Originally Posted By perfectsilence:

My parents reported the same a few days ago.

Originally Posted By arowneragain:



Yeah. I’m a bit worried we are overestimating how much of this is red wave versus just embracing early voting.

Originally Posted By John_Wayne777:


Well, look at Virginia:

Just a snapshot from article below

Apparently the Harris campaign is “panicking” about losing VA https://t.co/T1SkgfmmDK pic.twitter.com/oeBsavi0za

Data Analyst CK  (@TheDataGooroo) October 27, 2024

If this kind of thing is happening in Virginia, it's happening even harder in other places in the country.

Originally Posted By John_Wayne777:


I do, and this is the perfect place to discuss that.

2020:

Trump's trump card, the economy, was gutted by COVID and resulting bad policy decisions. We know now that "2 weeks to stop the spread" was a lie from the getgo. It smashed the economy and even though it was recovering significantly and quickly, it wasn't recovering quickly enough to become the trump card again.

If you go back and look, public polling had Biden ahead by double digits almost everywhere, almost all the time.

Trump was going to lose, and going to lose badly....except he didn't. Trump significantly out-performed the polls and it took acts of "fortification" in a couple of key states to get Biden into the oval.

Two things happened there. Firstly, the polling seen through most of the campaign was absolute garbage. How you make up the poll and who you talk to impacts the result, including the assumptions you make about the electorate to start. If a pollster thinks we're in a D+9 environment...(meaning that the generic democrat has a 9 point advantage) then they have polling based on that assumption and over-represent groups that vote democrat in their samples.

The key question in the election is who is going to show up. You don't know ahead of time who will come out and vote. 2020 was an anomaly because in lots of places literally everyone got a ballot. That's a lot of ballots with sketchy (and usually non-existent) signature matching and minimal chain of custody. If you want to see how fucked it was, look at the signature rejection rate in California for the presidential election and compare how much higher the signature rejection rate was when the Newsome recall was in progress. Spoiler alert: It was exponentially higher when their boy was about to get recalled, showing you that they fuck with that to get the outcome they want. Part of the inherent corruption of the system.

So the polls were cooked from the getgo in order to promote a preferred narrative of Trump being hideously unpopular and with zero chance of winning.

Except, of course, the vast majority of Trump's voters did not run off and vote Biden. Trump definitely lost ground with some groups, but it was nowhere near as dramatic as the polling indicated.

Then towards the end Trump actually started gaining some momentum. He was legitimately behind a few points but started closing the gap in the final weeks of the campaign producing a race that was incredibly close. Close enough that the "fortification" had to happen to get the outcome.

So 2020 was way closer than anyone in the professional chattering classes projected the entire time, but it got even closer in the closing weeks. The outcome was so close that "fortification" in a few places could work.

2016:

Trump had no chance from the jump, at least according to the same chattering classes.

This was where we really got to see how broken polling was specifically on Trump. Pollsters made assumptions about the makeup of the electorate (again, heavily favoring democrats despite Obama's weakness and an unlikable candidate) and they polled with the usual methods.

What happened in 2016 is that a lot of people who don't normally participate eventually participated. If you're a pollster, you look at "likely voters" meaning people who predictably participate first and foremost because, well, they usually show up and vote. They are usually more educated and more likely to talk to pollsters. They are easier to reach. They're easier to poll.

In 2016 a lot of rural people were not easy to poll. And urban blacks who were pro-Trump were not inclined to talk to pollsters. In fact, there were plenty of stories at the time about Trump voters that were reluctant to talk to the press in any capacity because of the hitjob Trump was getting in the press. It didn't help any that Trump supporters were physically attacked on multiple occasions.

The polling then was scattered. You had most public polling showing Hillary far ahead with a significant democrat advantage in the electorate. Except the whole electorate is not evenly distributed throughout the states. Some pollsters were using different methods to try and reach some of those more reluctant voters to get a better read on the actual mood of the electorate. They were finding very different trends just by using different methods.

Response rates to polling are pitifully small. This is why in some polls if you look at the N you'll see that the sample size is tiny. I've seen some this cycle with as low as under 400 people. Why? Well, a lot of methods of polling like home phone calls have shit response rates but still cost the same amount of money to put on if you get a response or not. Some pollsters changed their approach and started using alternate methods like online, text, and blending with more traditional phone methods. Each of these methods will reach people with different inclinations and tendencies to respond.

