Harris Leads 2 to 1 With Early Voters

This is great news. Trust me folks, she is going to win.

GOOD NEWS

Woo-hooooooooo!!!!

My sister and I early-voted this past Friday; one of the poll workers told my sis they have NEVER seen such a turnout on the first day of early voting. And apparently it happened all over my state... which unfortunately is deep red outside the largest cities. But I live in hope.

My old Dad mailed in his ballot ten days ago; like his fellow Navy vet Jimmy Carter he was so proud to vote for Kamala!

Fingers crossed for MASSIVE Black turnout in every Southern and Midwestern states which will definitely flip some Red seats down ballot.

Yes! Let's fucking go!

Wait, I thought it was all doom and gloom.

I can’t keep up.

Trump discouraged early voting for years. Plus Democrats have always voted early more. Can’t really read much from this. Sorry.

Additionally, Harris has double digit leads in all the states she should win, I.e. West Coast, Northeast. Trump only leads by 5-7 in states he SHOULD have double digit leads like Texas and Florida.

Keep an eye on the states which don’t count the absentee ballots until Election Day. They’re the ones saying vote counting should stop at midnight or some bs and then, because day-of voting tends to be Republican and the shift to Democrats when all the mail-in votes are counted later is evidence of voter fraud!!! /s. Thank god Georgia’s court stopped the “all ballots must be counted by hand” crap.

R8 All that shit is hoopla. They cannot stop counting the votes just because they have run out of time. It’s never happen before in America and won’t be happening in 24.

I beez blatino, mafuckers!!!! Ole!!! 🌯 🫏 🌮

R10 I’m from St. Louis now? Boy bye. You are a joke.

I’m cautiously optimistic but memories of 2016 are still keeping me up at night. Don’t let up on GOTV efforts. We can do this but we have to keep a foot on the gas pedal.

r8 ahem

R12 you just have PTSD. Everything will be alright.

We gonna smoke his orange ass, y'all!

Sane Americans are sick of Trump's shit. This will end in tears...for Trump.

Today is the first day of early voting here in FL. I'm going to ride by my early voting polling place (different than the regular polling place) and see if there's a line, and if there's not, I'll pop in and vote.

If there's a line, I'll be shocked -- but ya never know.

In 2016, the undecideds broke big for Trump in the final days. He was an unknown to them, and they thought “let’s try a business leader.”

Hard to imagine that happening again. Indeed, given his increasingly erratic behavior, one might predict the opposite.

Nice summary

The GOP are pushing early voting.

Don't let ANYONE think we have it in the bag. Remember 2016.

More evidence.

Which tells us nothing, r22. That’s all over the place. We don’t know who’s voted or when or how many are left that are undecided and swinging in her direction.

It tells us that people who were undecided late are breaking for Harris, as one would expect given Trump’s behavior. That suggests that if there is a polling surprise, it will be a pro-Harris surprise.

Shit like this report does a disservice to the election. Now many voters who thought about voting for Harris but were on the fence, will stay at home, just as in 2016.

R25 calm down you nervous Mary.

Right. Because undecided voters are closely tracking polling analyses for signs that they can just stay home because the candidate that they sort of support has it in the bag. Makes perfect sense.

This isn't 2016. Most people understand what's at stake.

In 2016 Democrats thought Hillary would beat the orange clown in a landslide.

In 2020 Republicans thought The Donald would beat that "senile old man" in a landslide.

People do stay home or opt-out.

I def have PTSD from 2016 and refuse to be as hopeful as I was that November 5th - I've never felt so psychologically sick in my life as I did that night -- but I still have to admit that under that terror of repeating that I don't believe the polls and I think it will be a wipeout for Harris. They're flooding the models with nonsense Republican polls -- I simply cannot compute it being close when Trump's maniac behavior is doubling even his 2016 nonsense

People who don’t really give a shit stay home or opt out. Always have; always will.

<- My mom's neighbor has always been supermaga, but she was taken aback one day he told her he didn't vote. Supposedly his wife was raised Jehovah's Witness, so...

And many people don't want The Gov't, exes., etc. finding out their private information, under the delusion that they are living off the grid or some shit.

We need to be at 500k early votes in PA by election day in order for Dems to be in good shape. Currently at 325,118 votes.

[quote] They cannot stop counting the votes just because they have run out of time. It’s never happen before in America and won’t be happening in 24.

This is literally EXACTLY what happened in 2000 in Bush v Gore.

I voted this morning, the first day of early voting in Texas.

What r34 said. That is exactly what happened.

Incorrect. They were recounting votes in Florida. The recount was halted not the original. And it boiled to one state. The chances of this all boiling down to one state are slim.

The thing that keeps coming back into my mind is the remembrance of before the 2016 election when Pres. Obama went on national TV and tried to quell the fears so many had of Trump winning. He said "don't worry, Donald Trump is not going to be the President of the United States". Talk about words that came back to haunt him.

I count nothing out. Back then no one really knew just how many hate filled, mentally diseased and completely insane people we have in this country. And unfortunately most of these people are voters.

We voted this morning in reliably blue Austin after checking the voting wait times. Our place wasn’t crowded at 745 but started filling up as we voted. The other location in my zip as well as two others around the city were showing wait times of over 50 minutes at 730 AM. 💙

Some of yall seem to lack common sense. Do you think they just gon say—shucks we ran out of time, we aren’t counting the rest of the votes THAT HAVEN'T BEEN COUNTED YET. The shit would go all the way to the mafuckin Supreme Court and all 9 justices would vote that they must be counted. The state of Georgia is going to do whatever they have to do to meet that deadline. And if they don’t the Supreme Court will trump the fucking governor. Trump ain’t God. Kamala is the fucking sitting Vice President. Some of yall have PTSD from 2016. Every vote will be counted.

I was listening to a podcast interview of a Get Out the Vote organizer in Wisconsin. Their Dem volunteer game was very strong vs Musk’s weak outsourcing for Reps. As in they rarely saw them out on the street. But what I didn’t understand was, the Dem volunteers rang the doorbells of registered Dem voters to remind them to vote and Reps went to registered Republican voters houses. Does that mean nobody is hitting up the unregistered?

[quote]many driven by abortion access: new poll

I definitely think there’s a hidden “abortion vote” this year that’s not showing up in polling. Many people who don’t vote regularly are going to show up for this, and many women who typically vote Republican are going to change their mind or plan to vote Harris but aren’t saying it out loud.

I would really like to think the election will be a blowout in early results, leading the news outlets to call it before midnight on Election Day.

R42 There are also a lot of Republican voters that are quietly voting for Harris/Walz that are afraid to publicly say that because of the MAGA bullies/crazies. Yamiche Alcindor was reporting on that going on in Michigan a couple of weeks ago.

[quote] They were recounting votes in Florida. The recount was halted not the original.

The recount was halted because SCOTUS specifically determined that they were out of time.

Idiot.

R45 who you think you talking 2. Like I said it was a recount. Not the original count. They’ve fixed fucked up ballots. Idiot.

Do you think America and the Supreme Court is going to halt an ORIGINAL VOTE COUNT. There would be a fucking civil war. Call names and get disrespected again bitch.

It’s important that the major swing states like PA, MI, and WI all have Democratic Governors, which will help tamp down some of the Republican election fuckery like what went on in Florida in 2000.

R46 for the win.

This is excellent news. Please vote early, especially in swing states. Note that dump has been asking people to vote early at his Shitler rallies and it's not getting them out.

[quote]This isn't 2016. Most people understand what's at stake.

r28 is correct, this isn't 2016 and cognitively unimpaired voters are aware of the dynamic by which Clinton lost in 2016, that dynamic being essentially not thinking they needed to vote because she was inevitable.

This is unqualified good news for Harris/Walz. If you look at the percentages of people who plan to vote on election day Dump has the lead there but not enough of a lead to address the delta of voters who have already commuted their votes to Harris/Walz.

Something else to be aware of and consider:This was a fucking LANDLINE poll. This indicates the likely voter pool of respondents were not young and probably over 65. I've long believed Dobbs/Abortion is much more of a driving factor than the polls are capturing and if people past childbearing age are voting for Harris with such enthusiasm and in these numbers, it is a strong bet younger women AND men who will pay the price for lack of abortion services are at least as motivated as their parents

R50 100%. I personally believe the Democrats are playing up how close it is to make sure people go vote. Democrats want us to be scared.

The best part is Dump is his own worst enemy. Just letting him talk loses votes.

Now, I'm not so sure those votes will go to Kamala, but as long as they don't go to Dump, we win. We win bigly.

Some men with teenage daughters will be motivated by Dobbs enough to vote D as well.

Certainly Dobbs is motivating more Democrats than Republicans.

I rode my bike over to the early voting place around 11:30. It's a small parking lot, and every spot was taken -- about half of them by poll workers, so it's good that I can slide my motorcycle into most small spaces.

But there was no real line, and even though I had two people in front of me checking in, it went quickly. And if there were any Democrats (besides me) in the bunch, I'll eat my shoes.

