2020 US Elections | Biden certified as President | Dems control Congress

Status
Not open for further replies.
I think getting senate representation for DC and PR is more likely than changing the electoral system.

If the Dems do win the Senate and the Presidency, do people here think it is likely?


@oneniltothearsenal what's the argument the book has against the senate playing a role to give every opinion a fair shout and not giving the herd living in close proximity an outsized voice (something which I hear from people who are pro electoral college)?
 
SinNombre said:
I think getting senate representation for DC and PR is more likely than changing the electoral system.

If the Dems do win the Senate and the Presidency, do people here think it is likely?


@oneniltothearsenal what's the argument the book has against the senate playing a role to give every opinion a fair shout and not giving the herd living in close proximity an outsized voice (something which I hear from people who are pro electoral college)?
Click to expand...
That's a reasonable argument, and you don't want big population centres to dominate everything. On the other hand, urban centres is also where you find most minorities, who are thus underrepresented now as much as rural areas would be otherwise. Also, the population difference between urban and rural areas probably constantly increases; at which point does the relative disparity in political influence switch from 'reasonable to give rural regions a voice' to 'this makes no sense anymore'?
 


I like some of the replies to this. Some simply deny that Ted Kaufman proposed those cuts, though the article is still up on his website (I could find it by googling his name and social security). Some are taking at absolute face value Anita Dunn's account of what she told Harvey Weinstein. One person is saying that a member of the team (Zients) was nice to her so how can he be bad...

Btw, each of these people have had extensive edits to their wikipedia pages in June and August 2020.
 
Last edited:
berbatrick said:


I like some of the replies to this. Some simply deny that Ted Kaufman proposed those cuts, though the article is still up on his website (I could find it by googling his name and social security). Some are taking at absolute face value Anita Dunn's account of what she told Harvey Weinstein. One person is saying that a member of the team (Zients) was nice to her so how can he be bad...

Btw, each of these people have had extensive edits to their wikipedia pages in June and August 2020.
Click to expand...


That looks like a solid list. I hope Sally Yates gets the AG job.
 
berbatrick said:


I like some of the replies to this. Some simply deny that Ted Kaufman proposed those cuts, though the article is still up on his website (I could find it by googling his name and social security). Some are taking at absolute face value Anita Dunn's account of what she told Harvey Weinstein. One person is saying that a member of the team (Zients) was nice to her so how can he be bad...

Btw, each of these people have had extensive edits to their wikipedia pages in June and August 2020.
Click to expand...

Some of the replies there are a lot more down to earth about it than I expected. This is one of those fight fire with fire type of situations. Nothing to feel warm n fuzzy about other than that the Biden campaign is clearly arming itself to the teeth to take on the mob.
 
berbatrick said:


I like some of the replies to this. Some simply deny that Ted Kaufman proposed those cuts, though the article is still up on his website (I could find it by googling his name and social security). Some are taking at absolute face value Anita Dunn's account of what she told Harvey Weinstein. One person is saying that a member of the team (Zients) was nice to her so how can he be bad...

Btw, each of these people have had extensive edits to their wikipedia pages in June and August 2020.
Click to expand...

Kamala Harris had here wikipedia page edited as well prior to being announced as VP
 
SinNombre said:
I think getting senate representation for DC and PR is more likely than changing the electoral system.

If the Dems do win the Senate and the Presidency, do people here think it is likely?


@oneniltothearsenal what's the argument the book has against the senate playing a role to give every opinion a fair shout and not giving the herd living in close proximity an outsized voice (something which I hear from people who are pro electoral college)?
Click to expand...

The book talks about the electoral college, not the Senate. (but as a sidenote I would the say the Senate hardly gives "every opinion a fair shout" but that's for a different post).
The book is concerned with the electoral college that elects the President of the United States, why should a citizen from Wyoming be given 70 times the influence on electing the President that someone that lives in LA County or NYC?
 
So, I've been getting these ads all week on Facebook.

Either Biden's lead isn't what it purports to be, or Biden campaign cherry-picking polls for marketing campaigns to try to score more donations by scare tactics.
3wAsO6z.png
 
Carolina Red said:
They’re citing the Emerson poll

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_biden-6247.html
Click to expand...

It's one of those things where clearly Quinnipiac and Emerson can't both be right. And with COVID, the mail-in fiascos and voter suppression, personally I think it could go either way at this point.

