Trump 2020 - Topic

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Oct 31 2020 01:50pm

Quote (Surfpunk @ Oct 31 2020 02:22pm)

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1322301003090268162

Trafalgar also underpolls under-35 voters, and overpolls 45+ white voters. It's skewed methodology. This is a breakdown of a recent poll Trafalgar did in Pennsylvania, and the census breakdown of the PA population.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ElWQzitW0AA1HyZ.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ElWQziuX0AMQ2fC.jpg

I don't doubt they, like all pollsters, have some differences in methodology. What I'm illustrating is that their methodology got 2016 right, and their current polls are predicting something completely different than the rest of the pack, just like in 2016.

To be fair, your census graphic is 6 years old, but the skew is still there even when you dig up current demographics.

Santara

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#7632

Oct 31 2020 01:52pm

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Oct 31 2020 02:47pm)

The "who are your neighbors voting for"-question is effective at finding shy voters, but it is also very vulnerable to bias. In 2016, liberals were overconfident in their win probability, didnt take Trump's chances seriously, and were shellshocked when he pulled off the "miracle". Therefore, I would strongly assume that a lot of them are paranoid this time around, no matter what the polls are saying. Basically, they are overcompensating for the mistake they made in 2016. Although Biden is ahead in the polls by a larger and more consistent margin than Clinton ever was, with far less undecideds and no Comey letter, they just cannot trust these polls. Another factor why this question might be skewed in Trump's favor is that Trump has particularly loud and visibile supporters. All it takes is one or two Trump "superfans" in a neighborhood to make the rest of its resident feel like the whole neighborhood is 'trumpy'.

I do think that Trump's support is slightly underrated by the polls based on "differential non-response", but that should only be good enough for a 2-ish percent swing in Trump's favor, not the 7+% swing that Trafalgar is seeing.

The nationwide gap isn't what's at play. That's like tracking hits in baseball. What matters is the score, and the score in the election is state by state for electoral votes.

Black XistenZ

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#7633

Oct 31 2020 01:53pm

Quote (Santara @ 31 Oct 2020 20:50)

We have no proof that it is their methodology which got 2016 right. They might just as well be a pollster which generally has a strong pro-Republican house effect, and who then happened to get the result right in a year when there was a polling error in the GOP's direction.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 31 2020 01:53pm

EndlessSky

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#7634

Oct 31 2020 01:54pm

GEORGIA IS NOT IN PLAY

Does anyone actually believe Georgia could be blue?

Thor123422

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#7635

Oct 31 2020 01:57pm

Quote (EndlessSky @ Oct 31 2020 02:54pm)

GEORGIA IS NOT IN PLAY

Does anyone actually believe Georgia could be blue?

I think there's maybe a 5% of Georgia going blue.

Black XistenZ

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#7636

Oct 31 2020 01:57pm

Quote (Santara @ 31 Oct 2020 20:52)

The nationwide gap isn't what's at play. That's like tracking hits in baseball. What matters is the score, and the score in the election is state by state for electoral votes.

Like I said, I'm very sure that a lot of voters got blindsided in 2016 and are now overcompensating for that, thus overestimating Trump's support in their neighborhood. It's easy to see why Trafalgar's methodology would have a pro-Trump bias in 2020 - across the board, in every state.

Mangix

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#7637

Oct 31 2020 01:59pm

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Oct 31 2020 03:57pm)

Didn't he only win most clutch states by like less than 1%? I think its almost impossible to argue that he has 100% of the voters he had in 2016, which he would need, to win.

This post was edited by Mangix on Oct 31 2020 01:59pm

Surfpunk

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#7638

Oct 31 2020 01:59pm

Quote (Santara @ Oct 31 2020 02:50pm)

Yeah, I'm not saying they didn't get it right in 2016. But I think current polling has adjusted to accommodate that, plus 2016 was an anomaly year, due to the general voter apathy regarding the two major party candidates then. Turnout is expected to be much higher this year, as already evidenced in early voting numbers. Texas and Hawaii have already had early voting numbers exceed the total vote (early and on election day) from 2016, and ten other states have reached the mid-80s to mid-90s percentile in early vote totals. I'm not sure if Trafalgar is going to be the lucky outlier this year.

This site has a good compilation of early voting data, and isn't partisan. https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html

This post was edited by Surfpunk on Oct 31 2020 02:01pm

Thor123422

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#7639

Oct 31 2020 02:04pm

Anybody got any thoughts on the Trump campaign fighting legal battles to get votes thrown out?

In Pennsylvania they've gotten the courts to rule on very specific circumstances for accepting ballots including "secret envelopes".

Similarly they're trying to argue that even if ballots are postmarked by election day they shouldn't be counted if they are received after Nov 3. Any court that agrees with this, especially after the postmaster's shenanigans that were obviously meant to delay ballots, will lose my respect as an authority and should lose everybody else's as well.

How the supreme court and state courts rule on these issues can substantially affect our democracy going forward. We may be in for a rough ride on the election results and as a country depending on how it goes.

I'm leaning towards moving to Canada regardless of results honestly. The fact that we've gotten to this point may indicate that we're screwed regardless of results, since the cracks in the system are laid bare. Caesar didn't destroy the Republic by marching over the Rubicon. He destroyed it by exploiting the cracks years before that.

Black XistenZ

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#7640

Oct 31 2020 02:06pm

Quote (Mangix @ 31 Oct 2020 20:59)

Didn't he only win most clutch states by like less than 1%? I think its almost impossible to argue that he has 99% of the voters he had in 2016, which he would need, to win.

There are quite some conservative folks who didnt vote for Trump in 2016 (and went with Gary Johnson or so) and were won over by him over the past 4 years. There are also indications that he improved his standing with blacks and latinos a little bit. And it has to be expected that long-term political realignments continued throughout his presidency, namely that non-college whites are increasingly Republican and college whites increasingly Democrats - a tradeoff which benefits Trump in the Midwest. Based on this trend alone, his margin in PA/MI/WI should have been 1 or 2 percentage points better than in 2016, conditional on a similar political environment.

So no, he was never in a position where he had to retain 99% of his voters. There was some margin of error - just not enough to compensate a huge backlash over his handling of covid, particularly among seniors, or an all-out anti-Trump rebellion in the suburbs.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 31 2020 02:06pm

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