What [bold]was[/bold] going slowly was these illiterate idiots trying to read their chock-full-of-long-amendments ballots. In the time it took me to get in there, vote, and leave, no one else of the (perhaps) 25 voters in the room had finished filling in their ballot. I joked to a black woman poll worker on the way out, "It's hard to vote when you can't read, hunh?" and she cracked up. I already knew "she ain't from 'round here."

So that's my report from Deplorable Haven, FL. More voters than I thought there would be, but not a crowd. And since I would guess that 99/100 were voting for the Dumpster Fire, I consider that a good thing.

I know the nation polls “don’t count” like the swing states, but bear with me.

In the US polls averages in DL fave NYT, they’re tied in 7 polls. 18 has Trump leading. Harris is leading in 45 NATIONAL POLLS.

That has to mean something.

I voted this morning around 11 in suburban Louisiana. The line was out into the parking lot of the library/polling place. This was day 3 of early voting. I didn't see a single black person, but that's not particularly unusual for this community

R28 - those under 25 maybe don’t (yet)

I am still figuring out who to vote for in all the local town elections…town council, school board. There’s not much info to identify them online.

The issue in 2016 was that so many people thought Clinton would win that some voters either didn't vote, or they voted 3rd party, or voted for Trump as even kind of a joke.

I don't think that's the case this year. And Biden won convincingly in 2020 - BEFORE Jan 6th and BEFORE Roe was overturned.

I almost don't want to talk about a victory because it feels like giving it air will somehow jinx it.

But I just don't see enthusiasm for Trump.

Straight Dem.

[quote]The issue in 2016 was that so many people thought Clinton would win that some voters either didn't vote, or they voted 3rd party, or voted for Trump as even kind of a joke

That’s why Kamala has been saying since day one that she’s the underdog in this race. It's a smart move.

Her team has definitely analyzed Hillary’s entire campaign and used it as a blueprint of what not to do.

I saw this funny segment on CNN yesterday where some right-wing fascist MAGA lunatic was trying to blend in with an anti-Israel protest outside the DNC when two young women clocked him from his social media live streaming. They approached him and loudly blew his cover.

Because those types always melt down when confronted by strong, scolding women his retort was "how many abortions have you had today." Without missing a beat one said "George Soros has paid me to have an abortion live on stage today!" I thought 'one or both of her parents must be Dataloungers.'

[quote] Trump discouraged early voting for years. Plus Democrats have always voted early more. Can’t really read much from this. Sorry.

What I read is that Dump has 15 days for his crazy, dementia antics to further discourage Election Day voters.

[quote][bold]Keep an eye on the states which don’t count the absentee ballots until Election Day. They’re the ones saying vote counting should stop at midnight or some bs[/bold] and then, because day-of voting tends to be Republican and the shift to Democrats when all the mail-in votes are counted later is evidence of voter fraud!!! /s. Thank god Georgia’s court stopped the “all ballots must be counted by hand” crap.

And if they do, R8, Lord help them, because veterans in red states like my old Dad will fucking FLIP their gotdamn lids.

And as the proud child of a proud double (Navy AND Army combat) veteran, I am fucking here for it.

[quote]The issue in 2016 was that so many people thought Clinton would win that some voters either didn't vote

The main issue with Hillary is that she was just as unpopular as Trump. That included a significant amount of Democrats. Don't forget that she was in a bitter battle with Bernie Sanders during the primary. Have we forgotten how contentious the convention was in 2016? Many of Bernie's supporters stayed home or voted for Jill Stein. Her unpopularity and poorly run campaign was why she lost.

I think it's Pennsylvania that can't even begin counting early and mail votes until after the polls close on 11/5. This is ridiculous and a waste of time. Why not count them as they come in, once a day like other, NORMAL, states do?

The fat loud mouthed red neck down the street has 2 Harris Walz signs in his front yard. Also a Lucas Kunce and vote yes on amendment 3, the amendment to overturn Missouri's abortion ban. Some people are waking up.

[quote] I count nothing out. Back then no one really knew just how many hate filled, mentally diseased and completely insane people we have in this country. And unfortunately most of these people are voters.

In 2016, Dems did not vote in the numbers needed to win. They fixed that in 2020.

2016 was anomalous.

[quote]I think it's Pennsylvania that can't even begin counting early and mail votes until after the polls close on 11/5. This is ridiculous and a waste of time. Why not count them as they come in, once a day like other, NORMAL, states do?

You can blame PA state Republicans for that, of course.

[quote]But the state legislature and governor have yet to agree on a bill that would give workers more time to process ballots — with Republicans insisting that such a policy be tied to expanded voter ID requirements, and Democrats so far balking at that deal.

Alabama, District of Columbia, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin are the seven states (plus DC) that can’t begin counting mail-in ballots until Election Day.

In PA, they can start counting them at 7am on Election Day.

Even if I knew 100% that Harris was going to win, I would still make sure to vote for her. It's my personal "Fuck you." to Donald Trump and his enablers. From me, especially to them.

I'm not going to pass that up even if I know MVP is going to beat that fat bastard like a drum.

What's great about this poll is that these are actual BANKED votes, not an estimation of potential votes that may or may not happen.

Anyone who voted for Trump as a joke in 2016 with the hopes that Hill would still win is fucking retarded and should just stay home. Hell, they might do anything. They might join Al Qada.

North Carolina can start counting BEFORE Election Day. If Harris flips NC that's the end of Dump, and we will know shortly after polls close on east coast.

There are quite a few in 2016 who voted Dump as sort of a “protest”. They thought, he’ll never win, so who cares?

[quote] Some of yall seem to lack common sense. Do you think they just gon say—shucks we ran out of time, we aren’t counting the rest of the votes THAT HAVEN'T BEEN COUNTED YET.

YES! The MAGA cultists running the states are gearing up to do just that.

Anyone who doesn’t vote is a fucking moron and I know a ton of gay men in Austin who are liberal but simply don’t vote. It boggles the mind. They’re all into politics and current events too.

R41, the time to register to vote in red states has passed, so unregistered voters are out of luck in red states.

I can only speak for Ohio's deadline, which was October 7th. If you weren't registered to vote by then, you don't get to vote in this election. Most red states have restrictions like that. Only blue states allow "late" or election day registration.

The voter registration push was over the summer and discussed here on and off.

If you are an "unaffiliated voter", you may get a visit from BOTH campaigns, if they have the time, but the traitor's ground game is shit, so I doubt they can slap their own dicks.

You know, he's never going away, but after we cunt punts him, he's going to drag the thugs down with him. ALL the way down. They will have to PAY him to go away.

I'm so tired of state laws when it comes to federal elections. If you guys want to do your local elections one way - that's fine.

But federal elections should be uniform across the country.

We do so much stupid shit because of states rights and the size of this country.

Too much fuckery can be done locally. And it's ALWAYS REPUBLICANS. Every God Damn Time.

R80 yep.

IRA FLATOW: Both sides say that turnout is going to be a key in this election. What are some of the ways that people can be motivated to go to the polls?

JON KROSNICK: Campaign professionals and political scientists decades ago used to think that turnout and candidate choice were kind of two separate decisions, turnout coming first and candidate choice coming second. In other words, you decide whether you’re going to vote or not. And then once you decide that you’re going to vote, then you decide who you’re going to vote for. And what we’ve come to realize very clearly now through really terrific data is that those decisions are intimately linked, that there are some people who vote all the time no matter what. There are some people who never vote no matter what, but there are other people who slide in and out of the participating electorate.

And those decisions about whether to vote or not are sometimes influenced by their attitudes toward the candidates. What can the campaigns do to affect turnout. Some of the most important work that we know in our literature comes from a guy named Don Green, who is a professor at Columbia University. And when he was at Yale, he was doing really revolutionary studies that were large field experiments where he randomly assigned households either to get poked in one way or another to inspire them to vote or not.

And what’s interesting is that Dawn’s work actually followed work by a prior scholar, social psychologist, Tony Greenwald, who is now at the University of Washington. And what Tony did were very simple studies. He did telephone surveys where undergraduates at the University of Washington called a set of people registered to vote and told them one of two things.

They said hi, calling from the University of Washington psychology Department. We’re doing a survey, just one question today are you going to vote in the election on Tuesday or not? Or other randomly chosen people were asked Psychology Department at the University of Washington calling, we’re doing a one question survey, who do you think is going to win the Seattle Seahawks game on Sunday? So the idea here is the first group got a treatment. The treatment was simply asking them if they’re going to vote.

And the second group was the control group who didn’t get that treatment. And it turns out the people who were asked if they’re going to vote, voted significantly more often. I think at least 10 percentage points more often from one question in one interview a few days before the election. What happened there? Well, what happened was everybody kind of knew that the socially admirable thing to say was that they’re going to vote. And people who merely hadn’t made the decision, who were undecided about whether they were going to vote or not, heard themselves saying, I’m going to vote. And it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There are various different ways to get people to do things, to create self-fulfilling prophecies like that, which actually do affect their subsequent behavior. And Tony just implemented one version of that. And so what Don then did was to do these kinds of treatments in three different ways, by mailing postcards to people, by making phone calls to people, or by having people go to the doorstep of their home and engage them in a conversation about the election.

