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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 9, 2020 17:41:36 GMT
A very early look at where polls might have failed most:
Weighting by education to avoid underpolling of non-college educated white voters was supposed to help pollsters instead of just adding a Republican bias to their results. Where I suspect that went wrong is that the kinds of non-college educated white voters who would answer an anonymous call from a pollster had higher social trust and were overweighted relative to their peers with low social trust, who have skewed much more in favour of the Republicans in 2016 and 2020 than they did in previous elections. If there is a correlation between the kinds of voters who don't trust social structures and/or institutions and those who can buy into right-wing populism, then the voters being sampled here would be disproportionately anti-Trump relative to a full sample.
This kind of non-response bias seems to be a big problem and I'm not sure how it can be solved. Perhaps weighting by education will need to be replaced with weighting by trust in local community or govt. or some other measure.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 9, 2020 17:20:37 GMT
Or, he's lazy. One of the reasons why I think he's so popular among conservatives is his laissez-faire attitude to the US government.I would agree that this is a large part of his political appeal. I'm not sure that he has actually enacted huge cuts in government spending , but it's the message that matters. I suspect his lack of commitment to orthodox economic conservatism and the way his spending tied into populism had something to do with his success. Not that polls should be taken all that seriously, but his approval rating was lowest over the last four years when he was trying and failing to destroy the ACA. His administration's been very economically right wing, but less so in rhetoric than previous Republican nominees. In particular, I do wonder whether his apparent 2020 bump amongst low-propensity voters had something to do with the stimulus checks. For millions of voters, the CARES act (a genuinely good thing within a sea of trash) must have been one of the first apparently benevolent, state-sanctioned acts to directly benefit them in years, and the checks it generated came with Trump's name on them. In certain places like the RGV, these new voters were somewhat less Republican downballot so they may have been crediting Congressional Democrats, too.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 9, 2020 13:39:46 GMT
Don't be daft, I am talking about the likelihood of the Democrats using the name of Joe Frazier to vote; it is as daft as my counter suggestion. There is no conspiracy theory, just a lot of people who need to face reality and stop playing games with emotions. The president can do what he wishes, it will not change the result, which he and his advisors know, so what is their endgame? Is is not the case that a population the size of the USA just might have a number of electors called Joe Frazier? What comes to mind is the Tupac incident in which Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky thought a man claiming unemployment benefits under that name was committing fraud. He ended up apologising at a press conference.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 9, 2020 12:45:50 GMT
Does Mark Gettleson read this forum? I made the same point of those on the left of the party running behind Biden a few days ago. Without delving deeply into the figures, I think the real answer is probably that Biden did very well in educated, white, middle-class suburbia where Trump's/the Squad's divisiveness turned people off.
The main thrust of the article isn't bad but it ignores that, in suburbia, most of the downballot underperformed Biden including the more centrist candidates. The opposite was true in many places trending away from Democrats where there was a consistent overperformance of presidential #s. This looks like the previous realignment saw with rural WWC voters retaining downballot loyalty a bit longer. In addition to a couple of moderate folk like Collin Peterson (incidentally, in a rural seat, not suburbia) who outperformed Biden, there were also progressives who outperformed him - Jared Golden is a good example, although he was also overperforming in a rural area as opposed to fighting in suburban territory. He would fit into the 'populist' niche the article mentions, although it never really bothers to explore that angle. Omaha is not a particularly good example because, although the candidate had pretty poor messaging, she was done over by the previous Democratic Representative ratf**king her bid and endorsing and campaigning with her opponent. At the end of the day, the rush to a moderate aesthetic appears to have been holding the Republican Party back for years. Perhaps the opposite holds true for the Democrats, although I see no cast-iron reason for that to be the case.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 9, 2020 4:54:14 GMT
Some insight into the disorganisation of the Florida Democratic Party:
I don't think this explains all of the disaster they faced this year but their incompetence seems to just keep growing.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 8, 2020 14:34:30 GMT
