I really think the media I’ve been consuming was primarily pro-Harris. Even on the Dope and even now. Its still very pro-Harris and anti-Trump.
THe polls were ‘close’. but the results were far from close.
Even on ‘regular news’ I’m hearing about getting help for ‘election anxiety’ which is catering to the Harris voters…I personally think that if Harris won, there would NOT be a similar ‘election anxiety’ push for those disappointed voters.
Why do you think you ‘really thought Harris would win’?
She wasn’t representing as a doofus.
I couldn’t imagine that there were many people that hadn’t voted for him previously would vote for him now. I also thought turnout would be high.
The results were close, we go through this every single time there’s a close polling miss. Trump winning all 7 swing states was the modal outcome of the final Nate Silver simulation of the election (followed by Harris winning all 7 swing states). The polling miss in this election has been entirely inline with historic elections.
It’s just that psychologically, we have an in built tendency that when we predict 49 and the result is 46, we go “wow, the polls were pretty close” but when we predict 49 and get 51, we wonder “wow, how could the polls have gotten it so wrong?”.
People are overreacting.
For the last month or so of the race the national media implied that Harris was gaining momentum. Pair that with the bizarre desperate comments being made daily by Trump led me to believe that the younger voters, Hispanics, and suburban women would push Harris to victory. Not an overwhelming victory, but a victory nonetheless. The media kept citing polls that were feeding this notion, so I tended to believe them. I also believed them because I wanted to believe them and couldn’t imagine anyone in their right mind would vote for Trump given the alternative. How wrong we were.
When she became the nominee there seemed to be a lot of positive energy behind her campaign that we weren’t seeing with Biden. While I thought Harris would win, I never thought it was a sure thing as I knew Trump had plenty of support. I’m both surprised and disappointed by how badly she lost.
In my case, I truly didn’t expect such a large percentage of the electorate to be taken in by a 9th grade bullying bullshitter who magically promised everything.
It turns out that most people are stupid.
The Asshole that won is a Convicted Felon, Serial Sexual-Abuser and Liar, Traitor and Con-Man.
Why the Fuck Would Anybody Vote for Him?
It was close the last time, and it’s done nothing but puke and shit and piss all over everything since.
And you wonder how people are dumb-struck over this???
Is it thirty five or thirty eight felony convictions?
Proven lies.
Perhaps some people did not want to vote for a woman.
Racist preferences came into play.
People who hate wokeness.
People who want to kill social security.
Heil Trump.
I though Harris would eke out a slim victory. And the the Dems would take back the House (and it is still barely possible, in any case the House will be too damned close to get any big stuff accomplished, so much for Plan 2525), and that the Dems would lose the Senate by one or two votes. I was hoping for another tie, that was the best I could hope for. (One senate race still open?)
The thought that trump would have a solid win, and the popular vote also was unthinkable.
The #1 reason- Inflation, something that started under trump, and that the White House cant "fix’. So due to economic illiteracy,
I tend to have a pretty low opinion of my fellow American and what passes for American “values,” but fool that I am, I did not think the assholes and fools were as many as they are. I foolishly thought that the arc did bend - ever so glacially - towards justice. I was wrong.
I don’t think anyone “led” me to that. As little faith as I have in my fellow citizens, I didn’t think them THIS bad.
Trump is a horror show. Has a worse candidate ever been popularly elected to a major country? Talk about unforced errors. Unfortunately, the entire world will suffer as a result. USA! USA!
I really thought Harris would win because of the hatred for Trump.
On the other hand, I acknowledge that the fear of Trump is overblown, but in the circles I run – especially on the internet – deem him an existential threat. I must always remember that that internet is filled with people that are 100% “on” all the time, and that calmer minds would prevail. In this case, calmer minds prevailed, despite what else might be in the varied minds that voted for him (no, they’re not all racist misogynistic assholes, because there are a lot of non-single-issue voters, and there are other issues).
Note: I’m not saying that I favor a Trump presidency; clearly I don’t. But I have not much fear of the Trump presidency.
I’ll admit I was definitely one of the most over-optimistic posters here, utterly sure Harris would win. Probably going with heart over head. I had made similar off predictions about Hillary and Biden.