Obviously, a postcard doesn’t ask you a question, but a phone call and a conversation on the doorstep had the potential to engage that same kind of self-fulfilling prophecy logic. And what Don found is that, in general, the phone calls didn’t work. And lots of people are making phone calls on behalf of candidates these days. And it might make them feel good to make those phone calls. But the reality is his work suggested probably not going to have much effect.

On the other hand, the face to face mobilization worked remarkably well. And now it’s critical that the conversation on the doorstep do the right things and not do the wrong things. It’s also critical for a campaign that wants to mobilize supporters that it not send people to knock on the doors of households of people who are going to vote for their opposing candidate.

IRA FLATOW: Is there any evidence that there are people who go into the polls, look at the candidates up there on the board, and they then– that’s at the point, they make their mind up?

JON KROSNICK: Absolutely. I’m sorry to tell you that we have decades of research showing that there are some people who walk into a voting booth or sit down with an absentee ballot. And when they look at the names on that ballot, those names are in a particular order because, of course, candidate names are always presented visually. And that order of names nudges voters in a particular direction.

In fact, more than 1,000 published tests have now shown that in 85% of elections, approximately, the candidate listed first on the ballot gets an advantage that is about an average of two to three percentage points of votes as a result simply of being first. And that results from two psychological processes. One, is again, ambivalence. So if you’re torn, Clinton, Trump, Clinton, Trump, I don’t know what to do. And one of those names is above, people tend to lean in the direction of the name above.

But secondly, there are people who vote who don’t actually know that much about all the candidates. And so those that lack of information makes them nudgeable also. So if you want to think about a two to three percentage point effect as not that important. I mean, in 2000, George W Bush was elected president as a result of a vote count in Florida that gave him a margin of victory of much less than one percentage point. And guess what. George W Bush’s name was listed first on every ballot in Florida that year, because the law in Florida is that it’s the party of the governor who has all their candidates listed first on every ballot. And George W Bush’s brother, Jeb Bush, was the governor that year.

In 2016, in nearly all of the battleground states where Donald Trump won by a tiny margin, his name was listed first on every ballot. And you might say oh, come on, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton. How could name order possibly matter? Well, it turns out New Hampshire rotated name order across the state. And so we can actually look at whether Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton got more votes when they were listed first. And what we found was about a point and a half, a percentage point and a half advantage for each of them when they were listed first as compared to when they weren’t in that election, which involved, as you know, a lot of ambivalence for Americans.

It’s really hard to make elections fair. But the important question at this point is who’s going to be first in those battleground states. And if you want to be horrified a little bit more, I’ll tell you that as far as I know, none of the polls that are being done are taking into account the bias that will be created by candidate names.

IRA FLATOW: So is there– does that mean there’s a flaw in the polling?

JON KROSNICK: Absolutely, the good news is that scientists know how to do accurate surveys. Even today, you say, well, nobody answers the phone and that everybody’s got cell phones and the various other complaints. The reality is scientists who’ve evaluated the accuracy of survey data have found that as long as you do true random sampling of households or individuals and you work hard to interview as many of those people as you can and you use unbiased questions, the results are incredibly accurate.

So I’ll just give you an example that in 2016, the year when we all were told before the election by The New York Times and by the fivethirtyeight.com that Hillary Clinton had more than an 80% chance of becoming president based on polls. In that year, If you look at only the polls that were done with random sampling during the week before the election, their average error in predicting the Trump and Clinton shares of the vote was less than one percentage point off, less than 1%. That’s much smaller than the theoretical margin of error of those polls.

On the other hand, the market was flooded in 2016 with non-random samples that were promulgated by two organizations, SurveyMonkey and Google consumer surveys. Those were done with what are called river samples. So these are, if you think of yourself as a fish swimming around in the internet, all of a sudden a net reaches in and pulls you out and asks you a question. In this case, if you’re reading a news story at a newspaper website, a little box pops up and says, you can continue reading the story for free after you answer this question, who are you going to vote for in the election on Tuesday?

Well, they said everybody reads the newspaper. The reality is this was not a random sample in any way. And those river sample surveys were startlingly inaccurate, average errors of six percentage points and more. And often errors as large as 13 or 14 percentage points. That’s not a surprise because there was no random sampling done in those surveys. But if you’re going to predict the battleground states, which are the only states you need to get right in order to forecast the outcome, you need much more precision than an average error of six percentage points.

So that is what I think importantly contributed to those incorrect predictions in 2016. So long story short there, we know how to do accurate polls. Are we doing simple random sample surveys right now the way we know we can? Almost nobody is. The market has flooded with more surveys that involve non-random samples, lots of them. And unfortunately, I’m sorry to say, some of the most visible and most praised pre-election surveys involve an entirely different methodology that’s also seriously flawed.

This involves random samples of people on lists of people registered to vote. So instead of calling a random sample of telephone numbers and giving all Americans an equal probability of being selected for a survey, this method involves first step is getting lists of people who are registered to vote in all the states, recognizing that mobilization efforts are going to cause more people to be registered between now and election day. Well, they can’t take that into account.

Secondly, when people are buying these lists from commercial companies, the polling groups that buy the lists are not told how long ago did the supplier get the list from the state. And so because people are constantly registering, those lists are likely to be out of date. And then after they get the lists, they only get names and addresses. Now, they’ve got to get phone numbers for those people in order to call them.

Well, it turns out can only get phone numbers for about half of the people on the list, and that half of the people with listed are available phone numbers is not a random sample of the whole list. Then you’ve got to somehow weight these data. And statistical weighting means adjusting for unequal probabilities of participation in different groups. So higher educated people agree to be interviewed more often than less educated people. In order to fix those discrepancies you have to know the true distributions of age and education and sex and so on in the population.

What’s your population? Well, it’s people registered to vote. How can you know the demographic characteristics of people registered to vote? You can’t. The government doesn’t know that. Nobody knows that. And so the companies selling these data make it up. They guess what your age is. They guess what your sex is. And when I’ve looked at what they think about me, I’ve been told I’m a 78-year-old female.

So the accuracy of those guesses is not great. The next steps are taken in all pre-election polls. You’ve got to decide among the people who are registered to vote, which of those people actually are going to vote or not. And then you’ve got to deal with the fact that when you do a survey and you say, well, if you do vote, who are you going to vote for, there’s a significant chunk of people, even up toward the end who will say, I won’t tell you because it’s confidential or I haven’t decided yet. And so the researchers have to handle that somehow. So there are a lot of steps in the process to produce accurate outcomes. What I can tell you is when we’ve looked at true random samples, it works beautifully.

IRA FLATOW: Well, what you’re telling me is that, then we should not be paying attention to most of these polls.

JON KROSNICK: That is absolutely correct. You should not.

IRA FLATOW: My last question to you is about the themes in this election. It seems to be there are two main themes in this election fear versus hope. As someone who studies political psychology, which one works more well?

JON KROSNICK: They both have effects. Fear causes people to be more thoughtful and attentive to information. Hope inspires positivity toward whatever candidate is making you feel hopeful. So if you’ll forgive me, let’s just say for the moment that Kamala Harris’s messages are inspiring hope. There’s reason to believe that taken by itself increases the probability that voters will vote for her. And we have lots of evidence from many, many statistical analyzes to support that idea.

Now, when Donald Trump says, I’m going to make America great again, that’s also potentially a hope inspiring message. But bear in mind also that a big part of his message is about fear. And it’s fear about what will happen if the Democrats continue to control the country. And what that does is doesn’t make people necessarily negative toward him, but it makes them thoughtful, it makes them attentive. It makes them look at the evidence.

And so the question is, does making people thoughtful help sell the Make America Great Again message or not? And from our point of view and our literature, I’m not sure it does.

IRA FLATOW: Well, this has certainly been thought provoking and eye opening. Dr. Krosnick, I want to thank you for taking time to be with us today.

JON KROSNICK: It’s my great honor, thank you, Ira, for having me. I really appreciate it.

IRA FLATOW: You’re welcome. Dr. John Krosnick, Professor of Political Science, Communication, and Psychology and Director of the Political Psychology Research Group at Stanford University.

What do you mean people who give a fuck voted for Kamala?

Thanks for posting that, R86.

I wish they wouldn't publish things like this. No point agitating the Maggats.

Pretty sure the MAGAts aren't reading "Science Friday," R89.

Well, the article was in USA Today, R90, so who knows what somebody leaves in the shitter at Denny's.

Sorry, R91, I thought you were referring to the article posted just before you at R82-86.

Though the MAGAts I know aren't reading USA Today, either.

Oh, you are ever so welcome, senior lesbian/ R88!

I did post it the day it was broadcast, but the transcript wasn't available until a couple days later.

And it's been on my mind since I first heard it because it's so timely, and am disappointed it hasn't gained a bit of traction in the MSM. I was hoping MSNBC or CNN, or even Democracy Now! would've booked the professor for an interview, but... crickets. Every host has breathlessly reported on the 1196.6 polls that've come out since then, but no reporting on the psych aspect of polling.

