I Don't Believe This Weekend's Scary Poll Numbers
That poll putting Trump ahead of Biden in all the major battleground states sure looks terrifying, but there's never been an election more clouded by the unknown than this one.
A week after Halloween and the scary monsters are still abroad in the land.
Scary polls!
Scary plans!
Boogedy, boogedy!
It was a great weekend for intellectual doomscrolling, to say nothing of galloping paranoia. First, The New York Times comes out with a poll that shows the president is trailing Fulton County (Ga.) Inmate No. PO1135809 in all the major battleground states.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a45752839/trump-leading-biden-poll-numbers/Open linkView original on lemmy.world189
Comments91
I’m seeing a lot of what looks like famous last words in this thread. I just don’t know where you people get this confidence in the American people from.
Same. 2016 and covid were just a little taste of how low we can go. I don't doubt that it can get worse.
And it likely will, as more states ignore popular vote, and force women to either risk their lives, with sweeping bans
This, 100%. Americans were the people dumb enough to elect Trump. They haven't changed that much in 8 years. All bets are off.
He lost pretty convincingly. It was only 3 years ago. You don't remember Biden voters lining up to vote early, during a worldwide pandemic, just to kick Trump while he was down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election
Why would you care about that? That doesn't decide the election. Anyway, he lost that by 4.5% (7 million votes). Biden's percentage (51.3%) was the highest for a challenger to an incumbent president since 1932. Trump got completely stomped.
The outside world cares, as it tells a lot about the US as a nation. Nearly half of you are batshit insane, at minimum.
I will never understand the proclivity to just make numbers and shit up when the sum of all human knowledge is at your finger tips.
Kind of hard for them to be last words when the election is still a year off
This. People seem to think the voting public has a memory. As ever, these early analyses are meaningless.
Polls just create talking points for media to run around with. You could easily find (or discard) data to create any narrative you wanted. Remember when Hillary was the runaway favorite? Remember when Jeb Bush was the front runner?
Just go out and vote. End of the day no matter what the early polls say. Go Vote. Make your voice heard.
Remember when Bobby Boucher showed up at halftime and the Mud Dogs won the Bourbon Bowl?
Now that's a high quality comment.
Thank you a-very much Mr Coach Klein sir
Go vote. Help other people vote. Make sure people are registered to vote, locally and in other states via online call-banks.
Nothing else matters. Secure the vote and protect the vote.
And regularly check your voting eligibility, especially as the voter registration date draws closer. Republicans are not above purging rolls at the 11th hour.
smh
There's a certain contingent that will fervently support him no matter what happens. To these people the trials are all a conspiracy and just that much more reason they should give everything in the trailer to support their savior's rise to the throne.
And these people are so passionate about it they probably go out of their way to vote in said polls. While most anyone else is not even answering the polls, giving this a bias.
A lot can happen in a year.
I agree, it's not good. For now. We don't even know if he'll be on the ballot in a year. There's no need to panic at this point.
THATS WHAT THEY SAID LAST TIME!!!
heaves into paper bag
In American politics, a year is an eternity.
Still, it's pretty unbelievable if Trump is actually running ahead at any point after everything that has happened with Jan 6, Roe, the criminal cases, getting involved with porn stars, etc. Really makes me lose faith in the US.
Tbf, regarding the last point I think you mean, "sexually assaulting a porn star." There's no shame being involved with an adult entertainer if all parties involved are consenting, but there definitely is when you're sexually assaulting them (or anyone).
Definitely. I was actually referring to the fact that millions of conservative evangelical Christians rail at "promiscuous behavior" on a daily basis but apparently give Trump a total pass on that. Despite his obvious lack of integrity and behavior that's contrary to what they preach, he's somehow just the type of leader they want.
He's been accused of sexually assaulting people, but not Stormy Daniels.
You're right, I got her case mixed up with E. Jean Carroll's case: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/breaking-down-the-verdict-as-jury-finds-trump-liable-for-sexual-assault-and-defamation
Hard to keep all of his transgressions/crimes straight.
Not just accused, but found liable. It's not quite a conviction but at this point I consider it a documented fact. In other words, using words like "accused" is unnecessary and misleading. Just say he's a rapist, because he is.
You still had faith in the US?
I did. But it has truly diminished since 2017.
yup. stupid is highly contagious. it could end up being a lot worse.
Or they could be so stupid, they don't vote. All that talk of stolen elections eroded a lot of their voters' trust in voting.
