GET OUT: US politics November 2020

i don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait for a long period of time after the election to ship trump’s sorry ass back to whatever gold-veneered conference centre he hasn’t had to hock yet.

There are precisely two words I want to hear this month. I don't know who will say them or when, but they are:

you're fired

Hi

Interesting pic.twitter.com/WZDD5smzAc

— Will Jordan (@williamjordann) November 2, 2020

What am I supposed to take from this? Democrats are more inclined to vote early this year than Republicans, we know that, so the more Democratic parts of Texas had more early turnout, as you'd expect. What is holy shit about it?

Controlling for pop growth, turnout in Democratic parts of Texas has been huge. And it’s not even Tuesday.

Like many I the thread I don’t understand the second map, because they are two different years.

There is a whole frickton of game theory in it,, but I found this interesting, in terms of why does Candidate X go to state Y.

https://neelmehta.medium.com/5-keys-to-campaign-strategy-5-high-variance-plays-4a1f32f88920

(Also in a "wtf else do we have to do while waiting for results" kind of way. Clearly, wait-and-see remains the best strategy)

62-63 million people voted Trump in 2016. Given current trends he’s likely gonna need something like 72 million to win. I do not think he’s persuaded anywhere close to 10 million additional people to vote for him.

I never forget that year when something like a mind boggling 300+ election staff died during an Indonesian election, purely from counting fatigue/overwork.

I think all the tweet is saying is that in democratic areas of texas early voting alone has already far exceeded total votes in 2016

To put this another way, I don’t see how a guy who’s literally never gotten above a 42% approval rating in the polling average can win a high turnout election

Yeah but the second image claims to show margins for Clinton 2016 and O’Rourke 2018 in a single map. I can’t figure it out.

Xpost

I think all the tweet is saying is that in democratic areas of texas early voting alone has already far exceeded total votes in 2016

Yes. I get that. But if counties in the Republican part of the state are already at 80% of their 2016 turnout, and we know that those counties have many more Republicans and thus much greater expected Election Day turnout than the Democratic counties, is there any reason to expect we're going to see bigger relative turnout in Dem counties than GOP counties, when all the votes are cast and counted?

I agree it makes it pretty clear Texas turnout as a whole is going to be much higher than 2016, and I can't help but feel that helps Democrats, but it's not obvious to me the turnout increase is going to be differentially concentrated among Democrats, is what I'm saying.

And that’s OK, and here’s why

I understand and generally agree with your general point eephus.

It’s just that’s the clearest data I’ve seen that democrats are voting early (received wisdom but you never know), the exact extent of the difference is extreme (which was not obvious to me), the absolute turnout is very large, and you’d rather be the guy whose voters have already turned out. It’s much more suggestive than the “turnout is up in this state compared to four years ago” stuff we’ve been getting.

Ps I don’t think biden is going to win in Texas.

And since I was moaning about these Humber’s ignoring population growth earlier, here’s the same thing correcting for that (left hand plot is % or voters, not number of votes)

Final look at TX returns by county, which again says that larger blue-trending counties were the most eager to vote early. The little dots will do their best to catch up on Tuesday of course (though there's also still plenty of vote left in the suburbs and urban areas). pic.twitter.com/4dwRn5z7GJ

— Jason Pipkin (@jipkin) October 31, 2020

Again, Wasserman relies on a different source than Elections Project and said source goes for higher numbers but even so:

The U.S. just surpassed 95 million early votes cast, per @WinWithJMC. That's 70% of the 137.1 million total votes cast in 2016, and we're on track for 100 million+ cast before polls open on Election Day.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 2, 2020

the turnout is exciting.

i'm glad the country can agree on one thing -- they hate donald trump and think he is an asshole

buncha cumstainfuckbubblepterodactyldicks

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/523833-pittsburgh-backs-trump-in-first-republican-presidential-endorsement-since

huh, i wonder if that will make a difference in PA

i mean, kinda late for that. i just object to their logic behind it.

