USA Politics
- Thread starter Genghis Khan
- Start date
Was he as bad as Dan Quayle in 1988?
I think so. I would take "they're eating the cats!!" over the "you're no Jack Kennedy" moment any day of the week. I think that one is going to be remembered for a very long time.
TheMercenary
Ancient Mariner
Trump Shows Signs of Strength in Sun Belt Battlegrounds, Polls Find
New polls from The New York Times and Siena College showed Donald J. Trump ahead in Arizona and leading in tight races in Georgia and North Carolina.
A Majority in Arizona Supports Establishing Right to Abortion, Poll Finds
A ballot measure codifying “the fundamental right to an abortion” is supported by 58 percent of the state’s likely voters, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.
TheMercenary
Ancient Mariner
Siena has had a real Republican lean this whole time. I'm with Mosh - either they're on point and we're all fucked, or they're wrong with their electorate model. No way to know except for the election to happen.
The polling is really all over the place but based on the average of what we’ve seen i guess I would predict either of the following outcomes:
1: Harris sweeps the rust belt and flips one sunbelt state besides NV.
2: Trump sweeps the sunbelt and flips one rust belt state.
Either gets the respective candidate above 270. I kinda doubt it will be a straight split down the middle despite NYT kinda projecting exactly that. These outcomes are kinda in line with a closer popular vote margin as well.
The wildcard is a polling miss in either direction that probably results in whichever candidate the error favors sweeping all of the swing states plus possible upsets in other states.
Obviously the polls can move between now and November but it’s going to be close man.
Edit: the good news for Harris is I think scenario 1 is more likely. Her rust belt polling is consistently better than Trump’s sun belt polling, and there are a lot of methodology question marks about how they’re capturing Trump voters (doesn’t mean the polls are wrong).
1: Harris sweeps the rust belt and flips one sunbelt state besides NV.
2: Trump sweeps the sunbelt and flips one rust belt state.
Either gets the respective candidate above 270. I kinda doubt it will be a straight split down the middle despite NYT kinda projecting exactly that. These outcomes are kinda in line with a closer popular vote margin as well.
The wildcard is a polling miss in either direction that probably results in whichever candidate the error favors sweeping all of the swing states plus possible upsets in other states.
Obviously the polls can move between now and November but it’s going to be close man.
Edit: the good news for Harris is I think scenario 1 is more likely. Her rust belt polling is consistently better than Trump’s sun belt polling, and there are a lot of methodology question marks about how they’re capturing Trump voters (doesn’t mean the polls are wrong).
DJ James
A coma stole my name.
Saw a thing from a Trump rally where he talked about making overtime hours non taxabale. Talk about something that would actually affect me. Genuinely speaking, I can’t quite remember the last time I’ve had a week under 65 hours. It felt kind of good too hearing him shoutout all the people like me that have to work a lot. Well, I shouldn’t say have to, I choose to work this much.
It's such an empty promise, though, and Trump's tax plans would bankrupt America - far far worse than the current deficit spending.
I always find it interesting how people perceive these more populist campaign promises. I hear stuff like no taxes on overtime or no taxes on tips (which Harris and Trump both favor) and my immediate reaction is like, "yea but how are they going to get that through congress?" I kinda ignore that stuff because it's so unrealistic, it's one reason I never got on the Bernie bus in either 2016 or 2020. It also just feels insulting to voters, such an obvious ploy to win votes despite there clearly being no intention of actually doing it.
Meanwhile, Trump wanting to put a 100% tariff on foreign goods is something he can do only with the presidential powers. That would make cars unaffordable to the middle class and cause a recession. His economic policy is terrible and disproportionately affects the people who are voting for him.
Meanwhile, Trump wanting to put a 100% tariff on foreign goods is something he can do only with the presidential powers. That would make cars unaffordable to the middle class and cause a recession. His economic policy is terrible and disproportionately affects the people who are voting for him.