I think the thing that really gets me about this sentiment is "Do you really think Donald Trump would've killed fewer Palestinians?" Killing brown people is a Republican past-time at this point. I understand being angry to the point of self-destruction if you think hurting yourself might help someone else, but this isn't even that. It's literally self-destructive and would make the very thing they're mad about worse. For my sanity I have to believe this is like some tiny twitter echo chamber that the media is blowing up for clicks.
Right, this is all just more "your brain on cynicism."
Modernism made us zealots. Postmodernism made us skeptics. Metamodernism will bring us back around to (localized) idealism, because holy shit there are way too many people in this world who lack the cognitive tools to face down that kind of nihilism.
You come off as smug and dismissive of people's real concerns. Whether you care to admit it or not, you have to appeal to more people to win the election. You are so concerned that people won't vote for Biden, but you aren't concerned enough to want Biden to figure out what appeals to those people and present it to them.
Just more of the same from you. If Trump wins, at least you can be satisfied that everyone but you deserves it. No need for any introspection on your end, or from the Democrat party at all.
Most of the people who support Trump don't even have real concerns that would lead them to vote for him. They have imaginary concerns that are so asinine that anyone with two functioning neurons can see right through them.
The polls didn't predict the 2016 win by Trump. They didn't predict the 2018 blue wave accurately. They didn't predict highest voter turnout in 100 years in 2020. They failed to predict a red wave that never materialized in 2022. BUT, I've got a good feeling about polling in 2024!
"When looked at in historical context, what stands out isn’t that polling in 2016 was unusually poor, but that polling of the 2004, 2008 and 2012 presidential races was uncannily good — in a way that may have given people false expectations about how accurate polling has been all along.
The other factor is that the error was more consequential in 2016 than it was in past years, since Trump narrowly won a lot of states where Clinton was narrowly ahead in the polls."
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/
I wish my job allowed the level of reliability that Political Experts, 'Economists' and Meteorologists have.
Meteorology is really hard, but comparing it to politics and economics is false equivalence. Meteorology is governed by well proven mathematical models, and we can use them to make predictions. The problem is that the earth is really big, so we just don't have computers powerful enough to simulate it finely enough. Add to that it's a chaotic system and it becomes difficult to predict accurately very far into the future. Weather predictions have actually improved dramatically the last few decades, and I expect they will continue to do so along with advances in computing. Economics and politics may as well be random guessing, but is often worse than random guessing, because we have no reliable proven model for human behavior.
Anytime people get mad at the metrologist for being wrong, I remind them that they're LITERALLY PREDICTING THE FUTURE.
As someone trained in statistics, I will say you have nailed this. The only 'poll' that has any hope of being accurate is counting the votes the day after. Even if we had good models for the complex intricacies of human behavior with respect to voting (I will correct that we do have good models of human behavior, Game Theory and Network Theory have gone a long way towards providing workable models for things) there is no way to guarantee clean input data. Garbage in, conservatives out. Pollster bias, population bias, selection bias, social pressures causing disingenuous responses. You can't get away from any of it. Phone polling requires that people answer and actually participate, which eliminates swaths of personality types which skews your data. In-person polls have to be conducted in person, so the location choice skews the types of people who are likely to be present at the time you are polling. Even focus groups are inherently flawed as a polling methodology, but they are as close to clean as one can get. You still only obtain the opinions of people who have the time during the day to go somewhere for hours. So it is predominantly young college students between classes, stay-at-home parents while the kids are in school, people who are unemployed, or retirees looking for something to do. If it is not one of those, it is likely someone who is doing the focus groups to make ends meet and the repeated use of the same people for different polls often leads to other forms of data contamination.
Bottom line, don't trust polls. If you aren't doing them, likely the demographics that you represent are not doing them either.
Another issue that affects how accurately weather models are seen is a difference in what they output and what is reported. The output of the models is a series of 2D maps of various variables and how they change over time and space. The models will predict that conditions will form for cloud formation and will lead to precipitation at a certain point. They are pretty good at predicting that part. Where it starts to get less accurate is determining where those things will happen and when with specificity. They'll be pretty sure that there will be rain from this particular system, but it might move north of city x, go right over it, or go south of it.
So that 40% chance of rain is actually "99% chance it rains, but 39.5% chance it rains here and 59.5% chance it doesn't rain here but somewhere else nearby instead".
My appreciation for what they do increased after I started using windy.com, which gives the map of predictions over time instead of "here's what will happen in this city".
Oh and weather patterns can be smaller than cities, too. That 40% chance of rain could even mean "40% of the city will be rained on". On cloudy days, you can often look around and see rain in the distance in various directions around you, sometimes it passes over you sometimes it doesn't.