I voted this morning, first thing when the polls opened.

Great news, P-Drag/R94--any local reports of how turnout was this first day?

To all DLers on the fence about voting early, I can tell you a good 95% of anxiety I've had these last six months has disappeared, and it is such a good feeling, even though I'm in a red state.

I actually have a Ph.D. field in Quantitative Methods, Survey Research, and Political Polling, R93, so I could have told you most of what was in that ScienceFriday. But I assume nobody here thinks I know what I'm talking about because my life's experiences have been many and varied and it probably sounds like I'm making shit up (trust me -- I'm not that creative). But it was nice to hear someone echo what I (and all professional pollsters) already know.

There is no fucking way in hell, anymore, to get a sample where you could even stretch the truth enough to intimate it was "random," which is the premise of all statistical analysis: a random sample/normal distribution. So the days when you could trust [italic]any[/italic] poll are long gone.

For your own sanity and peace of mind, ignore them all.

[quote]But I assume nobody here thinks I know what I'm talking about because my life's experiences have been many and varied and it probably sounds like I'm making shit up (trust me -- I'm not that creative).

Damn, senior lesbian/R97, why on earth would anyone here accuse you of making shit u.... sorry, almost forgot where the fuck we are!

As a literature/history/library science geek who's allergic to math and its allies, I'm always in awe of numbers people.

I said in another thread that when I went to poll worker training at the BOE on Friday, the line to even get to the PARKING LOT was backed up for almost a block.

The popo was out directing traffic. It was fucking PACKED. This was the Hamilton County/cincinnati Ohio BOE.

It’s also on the bus line, so it’s easy to reach.

But R98, I'm really [italic]bad[/italic] at math! I had to take Algebra II twice in high school because I didn't understand it!

But statistics is different. Statistics is the science of the educated guess. Or as one of my bosses called it, a SWAG: a scientific wild-ass guess. Once you really start to understand it, and you must understand it with your gut as opposed to your brain, the computer does all the "hard math" for you. All you have to do is propose a hypothesis, collect the proper data, use the most "parsimonious" and relevant statistical/analytical test(s), and interpret the results.

Sounds pretty simple, but it can be infinitely complicated, especially collecting the data and interpreting the results of the statistical analyses. Thus my comment about the impossibility of collecting a "random sample" of likely voters, which falls under "collect the proper data."

I found statistical research to be excruciatingly difficult, but I had such a passion to answer social/political research questions, I had to master the methods. And ultimately, for someone like me who loves a challenge, I had a blast.

[bold]Now -- back to our regularly scheduled program.[/bold]

Early voted in Texas today. Suburban Fort Worth. It took 35 minutes from the time I got in line until I deposited my ballot and walked out the door. The line was consistently long but quick-moving the whole time. Unfortunately I live in a solidly Republican area, so who knows what the turnout means.

The Tarrant County Elections Dept website has a map of all early voting sites in the county that is updated hourly with the wait times. Most of the sites showed 30-45 minute waits for most of the day. I haven't seen any reports of the turnout numbers for today yet, so I don't know if it's more. less or typical.

What's with the Lee Sabatella of Brooklyn at R101 who sent Trump $1041.02? Does that irregular number have some kind of Nazi significance?

[quote] Anyone who voted for Trump as a joke in 2016 with the hopes that Hill would still win is fucking retarded

Or just a sex worker.

From the link at r101, you can see the Trump donor names, addresses, occupations. In case you want to avoid those people or not patronize their businesses.

Aha! Susan Weaver, 1 Sutton Place NYC, Actor donated $1000 to Kamala Harris.

Yep that’s her legal name.

Murdoch's WSJ is trying to spin this as good for Repigs, too (gifted link, I don't pay for WSJ).

R60, i can verify this with personal experience. Two relatives voted Jill stein because they “knew” trump wouldn’t win. I knew friends who didn’t bother to vote.

I never understood the intense fire-hot hatred fro Clinton, but she inspired it in some

R108, in retrospect, the Hillary hate was really stupid. Can anyone really say Hillary would have handled covid worse than Trump?

[quote]I never understood the intense fire-hot hatred fro Clinton, but she inspired it in some

It's baffling until you consider that the Clinton's came to power. birthed the right wing alternative media universe where up is down and where truth is defined as a lie repeated enough times that it gains traction in public discourse. Most people don't remember how outraged the right wing was over Bill Clinton's victor over George Herbert Walker Bush. They were furious and though they didn't come out and say it as blatantly as Dump, they believed the election was stolen from them by what they perceived to be a media overly friendly to Bill Clinton.

Never a group to be overly tethered to facts, Republicans media critics willfully ignored how Clinton was pummeled over Jennifer flowers, over " I didn't inhale" over avoiding military service in Viet Nam over Hillary saying she wasn't Tammy Wynette stand by your man.. They were so angry that nothing tanked Clinton, they created an alternative universe where they created steroidic lies and fed them to an audience hungry for revenge.

They couldn't accept the truth: Bill Clinton was a once in a lifetime politician who really wanted to do something to help the country. He "stole" the Bush second term by being indestructible, so they spent billions (BILLIONS) of dollars creating lies and false narratives about Bill and Hillary Clinton that live on to this day.

So, to put it simply: Most people don't know the reason they hate Hillary Clinton. The reason is simple and stark: They were manipulated into hating her with a well funded, fact free campaign that spanned decades and crossed party lines (birthing the likes of Jill Stein)

Simple manipulation

R110 is correct, and it's all the more reason Hillary shouldn't have run to draw a line under it as a selfless act. I actually like her, but I hate the drama that comes into her space. That line finally being drawn under The Clintons was pretty much the only relief.

[quote]They couldn't accept the truth: Bill Clinton was a once in a lifetime politician who really wanted to do something to help the country.

And that was the thing that really chapped their asses. The whole thing with Clinton (even moreso than Obama, who had the disadvantage of contending with a right-wing noise machine that had had twenty years of practice at that point) that drove them nuts was that even when people didn't necessarily like Bill Clinton's policies, they liked HIM. Why else did we get the narrative that everyone wanted to have a beer with W?

Hillary always had some scandal swirling around her. Yeah, nothing ever seemed to be provable, but she often evaded questions and gave the appearance of being dishonest about things. A lot of people just generally felt like she wasn’t trustworthy.

And also she had an air of “It’s my turn to be President, I deserve it.” I think that rubbed many people the wrong way who felt like she basically rode her husband’s coattails into politics and hadn’t convinced people why she should be elected.

for r33

[quote] need to be at 500k early votes in PA by election day in order for Dems to be in good shape. Currently at 325,118 votes.

The link below has encouraging numbers. KEEP VOTING PA (and all the swing states)

R110, add it to the 1001 things that Hillary blames for her defeat that are other than it being her own fault for being a terrible candidate. She earned her defeat.

[quote]And also she had an air of “It’s my turn to be President, I deserve it.” I think that rubbed many people the wrong way who felt like she basically rode her husband’s coattails into politics and hadn’t convinced people why she should be elected.

Did she, though? She worked her ass off to earn her Senate seat.

I'm not saying her campaign wasn't flawed. They underestimated a lot and focused on the wrong things, but the "I deserve it" narrative always seemed like a way of putting down a woman for having ambition. Would we have said that about a man? No one ever said that about W, and that was another attempt at a dynastic presidency. Hell, look at Jeb!

[quote] And also she had an air of “It’s my turn to be President, I deserve it.” I think that rubbed many people the wrong way who felt like she basically rode her husband’s coattails into politics and hadn’t convinced people why she should be elected.

OK, I do agree with this and I think Harris has been very wise to avoid this. Clinton would have been a very good president but she was a bad candidate.

r113, please forgive me, I am not trying to embarrass you, but your post is a text book guide to how the PERCEPTION of Clinton was manipulated because they couldn't get any fact related fantasies or lawsuits to stick.

[quote] Hillary always had some scandal swirling around her. Yeah, nothing ever seemed to be provable, but she often evaded questions and gave the appearance of being dishonest about things. A lot of people just generally felt like she wasn’t trustworthy.

The general aura of untrustworthiness was created by right wing bad actors who, having been defeated by facts, turned to manipulating the PERCEPTION of the Clintons with a well planned campaign of lies and distortions

[quote] And also she had an air of “It’s my turn to be President, I deserve it.” I think that rubbed many people the wrong way who felt like she basically rode her husband’s coattails into politics and hadn’t convinced people why she should be elected.

Again, this is a perception that was created and cultivated for people to consume. It wasn't organic or earned.

Hillary Clinton is far from perfect BUT without the decades long, multibillion dollar assault on her and Bill Clinton, those faults would have fallen into the generic pile of shit ALL politicians do.

[quote]Did she, though? She worked her ass off to earn her Senate seat.

A Democrat with world-wide name recognition winning a Senate seat in New York doesn’t require working one’s ass off.

