"Will you shut up, man?" US Politics October 2020

yeah my gut won't listen to anything since 2016 but my brain is screaming "Biden landslide incoming"

New national Opinium poll has Biden even leading with white voters:

This cannot POSSIBLY be good news for Republicans. New voters and previous non-voters just don't turn out to show how much they love Big Daddy Incumbent. They just fucking don't. This is a "please get this motherfucker out of our lives" election. Period.

We have exceeded 20M voters who didn't cast a ballot in '16 having already voted in this election - 20,357,512 to be exact.

That's 27.2% of all ballots cast, and more people than live in any one US state other than CA, TX, and FL.

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) October 30, 2020

The poll additionally found that a 57% majority of likely 2020 voters who did not vote in 2016 supported Biden

guessing there are a lot of ‘Covington Kids’ who’ve turned 18 over the last 4 years but ngl I would have thought this particular number would be higher

You know what correlates with Democratic turnout? Republican turnout. You know how close these elections are going to be? Close. Ignore the early voting counts.

Ignore the early voting counts.

This.

You know how close these elections are going to be? Close.

the possible results range from "Trump wins by a hair" to "Biden wins in a landslide."

You know what correlates with Democratic turnout? Republican turnout.

OTMFM

didn't seem to be the case in 2018

Eh. I'm not Mr. Hope and Change, never have been, but no one here's telling themselves or voters to kick it through Tuesday night. Letting people feel good about data is salutary and necessary, especially during COVID.

and people forget about uh 2018

lol frogbs beat me

didn't seem to be the case in 2018

No offense, but to insist on reminding people REMEMBER 2016 is tiresome at this point. Adding caveats to Joe Biden's chances on the Friday before Election Day is like having to salute the flag before criticizing America.

I mean by all means have fun hitting refresh. And these numbers are good for civil society. And if I had to guess then I’d say they were good news for democrats. But I don’t understand why you’d use them to tell you what was going to happen in the election when we have actual polls where people say who they’re voting for.

No offense, but to insist on reminding people REMEMBER 2016 is tiresome at this point.

Then I didn't understand your point.

We have a ton of information that makes us confident biden is going to win. Early vote counts are not part of that.

otm re: optimism (not that I think caek is saying Remember 2016 - I get good value out of caek's posts).

I'm just tired of showing any optimism before having a friend put their fingers on my lips and launch into a Neil Simon-esque monologue about how I dare not utter a positive statement about Tuesday or Biden will be smote by Yahweh in retaliation.

also the 700th smug utterance of "the polls were wrong in 2016" as if that's a) a correct way of looking at what happened or b) an astute observation in 2020

i think some of my friends are literally in the Twilight Zone ep where they're going to see results that Biden won but be convinced that he lost and isn't President for 4 years

We have a ton of information that makes us confident biden is going to win. Early vote counts are not part of that.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, October 30, 2020

If that's your point, sure. I haven't followed early voting other than MDC's because local media needs a horse race.

I’m not advancing a minority review here. Everyone who predicts elections says the same thing except a bunch of people who are like the Democratic version of unskewers who have glommed onto a dataset that has no precedent in history to make claims about the future.

i feel like obsessive notation of early voting numbers, which may or may not be happening itt i can't say for sure, is basically just anxiety management

I think biden is going to win btw.

we did do a lot of the EV analysis in 2016 too which did kind of prove why it was pointless to hyperfocus on it, yes.

it actually turned into a thing where lots of locals in Orlando were yelling in 2018 at Democrats to "hurry up and vote" when the early voting totals in FL looked a bit weaker for Democrats, and several responded "why? does my vote count less since I'm waiting for Election Day? the fuck does it matter when I vote?"

The CW on this race race is going to end up being "Biden was consistently above 50% in swing state polls. Why did anyone think Trump had a chance?"

Uh, anyway, FWIW

Missed this, but @StPetePolls this week found Biden leading 54%-43% in #FL13, a senior-heavy St. Pete/Clearwater seat that voted for Clinton 49.6% to 46.4% in 2016. https://t.co/aVabcyyaut

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 30, 2020

P.S. 56% of their sample was age 50+ and 74% had already voted.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 30, 2020

Agree with everyone here, I think there is only one correct view to rationally hold which is

probability of Biden winning decisively is quite high

probability of Trump winning or election close enough to get mired in court review is quite low but is such a bad outcome it would be inhuman not to worry about it a lot

people are probably overfocusing on "pollsters missed big in 2016" (actually in just a few states which turned to be decisive) and not "pollsters, having learned something from 2016, were pretty much right on in 2018."