Right, that's exactly what it means, by my understanding. A weatherman can't predict the chances that a particular individual will experience precipitation, but that's what the average person immediately thinks when they look at a weather forecast.
What a weatherman can do though, is predict how much of a particular area may experience precipitation, based on measurable things like cloud pattern shape and size, wind speed and direction, geography, etc. Once you realize that, it's actually kind of intuitive that precipitation chances are reported as "percent of an area that will experience precipitation", and not "percent chance that I will experience precipitation".
Polling errors happen. Even a 95% accurate poll is bound to be wrong 1 in 20 times. This poll is such a massive outlier that the prudent thing to do is wait for more polling.
That said, I don’t doubt that Americans feel grumpy right now and they’re blaming the incumbent. I do cautiously doubt this degree of grumpiness amongst these demographic groups.
Agreed. A lot of people are grumpy about how he's handling the Israeli/Hamas War. A lot of people were also grumpy about how he handled Afghanistan. Only one of these two things is still in the public zeitgeist, however...
It's a full year out from the actual election, and I don't expect either of these two things will be generally remembered at the polls next year.
I seriously doubt the pull out of Afghanistan and the support of Israel is causing voters to prefer Trump in battleground states. Especially Afghanistan, which literally no one is talking about anymore. Maybe Israel policy has an effect, but I suspect pro-Palestinian sentiment is sadly pretty low outside of the Lemmy bubble.
People are pessimistic about inflation, the economy, gas prices, affordability and all the bummer news in general. They blame the president. “Feelings” about the economy are one of the most reliable predictors of presidential elections.
He won the first time in no small part to folks that considered both sides the same and wanted to see it all burn. Lets hope they learned their lesson.
Narrator: They didn't
Fascism doesn’t follow the rules, and neither do the leaders or mobs that push them to power.
Don't make the mistake of believing the reasons people give for supporting Trump over Biden are their actual reasons. Biden's age, in particular, is approximately nobody's reason for opposing him; it's an excuse they give, or maybe a reason they think will persuade others. You won't persuade anyone by debunking an argument they never cared about in the first place.
Yep, without methodology, numbers are just lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I got called and picked up and then promptly hung up, I'm voting for biden
Look, we are all still traumatized from 2016. And this shit is still way too fucking close.
Ten people at the party took a vote to see what to eat. Six people wrote "pizza" and 4 people wrote "the dog." This is US politics.
Shit, after 2016 I just stopped paying attention to polls all together. I veiwed them as flawed even before 2016. After? Shit man I might not even be living in a democracy tomorrow, a pollsters opinion on who might win an election a year from now is interesting but post 2016 it's something I refuse to loose sleep over.
The rapist Donald J. Trump indeed raped E. Jean Carroll but the sex with Stormy Daniels was consensual.
Nah. They'd vote for RFK Jr.
I'm 62 and been ignoring calls from unknown callers for years.
But I'm getting bombarded by emails from both parties.
It would be one cold frosty day in hell before I voted RepubliKKKlan.
The demo emails are annoying -- people from other states begging for money, telling me shit I've known for years.
Staaaap!
Oddly enough if you live in a Red State - the only way you might actually have change is voting in the Republican Primary.
Because the Democratic party has all but given up in a lot of states. Looking at you Florida.
Why are polls even being talked about right now? Is it because Trump wanted us to?
Because a reputable pollster did a year-to-go poll.
I'm concerned about the poll, but not freaking out like some seem to. The fact of the matter is that we're still a year out, and there are still a lot of unknowns. I think Trump's numbers will erode as the public sees more of him (because he's be relatively quiet since 2021), and they will be reminded why they don't like him. That's not even taking the trials into account, which I think will further erode his support.
Where I'm concerned is not that these people who leave Trump aren't going to Biden; they're either not going to vote or go for a third party. While it gets the job done, it leaves less margin for error because there will probably be less Democratic turnout.
Trump doesn't get the over saturation that the rest of politicians seem to get. I don't know why that doesn't apply to him. The more he is in the news, the better he polls.
Wait for the attack ads. The Dems better take the gloves off and keep showing that trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.
Attack ads work, they make prospective voters stay home on election day. The Dems need to use them aggressively this time.
How much more could he show? Everyone knows who he is.
Everyone knows who he is, but he's been normalized and relatively quiet for a few years. As there gets to be more coverage, I think some of the Biden 2020->Trump 2024 or Nothing 2020->Trump 2024 voters will just not vote out of disgust because they're reminded what he's like. This is more of a vibes thing. They haven't felt Trumpy vibes, so they don't remember what he's like (at a visceral rather than intellectual level). I think a lot of people saying they'll vote for Trump now have some rose-colored glasses about his behavior.