One reason for Biden's success is that he mostly kept the left on side and didn't spend the last few months ostentatiously attacking them (even if his actual programme was fairly moderate) Is that a lesson for elsewhere? I could of course not possibly comment It didn't go well for Alexander Kerensky. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke.In all seriousness, after observing the "defund" debate, the treatment of Pete Buttigieg and the Aaron Coleman fiasco, I have come to believe that a core part of the American left is outrageously stupid and pathetically shallow. Joe Biden is going to be up against an obstructionist senate from day one, a deeply unfriendly SC and a country with so many major issues that it almost boggles the mind and a portion of the American left are going to find away to blame their own party for every setback and feverishly assert that the POTUS could resolve anything and everything by "doing something" and pushing for ever more increasingly absurd radical proposals. It would be overly combative to start opposing Biden (especially considering the Georgia runoffs/that he isn't yet president) and Jacobin's modus operandi is pretty shit. However, at some point soon, there is probably going to be sufficient cause for an intraparty conflict. The presidency has a lot of executive power which Biden will refuse to use because he is a Senate man at heart. He should be blamed when (and it is almost certainly a 'when' rather than an 'if') he fails to use this power, an act which will have little bearing on subsequent presidents' willingness to use it. As for wider criticisms of the Democratic Party, critics of all ideological stripes should continue to push it so long as they see it wasting political capital in ways they don't agree with. Limitations on that political capital such as a divided Congress or the need to be electable only increase the importance of using that capital wisely. From the left's perspective, that means "But the Republicans," shouldn't be taken for a satisfactory answer so long as the party continues to promote ghouls like Andrew Cuomo and Xavier Becerra in de facto one-party states.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 8, 2020 13:04:26 GMT
Despite the huge polling misses, CNAlysis did rather well:
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 8, 2020 12:10:27 GMT
The DCCC reply would be: "stop treating us as an enemy" and "shush we have 2 Senate races in Georgia to win". Mind her comments regarding the lack of organisation in various Democratic Party structures is amplified elsewhere (see Daily Kos). It's a shame so many of her points miss as her argument here was actually valid. Schumer's "windowless basement" strategy of getting candidates to focus on fundraising over all else appears to have massively backfired and his rejection of Jeff Jackson in NC in favour of a candidate prepared to do that probably cost Democrats that Senate seat. He deserves the sack even more than Pelosi.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 8, 2020 11:46:54 GMT
It was lower than last time. Why was that surprising as opposed to the best Republican performance amongst black voters since Nixon?
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 6, 2020 19:24:56 GMT
Biden was indeed a stronger candidate than HRC, but the fundamentals were much worse for Trump this year. This result vindicates Clinton's candidacy somewhat.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 6, 2020 15:03:19 GMT
I'm not sure he has the power to do that and why would the Squad listen to him anyway? The squad are as powerful as mainstream Democrats and more importantly, the media let them be. If that were true, the administration's half-hearted attempt at withdrawal from Afghanistan would be continuing apace.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 6, 2020 2:14:00 GMT
Trump will run again and win his second term facing a Biden who would have wanted to retire but felt compelled to give it one more go when the spectre returned to haunt his presidency. Post-2024 diplomacy will be shaped in the backroom deals his crumbling business empire makes to stay afloat over the next four years.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 6, 2020 2:11:25 GMT
Colour me shocked: Edit: Most of Trump voters (54%) said racism was "very or somewhat serious" in America, so it's not as though they're all foaming White Supremacists either. yeah - that 54% think the Democrats are the racist ones There's a bit of both, but yes, it's possible to completely buy into Trump's rhetoric while believing some form of racism in the US is problematic. His campaign wasn't shy about throwing around accusations of racism about on occasion (sometimes quite fairly).
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 5, 2020 4:39:22 GMT
I'd prefer the states to all use the Nebraska/Maine system, where each congressional district elects an Elector (plus two by state-wide vote) instead of the whole state electing a ticket of Electors. I think people have made charts of what past elections would have been on the same vote, and there's usually not much difference to the end result, but it makes each state's vote more representative of each state's actual vote. Before popular election of the Electors state legislatures would quite often select mixed slates of Electors. That would help the GOP more than the current system. Not if implemented nationally (in the short term, anyway). The House was always going to be easier for Democrats and that wasn’t just because of candidate quality/incumbency; furthermore, it looks like their voter coalition has become even less electorally efficient this time with disproportionate gains in deep red and blue states. We may see American politics stable around a presidency in which the House is Democratic more often than not and the Senate vice versus (although the Senate’s bias is much stronger).