On a tangent, I was really saddened to see an old friend get into arguments with some other old friends on the FB and basically use language straight from QAnon garbage and then even reference QAnon. It's amazing how widespread that and Plandemic stuff has become. People I would not have suspected of being susceptible to that rubbish are getting into heated discussions with friends of 20-30 years. Another friend observed that its people who have either lost their job or can't work due to COVID that seem most susceptible to these wing-nut theories. Bracing myself for this election. Stay safe in Carolina!
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
It's one of those things where clearly Quinnipiac and Emerson can't both be right. And with COVID, the mail-in fiascos and voter suppression, personally I think it could go either way at this point.

On a tangent, I was really saddened to see an old friend get into arguments with some other old friends on the FB and basically use language straight from QAnon garbage and then even reference QAnon. It's amazing how widespread that and Plandemic stuff has become. People I would not have suspected of being susceptible to that rubbish are getting into heated discussions with friends of 20-30 years. Another friend observed that its people who have either lost their job or can't work due to COVID that seem most susceptible to these wing-nut theories. Bracing myself for this election. Stay safe in Carolina!
Click to expand...
I’ve noticed that myself. They’re looking for answers and clinging to whatever makes them feel better. It’s kinda sad.

And same here. Gonna do my best!
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
So, I've been getting these ads all week on Facebook.

Either Biden's lead isn't what it purports to be, or Biden campaign cherry-picking polls for marketing campaigns to try to score more donations by scare tactics.
3wAsO6z.png
Click to expand...
He's just keeping the voters from becoming complacent. He said from the beginning, don't put faith in the polls.
 
What are the odds of 269-269 tie in this election? I was playing around with electoral map and it looks somewhat likely if Trump wins Florida and Pennsylvania and wins Maine's second congressional district. It's still very unlikely but it's 2020 so can't rule it out.
 
MuFc_1992 said:
What are the odds of 269-269 tie in this election? I was playing around with electoral map and it looks somewhat likely if Trump wins Florida and Pennsylvania and wins Maine's second congressional district. It's still very unlikely but it's 2020 so can't rule it out.
Click to expand...

i'm more convinced now than ever that trump will be winning on election night because his voters will go to polling booths, democrats/biden will actually win the election because of mail in's, and trump's stacked court will hand the election to trump by getting key state ballots caught up in lawsuits and invalidating them.
 
WPMUFC said:
i'm more convinced now than ever that trump will be winning on election night because his voters will go to polling booths, democrats/biden will actually win the election because of mail in's, and trump's stacked court will hand the election to trump by getting key state ballots caught up in lawsuits and invalidating them.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think there was a Bloomberg study that said Trump could win over 400 electoral college votes based on in person voting but Biden could come out on top after counting mail in ballots. I still hold out hope that some non trump appointee conservative judges will not blatantly side with him.
 
All Biden has to do it is not say anything divisive. Most Democrats who sat out the last election in protest (though they thought Trump was going to lose anyway) learned their listen. With the growing number of racial tensions, there will be a large group to make a concentrated effort to get out there. Harris is a play at three demographics, I don't like her, but I don't hate her given who is VP right now. A man who refuses to be alone in a room with a woman besides his wife because....god or something. Biden has to make a concentrated effort to talk to the people in the North, and see what he can do to make their lives easier. Hillary refused which made them resent her. Trump pumped their heads up with nonsense about clean coal and all that bullshit and it worked.
 
MuFc_1992 said:
Yeah, I think there was a Bloomberg study that said Trump could win over 400 electoral college votes based on in person voting but Biden could come out on top after counting mail in ballots. I still hold out hope that some non trump appointee conservative judges will not blatantly side with him.
Click to expand...

Multiple pollsters came out and said that article was full of lies and terrible analysis. The central point of that article, which you summarize there, is nonsense.
 
sport2793 said:
Multiple pollsters came out and said that article was full of lies and terrible analysis. The central point of that article, which you summarize there, is nonsense.
Click to expand...
Could be but there's definitely no doubt that Trump will win based on in person voting and pro trump sources will try to sell it as if Trump won the election. Also, Do you have any idea regarding the issue with mail in ballots in new york? I heard that around 20% of them were thrown out citing minor issues such as wrong stamps being used. If Trump is able to do the same than that will really eat into Biden's margins in close battleground states.
 
sport2793 said:
Multiple pollsters came out and said that article was full of lies and terrible analysis. The central point of that article, which you summarize there, is nonsense.
Click to expand...

don't think they'll actually call states for trump if there is good stats to show mail in's will be a large percentage of the count in X state, but the result will be contested in court in any scenario beyond a Reagan-like win on polling day for Biden.
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
It's one of those things where clearly Quinnipiac and Emerson can't both be right. And with COVID, the mail-in fiascos and voter suppression, personally I think it could go either way at this point.

