2024 Presidential Election - Take II

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Dems can brag all they want about the overwhelming number of Election Law cases they've been winning in the courts so far in this election cycle. But they don't have such a hot record among cases that SCOTUS has decided.

But the Dems record got better today.

Supreme Court sides with Democrats in Pennsylvania voting case


https://www.npr.org/2024/11/01/g-s1-310 ... nnsylvania

It was a unanimous decision, too, so whatever issue was before the court must've been one of those lines in the sand that the court would not cross to help out the GOP.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Yeah, if even Thomas and Alito disagreed it must have been WAY off.

[Lefty Specialist]

This is abuser talk. And women can recognize it.

Donald Trump took his frequent habit of describing himself as a “protector” of women further on Wednesday night in Wisconsin, when he declared he would protect them “whether the women like it or not” if he wins a second term in the White House.

“I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not,’” Trump said. “I’m going to protect them.”

This is the difference between 2016 and now. Trump's a known quantity and the mask has slipped. Kamala doesn't have 'but her emails' and 30 years of demonization hanging over her head.

Hillary didn't have scores of former Trump staffers saying 'don't vote for this guy'. He also wasn't out on bail in 2016 like he is in 2024. Or adjudged to be a rapist. Or called a fascist by his former chief of staff. I could go on. Yeah, I still have PTSD from 2016. But this is a new election with very different issues and personalities.

Black women saved us in 2020. Women writ large will save us in 2024.

[whippoorwill]

Please God don’t let this asshat be at the Penn State game

[Bob Alpacadaca]

This is creepy. Both of the women in my house received handwritten postcards. They say "Thank you for being a voter. Who you vote for is private, but whether you vote is public record." Both are signed with just a first name. There is no affiliation listed on the postcards and they are not saying who you should vote for. But the whole "Who you vote for is private, but whether you vote is public record." part is creepy and vaguely threatening.

Turns out the groups behind these are DC-based nonprofits run by Tom Lopach, the Voter Participation Center and Center for Voter Information. He's a longtime Dem strategist and fundraiser. In Maryland the group send voters their actual voting records, showing when and where they voted. The Maryland AG has issued a cease and desist order.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/poli ... 07b2191c75

Will be so glad when this is over.

[MFS62]

I saw a clip of Newt Gingrich being interviewed (on FOX, of course) saying that it isn't right to tell women that they can vote differently from their husbands.
Will Project 2025-ers prohibit women from voting at all? I wouldn't be surprised.

Later

[Lefty Specialist]

I wrote 500 postcards for them. That was one of the message choices but I didn't use it because I thought it was too creepy. I said, ' Thanks for being a voter! Please remind your friends and family to vote in the Tuesday, Nov 5th election!'

I know because I wrote it 500 times and it's burned into my brain.

[Lefty Specialist]

Final Des Moines Register poll shows Harris leading Trump 47-44 in Iowa. Let's just say if she wins Iowa it'll be an early night......

[whippoorwill]

I’ve done postcards and I would never say that. It sounds like a threat.

[rchurch314]

This is creepy. Both of the women in my house received handwritten postcards. They say "Thank you for being a voter. Who you vote for is private, but whether you vote is public record." Both are signed with just a first name. There is no affiliation listed on the postcards and they are not saying who you should vote for. But the whole "Who you vote for is private, but whether you vote is public record." part is creepy and vaguely threatening.

Turns out the groups behind these are DC-based nonprofits run by Tom Lopach, the Voter Participation Center and Center for Voter Information. He's a longtime Dem strategist and fundraiser. In Maryland the group send voters their actual voting records, showing when and where they voted. The Maryland AG has issued a cease and desist order.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/poli ... 07b2191c75

Will be so glad when this is over.

gee almost like racist white republicans pressure their wives to vote how they want and reminding them that they are actually people and not just property of their husband might be useful?

[Lefty Specialist]

I think they were trying to convey the message that your vote is private, but didn't realize how bad it sounded. Like I said, you had a choice of messages and I chose another one. 500 Pennsylvania voters will be grateful I did.

[Lefty Specialist]

I dare you not to get just a little bit choked up.

[Frayed Knot]

Final Des Moines Register poll shows Harris leading Trump 47-44 in Iowa. Let's just say if she wins Iowa it'll be an early night......

If that's even close to accurate it would be big.

Iowa went with Dukakis, Clinton, Clinton, Gore, GWB (by 7/10th of 1%), then Obama, Obama before turning to Trump by 9+ points over Hillary and 7+ over Biden

I wish I had an answer for why but none I can come up with reflects well on Democrats. It's not like Iowa has some sort of rapidly changing demographic mix or high
levels of influx from other parts of the country. There are towns there that will tell you that theirs is predominantly Swedish while the Norwegian one is the one ten
miles down the road ... and the bulk of that immigration was 100 to 140 years ago. iow it's a fairly static place.
My main thought is that while the Democratic message gets stronger and stronger it does so in smaller and smaller pockets. So they're now getting (made up numbers)
90+% of voters in SF and Marin County instead of merely 70+, but in doing so they've been losing ground in places like Iowa and others in the midwest -- y'know,
the ones Hillary took for granted -- that were blue, or at minimum, blue/purple for decades.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Final Des Moines Register poll shows Harris leading Trump 47-44 in Iowa. Let's just say if she wins Iowa it'll be an early night......

That's an awful harbinger for Hitler and the GOP.

