Vote every time. Polls mean nothing. Vote.
Yep. Polls are getting less reliable anyway, because so many of them rely on landlines, and some segments of the population are less likely to respond to surveys than others.
Which is telling, because the land line polls tend to over inflate Conservative voices, and it still has Trump losing in a landslide.
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To be fair, Clinton won the popular vote by a large margin, it’s just that the House has not been expanded in 100 years despite the population more than tripling, so some states have outsized impact during a presidential election.
District sizes have nothing to do with Presidential or Senate elections, they are state wide.
Except that California should have like 60x as many votes as Wyoming.
If you increase the members of congress, then that’s going to increase the number of electoral college votes needed to win as well. So, proportionally, it all stays the same.
Congressional districts are divided among states based on the census, and then become the count of electoral votes, which in turn award the presidency. So they have a lot to do with presidential elections.
Increasing the number of congressional districts would also necessitate increasing the number of votes needed to win.
Right now, each state has 1 per Congressman and 1 for each of 2 Senators.
538 total with 270 needed to win (50.18%).
So if you add house members, let’s say we do something crazy and double it for everyone:
976 electoral college votes (538-100 because the Senate votes are fixed. 438*2 then add the 100 Senators back in).
Now you need 488 to become President. The problem remains, all you did is change the scale.
The size of the electoral college is based on the size of the House, because the House (currently) has a fixed size, the states each get a set number of electoral votes, that do not actually match the populations of those states.
This is due to a law passed in 1929 called the permanent apportionment act, which froze the size of the House, despite the fact that we’ve added two new states since then.
So States like California have less electoral power than they should, while states like Rhode Island have more than they should. Well, technically Rhode Island should have more as well, every state should have more.
Increasing the number of congressional districts would also necessitate increasing the number of votes needed to win.
Right now, each state has 1 per Congressman and 1 for each of 2 Senators.
538 total with 270 needed to win (50.18%).
So if you add house members, let’s say we do something crazy and double it for everyone:
976 electoral college votes (538-100 because the Senate votes are fixed. 438*2 then add the 100 Senators back in).
Now you need 488 to become President. The problem remains, all you did is change the scale.
Overinflating conservatism in the US is par for the course. See: the three-fifths compromise and the electoral college.
The electoral college isn’t bad per se, it’s just been allowed to become bad in a way that hints at a deeper issue.
Notably that the House has not been expanded in 100 years, even as the population has expanded, and two states have been added.
We need to un-cap the house and get it to the point where it’s actually representative again. Doing so would take a single act of congress.
Because the electoral college includes the sum of all Senators and Representatives in a given state, rural states with low populations presidential votes carry much more weight than urban states with large populations. You’re right about the House not expanding, that’s also shifting things around - but a huge reason the electoral college exists at all was to assure the southern states that the institution of slavery would be protected in order to get them to ratify the Constitution. It shifted power to shitheads on purpose.
The electoral college is bad.
It is unneeded in the modern era.
The electoral college didn’t shift power to slave states. That was the 3/5ths compromise.
No, the electoral college was created because the fastest way to travel in the 1780s was via foot. There weren’t even good roads between the new states. So it could take months to get from Georgia to Washington, DC.
We don’t have that problem anymore, but changing things like that would require a constitutional amendment. Something that is fairly hard to do in today’s political climate.
And it still wouldn’t fix the problem with the House not being representative. But one act of congress to repeal the permanent apportionment act of 1929 would fix both issues.
Massively expanding the size of the House would make it representative, and it would make the electoral college better represent the populations of each state.
It sure did shift power to the slave states. The Senate gives equal power to each state, regardless of population. That’s why, as states were allowed to join the union, they were done for quite some time in pairs - one slave, one free - in order to maintain a balance in the Senate.
The Electoral College did give the slave states more power, by way of the three-fifths compromise: the number of Electors depends on the number of Representatives, which depends on the census of inhabitants, not vote-eligible citizens, including, at the time, 3/5 of the slave population. So a state like Virginia, with more slaves than free people, got a boost compared to a state with only free residents.
Allow me to evangelize the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which aims to bypass the Electoral College and elect the president by popular vote.
Which still doesn’t fix the problem with the House not being representative.
It’s bad per se and also ludicrous. It gives way too much power to states with small populations, which tend to be rural and very right wing. But it is also ludicrous, we should all vote for the person selected to rule the nation, and every vote should have equal weight. Those same states - the right has a hugely unbalanced say in the senate for the same reason, small rural states have massively disproportionate representation. Reforming presidential elections can be done by amendment or by efforts like the popular vote compact, by agreement between enough states. The stupid constitution forbids amending the way the senate is apportioned, so there might have to be a court fight over changing that rule.
Again… The outsized power of smaller states is 100% an artifact of the permanent apportionment act of 1929. It decreed that the size of the House would be set at 435 members. And then we added two states and tripled the population.