Totally agree., r118, and it wasn't fair, but that was what her roll of the dice yielded. Same thing happens to people in their jobs all the time with office politics. Good people get caught up in bad actors or bad systemic bullshit, and it hurts or kills their careers.

[quote]Trump discouraged early voting for years. Plus Democrats have always voted early more. Can’t really read much from this. Sorry.

It didn't take long for our resident wet blanket to weigh in.

[quote] She earned her defeat

r115, yes Hillary Clinton made decisions that led to her defeat in not visiting battleground MI, WI and PA in the final days of the election. However, the electorate has to take responsibility also: It was clear who the Orange Dotard was in 2016, Jill Stien voters, Jim Comey and other played politics with the aura of inevitability that surrounded Clinton's campaign and those people are also responsible.

Unfortunately, and this hard to argue, her defeat was also our defeat.

[quote] A Democrat with world-wide name recognition winning a Senate seat in New York doesn’t require working one’s ass off.

Except she didn’t do that.

She went all over the state, put her face out there, met people, and earned every fucking vote.

Moynihan was initially not supportive of her candidacy, but she won him over with her work ethic.

Like or dislike her as you will. But don’t sell her short on that one.

Thanks, R114—those figures clear things up for me. In PA the Democrats really do have a big advantage in early voting , both in person and by mail (more than double). Given that almost a million people (and more than half a million Democrats) had voted by yesterday, we're at about one seventh of the total 2020 PA vote.

[quote]A Democrat with world-wide name recognition winning a Senate seat in New York doesn’t require working one’s ass off.

Nevertheless she did work her ass off.

"New CNBC Generation Lab survey finds that young voters are breaking towards Harris in the final two weeks:

🔵 Harris 60% 🔴 Trump 40%

This is the same margin as Biden won among young voters in the 2020 election.

Their July poll was 46-34%(!) Harris"

R114, oh! that IS good news

Here's the current results from r114's link. We're well over 500K, right?

More great news

[quote] On Sunday, CNN data analyst Harry Enten explained how Trump’s appeal among white voters who have not attended college has been steadily dropping, from a 33 percent lead against his opponent among that demographic in 2016 to 27 percent as of now, according to the latest figures.

[quote]Trump’s appeal among white voters who have not attended college has been steadily dropping

Uneducated whites are Dump’s core constituency, so this is not good for him at all.

I'm joyfully skeptical.

And, R131, I'm skeptically joyful. We're yin and yang!

R130, bingo.

Ding Dong

The Harris campaign has privately flagged concerns about Michigan, but publicly are saying they will win.

“‘We absolutely are competing to win Michigan,’ Harris campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said, noting Harris’ presence there this week. ‘We think we will win Michigan.’ She added that she believes they will also win Wisconsin and saw no signs of it slipping.

Obama was correct. America favored Hillary.

600k people voted on the first day of voting in Texas yesterday. Crazy number, really puts into perspective how big it is.

When he loses, he will claim it was stolen. His henchmen will push that narrative. It will be challenged and appealed and what happens if it makes it to the Supreme Court (who are all his lackies)? I am not as knowledgeable about the process as I should, so I'm not making a prediction as much as I am asking our DL politics experts to share what they think that that kind of challenge to the system now that the Supreme Court has been packed with cronies.

Thank fucking God Joseph Robinette Biden is the commander-in-chief of the US Armed Forces.

[quote]Uneducated whites are Dump’s core constituency, so this is not good for him at all.

I was shocked when I was talking on the phone to my mom this past weekend and she told me her brother - an obnoxious redneck former MAGAt - couldn't stand Trump now. I have no idea what changed but it's the thing that's made me the most hopeful

To win, Trump had to expand his base. Most pundits thought he wouldn’t be able to do that.

Don’t forget all the voters he had in 2016 who have since died of Covid.

R140, I think there is small minority of Repubs who are actually tired of Trump and are willing to vote for country over party. That explains the decline in support from those uneducated white voters.

Remember when Hillary's opponent in the Senate race, Rick Lazio, tried to rape her on stage during a debate? That was the real turning point for her.

Thanks Senior Lesbian and R86 for posting your insights and that transcript. I've been blathering about the problems with modern polling until I'm blue in the face, so it's comforting to see that experts agree.

That said, is the only way for any poll to even approach accuracy to be a huge sample? I always SMH when they say they polled around 1000 people and extrapolate the votes of millions. Would a much larger sample (say, over 10,000) make a difference in the quality of the results? Is that feasible?

[quote] It will be challenged and appealed and what happens if it makes it to the Supreme Court (who are all his lackies)? I am not as knowledgeable about the process as I should

If by “it” you mean the election in general, that’s not how it works. You have to have a specific contention regarding the law or constitution. All the issues raised by Trump’s attorneys were ruled against because there was nothing there. The newly minted myth that anything goes with the Supreme Court is great propaganda but it’s not reality.

[quote]I think there is small minority of Repubs who are actually tired of Trump and are willing to vote for country over party.

We can see what it is by looking at the polling. In the recent HarrisX poll, 7% of Republicans indicated they are voting for Harris and 7% of Democrats indicated they are voting for Trump. Apparently, both sides have people willing to vote for something over party.

[quote] 7% of Democrats indicated they are voting for Trump

Mental illness at its "finest".

R148, most or all of that 7% are octogenarian southerners and Appalachians who registered during the civil rights movement when local Democrats still represented segregation, and just never got around to changing their affiliation. Believe me, those same voters voted for Reagan, the Bushes, etc.

R149, I'm shocked that they never bothered to change their affiliation. But what you says certainly sounds plausible.

[quote] Remember when Hillary's opponent in the Senate race, Rick Lazio, tried to rape her on stage during a debate? That was the real turning point for her.

What??

Hillary killed her chances with a lot of people (male and female) for making it look like she completely forgave Bill for all his many years of philandering. I have a friend who is the brother of someone who was high up in Bill Clinton's administration during his Governor years and later on in his Washington years. This guy told his brother a ton about Bill's activities of the not so savory kind in all the years he worked with him. He was a sexual addict with little discretion. If he could catch it he would fuck it.. And he had some of his protection detail standing guard for him in all sorts of places (including AF1) when he was partying with some broad. Of course Hillary knew of it all, but didn't care. Her seeming upset over the whole thing when it all blew to hell was actually because he had embarrassed her, not because he was fucking everything he could get his hands on. I was never told point blank that she preferred women, but there were certain inferences when I'd ask the question. She was just happy Bill was getting it on with other women because she didn't want him trying to get it on with her.

[quote]Hillary killed her chances with a lot of people (male and female) for making it look like she completely forgave Bill for all his many years of philandering.

So they voted for another serial philanderer and pussy-grabber instead? Makes sense.

Misogyny never makes sense, but I think they're kind of positioned her as a cuckold.

Yeah not buying that. Any woman bothered by Bill's philandering would be utterly disgusted by Trump.

Fascists have double standards, dear.

People.need to be able to score high an IQ test before they are allowed to vote.

We're talking about Hillary, not the female voting public. You make it sound like they voted for Trump over voting for Bil Clinton who wasn't running, was he. Trump won because they hated Hillary unreservedly, and he was a man. Hillary never even attempted to make herself likable to the general public and some of her comments made people hate her that much more, such as when she talked about not being that "stand by your man" type sung about in the country song.

R152 it’s almost like seeing directly inside the Clinton family and sex addiction issue. It does not get more first hand than hearing from someone that knows someone who has a brother who has a good friend who knows someone that worked somewhere near the Clinton’s..

I still think Trump will win. I think enough people have been convinced that life was better under Trump and I just don't think enough Americans want the president to be a mixed race woman. I know that'll make many instantly kick back in denial, but it's true.

I encourage you to bet your entire savings on your anecdotal observations, r160. Your world is not the world. My world is not the world. Peer-reviewed polls are.

R161 I'd love to be wrong and hope I am wrong. But I went from thinking Trump couldn't possibly win last time he went up against a woman, only to feel very stupid for being so very wrong.

You'll have to do the full job if you go that route.

She won the popular vote. She lost in key battleground state by tens of thousands of votes. She didn't campaign there as much as Trump.

There were tactics Trump 2016 got away with, like misinformation/disinformation, and spamming young men on Playstation Live (for example), that they won't be able to get away with.

There was no January 6th, and that's a huge line for many law and order types.

There is no deep history of right wing press coming after Kamala Harris. Hillary came into her campaign with a nearly 25 year history of that.

Covid does have demographic effects.

And so much more. Please trust your own wisdom less.

R160 lots of those on DL did not want to see a mixed race woman head the ticket when Biden went tits up. Many of them on DL wanted the mixed race woman replaced with a white male. And some on DL still claim she was a terrible choice and some on DL claim they won’t vote for her.

But they on DL are progressives and racists are all right wingers.

R163 Well, I guess we'll see. I just think underestimating the many people who keep quiet (eg for polls, asked in the street) is unwise.

But that group includes newly registered voters, people afraid to openly disagree with MAGA, and pro-choice women who will vote quietly. There's much to feel good about, but I agree there's no good to be done from thinking anything is in the bag.