The Des Moines Register survey was conducted by veteran non-partisan pollster J Ann Selzer, whose poll has long been seen as the “gold standard” of Iowa surveys by both Democratic and Republican political operatives.

[Lefty Specialist]

Iowa went hard Christian right in the last decade or two. It's one of the whitest places in America, a place where Trump's white grievance has found fertile ground. If it really goes to Kamala, that's an earthquake. Trump won it by 9 against Hillary and 7 against Biden.

[Lefty Specialist]

Kamala on SNL tonight. Goodie.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Iowa went hard Christian right in the last decade or two. It's one of the whitest places in America, a place where Trump's white grievance has found fertile ground. If it really goes to Kamala, that's an earthquake. Trump won it by 9 against Hillary and 7 against Biden.

That Iowa poll is also an extreme outlier. Every major and credible poll has the battleground or swing states in a virtual dead heat.

[Lefty Specialist]

Well, that's a very specific Iowa poll. Iowa hasn't been polled much since it's not a swing state. But in June in the same poll, Trump was beating Biden by 18 points.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Well, that's a very specific Iowa poll. Iowa hasn't been polled much since it's not a swing state. But in June in the same poll, Trump was beating Biden by 18 points.

Great. But why Iowa and not Michigan?? Or Wisconsin? (etc., etc., etc.) Why isn't Pennsylvania polling like Iowa? Who the hell knows anything for sure?

[Chad ochoseis]

The Iowa poll is being taken seriously because the Des Moines Register polls are generally considered top quality.

I'm not a big Nate Silver fan. He did some pioneering work in sabermetrics. Then he wrote a brilliant book about why professional pundits shouldn't be taken seriously, and the book was so successful that it enabled him to become...a professional pundit. But one of his ongoing themes is that there's always safety in numbers; you might go wrong if you follow the herd, but you'll probably keep your job. If you go your own way, you'd better be right.

He's been applying that idea and pointing out that even if the race were dead even in every swing state, statistical variation would still produce some outliers giving one candidate a big lead somewhere. And nobody is publishing any outliers in the swing states. So Silver has been concluding that the pollsters are basically gutless and that the new polls are simply reinforcing what the old polls have been saying, because pollsters like being pollsters, and if they go out on a limb and they're wrong, they might not be pollsters anymore on November 6.

Unless you already have a stellar reputation and can afford to take a hit, like if you're the Des Moines Register. Then, you can call it as you see it. So the Iowa poll should be taken seriously. Not that I think Harris is going to win Iowa - there's still a wide margin of error in that poll. But she's doing better in Iowa than anyone thought, and states don't vote in vacuums. If left-leaning white women are coming out for Harris in Iowa in numbers high enough to make it close, then there's a good chance they're coming out in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania (thanks, Cooby!) in numbers high enough to push her over the top in those states.

So maybe we'll all be able to get to sleep by 10:30 on Tuesday night and rest easy knowing that fascism might have taken democracy to Game 7, but democracy managed to walk it off in the bottom of the ninth.

[whippoorwill]

I know a lot of white women voting for Harris :)

[batmagadanleadoff]

Kamala on SNL tonight. Goodie.

[Edgy MD]

It's pretty saddifying to think polling agencies are mis-reporting their findings to keep from looking foolish.

It may be social science, but it's still science. Your conclusion should be what the data says, not what's safest for you to assert. If you're wrong, you're wrong. You show your data and methodology to your colleagues, and if your polling was done professionally, you have nothing to apologize for. Trying to predict what a large sample of people do by polling a small sample will only tell you likelihoods, and that's useful. But they are still only likelihoods. Adults should know this.

What has been maddening about reading Nate Silver is the number of times folks would ask him something along the line of "One of 538's big misses was in Michigan's fourth district — what happened there?" only to have him answer, for the umpteenth time, "Nothing happened — we estimated the incumbent had a 78% chance of winning and that meant the challenger had a 22% chance of winning, and 22% is a number that sometimes comes up; about 22 times in 100, as a matter of fact."

If you want certainty, ignore all the polls and you'll find out the winner when he or she is sworn in. Even the most sophisticated poll can only shave away uncertainty, not eliminate it.

[batmagadanleadoff]

It's pretty saddifying to think polling agencies are mis-reporting their findings to keep from looking foolish.

It may be social science, but it's still science. Your conclusion should be what the data says, not what's safest for you to assert. If you're wrong, you're wrong. You show your data and methodology to your colleagues, and if your polling was done professionally, you have nothing to apologize for....

This is exactly what I've just been thinking. Is it being suggested that polling results from other states might be in line with the latest Iowa poll, but are being held back or manipulated because the results aren't mainstream?

What has been maddening about reading Nate Silver is the number of times folks would ask him something along the line of "One of 538's big misses was in Michigan's fourth district — what happened there?" only to have him answer, for the umpteenth time, "Nothing happened — we estimated the incumbent had a 78% chance of winning and that meant the challenger had a 22% chance of winning, and 22% is a number that sometimes comes up; about 22 times in 100, as a matter of fact."

If you want certainty, ignore all the polls and you'll find out the winner when he or she is sworn in. Even the most sophisticated poll can only shave away uncertainty, not eliminate it.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

[rchurch314]

polls aren't statistics, they're just models and estimations. It's not like a race where anyone can be ahead of anyone else. That's just for ratings and narrative.

Not to mention people lie. Or might not even vote even if they say they will in a poll, because one of our two parties is fascist and one of their top platforms is making it harder for people to vote.