Pollsters 2016 in the opposite direction to 2012 is another good thing to remember

*missed

that's the analogy I usually use. same thing coulda happened to Obama if the error was in Romney's direction.

and just imagine the President Romney years

This is a good tweet about early voting

A Democratic upset in a 2018 race for "Harris County judge" just might deliver Texas to Biden. Meanwhile, recent Dem wins in PA State Supreme Court races could thwart voter suppression in that tipping-point state.

Downballot elections, they matter folks!https://t.co/nCT5VfUuC5 pic.twitter.com/tJDcY1bkXV

— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) October 30, 2020

Optimistic fundraising email of the day is from Meraz Ben-David, Democratic Senate candidate in -- well, I'll just let you read it

Joe Biden has started advertising heavily in Wyoming, which means two things: Democrats are starting to realize that Wyoming is winnable (!!), and advertising has just gotten twice as expensive. That makes it hard to stay on the air.

Will you help us keep our ads on the air in these last few days?

"A Democratic upset in a 2018 race for "Harris County judge" just might deliver Texas to Biden."

I hate this phrasing. If Biden wins Texas it's the voters in Texas who delivered those electoral votes to Biden. All the judge is doing is refraining from standing in their way.

Yeah there’s been a tendency to report court decisions that favor voting as wins for democrats rather than ... voters

in comparison to Diebold voting systems, which delivered 2004 to Dubya

Wyoming? wtf

"Wyoming? WTF" is their state song iirc

I don't remember how many of y'all besides clemenza posted regularly to the 2012 threads, but there was a sense that Obama would win but narrowly, perhaps with the smallest popular vote total ever. It turned out most pollsters besides Silver had underestimated his chances: the election results went from a close to a comfortable win. That was nice.

I mean what would you write if you were trying to get people to give money to your Wyoming Dem Senate campaign?

xpost yep, I posted to that thread. there were a lot of angry conservative politicians who were writing anti-Silver screeds, convinced he was manipulating data that should have reflected toss-up chances for Romney into a decisive Obama lead.

Rasmussen predicting a Romney win was the icing on the cake - the comments section was hilarious to read the day after.

I was posting as NINO CARTER at the time I think

I'm pretty much assuming at this point that Biden will be the decisive winner, if not on Tuesday night, then shortly thereafter, and Trump will complain and bitch about it and scream election fraud and theft but will get no traction on it, and Republicans will start slowly backing away, and he'll rage tweet throughout the holidays and not go to the inauguration, and then will quickly move to OANN on a non stop basis claiming Biden is illegitimate and he will hopefully start to fade from public view as he becomes a niche Alex Jones sort of fool.

"becomes"

Trump will take a cyanide pill to prove his devotion to his people and people will blow-up the photo all over TWitter and prove itw as just a Tic-tac

akm is probably not wrong, but in between his rage tweets he will continue to dismantle any and all environmental regulations and protections he can find

I hate this phrasing. If Biden wins Texas it's the voters in Texas who delivered those electoral votes to Biden. All the judge is doing is refraining from standing in their way.

It's accurate though. Texas has been solidly GOP-controlled for like twenty years now and so the mechanics of voting and representation here are deeply partisan. Republicans actively gerrymander, disenfranchise, and make the acts of registering and voting as hard as possible (such as requiring ID to vote since the 2014 immediately after the Supreme Court hobbled the Voting Rights Act). If Biden wins Texas it's the elected officials in charge of voting at the county level who since 2018 (thanks to Beto) are now Democrats and actively took steps to make it possible for more people to vote. It's far more than just not standing in the way of voters, it's removing very large roadblocks between them and the voting booth that the GOP has put up.

good luck Florida

Raw footage of mailroom in post office here in Miami Dade. Source revealed “mail in ballots are within these piled up in bins on the floor. Mail has been sitting for over week!.” @AmandiOnAir @PeterSchorschFL @MarcACaputo @GlennaWPLG @CNNPolitics @NewsbySmiley @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/DO8jx1VUnz

— Dem House Leader (@kionnemcghee) October 30, 2020

I love to work at the post office in Miami Dade and discard all the Biden votes