The paper criticized Democratic nominee Joe Biden, a Pennsylvania native, for his stance on ending fracking and other "Cuckoo California dreams."

While painting Biden, 77, as being “too old for the job, and fragile,” it acknowledges that it believes Trump at 74 is also too old but “seemingly robust.”

538 still tweeting about how "10% isn't 0%", which...I know, I know, but seriously, it's fucking terrifying me

though I do think about how elections are different than other random events - in poker, AK beats AQ preflop one-third of the time, in sports you can roughly calculate each team's WP%, but unless you know exactly how the deck is stacked and which way the ball bounces you can't really predict what's going to happen, just how *likely* it is. if you run AK vs. AQ 100 times, the AK will win somewhere between 60-70% of the time. but elections are not like that - I don't really buy the thing Nate always says, "if you run the election 100 times, Hillary wins 70 of them"...how does that make sense? if the election was Wednesday instead of Tuesday, would a whole different sample really vote? 2016's polling miss was mostly related to an error in the way polls weighted education levels (which was fixed for this election) and a bombshell in the final days of the election which had Trump gaining a little ground in virtually every poll. no such thing is happening right now. Biden is ahead in every swing state (besides *maybe* Florida?) and even with a full polling error in Trump's favor, he still loses by a lot. so where exactly is this 10% chance coming from?

The only absolute is death.

xpost Context: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/the-standoff-between-owners-and-journalists-thats-eviscerating-pittsburghs-biggest-newspaper/2020/06/16/13c6089e-aa7a-11ea-a9d9-a81c1a491c52_story.html

and the gin and tonic as the warm weather cocktail of choice

one time I rolled a ball towards a hole. I had done it many times before. the same result - it stayed on the straight and narrow and disappeared into the hole. I lost count as far as how many times I had done it, probably 1,000, maybe 2,000. It was an easy result as I was literally centimeters away from the hole. It was, as you say, a sure bet.

Anyway, I decided to bet the guy next to me that I could throw the ball in the hole, and weirdly, he took me up on the bet, which I saw as a fool parting with his money. But I got eerily unnerved as to how confident he was in winning - he plunked down $500 next to me. and all I had to do was roll a ball into a hole centimeters away.

I got ready to roll the ball and a dinosaur came onto the golf course, causing the ground to rupture, and the ball went rolling past the hole.

however the kid died so I didn't have to pay him

Before last year, Keith C. Burris was mostly known to reporters at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as the author of the most controversial opinion piece their newspaper had ever published.
In a 2018 editorial with the headline “Reason as Racism,” Burris defended President Trump’s infamous comment about immigrants from “shithole countries,” arguing that “calling someone a racist is the new McCarthyism” and that such a label should be confined to the likes of Bull Connor and Dylann Roof. Plus, he added, “there are nations that are hellholes in this world.” Appalled readers, including current and former staffers, wrote letters in response. Leaders of major foundations said the paper “has done our community and the cause of justice a grave disservice.” Sixteen members of the Block family — owners of the paper for nearly a century — called it an attempt to “justify blatant racism.”

Barely a year later, Publisher John R. Block promoted Burris from editorial page editor to executive editor of the entire paper.

And so on.

Basically, paper currently run by Trumpers.

The White House on lockdown: A federal law enforcement source tells NBC that beginning tomorrow, crews will build a “non-scalable” fence to secure the WH complex, Ellipse and Lafayette Square.

250 National Guardsmen have been put on standby, reporting to Metro Police officials.

— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) November 2, 2020

^ Suggests that Trump is planning to do something so blatantly objectionable that it is predictable in advance that extremely angry protests will arise. But we could easily have predicted that a couple of months ago. It is of the essence of Trumpism.

Yeah that’s not good

or that they're assuming "angry liberals" will riot when they "win"

i don't think he will succeed in "stealing" the election

so whatever, he can do what he wants

538 still tweeting about how "10% isn't 0%", which...I know, I know, but seriously, it's fucking terrifying me.

