All Enten seems to be demonstrating there — albeit via a tiny sample size — is that an individual candidate’s (a) favorability rating and (b) election outcome are unrelated.
Just how long would you expect Thiel’s puppet and the cabinet to wait before evoking the 25th amendment? I’d guess three months, tops. the only question is, how will they spin it so it’s the Democrats’ fault?
No joke, right?!
Pretty good summary by kos on the state of things right now:
Why screw around? If you’ve got 2/3rd of each house of Congress in your pocket, just go straight to impeach/remove and be done with it.
No, I’d say:
“Pretty good wishful thinking by kos on the state of things right now”
For example:
-
the Kos link says that not to worry, because Trump is “old,tired,cranky and can’t handle the pressure.”
So What? This is irrelevant. (unfortunately)
His last rally was the weirdest in American history…a disco with him bobbing his head to the music. That should be proof ot Trump’s insanity…but it did not move the needle at all. In fact, the polls showed a slight improvement in Trump’s chances. -
The kos link points out the old canard that the polls must be wrong because abortion rights are on the ballot, too. But this is old news, and people who answer their phone to take the polls have always known it. There is no reason to think that the latest polls this week are more wrong than all the previous polls.
The race is a tie.
The winner might be determined by the weather. (If it rains, there is lower turnout.)
True.
Pennsylvania is now in a moderate drought. If this breaks on Election Day, someone is looking out for us.
Two factors there. One is that Republicans disproportionately vote on Election Day. The other is that Democrats are more determined to vote.
While I think the risk of a Trump victory is sky high, I see some reason for optimism in Trump possibly peeking too soon, as in — right now. We literally need the skies to rain on his parade.
As much as I would like that to be a “good summary” of where things stand I remain unconvinced.
The conventional wisdom on the boards among some posters seem to be that the polls must be wrong for it to be this close. As frustrating as it is that it is still a coin flip I don’t know how we are supposed to be certain there is a serious polling error.
I find it baffling this race is this close when it is clear one of the candidates is such a mess and is clearly in some type of cognitive decline. But rather than it being a polling error I am concerned the closeness is due to much greater misogyny and racism than I thought was still present in the electorate at large.
I hope to be proved wrong on election day but the longer things stay this way the more likely I suspect DJT will win a second term.
Trump needs an October surprise, and it still isn’t happening. And Helene and Milton did nothing to move the needle in his favor.
Not to mention places like the NYT “sane washing” trumps more …well… insane comments.
I said that once and several posters pointed out that polls can never be 'wrong"- but then, of course they can not be right either.
Spreading more rat poison?
I really don’t think kos is sugarcoating anything. He knows that the race is close but thinks that we have the edge.
It’s relevant because there is still time left in the race. 16 days and change. Things can still happen.
Have there been any polls yet that should have captured the public’s reaction to that?
He is clearly reasoning based on 2022 and the red wave that wasn’t.
See my epistemic thesis above. 
If it turns out to have been a squeaker, then your saying right now that it’s a tie will be correct; if not, not.
We’re not. But in 16 days and change (or longer, depending on the closeness), we will know whether there is now or isn’t.
Well… that’s tricky, inasmuch as Harris is doing better than Biden was. So she is doing relatively better, but she isn’t smashing Trump, so perhaps what’s preventing that is misogyny and racism? Quite possible. I would say factors are these:
- Biden shouldn’t have run. We wasted at least some time by having to switch candidates (although there was the thrill of the surprise factor, etc.). But Biden initially being seen as losing to Trump was, as an isolated factor, a negative. Further, while Harris has run a great campaign from where she started, she probably could have run a devastating campaign at an earlier point in time (though there would have been no guarantee, in a normal primary, that she would have won).
- Biden never really achieved great popularity or sold his accomplishments well. He was a shit communicator as president. That was a huge factor in the failure of his own campaign and the American people’s ongoing misunderstanding about the strength of the economy, etc.
- Regardless of where we are today relative to Trump’s performance during the pandemic, people are understandably nostalgic for prepandemic days, and Trump was president then. It’s unfair, but it is what it is.
- Trump’s cultish base is substantial and intractable.
- There is the stupid faith, particularly among old people, that “R” really means “R.”
- The traditional media have utterly failed to respond to Trump’s hack of them and politics itself.
- Even though he is coming apart, Trump is an interesting and entertaining character. He’s a dangerous piece of shit, but even I find him compelling in certain ways. In 2024, life is boring and meaningless to a lot of people. There is a global malaise. Some people–probably a lot of people–would rather have politics make them feel something than, you know, serve the polity.
I think that pretty much covers it.
I don’t because I believe factors not captured by the polls will propel Harris to victory. If I am wrong, I will admit it in this thread in a few weeks.
