U.S. Presidential Election

[kalifire]

51 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Who will die first, Trump or Biden?

BET NOW!

 

Actually...if Trump loses...and if he incites violent civil unrest, he could well die behind bars.

Talking of Trump and legality, his first sentencing date is coming up later this month. Many assume, as do I, that if he’s elected President, he’ll find a way to drop all the charges against him. 
 

But if he’s elected, he’ll only be President-Elect, and won’t have any power to do anything until next January. So how would his sentencing in a few weeks be affected? Could he still be sentenced for that, and let’s just daydream that it’s a custodial sentence - would Biden pardon him to ensure a peaceful transfer of power? 

Edited November 4 by kalifire

[steviewevie]

2 minutes ago, kalifire said:

Surely polls that are within the margins of error are essentially meaningless. 
 

I think one of the key differences that will affect the outcome is the ground game. I have a friend who lives in a suburb in Philadelphia and is active in volunteering for the Harris campaign. He says over the last couple of weeks he’s seen dozens of demonrat canvassers, but not a single one for the republicans. Their ground game is practically non-existent.  

Democrats going old school with door knocking, Republicans relying on Musk and his new propaganda toy.

[MilkyJoe]

58 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Actually...if Trump loses...and if he incites violent civil unrest, he could well die behind bars.

Thats the dream. minus the violent civil unrest of course.

[maelzoid]

9 minutes ago, kalifire said:

Surely polls that are within the margins of error are essentially meaningless. 
 

I think one of the key differences that will affect the outcome is the ground game. I have a friend who lives in a suburb in Philadelphia and is active in volunteering for the Harris campaign. He says over the last couple of weeks he’s seen dozens of demonrat canvassers, but not a single one for the republicans. Their ground game is practically non-existent.  

I assume your slur is just a typo...?

But anyway, I disagree with your take on polls within the MOE... kind of. Taking any one single poll that is within the MOE and 100% no useful predictions can be made from it, but when nearly all of them are, that should signify the closest of races, even if there is no reliable way of predicting the victor, it is at least meaningful info.

 

However what is wild about these polls is that just about every single poll is within the MOE. Given the expected randomness of polling, you should except a decent number to fall outside of the MOE just due to normal distributions, and that doesn't seem to happen. That suggests either the pollsters have their fingers on the scale to provide a tight race (my opinion) or the MOEs are badly calculated.

[maelzoid]

13 minutes ago, kalifire said:

Talking of Trump and legality, his first sentencing date is coming up later this month. Many assume, as do I, that if he’s elected President, he’ll find a way to drop all the charges against him. 
 

But if he’s elected, he’ll only be President-Elect, and won’t have any power to do anything until next January. So how would his sentencing in a few weeks be affected? Could he still be sentenced for that, and let’s just daydream that it’s a custodial sentence - would Biden pardon him to ensure a peaceful transfer of power? 

This is quite the juicy 'what if.'

My guess is that if Trump wins and by the time his sentencing comes is the confirmed president-elect, he simply doesn't turn up to his sentencing. Maybe he sends a lawyer and they just kick the ball down the road until he is sworn in and can pardon himself. The only alternative would be for the judge to issue an arrest warrant and send the cops to find Trump and haul him up before the court which would happen to any other convict who skips sentencing. No judge would do that to a president-elect, especially one as vindictive as Trump.

[steviewevie]

21 minutes ago, maelzoid said:

I assume your slur is just a typo...?

But anyway, I disagree with your take on polls within the MOE... kind of. Taking any one single poll that is within the MOE and 100% no useful predictions can be made from it, but when nearly all of them are, that should signify the closest of races, even if there is no reliable way of predicting the victor, it is at least meaningful info.

 

However what is wild about these polls is that just about every single poll is within the MOE. Given the expected randomness of polling, you should except a decent number to fall outside of the MOE just due to normal distributions, and that doesn't seem to happen. That suggests either the pollsters have their fingers on the scale to provide a tight race (my opinion) or the MOEs are badly calculated.

None of them want to be that outlier...herding. Except Selzer.

[lazyred]

44 minutes ago, maelzoid said:

However what is wild about these polls is that just about every single poll is within the MOE. Given the expected randomness of polling, you should except a decent number to fall outside of the MOE just due to normal distributions, and that doesn't seem to happen. That suggests either the pollsters have their fingers on the scale to provide a tight race (my opinion) or the MOEs are badly calculated.

We don't need anymore conspiracy theories. If it is really 50/50 then polls will converge on that with the odd outlier. If the error is +/- 3% then either candidate could win and the polls are still correct within the margin of error.

If the polls are wrong it will be because of a late swing or using the wrong weightings. Its not a conspiracy to misrepresent the forecast.

[steviewevie]

49 minutes ago, lazyred said:

We don't need anymore conspiracy theories. If it is really 50/50 then polls will converge on that with the odd outlier. If the error is +/- 3% then either candidate could win and the polls are still correct within the margin of error.