We need a federal statute for a POTUS age limit. IMO if you're over 68 you should not be allowed to run for POTUS.

R167 does not trust the voters in a democracy and feels there must be restrictions on who they can vote for because the voters can’t be trusted.

If Trump/Musk gets in then it won't matter, R167. No one will ever be "running" again.

If he gets in then you'll see him start rallies with Don Jr and Vance. Priming the base for a transition from himself to them. If he gets in then a white male Dem wouldn't beat in 2028 anyway. It will take an external attack on the country to break the spell and I am afraid that would happen. We will be attacked or we will be dragged into a war or out blank check to Isreal and the opening of Trump hotels in Isreal will lead to more terrorists attacks on our cities. Only then will the passive white men who think Trump's 'poicies' are better wake up and sadly that wake up.

But I have not given up hoping and working for a Harris victory. I'm out here door knocking for the first time in my life and I am pretty pissed at the Dems (laymen and journalists) who are saying Trump already has it. Talk about depressing turn out.

'and sadly that wake up will come when we have dead bodies on our streets'

Up so early I can't even finish a sentence. I've been working 6-2 and then door knocking in the afternoons then working my side hustle at night.

R170 who is saying that trump has it?

R114

Checked the same site for TX and it shows 1.5 million early votes so far but nothing more granular. Fingers crossed. 💙

21.5 million people have already voted. The election isn't two weeks from now, it is happening as I type!

R170 in your world what country would you see attacking the US if trump were elected. We still have the most potent military in the world and a shit load of nukes.

Russia would be on a good friend and have favored status. China is sure not going to attack us. Maybe the UK or Canada, Ukraine?

Making up stupid shit is what we do on the DL

If Trump wins no one will have to attack us. He'll give everything away for "peace" with Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China, and NATO and Latin America will give up on us in disgust.

What R176 said.

[quote] Hillary killed her chances with a lot of people (male and female) for making it look like she completely forgave Bill for all his many years of philandering.

No, she didn't.

He will definitely give Alaska to his bestie Putin. Putin has been telling Donnie he wants it for a while now.

Bibi will get $ and weapons to glass whoever he wants.

I wonder what he will give his fat boyfriend, Kimmy?

right, please don't repeat that trope

[quote][R167] does not trust the voters in a democracy and feels there must be restrictions on who they can vote for because the voters can’t be trusted.

To R168: Unfortunately, neither did the framers of the Constitution, and that is why we have the Electoral College.

The reality is that our individual votes really do not count; if they did, Gore would have won in 2000 and Clinton would have won in 2016. It is the votes cast by chosen Electors that are counted because the Founding Fathers were fearful that someone like Trump would be elected by popular vote and the Electoral College could step in and prevent that from happening. It TOTALLY BACKFIRED.

Because of the Electoral College model, the vote cast by a person in Idaho carries more weight than that of an individual voter in California.

R181, the Electoral College today is also drastically different from what it was originally. Regardless, it needs to go.

R182 it’s never ever going away.

The EC will never "go". There will never be conditions in govt for it to "go". Un-fucking-fortunately.

Huh? It was almost voted away a few decades ago.

[quote] It was almost voted away a few decades ago.

It would require a Constitutional amendment ratified by three-fourths of the states. It can’t be voted away. The EC will never be abolished.

Excellent comment, R181! I couldn't have explained that better myself. And I've tried.

EC is going away the moment a Dem candidate loses the popular vote but wins the EC.

And if you do the math 3/4 of the states includes a lot of small states that will not want to give up their increased clout.

And the EC is never going away.

The Electoral College could be revamped so that each state awards its delegates proportionally. That wouldn’t require any Constitutional Amendment.

[quote]And the EC is never going away.

Gurl, "never" is a really long time. The US is only a couple of centuries old, it will happen eventually.

But during our lifetimes? Yeah, probably not.

FUN FACT: US Senators also used to be elected via the Electoral College, not just the President. And, yes, a Constitutional Amendment was required to change this.

[quote] FUN FACT: US Senators also used to be elected via the Electoral College, not just the President.

It wouldn’t be DL without a big dose of disinformation.

R192 here. R193 is correct; sort of. Prior to 1913, United States Senators were CHOSEN by the individual state senates. It was even worse than I initially presented: the populace had no say whatsoever in who represented them in the US Senate. YIKES!!!

Of course, R193 was too lazy and/or ignorant to actually explain or expound on his/her assertion of "Disinformation". I'm guessing ignorant . . .

Instead of the Constitutional rule that a newly admitted state needs to have at least the population of the least populous state, it should have been that it needs to have at least 1/12 the population of the most populous state (in 1787 VA had about twelve times the population of RI). As it is, we have this clump of broadly homogeneous states (ND, SD, NE, WY, MT, ID) which together barely have the population of NJ and yet they have vast electoral and senatorial power. The least populous state now (WY) has 1/60th the population of the most (CA)—FIVE TIMES more disparity than in 1787!

[quote] The least populous state now (WY) has 1/60th the population of the most (CA)—FIVE TIMES more disparity than in 1787!

That could be made better by breaking California up into several, more reasonably sized states.

YIKES

Best case is to focus state level and get the Interstate Popular Vote Compact enacted. The plan is that once states that total 270 EVs adopt it, it will go into effect, so that the winner of the national popular vote will automatically be awarded a winning number of votes in the EC.

It's probably the most realistic option to reform, since anything else would require either an amendment or, scarier, a constitutional convention being called, which would end up with the whole thing being rewritten.

"With 13 days to go before the election, I want to don my behaviorist hat and - at the risk of waxing too esoterically - I'll share what I see:

1. There is an enormous amount of emotional energy everywhere, as you'd expect there would be. More than I've ever felt before. The dominant energy coming from the political Right is defiance and from the political Left is angst. Angst is the more honest emotion of the two - it's reactive to genuine concern. Defiance is more contrived - it's defensive and it's driven by a need to put forth an image. The political Left gets visibly outraged more, which is what angst does. The political Right is more prone to projection, and there's sometimes a difference between what they believe and what they just say they believe - which is what defiance does.

2. Most of those who we'd consider power brokers - corporate and/or elitist - have great uncertainty and uncomfortableness. They hate not knowing things, they hate risk. Some are more fearful of economic consequence than others. That fear will lead them to default to a position moored in money, which is their God. As we know, love of money is not necessarily aligned with love for societal good. Our mainstream or corporate media is especially fearful, which has manifest as normalization, to be "safe." This is sad and unfortunate.

3. The polling industry is swept up in all this emotion. Angst, defiance, and uncertainty shines a light on what they profess to do. But what they profess to do, can't be done accurately - structurally and representatively. But I've tweeted about this before.

Here are my two political conclusions of the day:

4. IF there has been movement from conservatives, independents, and moderates away from Trump - IF Trump's darkness and his decline and Liz Cheney and other conservative voices and military generals and John Kelly have given voters pause, WE WOULDN'T SEE MOST OF IT. It would be happening silently, because of our emotionalized ecosystem.

5. The constant outrage permeated by Trump, his daily controversies, and the speculation on what he'll do is taking too much of the oxygen and discourse away from Vance and Project 2025 - the truer foes.

My apologies to all who read this tweet looking for a predictive punch line. We are all creatures of emotion, and whether we feel angst, defiance, impatience, or something else - what we really want is certainty - that's part of why we can't help turning to polls.

Having said all this - based purely on observable behavior, and the manner by which our electorate is emotionalizing, I think Dems are way more focused, way more in sync, and are maintaining a way greater perspective. Don't underestimate humanity's intrinsic preference for light above dark and for hope above despair. And it's not just the power brokers who make decisions based on perceived risk."

If she wins, I swear it may well be the happiest day of my life.

If she loses, it's just unfathomable. I can't even imagine how I will react. As bad as 2016 was, this would be exponentially worse.

God help us.

Speaking of congressional seats... Republicans want to use girls as incubators so they can keep them/gain more. I mean, if the gals survive the process, of course. Not that they really care.

"Republicans just stated in their latest mifepristone lawsuit that they need HIGHER birth rates for teenaged mothers so they don’t “lose a seat in Congress.”

Read that again."

Read this article closely, esp what Plouffe says. My take:

*They think she’s ahead

*They don’t believe public polls that have the battlegrounds all within 2 points; suggests they believe some are in the bag

*They don’t need Repub votes to win

*Going after Repubs & doing a bunch of outreach in unorthodox places isn’t as much to squeak out a win as it is to run up the score

*They trust their data more than their polling

*Their internal presentations of where the campaign is & where it’s headed must be really good if big donors feel good (since they’re usually freaked out).

To me it reads not that they know they’ve got it won, but that they know that if they execute that they will win, maybe big.

