US Presidential Election 2020

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

Where is all this speculation about Minnesota coming from recently? Biden is well ahead in the polls there and unlike the rest of the rust belt states it actually stayed blue in 2016. I've heard it mentioned a few times in the last week but it looks like a big ask for Trump. If Biden is losing here then he's likely already lost.

Since 1984, the bakery claims the winner of their cookie poll has matched the winner of the popular vote.

“So far, President Trump has a very large lead of 2,576 cookies to 696 for Joe Biden,” said Bill Hanisch. “So, I’ll tell you, in the 25 years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen it like this.”

Bill Pick, leader of the Aitkin County Democratic Party, called the erosion of support for Democrats in rural Minnesota "mind-boggling." "It's really sad to see that there's a potential of Minnesota going to be a red state."

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

I remember after 2016 Nate Silver making the point that the polling error was relatively small but the crucial thing was that it was decisive. Very often the polling errors are much larger but predict the correct outcome so nobody cares about them. It's a bit like in football when somebody shanks a penalty but it still goes in because the goalkeeper dives the wrong way. Many people perceive that as a "good penalty" since it went in regardless of the fact that it was badly executed. It's classic "results-oriented thinking"

I see a lot of attitudes dismissing polls because Trump won last time and I believe this is feeding into the betting market prices for Trump being lower than the polls suggesting it should be.

Getting back to Nate Silver/538. I believe he gave Trump a 28% shot prior to the last election. As anyone, who's familiar with Texas Hold'em knows that's considerably higher odds than having AA cracked by a lower pocket pair, all-in pre-flop - and that happens a lot. It's not like Trump was some 3-legged, 500/1 shot in the grand national. He was more like the odds of Liverpool winning the upcoming premier League (3.7 on Betfair exchange right now)

Fundamentally, most people don't understand probabilities and they really don't want to hear about nuance. They believe things are/should be binary but in reality they are a lot more complex then that.

So yeah, polls get the results wrong from time to time but they are a vital predictive tool and if you really don't believe that ask yourself why all of the major parties commission their own internal polls.

Many Democrats mistakenly believe this illusory dominance of the public debate means they have won the hearts and minds of the electorate. As we saw in 2016, however, the reluctance of right-of-center voters to argue with puffed-up progressives simply meant they wanted to avoid shaming and social ostracism. They kept their peace until it really mattered — when they reached the voting booth. That’s the beauty of the secret ballot — people who decline to be bullied by “strong liberals” can make their voices heard loud and clear in November. According to the Cato survey, the number of people choosing this path is far larger than it was in 2016. Moreover, they span the entire demographic spectrum:

Nearly two‐​thirds of Latino Americans (65%) and White Americans (64%) and nearly half of African Americans (49%) have political views they are afraid to share. Majorities of men (65%) and women (59%), people with incomes over $100,000 (60%) and people with incomes less than $20,000 (58%), people under 35 (55%) and over 65 (66%), religious (71%) and non‐​religious (56%) all agree that the political climate prevents them from expressing their true beliefs.

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

I can see that you're attempting to engage in good faith but I don't understand the point that you are making. You have linked to a lot of partisan pro-Trump accounts/hashtags there.

Nobody is saying that Trump is not popular with his supporters. Nobody is saying that the Democrats didn't lose a lot of white working class voters to Trump.

Searching for hastags used by one side or the other isn't going to tell you very much. Regardless of the outcome in November, each candidate is going to get a minimum of 60 million votes. You could spend between now and the election on twitter or facebook looking at posts in favour of one candidate or the other and you'd be none the wiser about who's going to win.

As for the "shy Trump voter" phenomenon. This may affect people in social situations but it's not going to affect opinion polls unless people are actively lying to complete strangers (where there is no social cost to being honest).

p.s. I don't want to sound condescending but I'd be wary of using Candice Owens as an example to support any positive point that you want to be make. She's a fairly transparent grifter/troll in the same way as Katie Hopkins is.

The results presented above are for the first wave of participants, although the overall findings were similar across both waves. Specifically, in Wave 2, 10.5% of Trump supporters said they were likely to be untruthful on phone surveys compared to 4.6% of Biden supporters.

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Well the COVID-19 deaths and the handling of the pandemic are a political issue because they are/and will play into people’s political decisions for the election in November.

Itssoeasy wrote: »

The Biden and Harris campaign should hold the president to account for his failings around COVID-19 because he like other world leaders had a chance if not to stop the virus entering their counties, they had a chance to limit the spread. Donald trump has done an awful job at that on a federal level but I’m sure there’s a better comparison(none will be good) that will highlight the scale of the pandemic but 9/11 should not be used imo.