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NYT: Trump Leads in 5 Critical States as Voters Blast Biden, Times/Siena Poll Finds
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.
Prediction markets are of course reflecting not just the current polls (which are disastrous for Biden) but also the realistic prospect that Trump will be in prison at the time of the election.
Is there protocol for that? Is he even eligible at that point? Does he reign from prison? Is he released? Can he release himself? Seems like I should know these things.
He can pardon himself for federal crimes, which are the ones he will likely be convicted of first. The Georgia case will be a lot messier, but also it's unlikely to conclude before the election (unless Willis can get another dozen people to take plea deals).
I think it's pretty unlikely that he wins from prison though. Even if he apparently has the nomination sewn up by that point, there's still the prospect of the GOP pulling some kind of shenanigans at the convention to give the nomination to someone else. And if they really do go ahead and try to win with their candidate in prison, they probably lose.
You think the Dems will go that far versus just being an election stunt? Regardless of whether he was guilty or not it looks like a huge issue for Democracy if they put him in jail before the election.
I still work on a model that they want bad press. Winning an election thru the criminal justice system seems wrong and a threat to half the country trusting the system. I’m not sure we can come back from that which makes me think the power brokers would back off from going quite that far.
After the election there’s no reason to prosecute Trump.
If he is truly guilty (and obviously that is a big if) then not jailing him is also a huge issue for democracy. It will unambiguously show that the powerful do not have to follow the same rules as everyone else, that ex-Presidents are not held to the same standards as the common man. Which has probably always been true, but that is one reason politicians often step down at the whiff of scandal. So the curtain is not entirely pulled back.
Of course they aren't, this is priced in, it's standard wisdom. We try not to prosecute the previous president so as not to become a banana republic.
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