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 5, 2020 2:19:28 GMT
Romney-Clinton voters, eh? And this is what they traded in the rural areas with more Senate power for.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 5, 2020 2:18:23 GMT
The AP/NYT has called MISEN for Peters.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 4, 2020 22:39:50 GMT
Sentimental crap isn't going to get Republican Senators on board and decency porn doesn't appear to play well with the electorate either, even after being tested to death. If he isn't willing to be a strong executive in the mold of the current president, he should prepare to be obstructed.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 4, 2020 19:30:25 GMT
She will be by enough Democratic primary voters when she runs in 2024 or 2028 and that, sadly, is all that's going to matter. If they run a Sanders 2016-style candidate against her, they'll be decried as racist; if they tried to match her on idpol, they'll be deemed unelectable. I wouldn't rule it out, but I suspect that changes in the composition of the Democratic primary electorate mean there is not going to be a path for any economic populist to beat an economically rightwing, socially progressive/"woke" candidate bent on deepening inequalities but with a diverse cast (hooray for more female billionaires!). She doesn't strike me as particularly popular though there will be opportunity to change that It doesn't matter that she isn't popular. She will clear the field of all moderate challengers easily because she is the sitting VP and will get institutional support. It will be somewhere between Joe Biden's path to the nomination this year and Al Gore's in 2000, and probably much more like the latter's. When the endorsements pour in from elected officials, millions of Democratic primary voters who follow their lead will accept that, once again, the Party Decides. Harris isn't yet a lock, but is heavily favoured for the nomination whenever Biden retires. The presidency is another question. With results like these, I suspect she'll lose the general election.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 4, 2020 19:26:06 GMT
The Democratic leadership has no dominating incentive to stop. It's an incredibly useful tool in allowing them to win primaries without actually committing to any policies they are or their backers are opposed to. It's going to be a big part of Harris' progressive credentials in 2024 (assuming the administration fails, as is likely) and the part of the Democratic electorate it works best on - the upscale part - appears to be growing within the coalition. They won't sacrifice what wins them primaries because of the iron law of institutions. They will never be prepared to throw primaries to the economic populists to save general elections; if they were, they wouldn't have pushed out Biden in 2016 and they wouldn't have installed Harris as VP this year. It's definitely not true yet, but in the long term, the left might have a better future in Republican primaries. Bernie Sanders is much closer to economic populism than the Democratic centrists. I don't think Harris is regarded as particularly "progressive" (the left refer to her as a "cop" rather disparagingly) but emphasis on social issues is where the centrists can appear to be on the left given their economic stance. I was thinking of how Iowa, when Democratic, was representedby Tom Harkin who was very much an old style Democratic economic radical She will be by enough Democratic primary voters when she runs in 2024 or 2028 and that, sadly, is all that's going to matter. If they run a Sanders 2016-style candidate against her, they'll be decried as racist; if they tried to match her on idpol, they'll be deemed unelectable. I wouldn't rule it out, but I suspect that changes in the composition of the Democratic primary electorate mean there is not going to be a path for any economic populist to beat an economically rightwing, socially progressive/"woke" candidate bent on deepening inequalities but with a diverse cast (hooray for more female billionaires!).
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 4, 2020 19:15:18 GMT
I lean towards this, but it is not the same thing as "mean lefty kids shifted tons of voters to Trump." It has more to do with the Democratic Party's commitment to corporate idpol than some fool on Twitter. Sure. Kids, being kids, will be immature whether lefty or not; it's up to the adults to set the agenda. My point is that the right is playing this game effectively and the left is at best doing itself no good and at worst self-harming. We've really got to stop, and soon. The Democratic leadership has no dominating incentive to stop. It's an incredibly useful tool in allowing them to win primaries without actually committing to any policies they are or their backers are opposed to. It's going to be a big part of Harris' progressive credentials in 2024 (assuming the administration fails, as is likely) and the part of the Democratic electorate it works best on - the upscale part - appears to be growing within the coalition. They won't sacrifice what wins them primaries because of the iron law of institutions. They will never be prepared to throw primaries to the economic populists to save general elections; if they were, they wouldn't have pushed out Biden in 2016 and they wouldn't have installed Harris as VP this year. It's definitely not true yet, but in the long term, the left might have a better future in Republican primaries.
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