And the House is still 435 members. Some congressional districts have more than a million people. How the hell can a Representative actually be said to represent 1 million people?
To fix this would take a single act of congress. Just a simple repeal of one law, and the adoption of a new apportionment standard. That’s it. Then the popular vote would mostly line up with the electoral college, because the votes would have to line up. Because it would actually be representative of the actual population.
Just massively increase the size of the house to match the actual population.
I agree the house needs expansion, however I also think that would only moderately address the electoral college skew toward rural states. Also it is in my opinion irrelevant as it does not address the core problem: the president should be elected by a direct national vote, each person getting one vote of equal weight to every other vote.
The polls showed him losing solidly to Clinton right up until he won though… The numbers are looking worse this time, but still.
It’s a little more complex than that. The national polls had him losing solidly to Clinton on the popular vote, which actually happened. The real polling errors occurred at the state level, in a few key states.
This actually kind of sucks because then if/when the votes don’t look close to how they expect according to polls they automatically assume something fishy happened.
And yes, I realize many will think that regardless.
Polls have evolved since then you know.
I’m not saying they are perfect, but they understand, generally, that landlines aren’t key anymore. It’s literally their job.
From the article:
Interviews were conducted in English, and included 319 live landline telephone interviews, 480 live cell phone interviews, and 111 online surveys via a cell phone text
But you are right on polls not really meaning that much. Especially over a year away.
Also, you have to take into account the weirdos who answer unknown numbers on their cell phones
That’s a valid point. Not many people do. Pollsters have a tough road ahead of them, because actually doing a scientifically valid poll is getting harder.
Also, national polls mean nothing. We don’t have a national election.
Trump lost in 2016 by 2.1%, he became President by winning in WI, MI and PA. 2 states Clinton failed to campaign in and a 3rd she alienated.
The total number of votes that elected Trump were just 22,748 in WI, 10,704 in MI and 44,292 in PA.
77,744 people made Trump a President. The rest of us knew better.
Trump became president because the Russian state interfered in our elections. Full stop.
Also true, but it wouldn’t have happened if Clinton had actually campaigned in states she took for granted and didn’t say stupid shit about coal.
Nothing Clinton said about coal was “stupid shit.”
She just told people the truth, and people prefer to be lied to over hearing uncomfortable truths.
Same happened to Al Gore: he told people the truth, and people went absolutely bonkers over that.
By contrast, Trump told people exactly what they wanted to hear, even though it was clear to anyone that he was lying to them or promising them things that he could never, ever fulfill - and people loved it.
Telling blue collar workers your goal is to end their industry is, indeed, stupid shit.
We complain bitterly on the Left about Republican voters voting against their own self interest… well, when you have a Democratic candidate telling them the intent is to put them out of work? What do you expect them to do?
I agree except for that last point
77,744 people made Trump a President. The rest of us knew better.
Sorry but that’s not how math works. 63 million people made trump president, and only 66 million of us knew better. That huge number of trump voters is the horrible reality of American politics weve had to come to terms with. Luckily some of the trump supporters learned from their mistake, but there’s still millions of them out there, not <100k
Millions out there, countered by millions of Democratic voters, and over votes on both sides in states like Texas and California.
It was the 77K in those three states that threw it to Trump, and note, in 2020, Biden did not repeat Clinton’s mistake.
Yeah I get that, but what I’m saying is it’s not like the rest of the US knew better than that 77k figure. 77k is just the difference in votes, it doesn’t represent the only 77k people that did wrong
This is true. 77k vastly undercounts the number of idiots that voted for that guy.
I don’t think YOU understand statistics, lmao
I mean, pollsters actually do account for how elections work in their models. There are all sorts of actual reasons polls have failed to be reliable lately, but if you think it’s because they just count total responses across the country, that isn’t the case.
Not really, case in point is this very poll:
“In the national survey of 910 voters, 47% of voters said they would definitely or probably support Biden, while just 40% said they would back Trump.”
Which is meaningless, because unless 47% of voters flip the correct states, it won’t matter how much Biden wins.
Remember, Clinton won the popular vote. Gore won the popular vote AND Florida. It didn’t matter.
So, I think you’re probably right, in this case. But you’re just quoting the reporting on the poll, which is very misleading. It makes it sound like there is no statistical model involved at all. From the methodology on the linked full poll results: “The full sample is weighted for region, age, education, gender and race based on US Census information”. Like I said, I think you’re right - I doubt if they mean weighting for “region” to imply they did an electoral college analysis - but until you look at the actual poll and it’s methodology, you can’t just assume that an article reporting on the poll is giving an accurate impression. There are polls that do account for state breakdown, and the reporting in an article on such a poll would probably be just the same as here.