On a tangent, I was really saddened to see an old friend get into arguments with some other old friends on the FB and basically use language straight from QAnon garbage and then even reference QAnon. It's amazing how widespread that and Plandemic stuff has become. People I would not have suspected of being susceptible to that rubbish are getting into heated discussions with friends of 20-30 years. Another friend observed that its people who have either lost their job or can't work due to COVID that seem most susceptible to these wing-nut theories. Bracing myself for this election. Stay safe in Carolina!
Click to expand...

The Emerson polling uses MTurk for their sample, which makes it extremely prone to uncharacteristic trends and overall makes them less reliable supposedly. The tweets below are from a guy who forecasts for the Economist and explains this more in depth. The last tweet refers to Trump having a positive net approval rating in the same poll questionaire that had Biden 49 to Trump 47. I don't think you can find another good quality poll taken over the last 2 years that has Trump at a positive net approval. Makes you definitely question the validity of the underlying poll data. Long story short, I think the Biden campaign is definitely cherry-picking polling data to scare people into giving them donations.
 
Last edited:
WPMUFC said:
don't think they'll actually call states for trump if there is good stats to show mail in's will be a large percentage of the count in X state, but the result will be contested in court in any scenario beyond a Reagan-like win on polling day for Biden.
Click to expand...

Florida will supposedly have most of their results in by election night as they improved their practices post 2000 after that fiasco. Biden would win FL if the election were held today so if that trend holds, I think it would be impossible for Trump to declare any sort of victory on election night. Of course, he might try to declare victory or claim that the election is rigged on Nov. 3 but it wouldn't be credible if Biden can score a victory in FL.

I don't think Biden would need a Reagan-like performance to avoid a scenario where serious lawsuits would threaten his victory, Obama 2008 should be sufficient.
 
MuFc_1992 said:
Could be but there's definitely no doubt that Trump will win based on in person voting and pro trump sources will try to sell it as if Trump won the election. Also, Do you have any idea regarding the issue with mail in ballots in new york? I heard that around 20% of them were thrown out citing minor issues such as wrong stamps being used. If Trump is able to do the same than that will really eat into Biden's margins in close battleground states.
Click to expand...

Well that's the only thing that would stop a Biden victory at this point and why Lichtman in his election prediction gave voter suppression as the main caveat to him predicting that Biden would win. Well that or COVID-19 miraculously disappearing. As a physician and biomedical researcher, I can tell you the latter point is impossible and, in fact, the virus is going to be much much worse this fall than what was observed in the spring. Even if a vaccine is pushed through politically prior to election day, it wouldn't be distributed widely enough to prevent reaching 300,000 deaths sadly.
 
sport2793 said:
Florida will supposedly have most of their results in by election night as they improved their practices post 2000 after that fiasco. Biden would win FL if the election were held today so if that trend holds, I think it would be impossible for Trump to declare any sort of victory on election night. Of course, he might try to declare victory or claim that the election is rigged on Nov. 3 but it wouldn't be credible if Biden can score a victory in FL.

I don't think Biden would need a Reagan-like performance to avoid a scenario where serious lawsuits would threaten his victory, Obama 2008 should be sufficient.
Click to expand...
Biden is only up 1.8 percent in Florida according to RCP average but their averages are all brought down by polls by Trafalgar group which apparently have close ties with Trump campaign and were instructed to release polls that showed Trump winning because Trump wants to look at polls that has him winning. Do you recon we can completely ignore that poll?
Also how can Florida count mail in ballots on the election night itself? I've heard that it might take up to 2 weeks for all the mail in ballots to be counted.
 
MuFc_1992 said:
Biden is only up 1.8 percent in Florida according to RCP average but their averages are all brought down by polls by Trafalgar group which apparently have close ties with Trump campaign and were instructed to release polls that showed Trump winning because Trump wants to look at polls that has him winning. Do you recon we can completely ignore that poll?
Also how can Florida count mail in ballots on the election night itself? I've heard that it might take up to 2 weeks for all the mail in ballots to be counted.
Click to expand...

Both are good questions. With regards to the RCP average, multiple forecasters with good reputations say that the issue with the RCP average is that they don't account for "house-effects", i.e. the right-ward or left-ward leaning bias that a poll may have. I think the 538 forecast (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/florida/) is generally pretty solid as they account for this sort of bias while remaining conservative in their estimates and allowing for more uncertainty in the data. 538 do include pollsters like Trafalgar and Zogby so that they are at least accounting a little bit for any truth that could be present in that data. At this moment in time, their forecast will predict a tighter race than the polls may suggest (1.4% in FL as of today) and then, if the polls maintain the same trend closer to election day, the forecast difference between Biden and Trump will widen. I think the other thing to look at is that in most polls, Biden is close to or at 50%, which is a good sign that any undecided voters would likely not change the final result, unlike 2016. Margin of victory in the polls isn't as important in this scenario. Of course, effective voter suppression can throw all of this out of the window as forecasts and polling only look at "intended voting", not whether votes will be cast and accepted or thrown out.