JudasMyGuide
Ancient Mariner
Different country (and continent) and a bit of a frustrated rant about "European politics", but as far as the inherent inconsistency of populism is concerned:
We have one big populist party here - led by a Slovakia-born entrepreneur of the Berlusconi type, with many scandals and being overall sleazy and kinda stupid, but his populist policies has mostly sucked out the entire left here (what remained is the communist party, inasmuch as it is a left party and not just anti-systemic trolls; they are kinda chummy with the fascists, as of now... and the rest of the left has wokified and dropped downwards to below 1% support, mostly) and he changes his policies ... well, pretty much as the wind blows. And he's not even really like Trump, he's too much of a rat to be like that (I man, I hate Trump and he's stupid, but at least he's still kinda ... dunno, dramatic, "grand", if you know what I mean, at least putting on the airs). But still.
People afraid of the results of uncontrolled immigration (which the "good parties" won't touch, so as not to be seen as racists)? Suddenly he's a bit of a brown shirt. People are disillusioned with the EU and the policies it forces upon us? Suddenly he's an euro-sceptic (although in words only - he is way too dependent on European subsidies for his business to be truly anti-EU - and everybody knows it). He needs to keep hold of his hoi-polloi voters, working class and small entrepreneurs whom he dragged over from the social-democracy parties and others? Suddenly free school lunches for children or free train tickets for the elderly. He feels like the Moravian still-kinda-residually-christian voters might support him in the presidential campaing? He's openly carrying about the Infant Jesus of Prague etc. (spoiler: it didn't help and his presidential campaign was a disaster - he's simply way too unlikable).
There are promises, broken promises, things that are actually detrimental to the majority of his voters. He rambles incoherently, he's imminently punchable. He was kinda right-leaning at first (because as a businessman who owns half of the republic in agriculture and other areas, it kinda makes sense). Then he went populist and started attracting the "common people". Nobody cares. People still vote for him en masse.
But to a degree I blame the "proper" parties, despite having voted for them in the last election.
See, the thing is our political situation is:
- you get the current government, which I voted for, a five-party coalition (comprised of
1. 90s-style "conservative" neolibs,
2. a Christian-Democratic centrist/economically slightly left, socially right party,
3. a third party that was created as an offshoot of both, kinda,
4. one centrist party with basis in regional politics and
5. the Pirate party, which is mostly in the state of breakdown and doesn't know whether it wants to remain in the general centrist, modernist, "non-political politics" civil society or if it's going to be hijacked by the rather small, but very loud and prominent faction of literally red/woke/communist leaning crazies who can't be properly dealt with because of how "open" the party is... but who incredibly hurt the party in PR, polls, campaign etc.) - this 5-party coalition has started as a way of fighting literally one person - the populist entrepreneur I talked about in the first paragraph
- then there's the populist party above
- then there's the openly fascist party (somewhat similar to German AfD, but it's possibly more of a joke, in a way that you kinda realise they're only in it for the money)
- then there's the communist party, which doesn't really work even for the people who think that "life was better under Communism", it's more of an anti-systemic troll party at this point, with very low, but stable voter support
- some micro-parties from both sides of the spectrum, mostly anti-systemic fascist or anti-systemic woke (I mean, even to a degree of literal Khmer Rouge campaign, kinda) which nobody cares about.
That leaves the current "democratic, good parties", the populists and the fascists as the only significant parties. And the "good guys" are so incompetent and downright terrible at everything (including stuff that affects me personally), I honestly don't know how am I going to be able to vote for them the next time ... even though I really don't want the populist to win. And I can hardly go around convince people to vote for "the good guys", because I watch live how the "good guys" are openly fucking up my life, my employer's life, potentially their voters' lives. And there's nothing I could do.
Tl;dr - in case of a lack of (what they'd perceive as) viable alternative, people will vote for the populists, no matter what. A short-term/short-sighted promise, even one that you kinda know will bite you in the arse, is still better than no promise (or chance of any embetterment) at all.
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The tariff amount he wants to set has varied from 20% to 300% depending on how insane he is at the current rally or event. A 20% tariff would be a disaster and drive inflation through the roof, bare minimum. A 200% tariff on China (as he proposed at the debate) would ramp up the price of everything by a huge amount.
Flaming Blimp Crash
Ancient Mariner
Sorry to just quote only a fragment of your post, but this is very true. I didn't start paying attention to the polls more until after Labor Day and waiting didn't do much of anything because a lot of the results have been baffling.