The most accurate pollsters in 2016 also vastly increased their sample sizes. To get 1,068 people to respond they'd poll tens of thousands of people to get response rates that didn't reflect just the easiest to reach people. They saw Hillary's weakness relatively early.

In the last few weeks of the election warning signs started coming out of "the blue wall" with people on the ground in those areas screaming to the Hillary campaign that she was in trouble. AAR's of the campaign even mentioned it:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/trumps-road-to-victory/507203/

They didn't realize that the "blue wall" rust belt states were a concern because traditionally they voted democrat.

Well, that was when the republican offering was shitbirds like Romney who oozed with contempt for the working class. Trump was a very different candidate and had enormous pull with the working class. If you want to identify why the Republican party has been so hostile to Trump, there's your answer right there. What Limbaugh called the "country club Republicans" hated the base of their party worse than they hate the opposition. The people McCain called "the crazies" heap them. Trump, on the other hand, gets along with them great. Despite all of Trump's billionaire weirdness, he's a lot more of a regular guy than anyone the Republican party has put forward since Reagan.

Remember that Hillary Clinton is one of the most arrogant human beings on earth. She was surrounded by similarly arrogant people, all of whom know everything because that's how they roll. Her arrogance was stupidity, which is how Anthony Weiner's masturbatory habits dealt her campaign serious blows. No truly smart person has that kind of vulnerability...but she was used to getting a pass from the deep state and from the democrat machine so she wasn't paying attention to the people in PA, Michigan, and Wisconsin who were encountering voters who were outright hostile to the democrats in that cycle.

Thus the 98% chance of winning bullshit that melted into a pile of disbelief over election night. The blue wall crumbled and they lost most of the battleground states they thought they'd win, almost all of it because the working class voter picked orange.

So that leaves us with:

2024:

Once again I believe most of the polling assumes we're in a heavily democrat favored environment. Some of the polls are ridiculous, with D+9 assumptions.

Even so, you're seeing pretty much all public polling showing a close race. Except if you go back and look at the polls from 2016 that understated Trump's support in the country and in 2020 that understated Trump's support in the country and note that they have not made any radical changes to how they are reaching voters, you have to assume that the same polls from those elections are making the same mistakes this time.

Only with those mistakes, you see Trump performing far better than he ever has. We see articles before the election worrying about the blue wall:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/democrats-brace-crack-blue-wall-signs-north-carolina-slipping-rcna176046

https://nypost.com/2024/10/22/us-news/democrats-quietly-panic-over-fraying-blue-wall-harris-campaign-strategy-they-are-just-not-thinking/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/democrats-quietly-panic-over-fraying-blue-wall-harris-campaign-strategy-they-are-just-not-thinking/ar-AA1sJBhc

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/kamala-harris-election-blue-wall-states-democrats-b2633777.html

...and I could go on. But you see the trend. In 2016 there were a couple of mentions in the press about bad signals from the rust belt, now weeks out you're seeing the press put a spin on truly bad news emerging from the rust belt states.

Translation: She's getting a stronger warning signal even earlier than Clinton did when Clinton lost PA, Michigan and Wisconsin. Meaning she's in deeper trouble there than Hillary was.

The reasons why she's in deeper trouble are durable across the nation.

If you want my opinion of where we're at related to prior cycles, we're looking at 2016 only far worse. Where in 2016 the thought of Trump winning the popular vote was laughably absurd, it's a very real possibility even in polling that shows every sign of being as inaccurate as it was in 2016 and 2020.

Looking at the same polls at the same times is the best apples/apples comparison and they show a much stronger Trump signal than we've ever seen, and this with no sign that the methodologies or core assumptions of the polling has shifted in the slightest.

That's the basis of confidence. They have understated Trump support and indeed Republican support, and my bet is they're understating it now, too. Which means that instead of this being a tight race, it's actually one where Trump is going to pull out the popular vote and win by comfortable margins in battleground states, including the blue wall states. He's going to utterly blow her out in states like Florida, Texas, and North Carolina. (which some pollsters ridiculously assume is a swing state)

I think PA is utterly lost to her and I think Trump is actually up by 5 or more there...which means he's going to win Michigan and Wisconsin, too.

I also believe we're not going to see a lot of vote splitting on the federal ticket and that the senate races in the battleground states are going to get pulled across the line by Trump's coat tails.

I think the closest contest in the nation right now is probably here in Virginia where it really does seem to be dead even and dependent on who shows up. We have a lot of DC infection here, and they're motivated to get out and vote because they are psychopaths who thrive on hating the rest of us.

