Did anyone vote for Trump before Election Day yesterday?![]()

As if.I bet you Lindsay Graham went home and danced to Ariana's new album when he found out he won.
My first thought.As if.
It's not at all danceable.

Why is there an intern in shorts pacing behind her as she makes monkey sounds?
Why is there an intern in shorts pacing behind her as she makes monkey sounds?
I fully expected her to break into ra-ta-kiti-ta-ta yeah I’m pussy bitch
You could EASILY vogue to it.My god Jark - these are all polling and political modelling 101 questions. Do you really think you're the first person to think of these questions? Or that pollsters and statisticians wouldn't attempt to do anything about it? Nate Silver literally answers the so called "get out clause" every time he sets up one of these models - you test the "10% outcome" against how often 538's models come up with that outcome. It's not just the headline figure that gives the likelihood of one thing happening or the other - it's everything under the bonnet too. The models give odds for each state. A 10% outcome should happen.....about 10% of the time.I don't think anyone in the polling industry has come well out of this election or the last one, primarily because they refuse to recognise that their methods no longer work in a time when every four years the factors at play have changed radically and there's not enough previous data to incorporate into their methods.
This is not about gut feeling, it's actually just common sense. Nate Silver (who I actually like btw) says "well we gave Biden a 90% chance of winning - if he doesn't win it's not that we got it wrong, it's that this time was the one time in ten he doesn't win". Putting aside the convenience of that get-out clause for his own reputation, that inability to accurately adjust polling to the social climate that is new and unique to this election cycle renders polling irrelevant as a "political science", which is what 538 does its best to be. It makes pre election polling no more accurate or trustworthy than a snap exit poll. And if polling is only accurate in very broad strokes - if Texas is deemed a toss-up or Trump+1 and ends up Trump+8 - for what reason are people like Silver and the pollsters themselves considered experts? They're just analysing 2020 data through a 2016 lens. It's no good.
You really, really have babe. Five Thirty Eight have been very, very clear throughout the whole campaign that the line between a Trump win and a Biden landslide in terms of electoral votes was astonishingly thin in terms of the numbers that had to shift on raw votes to produce a result one way or the other. Who didn't catch this result exactly? Five Thirty Eight were very clear this kind of result was potentially on the cards if a polling error. You haven't even read half of the stuff they put up explaining their own projections and you're claiming you understand it perfectly well enough to dismiss it.The eventual outcome (the person in the white house) may turn out to be what has been predicted - a presidency decided by postal voting - but my point is that the results we're seeing (even Biden's wins) skew so much more heavily in Trump's favour than the polls (which, let us not forget, were so rosy for Biden that Penelope predicted a landslide victory of 350+ votes) suggested, everywhere, that it's clear that polling methods continue to be way off and therefore that treating these people as experts is not justified anymore. We may be lucky and see a narrow Biden win - it's far from the easy victory the polls predicted. And it's not a surprise, so why couldn't they catch it?
I don't need you to agree, but I have not misunderstood anything.
I mean for one, most polling is online nowadays. Why exactly is the concept 'antiquated'? Do you have any evidence for the idea that people are *actively* giving dishonest answers?I understand that they cannot literally predict to the dot how people will vote, but clearly the best statistical modeling they have is not good enough anymore. And in a world in which you can discuss something with your friends and then a targeted ad pops up the next time you open your phone, finding out how people will vote by calling up 800 of them in a state of 5m people and asking them to give honest answers to a stranger feels... at best, antiquated. Just my view.
And even with that, it shouldn't have been as close as it is - Democrats losing so many Senate seats (that Biden as nominee supposedly would've helped them win) is a disaster for actually getting anything done. He's going to be a lame duck president for at least his first two years in office. Would any of the other Democratic primary candidates have done better? Maybe none of us can say, but the fact that THIS is the best they've been able to do after four years of a Donald Trump presidency tells me that things simply aren't good enough.The overall popular vote is projected to be 82 million votes for Biden and 75 million for Trump. Utterly fucking *insane* figures considering the previous record was 69 million (Obama 08). Anyone claiming 'someone else' would've done better really has to be able to reckon with a. Trump's vote going through the roof, and b. well, Biden getting more people behind him than any candidate in history. This isn't just a population growth thing. Any claim of 'oh, more should've been done to appeal to non-voters' kind of has to deal with the fact that Biden's campaign already seems to be the most successful in history at appealing to non-voters.
I mean, this is the thing - the Democrats did extraordinarily in this election. Literally the most votes any presidential candidate has ever got (and it definitely did help them in the Senate races - which implies how much worse it would've gone without Biden). The problem is just Trump's sheer popularity in himself. It's the equivalent of saying Usain Bolt didn't do well enough when he's just set the 100m world record, just because Tyson Gay set the world record for fastest ever runner-up at the same time.And even with that, it shouldn't have been as close as it is - Democrats losing so many Senate seats (that Biden as nominee supposedly would've helped them win) is a disaster for actually getting anything done. He's going to be a lame duck president for at least his first two years in office. Would any of the other Democratic primary candidates have done better? Maybe none of us can say, but the fact that THIS is the best they've been able to do after four years of a Donald Trump presidency tells me that things simply aren't good enough.
I understand that, I honestly do - I just think that if they did THAT well by running Joe Biden with an even less progressive platform than Hillary's in 2016, they could have done EVEN BETTER (in electoral votes, Senate races, everything) if they as a party adopted some popular progressive policies that might have inspired even more (yes I'm going to say it) non-voters to get out and vote. Record numbers or not, I don't think that's something anyone should stop pushing for! PS I also know that we'll probably never agree on this, but I know you're coming from a place of good faith here. I also appreciate that you've been civil and haven't told me to "fuck off" like a certain Moopy moderator did.I mean, this is the thing - the Democrats did extraordinarily in this election. Literally the most votes any presidential candidate has ever got (and it definitely did help them in the Senate races - which implies how much worse it would've gone without Biden). The problem is just Trump's sheer popularity in himself. It's the equivalent of saying Usain Bolt didn't do well enough when he's just set the 100m world record, just because Tyson Gay set the world record for fastest ever runner-up at the same time.
AGOG @VoR has got so rude!I also appreciate that you've been civil and haven't told me to "fuck off" like a certain Moopy moderator did.
How was it even less progressive than Hillary's? He's bringing in a $15 minimum wage, free college, public healthcare and a $2tn climate change fund! The detail of his platform is pretty close to everything you're calling for, even if the aesthetics of his campaign didn't necessarily give that impression.
I mean as it goes, the result Biden's got just now mean that his campaign was the most successful at bringing in non-voters of any in our lifetime, our parents' lifetimes, our grandparents' lifetimes and our great-grandparents' lifetimes. It's hard to argue he ever stopped pushing it with the result he just got!
AGOG @VoR has got so rude!

WE GET IT YOU'RE ELDERLYMy great-grandparents were alive in 1900.
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