How can Donald Trump win at this point?

Politics & Elections
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3270

OK, fair enough - in my opinion there have been two, both of whom have horrendous track-records in their “fellas, thank me later because you heard it here first” prognostications. I feel like Velocity is more of a “hit and run” guy without any substance to his “meh, we got it in the bag, she’s gonna get 400 EVs” claims.

Our friend the OP - to his credit - will back up his beliefs with cites, data, and substance, but he’s the one who (sincerely? I guess?) asked back in August “how can he win at this point” but refuses to acknowledge any legitimate answers to that question without a “yeah, but”.

3271

Okay, thank you.

I would call that a mischaracterization, but not a gross one. I mean, it’s a debate, right? So I debate back. But I’ve altered my stance along the way as Harris has continued to do well but failed to crush the Shambling Ocher Obscenity.

3272

We can’t stop you.

Funny thing is that “the polls” (rather the modelers who use the polls as their inputs) complete agree with your assessment that one or the other will win and the polls can’t at this point rule out a sweep of the swing states, by one, or by the other. In fact I think Nate Cohn pointed out that one of those two options was more likely than a very close result.

3273

It seems your main beef here is with Aeschines and their optimism. I can only think of one poster who has been giddily predicting a Harris win with an absurd number of EVs based on the Ds winning in TX, FL, the Dakotas, Alaska and some other ridiculous places. Most others have been rather cautious.

I don’t know if you saw my post above about the likelihood Harris will lose MI and thus the election or not. While I am trying to stay optimistic this is the type of information that makes it very difficult for me to remain so. With each day it seems more likely DJT will win this thing.

3274

The refusal to be polled isn’t on one side. You can make an argument that it is weighted to one side or another but many people refuse to answer polls or anyone you contacts them out of the blue. Me included.

3275

And yet the only numbers that are way off are Trumps. Look at the polls in 2020 and 2016, their error was entirely on the Trump side. Biden’s and Clinton’s numbers were almost dead on.

3276

The point is that all the numbers are crap.
I get that it is impossible to make money with a high quality poll when the competition just calls their parents and calls it good. But the media should stop reporting on all the crap polls. And we also should stop discussing the relative value of talking heads “analyzing” crap data.
The individual polls are so useless that even meta-polls are inconclusive.

3277

The problem we get is that the crap polls get averaged into the number that gets put into everybody’s graph. Not only are polls a problem, the average from them has no meaning.

3278

You should read one of the various polling threads. Briefest version, no that is NOT how it works. Amazingly the aggregators and forecast modelers know shit from shinola.

To the subject of the OP. Credulousness, believing absurd stuff and repeating it, amplifying it within your silo, is endemic. Clearly. Team Trump takes advantage of it more, but they can win because people in general frequently uncritically believe the obviously false, repeat it, because somehow the false statement makes them feel better.

3279

Why are those people who know “shit from shinola” insisting on publishing poll after poll with such margins of error that they have 0 predictive power?
I’ll predict something: none of the polls can tell us something useful, just like they didn’t in 2016, 2018, etc. etc.

People are comparing polling for elections with forecasting the weather, LOL.
The weather is a super complicated system that can only be modeled roughly, based on derived numbers.

Elections are about what a finite number of people will vote for, you can ask as many as you like, you can take as long as you like.
It is not unreasonable to assume that practically nobody has changed their minds about whether they will vote or who they’ll vote for in the last 5 months.
If you cannot reliably predict this simple system, you are not fit to own a calculator let alone call your outfit a “polling company” - that is exactly what they don’t do enough of - they are not polling enough people. They do publish a lot of crap.

3280

Apologies if this has already been mentioned and I didn’t see it, but here’s a potential monley wrench:

A panel of three Donald Trump-appointed judges said Friday that Mississippi was violating federal law by counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day, but stopped short of blocking the policy before the election, in a ruling that could nevertheless impact voting-related lawsuits this fall.

(Emphasis added)

Even as the ruling has no immediate effect on the coming election, it could help propel any legal challenges that Republicans seek to bring against any of the roughly other 20 states and jurisdictions that count ballots arriving after Election Day. Nevada’s policies allowing the late arrival of mail ballots are already being challenged in state and federal court by Republicans, but courts in those cases so far have rejected those arguments.

(I don’t know what the rules are in the other states which allow counting ballots received after election day, but here in the Soviet of Washington ballots which are postmarked on or before election day will be included.)

3281

If you care to read the polling threads where we have had this discussion ad nauseum please do. I’m not going to repeat the same things again here.

3282

How can Trump win? It’s simple. There is a contingent of Americans who doubt the threat of the right, doubt the promise of mass deportations and unchecked Presidential power and Trump’s grievance agenda. They think this election is like every other election.

Oh sure, they’ve heard the same information. But they see it just like the right has been accusing the left of being communists since forever. “Communist, fascist, name calling and hyperbole. The outcome of the election won’t really affect most people’s everyday life.”