More a bit in how misleading incomplete information can be.
What is missing first off is how favorably the opposition to Trump each time.
Clinton was unfortunately also disliked in 2016. Not as much as Trump was but close. She of course lost.
Biden was OTOH at about even. He of course won.
Harris is at about even.
She is also almost the exact same as Biden 2020 on “very” favorable to unfavorable as Biden was (looking at YouGov polls for this). Trump is the same underwater by 17 on the verys he was then. (Difference is that his numbers are more polarized: was 28 very favorable to 45 very unfavorable, now 33 to 50. Voters are more likely to either love or hate him and a full half are in the hate camp.)
Personally I think favorbility rating is meaningful but more the “very” numbers than the all. That number reflect the enthusiasm to come to vote for or against someone.
And it of course is relative to the numbers of the opposite side.
On both Harris is much more like Biden 2020 than Clinton 2016 with a minority loving Trump and half hating him. And not so many mild opinions.
It is really not the case. The forecasts can never be either but the poll predictions can be pretty accurate or wide off.
If the popular vote results nationally and in most states are closer than they typically are, say within two, or even a point and a half, or even a point, then the poll aggregations did an amazing job. Problem is in a close election one point off one way gives a completely different EC result than being off tin the other.
We don’t know that. We know that polls are at a tie for EC result.
But we know that the plus minus of what the polls say and the results are often off 3 or more one direction or the other. The election may in fact be a very solid win … one direction … or the other. Not close at all. Harris could win or lose the whole lot of those states within 3.
I think Kamala actually came at the perfect time. By being the emergency backup, she got to sail attack-free under the radar for most of the year up until the time Biden suddenly dropped out. She also got to have an opponent-free nomination process (although so did Biden.) She got to have the advantage of being the “by contrast” candidate - the worse Biden looked by summer, the better Kamala looked by contrast. The more fed-up and alarmed the electorate was about Biden, the greater the relief was when Kamala replaced him. She’s been the nominee for a short enough time that the honeymoon period is still ongoing or at least only starting to wind down. And the GOP hasn’t had time to really come up with a good attack plan against her, unlike Biden or Hillary, who’d been around forever.
This was the best possible timing Kamala could have had. If she’d been the nominee since February, it wouldn’t have been as good.
I totally agree with this assessment. Heck, she might not even be the nominee had Biden not been running during the primary season.
I basically agree with it too. I think it’s a net positive, but there are negative and positive factors within it that add up to the net positive.
Biden had originally said that he would be a one-term president. Had he stuck with that and groomed and positioned Kamala to be the candidate, we could possibly be in a better position now. But there are a lot of moving parts in that hypothetical.
But the more important and less arguable thing is that Biden should have communicated better throughout his administration so that either he or another candidate could have better reaped the rewards of his successes.
Yeah, we could have wound up with a doucheoid like Gavin… though, who knows, he himself might have done better against Trump. White male and all that jazz.
I’m the broken record but a systematic polling error of two or three is typical. Betting on there being one is not taking a long shot position. And when polls are this close an error of one is serious enough to tip it to whichever way that error falls.
There is no way to be sure which direction any such error will land and guesses are based on punditry and gut feelings. On the non-polling reasons we have.
I’ve said it many times. About half of America will vote for
Anyone (R)
over
Jesus Christ Himself (D)
It’s no deeper than that. Don’t try to find meaning. They are voting for (R), not for trump or Vance or in prior years Bush, or Romney, or McCain, or Nixon, or Reagan or … They are voting for (R) and that sort of thinking accounts for roughly 50% of the population who ever vote.
We have had many many Dopers, including me, say at various times “I would vote for a chimpanzee with a D behind their name before I’d ever vote for an R president.” Plenty of Rs feel the same way in reverse.
It’s about the stereotypical fantasy basket of policies they think every R or D president will deliver or prevent being delivered. They know which fantasy basket they want and which they hate with all their might. That’s all there is to the decision of who to vote for. The candidates as people, be they good, bad, or appalling, don’t even enter into the thinking.
The one place candidate quality might get involved is in deciding whether to bother to vote. Especially if somebody plans to do it in person on the day.
(I’m learning some board coding things from your post…)
Yeah, it’s the inertia of the Republican brand. Stupid but a thing.
Not I. Right now, if I had the choice between going ahead with the election as it stands or having Mitt Romney step in and with 100% certainty be the next president, I would choose the latter. That is, the certainty of a normal Republican becoming president would be preferable to the current risk of Trump redux.
It’s hard to remember what having a normal Republican as president is like because that hasn’t been the case since 1993, when Bush Sr. left the scene. (To be fair, Bush Jr. probably wanted to be normal but was not up to dealing with the circumstances he faced, being a fucking idiot.)
I endorse the rest of what you said as well.