6453

Chasten most likely.

6454

Lol. ‘how’ instead of who

6455

I’m making the bold prediction that Trump will win in 2020. Nothing has changed in these swing states. They’re still full of awful people who want awful things.

6456

Yeah that’s a nice scenario. If the Russians are going for maximum destabilisation, I wonder if they would want to make vote tampering in a few swing states really obvious, or even just the appearance of massive vote tampering.

Thankfully the people in charge are taking these threats really seriously, so there’s nothing to worry about!

6457

Look at the sample sizes for all those state polls: 650 people. The margin of error for each of those state polls has to be something like 6 or 7 percent. Meaning even “radical leftists” Sanders and Warren are polling within the margin of error of the GOP candidate in Florida.

If a Dem wins Florida, Trump’s path to victory become incredibly difficult.

Instead of getting bummed out by one poll, people need to see opportunity and act on it. In particular, the Democratic party needs to get better organized in FLA, which apparently was a major problem in '16.

Also note that survey uses “likely voters” which generally ends up being “people who voted in the last election.” 2020, like 2008 and 2012, is going to be determined by turnout: getting Dems who stayed home in '16 to the polls, and convincing irregular voters who went Trump in '16 to stay home.

(By the same token, looking at the overall poll, yep, Trump is basically tied with all the Dems in 2016’s swing states. That’s a problem the Dems need to tackle head on. No one is going to be skipping WI and MI this time.)

6458

Of course, I was an Arizona resident before, so maybe I’ve screwed the pooch. Sigh.

6459

To the extent that any of this is about economic anxiety[*], you’d think that the messages of Warren and Sanders would be able to compete with Trump’s populist lies in those states. Biden less so.

([*] Of course, maybe it isn’t about economic anxiety and never was. Hard to believe that the universe of economically anxious people is largely made of of…white non-college educated men.)

6460

So here’s an interesting breakdown from that NYT/Siena poll:

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One quick takeaway from this chart is that there are very few people in the “Biden over Trump, Trump over Warren” slice (2% vs. 1% in the opposite “Warren over Trump, Trump over Biden”). That seems more like the “I love herpes” respondents you get when you ask polling questions than like some big trend to favor Biden.

More concerning is the Biden or Other camp (4%), which is twice as large as the Warren or Other camp, and the Other-Other camp, which is a ridiculous 6%. Taken together (and at face value), this implies that Trump gets around 45% of the vote if Biden is the nominee and around 45.5% if Warren is, but that enough people vote third party or stay home that Warren ends up with ~43% while Biden ends up with ~46%. That leaves a lot of votes on the table still who could potentially be persuaded to turn out against Trump. If you figure a lot of the Other-Other voters are third party die-hards, not going to vote, or fall into the category of “I don’t want to support Trump, but when it comes down to it I have to”, there are still 9% of respondents in this poll who are willing to support a Democrat over Trump. Win over those voters (and turn them out) and Trump would have to sweep the table on the undecided/third party only group.

It also included this chart:

image

Which also has some really interesting results. Biden does significantly better among white college-educated voters, which surprises me even in these battleground states where his “moderate” position is favorable. I have to wonder if that’s a place where Warren and Sanders could make up ground, relative to Trump, once they were nominated.

Warren does worse than Sanders or Biden among white non-college voters, which is possibly name recognition but probably “likability”. She does worse among black voters, but so does Sanders, so that’s probably more based on her leftism. Interestingly, even Biden is doing way worse among black voters than Hillary did, so there’s a huge gap to get up her level of support, and even Hillary’s margin there seems like it was too low (this is all in the battleground states, remember).

Finally, Warren is getting killed in the Hispanic and “Other” slices. I don’t know much about who makes up those voters, but I have to assume most of the Hispanic voters are in FL and AZ (compared to MI, WI, PA, or NC). That could mean that Cuban/Cuban-American voters are lukewarm on her, but I’m unclear why they would like Bernie so much more unless it’s name recognition / sexism. Is there a policy difference I’m missing here? For the “Other” slice, I think that shows she may have some lingering effects of the Pocohontas / DNA debacle, which probably leaves a worse taste in your mouth if your ethnicity doesn’t even get it’s own line-item in polls like this.

6461

What is unclear? Hispanics prefer Sanders to Warren and the only possible reason is that they are sexist, even more than Wisconsinites. Don’t you start making excuses now.

6462

I’m biased towards Warren, but I don’t see what appeals to anyone about Bernie over Warren, other than those who just want to tear it all down and think only Bernie has the guts to do it. I don’t have a good handle on how Hispanics or other ethnicities view their policies (what are the priorities of the different groups lumped together into those line items? I have a clearer view of the priorities of the white and black slices because I’ve seen more reporting about it).

So the question is, given that we know sexism does play a role (though we don’t know how big a role) and that name recognition plays a role (though again a tough to quantify one), but that Bernie and Warren are very similar in terms of their policy positions while being miles away from Trump, what other factors are in play here as an explanation for people preferring Bernie over Trump but Trump over Warren (or choosing to say they prefer Bernie over Trump but not Warren over Trump)? I would much rather have the answer be a concrete policy or a lack of name recognition, but I’d also much rather have Trump polling in the low teens.

6463

Nevada poll just released with even more good news for Biden.

He’s having a day.

6464

Didn’t you hear? Biden’s campaign is going down! It’s dead in the water! Out of money! …or says the couple of GOP propaganda machines on a fairly regular basis these days.

6465

I would tear up my voter registration and never vote again.

6466

har har, you’ll never vote again whatever you do to your voter registration.

I really hope that everyone here that was depressed by that recent poll will still get off your fucking chairs next year and put every ounce of your being into helping the D candidate whoever they are. It isn’t enough to vote for them. Yes, it’s easy for me to talk as not being American I can’t do anything about it anyway, but seriously the whole world and every other species on the planet is counting on all of you to step up in a big way next year. You can all do this!!

6467

I live in Oregon, so my contributions have mostly been in cash, other than white knighting so much disinformation on Facebook.

6468

I told them to put me on the list of volunteers for the next election. We’ll see if that leads to anything. It’s a little… scary running around in a red county. I would hate to have the cops called on me, but maybe I can coerce a friend to do a buddy system with me.

6469

I hope you do. I would love to tell you that won’t happen to you, but we both know it is sadly all too plausible.

If I was closer, but alas I am in a different district. Good luck to you.

6470

It will be interesting if I can figure out something useful to do, and I have a couple of friends that are pretty passionate. I bet we can come help in some meaningful way even though OR is not a swing state. The local elections are still important.

6471

They always have a buddy system. (I did some of this in 2018)
Look up Swing Left and see if they operate in your area- they’re a very reputable organization for this.

That said, my real recommendation to you if you want to get involved in this way- contact your local democratic county office and see what precinct you should join. Espe cially if you have competitive local election. The work I did here in 2018 is currently stopping the Republicans from passing the state budget. The State Senate gives Cooper a veto by 1 vote, the State Senator seat here flipped by double-digit votes. I know we personally registered a few voters, so my work mattered.

6472

Yeah I will probably after the New Year. We’re not really competitive though, but I am sure there is something I can do. I know where the office is!