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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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NYT: Trump Leads in 5 Critical States as Voters Blast Biden, Times/Siena Poll Finds

Across the six battlegrounds — all of which Mr. Biden carried in 2020 — the president trails by an average of 48 to 44 percent.

Add it all together, and Mr. Trump leads by 10 points in Nevada, six in Georgia, five in Arizona, five in Michigan and four in Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden held a 2-point edge in Wisconsin.

This is a bit of a surprise to me, considering PredictIt has Biden up 42 vs Trump 37 (the rest are Newsom, DeSantis, etc), and Biden is at 53% on Manifold. ElectionBettingOdds.com has had Trump up for weeks now, though, so make of that as you will.

But the real reason I wanted to share the NYT article is just how delusional I thought the comments are. I'll post the top five, by number of reader recommends (i.e. upvotes).


Stats about the polling:

The polls of 3,662 registered voters were conducted by telephone using live operators Oct. 22-Nov. 3. The margin of sampling error for each state is from 4.4 to 4.8 percentage points. ...by telephone using live operators. Again with the voice call polling. So in other words people answering a phone call from unknown caller. This is anecdotal but I don't know anyone under 50 who answers a call from numbers they don't recognize or don't hang up when it sounds like a telemarketer.

41 Replies 1254 Recommend


What were the demographics of those who gave their views? And these individuals contacted, were they only speaking on land line phones? Very important considerations in determining the validity of such a survey.

21 Replies 634 Recommend


Regarding the folks who voted for Biden last time, yet will be supporting Trump in 2024 that were mentioned in the article, what I can't understand is if they voted for Biden solely because Trump's behavior turned them off, how is it that they are suddenly okay with it now? I'm especially baffled by this given that Trump's worst action was the Jan. 6 insurrection in my opinion, and that occurred after the 2020 Election.

7 Replies 591 Recommend


More than anything, these polls remind me that the Republicans are vastly superior at controlling the narrative and perceptions. Terrible at actually governing, but brilliant at marketing - especially fear-based marketing.

3 Replies 551 Recommend


The actual numbers on the economy don't translate to relief for working families. 6 years ago I could buy lunch from a food cart near work for $6. Now it's $11. Rent has increased by nearly 50 percent in that time, too. My income sure has not.

The people buying lunch are feeling it. So are the food cart owners.

The unfortunate part of this is Trump (or any other Republican running) won't do a thing to curb inflation or reorient the economy in favor of normal people. He's going to give more handouts to rich friends and billionaires.

Worse yet, he's going to head an anti-labor administration whose NLRB made it almost impossible to unionize. Biden still isn't the strong labor backer we need, as we saw with the rail workers strike, but it is at least much easier to organize under a Biden NLRB.

That's the only way working people are going to fix our economic situation: a president won't do it. We have to organize and demand a fair share of what we do.

14 Replies 510 Recommend


OK let me just share the next three because they're short:


These poll results defy common sense.

7 Replies 467 Recommend


never mind just the under 50. I'm over 70 and don't answer unknown callers. All this proves is the type of personality that answers unknown calls is more likely to vote for Trump.

In Reply to Darrell J 431 Recommend


How is this even possible? What a horrible headline to wake up to on a Sunday morning.

6 Replies 404 Recommend


I don't think the reader bias will surprise anyone, but what surprised me was just how emotionally skewed it seemed to be. It's like a mass mourning, with people trying to shoot the messenger (i.e. poll methodology) rather than accepting the message. The only comment that made sense to me, highlighting the perniciousness of inflation, still had to incorporate pot shots at Trump or the GOP. Anything for that upvote, I guess.

At any rate, I don't think this means all that much when we're a year out. No one knows where the economy will go in this time, or if Haley magically nabs the GOP nom, or if the Dems pull a 5D move and get Biden to withdraw after Trump gets the GOP nomination and have Newsom step in.

Have we considered that democrats are just down bad because voters blame them for screwing the pooch badly, even if the pooch screwing was mostly bipartisan?

I’ve seen polling results from the nov 7 elections- granted that none of them are in places that would be competitive in ‘24, unless it’s like a city council race or something equally meaningless- indicating that republicans are winning the generic ballot by a lot a lot. Trumps personal unpopularity just takes him from ‘winning Wisconsin by double digits, flipping New Mexico Virginia and Colorado, and having a decent shot at Minnesota’ to ‘ahead in every swing state but Wisconsin’.

I suppose the only mystery is why Wisconsin was the odd man out- it certainly seems like the reddest out of the rust belt swing states.

Wisconsin is one of the hardest states to poll in the country and definitely the hardest state to poll of the rust belt states because of their demographics and decentralized population. It's pretty hard to get a representative sample.

Trumps personal unpopularity just takes him from ‘winning Wisconsin by double digits, flipping New Mexico Virginia and Colorado, and having a decent shot at Minnesota’ to ‘ahead in every swing state but Wisconsin’.

No. Trump's popularity is what wins Wisconsin when he campaigns there or is on the ballot because he motivates voter turnout. When he's not or when [insert establishment GOP here] is running, they lose because they don't motivate voters to show up. Ron Johnson is an excellent example of this. Wisconsin is a Trump/MAGA state, not a GOP state. Mitt Romney lost Wisconsin by 7+ 2012 and McCant lost by 13+ points in 2008. The demos in Wisconsin didn't change much; the reason Trump won Wisconsin and won again 2020 absent illegal elections changes and obvious fraud is because the new working class/MAGA message resonates and motivate the voters there. This is the same story from the 2022 election when you compare the house seats to the state-wide offices.

which is why a dude like Dan Kelly was obliterated in the Supreme Court race 6 months ago despite the "generic ballot" looking great for the GOP at the time

This bogus claim that absent Trump the GOP would be killing it in the rustbelt states is a popular un-falsifiable belief of large portions of this forum and it's garbage and it has little support and a bunch of evidence against it. No, [insert GOP derp here] as presidential candidate wasn't going to win Wisconsin in 2016 or 2020.

Other Republicans poll worse than Trump against Biden. Trump is the only one polling a win.

Haley beats Biden by more than Trump does on current polling.

One, Haley likely loses every single rustbelt state and therefore the election. National election polling isn't the most predictive.

Two, current polling is what matters, not the average of a couple polls from months ago with one from a few weeks ago. In your own link, the one recent poll (within the last few weeks) has Biden beating Haley by 4 and Trump performing better in every single poll from the time of the last Haley Poll to now.

No, Haley doesn't beat Biden more than Trump. Not in polling and not in the state level polls which are the ones which matter.

not in the state level polls which are the ones which matter.

Has Haley even been polled vs Biden in state level polls?

Granted it's all a bit of an academic question at the moment - in practice the GOP nomination is a 1 horse race.

The question has been asked in some polls which then adjust and publish results for top-level questions like Trump v Biden or Trump v Desantis v Haley v etc. You can get that unadjusted data for these other questions in cross-tabs from some polling firms.

Oh hey, turns out NYT/Siena polled Haley v Biden in the same battleground states as they just did for Trump. So we have some recent direct comparisons from a reputable pollster.

GA: Haley +5 (equal with Trump)

AZ: Haley +9 (4 better than Trump)

NV: Haley +9 (2 worse than Trump)

PA: Haley +10 (5 better than Trump)

MI: Haley +10 (10 better than Trump)

WI: Haley +14 (16 better than Trump)

Doesn't seem like she loses every rustbelt state.

are these raw or adjusted? did you look at the poll or just link tweet?

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