For me, it was that I couldn’t fathom that Trump would seriously get elected again. But the Iowa Selzer poll, and Harris’ competence, etc. made me really think it. I thought that America was so sick of Trump that it would rather have a fresh new president for a change. Over 700,000 Republicans had died of Covid, IIRC, so I thought that must have worked to Harris’ advantage. On top of that, I was sure pollsters wouldn’t make the same pro-Trump polling error for the third straight time, and that they must have corrected or even over-corrected it this time so that it would be Kamala, not Trump, who’d outperform the polls on Election Night. I couldn’t think of a single way in which, compared to 2020, Trump would or should have gained any advantage - and he had lost in 2020, so it could only be worse this time for him. Harris had totally owned Trump in their sole televised debate. The Madison Square Garden comments about Puerto Rico being a garbage dump would have roasted him among Puerto Rican and Hispanic voters. This was a “change” election, and I thought American voters would think “change” meant “elect the lady” rather than “elect the same guy who was president before and who’s been covered ad nauseaum in the news for eight years.” Lastly, I thought that if voters were rejecting the 81-year old Biden because he was too old, then surely they would prefer the 59-year old Harris over the senile decrepit losing-it cognitive-decline 78-year old Trump.
Too much faith in my fellow human beings to realize what a monster Trump is. I really do not get how people like him. There is abundant evidence of the disaster he is and people ignore it.
I really do not understand this.
Amen.
I mean … it isn’t as if Trump tried to overthrow the legitimately elected US government, amirite?
Well … ami??
[Yes: I will stay in broken record mode as long as there’s a chance that people have forgotten the Alternate Slate of Electors scheme – hatched in roughly November 2020, and executed with the help of the hapless MAGA louts on 1/6/2021. If I forget to inject it in a thread where it would be relevant, I’d be grateful if you’d remind me. TIA]
I have no direct stake in this election being an indian woman living in India but I was hoping and expecting Kamala to win.
My hopes started to fade after speaking to my cousins, aunt, nephews and nieces living in usa…most of them (who were Hillary and Biden voters earlier) said they were voting for Trump…due to various reasons.
Crime, economy, illegal immigration and lgbtq issues were the topmost reasons they were saying for voting Trump.
One niece said “kamala statement that not a thing comes to mind which she would change from the biden policies” was the last straw for her.
I was shocked at the extent of vote drain from the previously “loyal democrat” indian american community.
Ofcourse all this is in my own small circle…and may not be representative on a bigger scale.
Tbh I’m still processing my disappointment.
First, at least for the last month, I DID NOT think Harris would win. Wanted her to win, hoped she would win but didn’t think it likely she would win.
I admit I was wrong in thinking the Arab American vote in MI would cost her the election but that was because I didn’t see it was a much larger problem than that.
The Democrats lost because of inflation and immigration. That’s really it. The GOP did a great job of whipping up fear about immigrants and the fake open border and in continuing the fiction that POTUS can control prices of food, housing, fuel, etc.
The Ds were supremely ineffective at making the public believe the economy was/is strong. Trump and the GOP won the propaganda campaign and the Harris team spent most of their time talking about what a horrible person DJT is rather than acknowledging the concerns about inflation and immigration.
you thought Harris would get 330 electoral votes. You weren’t optimistic, you were delusional.
I think the media was wildly pro-Trump. They sane washed him. They basically set up a dynamic where nothing he did wrong counted, and yet if Harris had one flaw, then you had to vote for Trump. Oh, sure, Trump called for the military to execute his enemies and then shat on stage. But give that 20 seconds and then we can go in a 10 minute deep dive on why Harris isn’t exciting black men like she should. They were desperately trying to create a false balance. Because actual balance was that Harris is a serious person that’s qualified to be president and Trump is an utter disaster. But they don’t want to call that out, so instead they downplayed massive Trump flaws and up played minor Harris flaws until their coverage was “balanced”
And I saw that attitude reflected in the public, too. They would follow the media narrative by picking minor flaws with Harris and ignoring massive flaws with Trump. I’m not even talking about the MAGA cultists, but just regular people.
And on top of that, Trump didn’t even seem like he was running a serious campaign. It was disaster after disaster. His rallies were meandering and boring, people were leaving. Even by Trump standards, he wasn’t as inspiring (to morons) as he was 8 years ago. His campaign staff was letting out every indication that they expected to lose. As Harris’ campaign seemed to be inspiring genuine enthusiasm, Trump’s campaign was going out with a senile whisper.
And I haven’t even addressed that we HAD Trump as president and it was a fucking disaster and I can’t believe people have forgotten about it in just 4 years. I could write a book on that, so I’m just going to leave it at that.