Honestly, I think they've been growing in numbers, boldness, and stickiness. I also think social media has a part to play here.
That could be. But prior to Trump, I find it hard to imagine the numbers of people now flat out denying that Covid is a real threat, or that masks work. And I certainly can't imagine that a plurality of Republicans would believe that Clinton is part of a world wide child sex ring, and that Trump is secretly working to destroy them.
Even that's an artifact of social media, though. Something like 70% of the population views Covid as a serious threat when polled. That's a very good number. Only 75% are against cutting Social Security, for example, which politically is a giant no-brainer.
The results in 2016 showed how many there are, I'm just not at all certain that he's putting more chess pieces on the board, and I think Biden has a few more than Hillary did. Biden is an uninspiring candidate, but he's not polarizing like Hillary. Nobody has a bad impression of him that wasn't hard core team red or hard core anticentrist. There's no ZOMG BIDEN IS TEH EVILS or even BIDEN IS SKETCHY/SHIFTY among normies the way there frankly is about Hillary. Meanwhile, the Lincoln Project isn't a thing because Republican Elites are out of touch. It's a thing because Trump is SO FUCKING BAD wrt centrist-GOP values that they're in open revolt and there are straight up unequivocal endorsements of Biden from GOP mid-wigs including speaking at the DNC convention. The closest to that that I remember in 2016 was Bill Fucking Weld of all people. Trump only has the bubba reactionary vote and the TEAM RED UBER ALLES (even if Trump insulted my wife and accused my dad of killing Kennedy) vote. Good governance moderate GOP types are off the table in a way that they weren't four years ago when they could pretend that there'd be grownups in the room.Number 6 wrote: ↑17 Sep 2020, 16:36No, I'm not sure of that at all. But I do know that about 40% of my countrymen are perfectly fine with Trump's grotesqueries. I also know that the EC skews things towards the more bubbarific states.
Your point about the prevalence of the redneck element is a fair one, but I also think it's easy to underestimate how prevalent that sort of thinking is. While it's fair to note that I work in a field that attracts red-state types, I can say that the Trumpian worldview is almost universal among them. I hope that you're right about how many hee-haws are out there, but I'm afraid you're not.
And polling accuracy was better in 2018, and I can't imagine that trend changes for 2020.Shem wrote: ↑17 Sep 2020, 17:22Even that's an artifact of social media, though. Something like 70% of the population views Covid as a serious threat when polled. That's a very good number. Only 75% are against cutting Social Security, for example, which politically is a giant no-brainer.
Ultimately, it's not the bubbas or the vegan femino-syndicalists in the cities that decide elections. It's people in the suburbs who try very hard to only think about politics in the month or so before the election. And those people are sick of being forced to follow the news to stay up on what the moron has done this time. This will be a repeat of 2018.
Ewww, don't tell me that! I wanted to waste my vote on Jo Jorgenson, blissfully secure in the knowledge that Minnesota would go blue no matter what I did.lunchstealer wrote: ↑17 Sep 2020, 12:27Minnesota is the only possibility, and then only because of too much BLM rioting.
1) Nate Silver has repeatedly pointed out that the National Polling averages were very close to what the actual popular vote came out in 2016. The devil was in the smaller samples for individual states. Even at the state level, only Wisconsin was outside of the standard deviation for expected results. [I don't know stats well enough to say what percentage of samples would lie outside of the standard deviation, but my shoot-from-the-hip assumption is that 1 out of 50 being beyond the SD is quite probable.]lunchstealer wrote: ↑17 Sep 2020, 17:31 And polling accuracy was better in 2018, and I can't imagine that trend changes for 2020.
In 2018 the state-level biases were about half what they were in 2016, meaning that the spread between polling results and ballot results were lower in 2018 than 2016. So if the polls in Wisconsin, PA, and MI are similar to 2016, the ballot situation is likely worse for Trump this time around.Aresen wrote: ↑17 Sep 2020, 17:431) Nate Silver has repeatedly pointed out that the National Polling averages were very close to what the actual popular vote came out in 2016. The devil was in the smaller samples for individual states. Even at the state level, only Wisconsin was outside of the standard deviation for expected results. [I don't know stats well enough to say what percentage of samples would lie outside of the standard deviation, but my shoot-from-the-hip assumption is that 1 out of 50 being beyond the SD is quite probable.]lunchstealer wrote: ↑17 Sep 2020, 17:31 And polling accuracy was better in 2018, and I can't imagine that trend changes for 2020.
2) We'll know by the time the official results are posted if the polling accuracy is better (assuming the shenanigans we all know are coming don't skew it.)
It'll probably go blue? It's not going to be the tipping point, I can say that.Ellie wrote: ↑17 Sep 2020, 17:38Ewww, don't tell me that! I wanted to waste my vote on Jo Jorgenson, blissfully secure in the knowledge that Minnesota would go blue no matter what I did.lunchstealer wrote: ↑17 Sep 2020, 12:27Minnesota is the only possibility, and then only because of too much BLM rioting.
Well, most of them may not really believe much of Qanon. Kinda like people dropped Birtherism pretty hard after Obama was out of office, at least in my neck of the woods. It's something to profess in order to signal, like the idea that Harris was a progressive prosecutor.
What would you rub their faces in and what would make you think they would feel shame about it?
Nothing more than their own boasting about how Trump will win in 2020 by a landslide.Hugh Akston wrote: ↑17 Sep 2020, 19:28What would you rub their faces in and what would make you think they would feel shame about it?
Deep State + Millions of Fraudulent Votes x Fake News = Lalalalalala Can't Hear YouAresen wrote: ↑17 Sep 2020, 20:09Nothing more than their own boasting about how Trump will win in 2020 by a landslide.Hugh Akston wrote: ↑17 Sep 2020, 19:28What would you rub their faces in and what would make you think they would feel shame about it?
Rubbing applied via belt sander.
Speaking as (I claim) a bona fide expert in Oregon politics, I can say with a great deal of confidence that the odds of Oregon going to Trump are similar to the odds of Joe Biden going to Trump. We're so blue that we have a blue supermajority in both houses of our legislature, both of our senators are blue, and four of our five Congresspeople are blue (the last one's district covers a majority of the state, geographically, but only about a fifth of the state, populationwise). The Trump faithful on Team Red have tried no less than three times in the last two years to get a recall for our blue governor on the ballot, and have failed to get enough signatures to even get to the ballot every time.
