US Politics, September 2024 -- “I’m Not Going to Apologize For Posting a Joke”

or find a riverbank and tell it to the reeds

The polling advantage for Harris is currently narrower in PA than in MI and WI, though I've also seen some people say that there hasn't been much high-quality polling there within the past few weeks, so there's a lot of uncertainty around what the aggregates are showing.

This goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: none of us are gonna relax until we win this thing. 2016 is a fresh wound.

she has been getting some really good polls out of Wisconsin lately

none of us are gonna relax until we win this thing. 2016 is a fresh wound

and here's hoping it's a popular vote blowout... that'll make their chicanery less viable

Towards the end of the August thread--or maybe it was in the containment thread--someone posted a tweet from someone in Pennsylvania saying the worry was just a rerun of 2020 and that Harris was doing fine.

In a way it's ridiculous that Trump is even competitive in PA. There's only been one GOP governor term there since 1987.

Meanwhile, North Carolina GOP sure picked a doozy of a gubernatorial candidate. Not gonna be any coattails for Trump there. Not into porn-shaming, but even at that this sounds like uh fairly egregious behavior.

https://www.theassemblync.com/politics/nc-election-governor-republican-mark-robinson-porn-allegations/

Why polling-based election prognostication is bullshit:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/03/election-forecasts-data-00176905

That's hardly what he actually concludes:

It’s still possible that these forecasts may end up being the best way to predict the outcome of presidential elections. But right now, we simply do not know if these models are particularly accurate. And we certainly do not know if small fluctuations in the probability of a candidate winning represent anything other than modeling error or meaningless random variation.

Which I think amounts to "we're not sure yet."

My hot take is that polls can accurately tell us that a race is close, as opposed to a shoo-in. But in a close race polls can't tell us who will win, because they just aren't accurate enough for that. In the Electoral College, this clearly is a close race right now. Unless the polls change to reflect something very different, that's about as far as they can take us.

speaking of polling

A new USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Tuesday shows Biden’s approval rating rising from 41 percent in late June, shortly before his fateful June 27 debate with Donald Trump, to 48 percent today. While Biden was more than 15 points underwater in his approval back then, his approval rating is now nearly even with his disapproval rating (49 percent).

Those are Biden’s best numbers in Suffolk polling since he was inaugurated in January 2021.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/03/biden-is-suddenly-seeing-his-best-polls-years/

filing that with things that make you think

>> Which I think amounts to "we're not sure yet."

As Niels Bohr (or maybe Yogi Berra) said, prediction is hard, especially about the future.

(xpost) How can we miss you if you won't go away?

(Okay, you went away, so now we miss you.)

(xpost) Right, which I think is what at least one leading pollster concedes: "So, who’s gonna win the election? Well, honestly, we don’t know — but we can give you our best probabilistic guess."

Is it okay for the Washington Post guy to offer a hedged guess about the accuracy of polls, but not for the polls to offer a hedged guess as to who'll win the election?

And anyway, isn't the Washington Post itself part of that awful media cohort you bemoan, not to be trusted about anything?

imagine if this happened? trump would lose it all. unlikely , but still...

"Vice President Kamala Harris trails former President Donald Trump by 5 percentage points in Texas, shaving off nearly half the Republican nominee’s one-time advantage over President Joe Biden from earlier this year, according to a new poll released Thursday."

"imagine there's no texas/it's easy if you try..."

uh, when a polling company offers a hedged guess about who will win it will have more real world effects on voters compared to when some Washington Post guy makes a hedged guess about the accuracy of polls. viz. confirmation bias is more strongly at play over who wins and that ensures the hedging will be widely ignored.

the day a Democrat wins Texas the GOP is over

This is a pretty weak sauce year for the Texas GOP. Most of their ghouls in Congress are locks, and Cruz is running on the Border Security bill he voted against.

Nothing like the biannual "Texas is turning purple/blue" fall delusion - only for the blobfish or evil goblin statewide GOP candidate to run up every rural county 85-15.

the day a Democrat wins Texas the GOP is over

LBJ won texas by 63.32%

jimmy carter won texas.

Henry V winning Agincourt has roughly the same relevance to 'Murrica 2024

I could almost see them sacrificing Cruz in favor of grooming new blood for 2030(!) except said prospective new blood is somehow even more embarrassing (Troy Nehls, anyone?).

The Senate is too close for the GOP to sacrifice any incumbent.

LBJ & Carter stats are void given 95% of those voters are dead.

ann richards was governor in the..late 80s?

The parties took a long time to re-align -- in the case of the Dems to shake off the remnants of the Solid South.

Ann Richards was governor from '90-'94. Jim Hightower or someone like that won a railroad commission seat in '94 and that was the last Democrat to win a statewide office.

2016 is a fresh wound

I keep thinking that was 4 years ago

women though...in texas...there are some...there...abortion?

A lot of stuff could happen. Texas could become a swing state but Minnesota could turn into Wisconsin and Wisconsin and Michigan could turn into Ohio. You just never know. Loosely speaking, I think states with big cities and cheap houses that a lot of people are moving to are going to get more Democratic (as has already happened in AZ and GA), while states that are getting older, poorer, and sparser are going to get more Republican. Admittedly my theory does not explain Florida but my other theory is that Florida is fucked up and bullshit.

its wild Trump has been a part of the daily political news cycle for nearly 9 years now I just want him to go away forever

I mean his horrible political views are just part of it, the thing I really despise is that he's just such a massive asshole about everything, all the time, his entire campaign strategy is shitting on everyone, he doesn't have a single nice thing to say about the country he wants to run. its just so exhausting, the only bigger asshole I can think of is probably his running mate

women though...in texas...there are some...there...abortion?

Yes, but like Milo pointed out there's a ton of rural areas dominated by Evangelicals and other patriarchal fucks.

not sure it'll have any real effect, but still fun to see:

Republican Voters Against Trump launched an $11.5 million ad buy in key swing states on Tuesday, marking the group’s largest ad buy so far this cycle.

The group is targeting voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona. Additionally, the ad buy will also run in Nebraska’s competitive 2nd Congressional District. $4.5 million of the ad buy will be spent in Pennsylvania, while $3 million will be spent in Michigan and $2.2 million will be spent in Wisconsin. The group will spend $1.5 million in Arizona and $375,000 in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.

I think it will have an effect. Gotta convince some people it's OK to stay home on Election Day.

yeah, I just mean that in the current political ecosphere, 11 million unfortunately ain't jack shit

11 million is OK if it's carefully spent. it's not like Republican Voters Against Trump has to finance a ground game, just plant seeds in voters' minds.

Just saw a Trump ad that was weirdly old-fashioned (and kind of lame): "The debate we've all been waiting for," followed by clips of Harris on the left detailing poor economic indicators, contrasted with Harris on the right extolling Bidenomics. Guessing they had to beg Trump to okay it. "But where's the insulting nickname?"

what might have been...

It is unclear whether Trump was genuinely considering choosing Kennedy as his running mate at that stage. Days later, at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, he announced JD Vance as the vice-presidential nominee.

But as recently as April – at a time when he was lambasting Kennedy as “a radical left Democrat” – Trump was apparently also considering him as his vice-president and musing about he liked the sound of a “Trump-Kennedy” ticket.

makes you think

Lol

Too bad about that voice

and the bear corpse and the beheaded whale

Those are pluses

his face and voice do kind of herald the end of a civilization. he's the embodiment of the rot in privilege.