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

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

If Texas goes blue and Florida doesn’t, does this mean we can never hear about that godforsaken state again unless it’s about a gator fighting the world’s largest python?

If Texas goes blue and can redistrict as a blue state, that would be a victory for the ages.

godforsaken

It's Neanderthal's fault for listening to all that metal.

good afternoon!

This is getting...mostly just stupid.

Breaking on @MSNBC: A new emergency appeal has been filed in the Supreme Court challenging Minnesota's policy on face masks at polling places.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 30, 2020

I'm convinced that there would be just as many, say, "Michigan man" or "California man" stories out there if reporters from all over the country spent as much time digging through other states' police reports, but it's way more trendy to keep making fun of Florida.

only Neanderthal and I make good Florida jokes.

Meantime:

In WSJ/NBC polling, Trump is +9 among "disengagers" —people who voted in 2016 but not 2018

Biden is +21 among voters who registered in the past two years or who voted in 2018 but not 2016, and those voters outnumber the disengagers.

More:https://t.co/e09m7OfUiU

— Ben Pershing (@benpershing) October 30, 2020

I mean WSJ had to keep digging for some group to throw out as some positive spin.

Separately, paywalled, but of interest:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gops-biggest-feud-gives-dems-huge-senate-chance-in-georgia

i like this tweet

Generic ballot: Closing days of 2016 v 2020. One of these things is not like the other. pic.twitter.com/a0TMf3s3tc

— Todd Eberly (@ToddEberly) October 29, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIdntHAhTv0

one of my wife's friends, who is about as apolitical a person as you'll ever encounter, became a citizen today explicitly to vote for Biden. I know it's just one person but if someone as disengaged as her is showing up....

i voted today

i farted today

could have farted in the voting booth to kill two birds with one stone

i farted today

― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), vrijdag 30 oktober 2020 22:11 (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

To see if you still feel?

Final @GallupNews preelection fav rating of the 2 side candidates: pic.twitter.com/fYUmKG1sKV

— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) October 30, 2020

(Seems insane to me that Trump's favorability ratings could have gone up among U.S. adults since 2016, but maybe "adults" means something different these days.)

Isn't Gallup now considered a somewhat below-average polling organization in terms of reliable accuracy?

more on that Twitter story about Miami-Dade ballots

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article246838887.html

A bit of gloom for you (though not sure a low Floridan Latino turnout would be such a bad thing for Biden!)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-30/biden-aides-see-warning-signs-in-black-latino-turnout-so-far

Isn't Gallup now considered a somewhat below-average polling organization in terms of reliable accuracy?

― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless), Friday, October 30, 2020 5:25 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yes, their main virtue (and it's a big one) is they've been asking the same approval question for decades. you can ignore them for voting intention.

xpost -- Wasserman thread in response to that Bloomberg story, and I've seen other reactions as well:

A few points:

1) Black & Latino turnout wasn't particularly great in '16, and even a modest increase vs. '16 would boost Biden
2) Polling has told us all along that Black/Latino Dems are more skeptical of VBM than white Dems https://t.co/v2pgwwZXbv

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 30, 2020

In other non-surprising news...

Quick thread. Warning: not super exciting.

1. In the course of our reporting on Trafalgar Group—part of the due diligence we often do while entering polls—we've learned that some of their polling was done for partisan clients that weren't clearly disclosed.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 30, 2020

Democrats say Biden’s strength among other groups - namely seniors and suburbanites - will compensate for any drop-off in Latino support.

For every working class person of color who doesn't go to the voting booth, we'll win two white Republicans in the Atlanta suburbs.