I am not completely sure how Florida will be faster to call on election night than other states but have seen multiple reputable sources recently mention that FL has better vote reporting mechanisms than most other states, which could allow for a victor to be credibly declared on election night. Again, not sure how that works if true.

EDIT: Should also mention Rasmussen as a pollster to watch out for in having significant right-leaning bias. They were completely off in the 2018 midterms as a result. Still it's good to include these polls and adjust them in any final analysis to cover all bases.
 
sport2793 said:
Both are good questions. With regards to the RCP average, multiple forecasters with good reputations say that the issue with the RCP average is that they don't account for "house-effects", i.e. the right-ward or left-ward leaning bias that a poll may have. I think the 538 forecast (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/florida/) is generally pretty solid as they account for this sort of bias while remaining conservative in their estimates and allowing for more uncertainty in the data. 538 do include pollsters like Trafalgar and Zogby so that they are at least accounting a little bit for any truth that could be present in that data. At this moment in time, their forecast will predict a tighter race than the polls may suggest (1.4% in FL as of today) and then, if the polls maintain the same trend closer to election day, the forecast difference between Biden and Trump will widen. I think the other thing to look at is that in most polls, Biden is close to or at 50%, which is a good sign that any undecided voters would likely not change the final result, unlike 2016. Margin of victory in the polls isn't as important in this scenario. Of course, effective voter suppression can throw all of this out of the window as forecasts and polling only look at "intended voting", not whether votes will be cast and accepted or thrown out.

I am not completely sure how Florida will be faster to call on election night than other states but have seen multiple reputable sources recently mention that FL has better vote reporting mechanisms than most other states, which could allow for a victor to be credibly declared on election night. Again, not sure how that works if true.

EDIT: Should also mention Rasmussen as a pollster to watch out for in having significant right-leaning bias. They were completely off in the 2018 midterms as a result. Still it's good to include these polls and adjust them in any final analysis to cover all bases.
Click to expand...
Do you recon there is such thing as silent Trump voter phenomenon? I hear it being touted regularly by some left leaning channels in youtube.
 
MuFc_1992 said:
Do you recon there is such thing as silent Trump voter phenomenon? I hear it being touted regularly by some left leaning channels in youtube.
Click to expand...

Pollsters/forecasters are pretty adamant that the data shows it's not that prevalent and this is just a headline that can attract clicks to news sites. What pollsters/forecasters do say though is that there is a lot of data that people do believe that there are a lot of silent Trump voters out there, mainly due to the shock of 2016.
 
sport2793 said:
Pollsters/forecasters are pretty adamant that the data shows it's not that prevalent and this is just a headline that can attract clicks to news sites. What pollsters/forecasters do say though is that there is a lot of data that people do believe that there are a lot of silent Trump voters out there, mainly due to the shock of 2016.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I really don't think they'd be silent anymore considering how vocal rest of them are although I can see some rich socially liberal types holding nose and voting for trump just for the tax benefits.
 
sun_tzu said:
Wasn't clinton higher that that according to 538?
Click to expand...

Different model used in 2016 compared to now so you can't compare to Clinton's numbers. The current model adjusts for lessons learned from 2016 polling errors I believe.
 
sport2793 said:
Different model used in 2016 compared to now so you can't compare to Clinton's numbers. The current model adjusts for lessons learned from 2016 polling errors I believe.
Click to expand...

Yes, correct. I might be wrong but I think I read it is adjusted for "shy Trumpers".
 
sport2793 said:
Different model used in 2016 compared to now so you can't compare to Clinton's numbers. The current model adjusts for lessons learned from 2016 polling errors I believe.
Click to expand...
Hopefully 2024 numbers don't have to be adjusted for election rigging. :nervous:
 
SirAF said:
Yes, correct. I might be wrong but I think I read it is adjusted for "shy Trumpers".
Click to expand...

I don't think so? I'm pretty sure Nate Silver is on record many times as saying he doesn't believe in the Shy Trump Voter. It's more that the model is better at weeding out polls with bad methodology (such as not weighting properly for education), I believe.
 
MuFc_1992 said:
Do you recon there is such thing as silent Trump voter phenomenon? I hear it being touted regularly by some left leaning channels in youtube.
Click to expand...

They definitely exist. I was shocked over the weekend to see an old friend I never would have imagined as a Trump supporter posting QAnon stuff, claiming he was part of # walkaway and the "silent majority". They definitely exist, but how prevalent is unknown.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.