Originally Posted By 1911SFOREVER:


He set the conditions for where we are now.

Originally Posted By John_Wayne777:


Well, look at Virginia:

Just a snapshot from article below

Apparently the Harris campaign is “panicking” about losing VA https://t.co/T1SkgfmmDK pic.twitter.com/oeBsavi0za

Data Analyst CK  (@TheDataGooroo) October 27, 2024

If this kind of thing is happening in Virginia, it's happening even harder in other places in the country.

Originally Posted By 1911SFOREVER:


He set the conditions for where we are now.

Originally Posted By John_Wayne777:


It's a relative thing.

Trump will probably end up close to his 2020 turnout...which was historic. Kamala's turnout, however, won't match Biden's.

Further, Kamala (and frankly Biden) lost ground with a lot of voter groups. Working class hispanics, blacks, asians, and even whites up through master's degrees have shifted the margins towards Trump and away from the democrat ticket.

Every survey of voters on their most important issues shows inflation, economy, and the border at the top. The cult of baby murder is way down the list.

Every survey of voters on their most important issues shows Trump beats Kamala by almost double digits if not double digits on the top issues of the economy, inflation, and the border.

The mood of the electorate is dismal, with them having the worst feeling about the economy that they've had since the 2008 crash. The democrats can't deal with the economic disaster the voters feel because they're the authors of it and they have no answer. Thus all the news articles where elitist shitwits have tried to convince people that the economy is great and they just don't know it. Asking people "who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying checkbook?" isn't a valid strategy to win.

All the fundamentals are against the democrat ticket. In addition to the pain, there are highly effective voter registration and mobilization efforts going on in key states. Those efforts are not just staying in the key states, but spilling out into other areas. What is an organized and deliberate effort in PA is not nearly as organized in VA, for instance, but the registrations are still happening and people are going out to vote.

Early vote is a big deal for your lowest propensity voters. These are the people who are most likely to abandon a long line on election day. Or to see the long line and not bother to vote. So getting them on the books as quickly as you can has been a crucial concern for democrats.

The difference now is that it turns out there are a lot of low propensity (meaning they don't vote in elections or don't vote consistently) who are siding against the democrat ticket. They're coming out to early vote, too.

In the past high turnout was assumed to be a democrat advantage. Now it looks like that calculus might actually be flipping as the democrats don't have a hammerlock on low propensity working class voters.

Do not be the least bit surprised when you see democrat rags complaining that early voting and mail in voting needs to be cut back after they lose this one.

Originally Posted By John_Wayne777:


Right.

That's the key difference between now and 2020. Trump's performance nationally is likely to result in a popular vote win by a couple of points.

That is massive.

Democrats are always whining about the popular vote because of NYC and LA. Take those two cities out and the democrats win a hell of a lot less. It's often much closer in the rest of the states where you don't have multiple millions racking up democrat numbers with 80% or higher votes for their shitty candidates.

Trump winning the popular vote means he's running a margin in a lot of states. That would mean enough margin in enough states that even if they had the mass mail-in ballots they had in 2020 they couldn't "fortify" their way to a win.

There are a couple of states that are close. Virginia seems to be very close. Minnesota seems to be very close. Shenanigans in those places could definitely result in those states going to Harris. Or she could win them fair and square. But their margins seem right now to be close enough to facilitate fraud.

The problem for them is that in so many other states it's not close enough that the outcome wouldn't be any different. If they frauded in Va and MN and got those additional 23 votes but Trump wins in WI, PA, and MI by the larger-than-fraud margins the polls seem to indicate it won't matter.

Thus I think you're less likely to see shenanigans this time around for the twin reasons of so many people now more keenly watching for them (harder to pull off) and because it likely won't accomplish anything anyway.

Originally Posted By 1911SFOREVER:


Very true.  I would say that his deals with the ChiComs were an accelerant.

Originally Posted By wyomingnick:


I don't think it works like that. They set up the laws in blue states, or purple states they have control in to facilitate and encourage fraud by making it easier. A lot of that is done by individuals and small groups they don't directly control. In fact I'd say the vast majority of it.

I doubt most of those types of people are not going to cheat because they think PA is a lost cause. Their systems requires all the little people do their part on their own, and I suspect most will if they are able to do so.

Now that doesn't mean they will be able to cheat enough to win, but I don't think that is going to stop them from doing it.