Thank god that’s not true or I’d be dead of cancer by now.
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This. My wife and I are “shy” Biden voters. I’m certainly vocal online and within my social groups, but I absolutely in no way advertise to the neighbors I’m a Biden supporter. Too many of them wave confederate flags and are more heavily armed than I am for my comfort level.
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Of course. That’s why the safest way to play Russian Roulette is using a revolver with two bullets in it.
(/s!)
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They predicted his 2016 win, and they’re predicting he’s going to win again.
Reminds me of Peter Schiff, who got all that attention for predicting the 2008 financial collapse.
Then he spent the Obama years warning of massive inflation that quantitativ easing was going to cause.
Looks like the broken clock effect to me.
I think this year’s phenomenon with Trump voters is they’re not going to the polls this time around. 2016 was a once-in-a-lifetime moment—voting—for a lot of them. When push comes to shove they will sit on the couch in large numbers on the 3rd.
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Yes, and maybe you wouldn’t mind telling a pollster you were voting Biden, but imagine if one of those confederate flag waving neighbours was married to a spouse who was supporting Biden. Are they going to tell a pollster who they are voting for?
The entire reason we have laws against people taking photos of their ballots is so that abusive people can’t force their spouses or young adult children into voting for who they want (not the entire reason).
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I’ve found this NPR podcast No Compromise very enlightening on this point. There are huge volumes of people in America who live in a completely fake information bubble. No reality makes it in at all. All they see are copaganda memes, racist tropes, lies about Democrats, etc. It’s essentially a cult and most people would be powerless to resist if so well immersed.
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Do people really maintain two twitter accounts? Who has the time and inclination to be both a “normal” person posting about “normal” stuff and then also spend time trolling with another account? How would we even know this is going on?
Sounds to me like Cahaly is making an admission about his own twitter use.
Amen. I am probably more open about my leanings than I should be, but for both professional reasons and, honestly, some degree of opsec, I do not voice my politics publicly at all. In my area that could be dangerous on both fronts.
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If it wasn’t for the technological hassle, I think a lot of people would segregate various aspects of their personality on line. We’re already told to separate work from home, why not other aspects too? Do you write fanfiction under your real name?
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The so-called Electoral College (a non-Constitutional grouping that never meets and thus is not a ‘college’) is slanted toward low-population, pro-GOP states by at least 5%. Any non-GOP challenger must amass a popular supermajority to take the White House. Ms Clinton won the election but lost the rigged game.
With enough voter suppression and shit-canned ballots in critical states, Donny-Boy could indeed remain in ill-gotten power. Funny – in any other election at any level, whomever or whatever gains the most votes, wins. In the US Presidency, losers win. What a system!
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Vote for Change. ANY change is better than this.
I’m pretty confident at that point that most voters will select Biden on their ballots. Including in the “swing” states. By wide margins.
I am not at all confident that most of those ballots will be counted, because of all the shenanigans going on. Many of those ballots are now moldering in various post-office corners, awaiting permission from the post-master general to deliver them to the various localities they are supposed to go to. Permission which is unlikely to come until after the election, at which point in many of the states they will be simply sent to the incinerator instead of opened and counted. Plus things like “signature matching”, (who here can scribble out a legible signature on those little computer key-pad things), which will be scrutinized very severely in urban (blue) districts where there are lots of ballots to process, and not so much in rural (red) districts. Plus, all the lawsuits currently going on about halting the counts at poll closing times, or soon there-after, including in places where it is policy to not even start opening the mail-in ballots until after poll closing time, meaning many of those ballots, even if sent, and arriving well on time, and passing the gauntlet of challenges such as signature matching, correct envelope sealing, proper notary signatures, etc, will still end up not getting counted.
And all those law suites to stop the counts/throw out ballots in blue districts will immediately get sent in front of trump appointed judges who signed a personal oath of loyalty to trump in their own blood as a requirement to get the appointment. Including 3 of the supreme court justices. We have to trust that those judges who swore oaths of personal loyalty to trump will renege on those oaths, despite threats of dire retribution to themselves and their families to be carried out by the Russian agents who are currently watching them.
All those disenfranchising efforts in carefully chosen blue districts make me seriously question whether Biden will end up being sworn in.
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Oh - absolutely. The polls always assume a fair election, when that is not gauranteed. But there is no easy way to account for voter suppression (and you wouldn’t want to anyway).
However, good polling is actually a check on the democratic process. If a result ends up way outside the range suggested by polling, it should raise alarm bells.
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If you’ve read some of Silver’s post-mortem pieces from 2016, he does conduct some self criticism and gives some thought to where 538’s model could have been improved. But yeah, this idea that the quality pollsters and modellers are getting it wrong is just a sign of widespread innumeracy. Also, people have a hard time with anything that isn’t a Yes/No, Right/Wrong answer.
The sad bit is that rural polling places, who are overwhelmingly white, non college educated; never have queues…
…while urban ones are the ones swamped.
In GOP controlled stateshouses, this is by design.
If we win unified control, voting rights to dismantle minority rule, needs to be priority 2.
(Covid is #1).
You misunderstand the principle used: Rule 1, people lie. Asking what neighbors would do is just one of the ways to find the truth. But see Rule 1.
Doesn’t matter if you are discussing cereal, politicians, or racial views. You are asking people: what do you want? If you just trust what people say, you’re screwed. You need a way to validate the data. When and what are they lying about.
That’s why these two pollsters can both be right 4 years ago and wrong today. They assume the reason for the lie is the same 4 years apart. 4 years ago it was expressing a hidden desire, today it’s expressing a hidden fear. You’re right, their method is hugely flawed. The method they are drawing from is pretty uncontroversial.
I do customer interviews with surgeons. This is life and death stuff. I ask something like the neighbor question to prioritize their answers. And I use a couple other techniques. Because you can get some really messed up answers from doctors. (why is a whole different fascinating discussion, but suffice it to say it’s not their fault.)
Example: we had an outside company do some industrial design. They talked to some surgeons, asking them about a feature on existing devices. The surgeons said they didn’t know, so the outside company designed it out. It was for opening the damn thing! The equivalent would be removing the doorknob on the inside of a door because opening and closing doors is so normal, you don’t think about it. WTF?!?!
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