The fucker needs to be in jail. Line the outside of it with national guardsmen. The federal and state government has an obligation to both see the punishments through as well as protect the ex-potus. These are no conflicting viewpoints, but rather what must happen to knock some sense into this country.
538 sold out completely to ABc? wtf?? where have i been?
It's been a couple of years now. Nate Silver now spends as much time at poker tournaments as he does working on 538
Nope Nate no longer works at 538. He left (with his model!) in protest against massive budget cuts and he’s planning his next project.
So...doesn't that mean that 538 is literally just the name with nothing behind it anymore?
There’s still some good people. And to some extent, institutions are about the systems that are in place, not just specific people. Quality and quantity is definitely lower, but the mission and vibe feel pretty similar for now.
Yep, but what the public doesn't know...
Maybe we’ll go full Idiocracy this time.
That was 2016. Catch up.
Polls are absolute bullshit. They’ve been proven time and again, why do people still let this shit scare them?
The polls are incongruous with the Democrat performance today. It's confusing. There must be a polling error or other problem
Some places did not even have anything to vote on yesterday.
Which means we didn't get polled either.
How are they accounting for that?
It's moreso the signs. Yeah, everyone didn't vote, but the places that did are providing a very informative picture. Ohio voted to enshrine abortion rights by +14%. Virginia Democrats retook the legislature, which flouts Youngkin's argument that he knows how to solve abortion for Republicans. And Beshear won reelection in Kentucky.
Unless traditionally blue areas have had similar surprises in favor of right wing causes, this suggests the national mood is very favorable to Democrats, which makes Biden's approval a big ?
I think this is why Trump could win. "I don't believe the polls".
Democrats need to wake the fuck up - Biden is not a good candidate and time is running out to select someone else. Don't ignore the polls because you don't like what they say - that is utter stupidity.
Democrats are going to let Trump back in by their own stupid machinations pretending that everyone thinks an 81 year old president is a good idea.
This is like Hilary Clinton all over again - it was "her turn" to run so big hitters sat out the primaries. She was a bad candidate - she won her own vote well but in the US system you have to win the electoral college and she didn't do it.
Please Democrats - wake up. Not Biden.
Not the best argument unless you want to tautalogicaly believe everyone who was ever president was a good candidate. I for one do not believe every president was a good candidate.
That point is that 100% of past presidents won their elections.
Thus, picking a candidate with a successful track record is usually the safer bet than picking someone who has not won an election. That is why incumbents are usually chosen by default.
Well both candidates have won elections, and both candidates have lost elections. The only difference is Trump has one loss in the genral while Biden has near half a dozen in primaries. I don't think the comparison is nearly as black and white as successful track record.
I wasn't comparing Biden and Trump, I was comparing Biden and any other potential Democratic candidate. The incumbent is almost always the safer bet than fielding someone new because they've been tried and tested.
As for Trump, all bets are off. He lost once against Biden and they're going to put him up against Biden again. Conventional wisdom would suggest that is just about the stupidest tactic you could do. But it's clear that all wisdom left the Republican party long ago.
I mean, I feel like it was easy for me to think you were. All I'm saying is if winning an election is the bar, then there's not many conclusions you can draw for the general that way since they've both won. The head to head is more important, as you've said. But still that doesn't mean Biden is a good candidate since the only time he won, in about half a dozen attempts, was against one of the worst candidates of all time. Biden is a better candidate than Trump sure, but so was Hillary and that didn't help her.
That wasn't me.
But fine, let's compare Biden and Trump.
Both have won presidential elections.
Only one has lost a presidential election.
Trump has not beaten Biden before.
Biden has beaten Trump before.
You're right that there aren't all that many conclusions we can draw. Hillary was a great candidate, and she failed while Biden won. So clearly picking the right candidate is not easy. Ultimately, only hindsight will tell if Biden was the right choice. But as far as predictions go, we've got some solid data and a proven track record that shows he can do it.
This is nothing like Clinton. Biden already won and any other candidate would need insanely good numbers to overcome the power of incumbency. Obama had an approval rating of 38% (lower than Biden now) a year before the 2012 election and still easily won the election (332-206).
Whatever your opinion of Biden, the Democrats would be very dumb to run another candidate.
You are unironically recalling 2016 as an argument that polls are legit?! Lmao
The polls said the race was much closer than people online or pundits would have had you believe. I know, because anytime I mentioned it online I'd get downvoted and when I mentioned it in real life people would get angry.
Almost every single poll said Clinton would win. That's what people are going to remember
Trump is 78. Basically 81. Worthless argument.