If the polls are wrong it will be because of a late swing or using the wrong weightings. Its not a conspiracy to misrepresent the forecast.

There should be more outliers though?

[maelzoid]

49 minutes ago, lazyred said:

We don't need anymore conspiracy theories. If it is really 50/50 then polls will converge on that with the odd outlier. If the error is +/- 3% then either candidate could win and the polls are still correct within the margin of error.

If the polls are wrong it will be because of a late swing or using the wrong weightings. Its not a conspiracy to misrepresent the forecast.

Respectfully, it is not a conspiracy theory. You say it yourself, they could be using the wrong weightings, and this is what I mean, when I say the finger is on the scale. @steviewevie mentioned herding, and I 100% agree with that too, which is another form of manipulating the results. 

And you are absolutely right to say  "If it is really 50/50 then polls will converge on that with the odd outlier." The issue I'm pointing out is there are so very few outliers which you absolutely would expect if polling was done without manipulation. It simply is the nature of random sampling which is what polling is. There's a bell curve, and what we're looking at is a bell with both tails suspiciously cut off.

[FloopFiller]

Right wing pollsters are massively overinflating Trump’s chances to lay the groundwork for the ‘steal’ and more neutral/left leaning polls are being overly cautious which is basically leading to a stalemate. Really do think a lot of them are gonna look dumb as hell come Wednesday morning when it becomes instantly apparent that Kamala has got it in the bag and it’s not even close.  

[MilkyJoe]

13 minutes ago, FloopFiller said:

Right wing pollsters are massively overinflating Trump’s chances to lay the groundwork for the ‘steal’ and more neutral/left leaning polls are being overly cautious which is basically leading to a stalemate. Really do think a lot of them are gonna look dumb as hell come Wednesday morning when it becomes instantly apparent that Kamala has got it in the bag and it’s not even close.  

It's not just to lay the groundwork though, Trump has always only ever tweeted polls such as Rasmussen that are hugely skewed in his favour because his base just lap it up. It's potentially a dangerous game they're playing and I'm hoping it massively backfires tomorrow and a large percentage of them just believe what they're seeing and stay in their trailers because they think it's a done deal.

[steviewevie]

I am not as confident of an easy win for Harris as others on here, but definitely feel a bit more confident than this time last week. Still going for a narrow Trump win in the electoral college...just for some balance! (and I think that racism/misogyny/sexism is still a big factor).

[FloopFiller]

The best thing about that Iowa+3 poll for Harris is that so many right wing pundits seemed to be predicting Trump would easily come out on top of it and were eagerly awaiting its arrival so when it landed so many of them and the dumbass blue checks that follow them suddenly let a bit of reality in to their echo chamber and have all gone in to panic and copium mode. The woman who runs it is gonna look like a genius if it comes off.

[MilkyJoe]

Is nobody’s favourite richest man in the world starting to sweat?…

[FloopFiller]

13 minutes ago, MilkyJoe said:

Is nobody’s favourite richest man in the world starting to sweat?…

Dude has been in desperation mode for a few weeks now, posting hundreds of times a day, obviously engineering the algorithm to put his and other right wing stuff as priority, and he even put a Trump 2024 banner as the background in the For You section if you live in the states. Full blown ‘oh sh*t I’ve hitched myself to the wrong candidate’ mode. Kinda more excited to see his outburst than Trump’s at this point. 

[steviewevie]

If Trump wins I am definitely leaving Twitter...if he loses I am going to hang around for longer for the lols.

[steviewevie]

 

[FloopFiller]

23 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

 

Republican backed poll, so knock 3 or 4 off of each of Trump’s totals and there’s your real result. 

[kalifire]

Yep, GOP funded polls. Should be recognised within that context.

[maelzoid]

1 hour ago, steviewevie said:

If Trump wins I am definitely leaving Twitter...if he loses I am going to hang around for longer for the lols.

Yep. Getting my memes polished and ready.

Here's one I made which I hope will come in useful.

[philipsteak]

I've got a group of American friends, all Christians but pretty mixed politically and socially. Ranging from fairly conservative to, by American standards, pretty liberal. Late 30s to late 40s. Midwestern.

All of them despise Trump. Even a few who say they align with him on economic policy are voting for Harris. And they hate that so many of their family members and fellow Christians are such strong Trump supporters.

[LJS]

My thoughts on that are not printable.

[lazyred]

 

 

[maelzoid]

4 minutes ago, LJS said:

My thoughts on that are not printable.

I think as a convicted felon he would likely be denied entry.

But if he did flee to Scotland, I assume he’d take residence in his golf course. I then imagine the local jokers take up the practice of shitting in all the holes.

[FloopFiller]

Pretty wild that Trump can’t even fill a rally in a supposed red state the day before the election. Campaign dying before our eyes