It’s a balance. You want donors to feel confident it’s a good investment but that you need their money. State X is winnable, but that campaign needs volunteers to close the deal (or run up the score). Enthusiasm=good turnout vs sense it’s all decided=low turnout/smaller margins/4

R199, the problem with the Interstate Popular Vote Compact is that it isn't law and it relies on the good will of the participants to do the right and honorable thing, aka "norms." As we've seen with the rise of Shitler, norms mean nothing and there is no norm that he and his fellow Republikkkans won't disregard if not outright flout. All it will take for the Interstate Popular Vote Compact to fail — at its most critical moment, no less — is for a few good men to do nothing, or worse, do something evil. And if you don't think Republiscum aren't up for [italic]anything,[/italic] you haven't been paying attention.

Someone asked this elsewhere and it makes sense to me.

That fat cunt lost in 2020. What new voters has he picked up since then?

R205, a lot. Democrats and Republicans are almost even in new voter registrations and more people now identify as Republican nationwide.

Trump also gains with voters who will under no circumstance vote for a black woman from California who’s 1/2 of the most unpopular administration in polling history.

r181 one hundred percent true. the originals feared "mob rule" - also, the logistics of counting votes then

Silver is now saying his gut tells him Trump will win. I hope his gut retires after the election, I don't want to hear the words "Nate Silver" and "Polymarket" for as log as I'm alive.

R209, do you have a link?

r205, young ones who couldn't vote in 2020, but that demographic is notoriously sky of voting at all

R2205

CNN had a segment on this the other day. The actual figures or % I don’t remember. But Trumps popularity went up from 2016 to 2020 then up again from 2020 to 2024. And it has gone significantly up .

[quote] young ones who couldn't vote in 2020, but that demographic is notoriously sky of voting at all

in 2024 Abortion is on the ballot. Young people are very aware of that fact. Could be a game changer.

Dump also lost a ton of voters who will not support him now. So I find the polls where things are tied to be dubious. And studies have shown the issue which is most motivating voters to turn out this year is abortion, and that benefits Harris.

the young boys are anti-abortion, the young girls, pro-abortion. more starkly than any other generation seen

I can't wait to see how many republican elections board heads and staffers end up in jail when they try to pull a fast one if Harris wins. You know some of the crazies who run elections boards are going to do some illegal crap like refusing to certify elections. I know of one who just plead guilty to doing that and is awaiting sentencing. I hope they lock the bitch up.

There aren't many misogynists who weren't already in Shitler's camp, R207, and I'd argue that there aren't many racists who aren't already there, as well. That said, we all thought DonOld had hit his ceiling in 2016 and he went on to get 8 million more votes in 2020, a record for a sitting POTUS as he says, but meaningless in the face of the victor who got 8 million more votes than that.

But Dotard's popularity, as R212 postulates, has not gone up. He's been under water in approval ratings consistently after the cultural amnesia regarding his heinous administration gave him a boost, but the general public has not suddenly become fond of him. Those numbers are pretty much set in stone. And part of what R212 alludes to is the phenomenon we're seeing with the shit polls flooding the averages (and news coverage) just as analysts and Democratic pundits have warned.

We've seen this all before, most recently in the 2022 midterms where polls in the final days said that there was going to be a red tsunami resulting in a House with a 50+ seat majority under Kevin McCarthy and state after state that was supposed to be in Republican hands (notably, Arizona and Michigan). In the poll that mattered — the election — Republikkkans were stunned. Their "red wave" was barely a tickle.

The Democrats have the right idea. They must keep hammering home the concept that he is unhinged, out of control and simply unfit. Using his words against him works. Making fun of him works, and it gets under his skin, to boot.

Bottom line, now is not the time to panic. Now is the time to vote, to make sure your friends and family are voting, and to do what you can to push the Democrats to victory whether it's knocking on doors, making calls, volunteering at a polling place, or donating money to those who are engaged in all of the above.

[quote]Silver is now saying his gut tells him Trump will win. I hope his gut retires after the election, I don't want to hear the words "Nate Silver" and "Polymarket" for as log as I'm alive.

To borrow a line from “High Fidelity,” I hope his gut has shit for brains.

[quote] in 2024 Abortion is on the ballot. Young people are very aware of that fact. Could be a game changer.

It’s all about Gaza for them.

[quote] the young boys are anti-abortion, the young girls, pro-abortion. more starkly than any other generation seen

The girls are trad wives (traditional wives) thanks to TikTok indoctrination.

Where is Miss Jaydine? I suppose the campaign is hiding him because he's disliked by most people.

[quote] Where is Miss Jaydine?

At the moment, Vance is leading a rally at Las Vegas.

It wouldn't hurt to have another Pussy Parade before the election to rile up any women who are undecided or who were not making the effort to vote.

if this Vance bitch tries to move in on my Maxwell House deal, I'll boot him back to the holler with bloody stumps where his arms were.

You better!

The two campaigns seem to have different senses of where things are going, Trump sticking to the swing states, trying to pin down NC, while Harris expands into TX.

Yep, the fact that he's camped out in NC right now speaks volumes.

I honestly think that if he loses NC it's over for him. Obama is going down there, that was not originally in his schedule, so the polls must be showing Harris has a very good chance there.

R201 she will win and that day people will take to the streets to celebrate. Wait and see.

It will be the end of Trump's presidential prospects, so I can definitely see people dancing in the streets when the election is called for her.

The fact that NC is even a swing state is a good sign, I think.

Granted, I think most people have said it was winnable for Biden, but because Cal Cunningham's Senate campaign imploded right before the election, it slipped away. And we have the reverse of that, because the gubernatorial election is going to drag on the ticket.

On Trump's ticket, I hope you mean, VotN.

R212, I don’t know what CNN is smoking, but what measurement did they use? If they interpret “popular” to mean Dump is the most read, or watched, figure today, well, most of us fucking hate him but click on every article on his insanity and missteps, hoping he self destructs. That’s the only way I see he’s more “popular.”

[quote] I honestly think that if he loses NC it's over for him. Obama is going down there, that was not originally in his schedule, so the polls must be showing Harris has a very good chance there.

Having been paying any attention to the polling? NC is a tie like the other swing states, so they both have a very good, and equal, chance of winning the state. They’re both going to have to work for it.

[quote] most of us fucking hate him but click on every article on his insanity and missteps, hoping he self destructs.

That’s not normal to click on articles about people you hate. There’s a long list of people, including politicians, who I never click on, because I don’t want to read about them. Isn’t the headline sufficient to get the gist, or is reading the article to get even more riled up the point of it?

[quote] The fact that NC is even a swing state is a good sign, I think.

We are living in a time of great transition (which is exciting but also rough and scary). In 2008, I would have never seen Georgia becoming blue/purple but it's happening. What happened to Colorado is the same thing happening to Texas, Georgia and North Carolina. It's even happening to Utah!!! Utah has voted less and less Republican with every election after 2000.

R233 you are disagreeing with a segment on TV you did not see.

Popularity as in liked more. And yes I find that surprising as well because in my bubble we all hate trump. A lot. And CNN said they also found that surprising,

It was a survey, it was data, you can of course disagree .

Ridiculous - not matter what the data “says”

Trump/Republicans have lost almost every election after 2016. The had a historic defeat in the 2018 midterms, with Democrats winning the most seats since LBJ. Trump lost in 2020. Republicans were humiliated in the 2022 midterms, even though they should have won big. Democrats have decisively won every special election since the Dobbs decision, even though pollsters had them tied on election day.

With voters saying that abortion is the number one issue this election, I don't see how Republicans magically start winning all of a sudden. It defies logic. If Democrats had lost almost every election over the last 6 years, no one would expect them to win the presidency this year.

[quote] With voters saying that abortion is the number one issue this election

That’s misinformation. The economy has consistently been the top issue.

I am betting there are thousands (if not even millions) of Repug wives and daughters who don't dare voice their concerns but will secretly vote for Kamala.

R239, and if not for the defund the police messaging and stuff like that, the Dems could have won even more seats. Oh well, we can't go back in time, but I think Kamala and the rest of the Dems have learned their lesson from that.

R241, yes, you are right about that. They may say publicly they support Trump but they will vote for Kamala.

If Harris is taking time to campaign in TX to boost Allred's against Cruz instead of working overtime in NC, PA and WI, they must feel pretty good about her chances in the battlegrounds. Or she has the most incompetently run campaign since Hillary.

[quote] Or she has the most incompetently run campaign since Hillary.

Nah, her. campaign will have Hillary derangement syndrome. I bet rule 1 is do not repeat 2016 and it's on postits everywhere. They will have studied every move HRC made in 2016 so they don't repeat it.

[quote] Or she has the most incompetently run campaign since Hillary.

She's run the best campaign since Obama. And considering she's only had since July to craft her message, I'd say that's even more impressive than Obama.

"She is running the best campaign..."

That's my point, R244 and R243. I can't imagine they would be taking her to Texas if they didn't feel comfortable with what they're seeing in the battleground states. It would be incompetent to do otherwise.

^ R244 and R245

R245, we can’t say that until she wins. If she loses, then it was completely botched.

R247, agree with you there.

Or r247, she knows she’s lost from internal polling and is now trying to save Congress for Democrats. She stands no chance of winning Texas. The fact that she would waste time there in the last two weeks is not a good sign.