When a pollster releases a batch of polls, the trend I've been noticing is they'll show a considerable lead in the national polling for Harris but ties in the swing states. On the other hand, a batch of polls from the same pollster will show a tie in the national vote while Harris enjoys decent leads at or just outside the margin of error in the swing states. Simply put, if the national popular vote is tied, Harris loses. Most of the analysis I've read and seems to line up with past elections is that Harris will need to win the popular vote by +3 to have a shot at the EC.
When digging deeper into the data of the polls, it seems there's a lot of weighting to counterbalance within them. Can't point to a specific one, but I'd seen instances of Trump being a few points ahead on men while Harris held a strong lead amongst women, yet the poll's overall results came out to even. Women comprise the majority of the electorate.
I've just been looking at voter enthusiasm/favorability ratings. On that front, the Democratic ticket holds the advantage. Whether that actually means anything on votes themselves come the start of the early voting window to November, we'll see.
The big problem with polls is that they aren't just call 1000 people, report the results. They're call 10000 people, get 1000 to answer, then compare those results to the model of the electorate run by the polling firm. Maybe the polling firm expects of 1000 people, 600 are Republicans, but only 400 answer. So maybe they give that 400 a bigger weight. The same for likely voters, race, religion, age, educational status.
Polls are really just educated guesses.
So if the electorate changes meaningfully from the pollsters' expectations, the polls can be off. In the runup to 2016, polling models were fairly static. But 2016 threw in a new variable - educational status - and upended the "likely voter" calculations.
Polls are really just educated guesses.
So if the electorate changes meaningfully from the pollsters' expectations, the polls can be off. In the runup to 2016, polling models were fairly static. But 2016 threw in a new variable - educational status - and upended the "likely voter" calculations.
I guess the good news for Harris is that the polls are juicing Trump’s support so hard that it’s difficult to imagine them overestimating him again (which seems to be the intention). I worry about Trump’s activity in non-traditional media and the “manosphere” because that is an area where I could conceivably see him driving turnout among people who don’t vote or aren’t expected to vote. But generally it’s hard to see another Trump polling miss.
The other optimistic take for Harris is that looking at state polls, district polls, and a small selection of actual election results seem to suggest that the suburbs might just be out of grasp for the GOP/Trump right now. She’s showing consistent leads in all three rust belt states and even polls of places like IA or NE look pretty grim for Trump in terms of margin. PA is scary, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if Harris actually has the rust belt locked down, which is all she needs.
As far as popular vote goes, there are reasons to think the EV/PV gap is shrinking. It looks like cities are seeing a bit of a red shift across the board. Also, I was entertaining this when Biden was the nominee but it seems to apply to Harris too, I think there is a world where Harris gets to 270 and the PV is tied or Trump ahead. If she narrowly wins all three rust belt states and NE-02 but loses every other swing state, that gets her to 270 and probably not a big PV lead. I wouldn’t count on it personally but it’s not impossible. I think Nate Silver gives her 80% chance of winning the EC if she’s winning the popular vote by 2 or more, so I don’t think she has to overcome as much of a gap as Hillary and Joe did.
The other optimistic take for Harris is that looking at state polls, district polls, and a small selection of actual election results seem to suggest that the suburbs might just be out of grasp for the GOP/Trump right now. She’s showing consistent leads in all three rust belt states and even polls of places like IA or NE look pretty grim for Trump in terms of margin. PA is scary, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if Harris actually has the rust belt locked down, which is all she needs.
As far as popular vote goes, there are reasons to think the EV/PV gap is shrinking. It looks like cities are seeing a bit of a red shift across the board. Also, I was entertaining this when Biden was the nominee but it seems to apply to Harris too, I think there is a world where Harris gets to 270 and the PV is tied or Trump ahead. If she narrowly wins all three rust belt states and NE-02 but loses every other swing state, that gets her to 270 and probably not a big PV lead. I wouldn’t count on it personally but it’s not impossible. I think Nate Silver gives her 80% chance of winning the EC if she’s winning the popular vote by 2 or more, so I don’t think she has to overcome as much of a gap as Hillary and Joe did.