Except the last Trump election has had a very real event on a lot of people’s lives - the SC appointments that canned Roe v. Wade and set up the abortion bans.

But these people don’t see the deportations as reality, don’t believe Trump will try to overturn Democracy. It isn’t real to them.

It’s all a regular election with R vs. D and the rest is hype. Dems are crazy to actually think Democracy is at stake. To believe Trump when he says he will go after his opponents. To worry about immigrants, transgender people, etc. To worry about Projdct 2025.

Those are the people that can make Trump win.

3283

How is this supposed to work? If anything at all is clear from Trump’s muddled, half-baked, incoherent excuse for foreign policy, it’s that he’s adamantly pro-Israel and adamantly pro-Russia. Trump is the one who moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump is the one who tried to bar Muslims from the US and who incited a culture of hostility within the CPB against anyone who even looked like a Muslim trying to enter the country.

Are you implying that these 400K Arab-Americans are just stupid, or that they’ve been bamboozled by Trumpist propaganda? I don’t see how any Muslim in their right mind could possibly vote for Trump, or do anything other than vote for the one viable candidate who can prevail against him. Of course, I don’t see how anyone in their right mind could possibly vote for Trump, but Muslims have special reasons to be fearful of him.

3284

I mean…at a certain point, it doesn’t really matter whether we think these Muslim voters’ reasons to vote Trump, vote third party, or abstain from voting, are logical or not. If that’s what they intend to do, that’s what they will do. All that is needed is for them to feel it’s the valid/correct course of action.

Telling them that they must vote for Team Harris - despite the colossal loss of life and grievous harm in Gaza - because Team Trump would mean something even worse - isn’t persuasive to them.

3285

Though you aren’t questioning me, I posted about this very thing up thread, specifically about a CBC piece about Muslim voters in Michigan:

3286

I feel these people (young people + Arabs/Muslims) who refuse to vote Harris for the current conflict in the ME could have a fairer representation in this thread. Earlier there were several posts about how stupid they are and cutting off their nose to spite their face. I don’t think that’s an accurate representation of their reasoning or feelings on the matter.

Now I am lucky not to have to make this decision, in The Netherlands I can vote for a party that properly represents me in a multiparty system, and the UK disenfranchised me so that’s done.

But I do understand having a red line. Not if that red line is voting for a black woman, that just makes you a terrible person. But a red line being: I cannot in good conscience vote for someone if that makes me complicit in genocide. Or a red line being: I cannot in good conscience vote for someone who breaks our own laws in sending weapons to another country, because it would make me complicit.

For some people, the complicity, the heaviness of the subject, might simply make it a red line and let the chips fall where they may, at least you weren’t complicit. You just really can’t stomach it.

For others, there may even be strategy — not saying strategy I support — but the idea that Trump winning and things getting really, really bad, in the long term will bring about real change. Even in the short term, the loss of international standing being, at the very least, honest. Even if it’s detrimental to them personally, in terms of other policy.

You can be angry at them and say they’re cutting off their nose to spite their face, but you’d be more effective encouraging the Democrats to do better in their policy. There’s video of Walz saying the expansion of Israel is a necessity, fer chrissakes. There should absolutely be a way to balance this issue better, stop sending weapons and be a bit tougher towards Netanyahu & his cronies, while not upsetting the American Jewish voters. It should be possible to show more respect for international law, the UN, outcomes of findings of commissions, the international community. The death of Sinwar was a really good time for an October surprise change in message. Call them out, not the people who feel complicity in genocide of their own people is the red line they cannot cross.

Like, yeah, if you’re not voting at all because you disagree with the exact timeline of implementation of healthcare policies, you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face. This is not that. I agree it would suck if Harris loses because these people refuse to vote for her (and I’m really scared that this will happen)! But I think your anger is better directed at the Democratic Party.

(Not directed at you personally, velomont, I just replied to this post to indicate the part of the thread I’m responding to.)

3287

I think you are overestimating the importance of these Arab voters. If you remove ones who aren’t eligible to vote, who won’t vote, and who already vote republican it really isn’t a very big population of voters who may flip and then certainly not all of those are going to be convinced. It could matter in a really close election, but is unlikely to make a difference if Harris would otherwise be up more than a half a point or so. I still think Michigan is the safest of the blue wall states for Harris.

3288

I get that, and I understand why people would have those red lines, however, if I voter thinks with any sort of big picture pragmatism, they should be able to figure out that voting for Trump won’t magically resolve the middle east situation due to the million historical and political complexities inherent in that situation; and, of course, the democracy thing.

Also, though I could easily criticize voters per:

I say that wrt all voters who do that, regardless of religion or ethnicity or whatever because I think that it’s wrong to vote only for one’s own best interest; I genuinely and sincerely believe that we should be aiming for what’s best for the species, and Trump definitely isn’t that.

3289

Looking from the outside it might seem like Michigan has the largest Muslim population in the country. In reality they are 5th or 6th in raw numbers and in percentage of population. Since the states with higher numbers aren’t battlegrounds no one cares about how they are voting.