If that were the case R251, why give up on her race to chase a pipe dream when there would be other more attainable senate or house races that she could try to boost instead? Allred beating Cruz is a longshot.

[quote] Allred beating Cruz is a longshot.

He’s currently only 1% away from Cruz. Not a long shot.

I live in Texas and voted for Allred on Monday. But I'm not confident the race is that close. I will be pleasantly surprised if he actually wins.

R249, Her campaign has absolutely been a resounding success. According to a yougov poll, >60% of people are voting for Kamala because of the woman herself versus only about 37% or so who are voting for "anyone but Trump". Those numbers were basically reversed for Biden in 2020. She has gotten people EXCITED to vote for her despite the fact that she received minimal attention as VP and didn't announce her candidacy until July. That's incredible by any metric.

R251 is the troll who is all over threads shitting on Kamala and simping for Trump. Ignore him and your experience here will be much less irritating.

R255, I agree that if Harris loses, even if it’s from making bad campaign decisions, it will still be a personal best for her and a reason for her to be happy.

I don't think Bill Gates would risk the retribution by making a massive contribution to someone who was going to lose to Trump. He knows something.

Gates was already making the contribution, the thing that changed was him going public about it. He could have been coerced to go public, since we know he has skeletons.

I can’t wait for this election to be over, in no small part due to the fact that trolls like r251 will disappear. Oh, and r251? Don’t bother commenting, I’ve had you blocked for eons but i know whom r256 is talking about..

R257 is on meth. No, losing and seeing the country destroyed will not make her happy. This is it for her.

[quote] I don't think Bill Gates would risk the retribution by making a massive contribution to someone who was going to lose to Trump. He knows something.

Gates has made a million business blunders. He knows nothing.

I remain hopeful that women across America get in the voting booths, away from their significant others, and say: fuck this guy. It’s going to be close as much as I wish it were different.

WEHT Robby Mook?

Robby Mook Aug 20: DO SOMETHING. I’m a precinct captain. What are you doing?

But nothing since. Get up, Robby! We love you! (well I him - I love everybody who's working for Kamala)

[quote]Robby Mook Aug 20: DO SOMETHING. I’m a precinct captain. What are you doing?

He needs to be kept FAR AWAY from the Harris campaign.

I blame the cargo shorts.

R251 was already blocked. Confirmed you're not missing anything. 🚫

Is anyone here in a potential bellwether county? I’m located in a fast growing midwestern county and it just feels so 50/50. It’s a mixture of mostly middle class transplants in the developed part, and largely rural and republican in the rest. Our local races are going to be so close. A different district in our state had a state rep win by SIX votes.

Whatever the result it'll be a shitstorm.

If Trump wins, well, I don't need to expand on that.

If Harris wins, the MAGA cult won't accept the result and will start shit that will make January 6 look mild.

And yet, R270, I'll still happily take Option B.

What part of Joe Robinette Biden as commander-in-chief of the US Armed forces do you not understand, r270? Bring it.

That is shocking r202, that they would blatantly put that in their lawsuit …if they don’t get enough teenage girls lives ruined by having babies too young then they might lose a congressional seat..

Maybe they ought to encourage people to emigrate to Missouri. Oh that’s right, they’re the wrong color.

I was in a Lyft on my way to JFK to fly to my cruise, and my driver had a Trump/Vance sign in the back.

I gave him a rotten review, but it was more because his driving was bad. But after considering not tipping, I decided instead to give him a whopping $0.46 in honor of Mighty Joe Biden.

[quote]There are also a lot of Republican voters that are quietly voting for Harris/Walz

Or not so quietly.

Look for more and higher profile Repugs declaring their votes for Harris in the coming week.

Go Kamala!

Even Susan Collins will be concerned.

For those who would run to embrace Fred Upton:

“Upton voted against passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and has since voted in favor of its complete repeal.”

“In 2004 and 2006, Upton voted for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. In 2019, he voted against the Equality Act, which would extend existing civil rights legislation to protect LGBT individuals from discrimination.”

However, he effectively left the GOP in 2021 when he voted to impeach Trump. After that, he did vote for some pro-trans, pro-gay bills, indicating he goes whichever way the wind is blowing. As a man without a party, he retired in 2022 rather than face defeat in a primary for a redistricted seat.

Echoes of "Hillary is going to win, she's ahead in the polls" back in 2016.

It's an entirely different world from 2016, r279, and comparisons are totally negligible.

[quote] Echoes of "Hillary is going to win, she's ahead in the polls" back in 2016.

Correct, so many pollsters and experts think Trump is going to win. And he won't.

[quote]Correct, so many pollsters and experts think Trump is going to win. And he won't.

I'd add to that the fact that many pollsters are on the right wing payroll

R282, seriously, I have noticed that too. There are several political analysts I follow on twitter and many of them (if not most of them) have said the same thing.

Trump leading in the battleground sunshine states in early voting, and tied in North Carolina. Gross.

R284 I didn't realize that vote counts were already being released.

Because they're not.

R285 What is this then?

It's a breakdown of early voting by party registration. But it's unknown who those voters are actually voting for. And even party registration is estimated in some cases. For example, it shows party registration figures for Texas. But in Texas, we don't register for a party. So at best, that's just a guess based on previous elections.

R286, I think that is just the registered party of the voters, not the vote. It might give an indication, I suppose.

R287 But isn't it likely they're voting for the party they are registered for?

Who knows, R289? But I've seen announcements by lots more Republicans saying they are voting for Harris than I have Democrats saying they are voting for Trump.

I don’t understand. When people talk about early voting, are they talking about in person? Or mail in? My mail in ballot doesn’t show anything and it won’t even be counted until Election Day (PA rules). How do they even track mail in votes by party?

R57, I saw the opposite at my early voting venue. First day of early voting, parking lots full, line for handicapped in front,all others lined up in the rear. I saw exactly two white people both over 50.

Gorgeous day, day before our city's large HBCU's massive homecoming celebration, and I really believe the equally massive early voting turnout is related to the embarrassingly poor turnout for our gubernatorial election last year. Far right dude even the prominent whites in the date hate. Southern U. Homecoming; big LSU game across town. Again, GORGEOUS day.

19 fucking percent turnout. NINETEEN.

So the asshole won and will be fucking over my state at least the next three years. But this year we're breaking records. I hope it's enough to flip a few local and statewide seats.

[quote]So the asshole won and will be fucking over my state at least the next three years.

Welcome to the club, R292!

But at least DeSatan is in his second term, and presumably (ya never know!) won't be able to run again.

Wow, R100/senior lesbian, that actually sounds a wee bit like cataloging, which 99% of librarians/techs/students find frustrating and arcane, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE. Love. The ability to take a subject or an item, cogitate over its essence, then try to distill the entire being of that entity into a catalog record that could fit on a 3" x 5" index card, so that even a fifth grader can understand AND locate, is... intoxicating.

And I also failed higher math in high school. Two report cards with six As (all AP level) and one F. Embarrassing.

Is that what you boys call "shade," R294?

Just curious.

Huh, R295/R100? What shade are you referring to?

I was only trying to make a (very poor, apparently) analogy to an area besides stats and higher math that most people struggle with.

Please forgive any absolutely unintended offense I gave; you're one of my favorite posters.

I just voted here in Miami Dade with my parents. However I had the unpleasant situation that a Nicaraguan voting right next to me, and who didn’t even know how to speak English and fill the ballot asked a question and showed me his ballot, and guess what he motherfucker was voting for republicans.

I have said it before on a different thread, I’m a Cuban born Spaniard, my ass is as white as Lilly flowers, I’m voting democrats because of gays, because I understand the wave of homophobia and racism and xenophobia that will definitely come if this bastard wins but if Kamala doesn’t win and it is known afterwards that a large part of gay and Latino voted for this monster. My liberal humanist ass will turn sour sour sour. It’s fair game. I will treat any gay that voted for Trump large an abomination and these Indios Mexican Nicaraguans, that are exotic , better do not complain about harassment and anti Latino hate, because I will call the INDIOS tiraflechas to their face.

If cubans vote in large numbers for Trump, I encourage all of you to contact the most hateful and anti immigrant of the republicans senators and demand for the termination of the Cuban adjustment act. Do your best effort and fight for it, even if you have to write letters to Donald Trump himself to accomplish it.

Notwithstanding r297 and the Marielitos, Cubans are model immigrants. There will be no undermining of the legal preference.

Sorry, R296 -- I guess I took it wrong.

It really is difficult to communicate like this, but we try our best.

This has to be a complete blowout. Like a Mondale blowout. Other than that, we are looking at lawsuits forever, Republic Party fuckery that will make the last time look like a walk in the park, Congress insanity, Florida and Texas going off the rails, and general mayhem.

I am so hoping this is a blowout. Otherwise, hunker down for a nightmare of epic size for months.

R300, I don't want to jinx anything--yes, 2016 traumatized me--but I think she will win AT LEAST an Obama 2012 percentage. Maybe even 2008. There are so many Republicans against Trump now versus 2020. Not a majority or a plurality but definitely at least 10% of them.