from Andrew Jackson until FDR pushed them aside: Slavers. Religious fanatics. Native exterminators. Liars. Horse thieves. Gunslingers. Card sharks.
All the jerks and degenerates of American History have been reborn somehow and have banded together to become Donald Trump's "fans".
It is important to remember that they are not the same as "all Republicans" or "all Conservatives". In fact, they are neither of those things. What they are is an amorphous mass of resentful, narcissistic people who drift back and forth between the parties, seeking whichever one is the weakest in order to take it over and reshape it in their own image.
You know how Trump is constantly projecting? He does it because he's defending his lawlessness and shortcomings.
Well, I think in this instance Democrats might not have considered that some (or many) of Trump's loyalists may end up ballot-stuffing within the confines of their rural communities, away from prying eyes, under the belief that Democrats do it in the urban areas.
We're going to need machine-learning to track suspicious voting activity, IMO, sooner than later.
“ Trump: If God came down from on high and God said I will be the voting tabulator for the day, I believe I would win California because I do great with the Hispanics‘
At this point I don’t even wonder if Trump is actually this delusional. He is. I also don’t wonder if his supporters are stupid enough to believe it. They are.
No. He is not that delusional. It is a bald-faced lie. He does it all the time. Many times a day. This is The Big Lie strategy. Played even bigger than how W played it.
Here's a quote from Wikipedia:
The success of a Big Lie depends on how much of a whopper it is. People have a hard time, like you are having a hard time, believing that someone would tell that big of a lie without believing it.
But no. It's a lie. From beginning to end. He lies constantly. About everything. Sometimes I think he lies because he finds it fun, and no other reason.
+1
Also the point is not to get all of his supporters to believe it. It is to get some of them to believe it. And he gets away with it because those that realize it is false just take it a joke.
If Harris loses, I propose we send to Palestinian territories all the people who stayed at home because of Israel. At least this way, they can be human shields for the Palestinians against the IDF, to get them to stop, amirite?
I mean look, if Bibi starts killing Americans, Biden will have no choice but to stop sending arms to Israel. The folks who allowed Trump to win will finally serve their true purpose in life: bringing peace to the Middle East. After all, they're single-issue voters and if that's the only thing that matters in their lives, they ought to step up.
/satire
I plan on taking up heavy drinking and start using drugs.
Japan has a very wide assortment of visas and millions of empty homes priced under $20K. Cheaper and more entertaining than heavy drinking and drugs.
Why not a job in Antarctica?
https://www.bas.ac.uk/jobs/jobs-in-antarctica/
You go to Antarctica and I'll go to Okinawa where it's tropical weather and palm trees.
Sounds good to me but my wife doesn't eat sushi. Would need to learn to drive on the other side of the road and get some form of health insurance, since Medicare doesn't work when living abroad (I don't think). Good news is I believe Japanese whisky is quite good.
Is this real? Homes under $20K? I assume that they're in the countryside which has been almost completely depopulated.
Heh. My own two cents: Harris wins the popular vote in a walk and the electoral vote fairly early on - days at most. No, my concern now is for how Congressional seats play out. Just because Republican women turn out to vote for Kamala doesn't mean they won't vote the straight party ticket down-ballot.
If you haven't already, read this:
https://goodauthority.org/news/election-poll-vote2024-data-pollster-choices-weighting/
There is an incredible amount of massaging of the numbers to try to "correct" for all sorts of things. Given that the corrections are far bigger than the actual vote margins, I don't think you can draw any conclusions at all from the current polls. They underpredicted Trump's share in both 2016 and 2020. So are they now overcompensating to try to get it right? We don't know until all the votes are counted.
I think whoever wins PA wins the election. My neighbor's daughter changed her registration to PA. I hope her vote matters.
What doesn't make any sense is that no October surprise has happened to cause a collapse of support for Kamala Harris. She was riding high at the beginning of this month, and now that it's ending she's gone anywhere from slightly negative to dead even to +1. You see it in every election. It becomes a horse race right before Election Day even in elections where the candidate won relatively handily like Obama in 2012. Whether it's truthful or manufactured I do not know. But, polls are mostly bullshit. They're all mostly phone polls made by individuals or computers that call people's landline or mobile phones. Almost no one answers their phones anymore if the caller is unknown because we've been so inundated with spam calls for decades now. It makes the sample tilt heavily toward the aged, and polls try to account for that through various methods. The sample size is always really small, and after each election each [serious] poll adjusts for "errors" made in the previous election cycle's polls. Aggregators then take these adjusted polls, average based on opaque heuristics, and lastly make their own adjustments. We're left with a bunch of statistical bullshit, especially since 2016.
What we do know is that either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will win. If you look at viewable enthusiasm it's clear Harris has the edge there this election cycle, but crowd size and endorsements don't always equate to an election win. It can go either way just as it could have in 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, etc. Perhaps soon we can cheer that we've bought ourselves four more years. All Biden's election gave us was 4 years. It's all Kamala Harris' election will as well. The sickness is still there, and nothing she does in office will fix it because they won't believe anything good she does for them. She won't have the political capital to fix the ills of this country because as usual the electorate will give her a garbage Congress to work with. The potential 2028 GOP presidential candidate will be just as much a fascist as Trump is. Or, we can weep that our republic dies on January 20th, 2025. Either way we're stumbling toward the end of the republic.
What doesn't make any sense is that no October surprise has happened to cause a collapse of support for Kamala Harris.
It hasn't been a collapse. She's gone from a three point lead to a one point lead, per most of the polls. That's a pretty normal tightening.
The real enemy here is the Electoral College. I'd be very surprised if more Americans opt for Trump than Harris, but this may not matter, because Madison's clusterfuck gives White Supremacist douchelords in Idaho three or four times the voting power of decent folk in California or New Jersey.
Crackpot theory 1: Pollsters all have a secret fear that they gave us the Orange Menace in 2016 by fueling overconfidence among Democrats. After 2020, they finally arrived at a secret gentlemen’s agreement* to keep the numbers close, so as not to unwittingly encourage or discourage either party.
*Figure of speech. There are women pollsters.
Crackpot theory 2: To judge by commenters on the Internet, many supporters of TFG are motivated by thinking that they cause liberal heads to explode. They also disproportionately respond to polls for the same reason. Some of these same people are just trolls and can’t be bothered to actually get off their keyboards to vote.
Josh Marshall has an interesting observation:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/election-miscellany-4
I was going to suggest that pollsters might be subject to the Millikan oil-drop experiment effect, an example of ‘herding’ in a hard science.