Trigger Warning: It's back up to 11%

He can fall flat in his face trying the steal the election and still make a huge (further) mess of this situation xp

or that they're assuming "angry liberals" will riot when they "win"

not a bad assumption, tbh

if they give the appearance of "winning", and it very much appears that they did not "win", and people in prominent positions seem to be nodding along with everything, then i think that would probably make a lot of people angry

but that's a lot of ifs.

his plan is to declare victory at midnight if he is ahead in the electoral count at that time.

frogbs: I can't tell if your last post is a response to the long 538 piece that went up an hour ago, or if you haven't seen it. If not, "So let’s state a few basic facts: The reasons that President Trump’s chances in our forecast are about 10 percent and not zero..."

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/im-here-to-remind-you-that-trump-can-still-win/

“I shouldn’t even be here. They said I had Georgia made,” Trump says in Rome, Georgia. Rally no. 4. pic.twitter.com/wxldmNtavB

— Courtney Subramanian (@cmsub) November 2, 2020

it does not appear the Trump campaign is expecting to win (legitimately) at this point

Asked about the Axios report, Trump’s Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, said: “My response is the president’s not gonna steal this election.”

probably the best possible response. short and terse.

xxp - just read it, I do see where it's all coming from but idk...there's so much "Trump needs all these longshot outcomes to come true" about this and I am not necessarily buying that they are as coordinated as they are suggesting. if 2016's polling error happens in 2020, Biden still wins big...and NONE of those factors that swung it to Trump are in play right now. his approval rating is still underwater. he's drawing poor marks on just about everything. Dems are overperforming in virtually every election that's been held since 2016 (nearly all of which have been drawing record turnout, just as this one is). not only is Trump polling poorly but virtually all Rs are along with him. he has massively fucked the one true test of his presidency which has caused his most reliable voting bloc (seniors) to turn on him. and Nate's most plausible theory in favor of an upset is...that 3,000,000 early votes are gonna be thrown out due to procedural errors? I mean....I trust the folks who do this for a living and I'm as nervous as everyone else...but I just don't see how it happens??

(excluding the Republicans outright stealing it, but that's kind of another scenario entirely)

like this seems pretty conclusive to me. if Trump can win with splits like this, how does the entire polling industry not immediately crumble?

Not sure we'll get more "final" national live-interview polls, but here are my average crosstabs (in situations where pollsters polled twice in Oct., "October 2020" includes the first poll and "FInal 2020 Polls" includes the second). pic.twitter.com/h833XhI5Sg

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 1, 2020

Took the @CookPolitical swingometer for one last spin. Here's what it spits out when you plug in the demographic splits in final live-interview national polls (even assuming a 10% turnout bump among non-college whites and 5% bump for everyone else). https://t.co/RAud6tHKVu pic.twitter.com/ekbfkifvNw

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 2, 2020

Trump’s gonna declare victory at like 10:30 or 11:00pm EST or so, by which point tons of DCites will be out in the streets having a party. The DCPD, who work for a black woman who hates Trump, will be trying to keep things from getting out of hand, while DHS FPS and other federal forces may very well be spoiling for a fight. It will be stupid, people might get hurt, but eventually it will stop once the projected count becomes insurmountable.

A federal law enforcement source tells NBC that beginning tomorrow, crews will build a “non-scalable” fence to secure the WH complex, Ellipse and Lafayette Square.

“non-scalable”... hmmm where have I heard that before?

Even if he locks himself in the fenced-off house on Tuesday to hide from dealing with the fact people hate him, he'll be bored as shit by the end of the week - after a month of adoring rallies! - let alone in three months' time when his term ends. He'd rather flounce off saying he needs to return to his business and the White House is a dump than actually concentrate long enough to foment a civil war.

oh - wait - is Mexico paying for this fence?