It seems the focus of this poll was to get some initial idea what kind of impact a third-party run with Manchin and some Republican running mate would have, and looking at weighted national numbers is probably “good enough” for that purpose, at this time. Definitely not a basis to conclude Biden has it in the bag, and the poll itself doesn’t seem to be trying to claim that.
Sorry I’m going on, but yeah, big picture, you are correct, at least in this case.
Oh, there’s no doubt a statistical model to represent the entire country. The problem with popularity contest polling like this is the election isn’t a popularity contest.
Now, a similar survey running down each contested state and calling out the electoral college votes, that would be useful.
Anything that leads with “a national poll…” can be safely disregarded.
Serious question, which state she alienated and how?
Pennsylvania. She gave a speech in neighboring Ohio where she said:
“We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
That echoed through coal country, and while nobody expected her to win states like West Virginia, it absolutely killed her in PA.
https://www.npr.org/2016/05/03/476485650/fact-check-hillary-clinton-and-coal-jobs
https://pagop.org/2015/08/03/clinton-pledges-to-continue-the-war-on-coal/
It was a self inflicted injury, which was so, so avoidable.
She COULD have rolled it into a victory like this:
“I’m going to tell you something right now that not a lot of people know… my great grandfather was a coal miner in Durham, England. Moved to Scranton with his six kids dreaming of a better life for all of them. I’d like to see a better life for your fathers, brothers, and sons that doesn’t involve risking their lives underground for a few scraps of coal that they’ll never share in the profits on.”
True story: https://www.palatinate.org.uk/hillary-clinton’s-great-grandfather-was-a-durham-miner-says-local-historian/
Instead? “Imma put a bunch of you out of work. U mad bro? LOL.”
Hilary Clinton is the definition of hubris.
Absolutely! If polls were deciding the outcome, Hilary would win in 2016.
Only twice in three elections. This means Trump had a one third chance to win that election. Which, sadly, he did.
If the weather forecast says 30% chance of rain and it rains do you question the validity of the forecast or do you think “I guess I ended up getting some of that rain”?
After 2016, anyone who believes in polls is a fool.
Believing is one thing. Anyone who changes their behavior because of polls, I wanna meet this fucking idiot and find out what’s going on in that dumb brain
The 2016 polls were not inaccurate though. They said Trump had a small chance at victory, and he pulled it off. They never said it was impossible, they just said smart money was on Hillary.
Ya, if I remember right FiveThirtyEight had Trump at around 30% chance in 2016, so slightly unlikely but not exactly a crazy longshot.
They were one of the few that gave him that large of a margin, iirc. The rest were in the 90’s for Hillary.
The national polling was also pretty accurate, it was the state polling that missed. Trump squeezed out wins in 4 states by a combined total of 50,000 votes. Nationally though the numbers were within their prediction.
Vote now on your phones!
Literally nobody wants conservative garbage in office. The party of liars and frauds always defanging enforcement of laws and regulations and everyone knows because we have been talking about it since that Liar War George WMD Bush and housing crash that he did.
Every chance we had at reigning in the psychopathic elites was thwarted by the Conservatives ONLY.
The white dudes sold half of my generation to a liar war and the other half to crippling debt. So we voted in a black man and they revolted by selling out to foreign enemies to steal an election because they got caught stealing 2000 with the Brooks Brothers Riot.
The party of garbage is being taken out and the midterms show it. Polls are garbage and we don’t answer them because we want them to look like assholes like we did during the mid terms AND 2024.
What’s their plan? Ruin our lines of communication from now until 2024 by buying and destroying media in a way that looks like incompetence.
They might go and get crazy and attack the country again OR start pretending they’re Democrats - they already do.
Look at Ron ShitSandwich. Total incompetent shit bag. And he’s only 44. Plenty of time to get worse.
Fucking PREACH!
And then you woke up
The only reason conservatives win anything is because of lines on a fucking map. No one likes that shit
Oof. Almost every institution of politics in America allows them to rule the country as a minority party.
Think about how there are two senators for every state. So tens of millions of people in California get the same political representation as the like one million in Nebraska.
The Supreme Court was designed so that the institution was buffered from political winds. A bunch of conservatives can interpret the Constitution however they want with no political repercussions as a consequence.
States have a lot of leeway in deciding how to conduct elections. That’s why they can have single ballot box at a single location in a district with millions of voters. And they do that and say the elections are fair.
Conservatives have advantages all over the place.
Both parties are gerrymandering as much as they can get away with. If you meant the electoral college that’s part of being a federation of states, sorry. Changing the rules to benefit your team is not exactly fair either, right?
If the number of electors was distributed in a way that didn’t give disproportional representation to states with very small populations, that would be great. Also, the notion that the US is truly a federation of independent states hasn’t been accurate for at least 200 years.
It’s a bit disproportional for a few states but then again, you can say the votes of people in Wyoming are worth more relatively speaking but it’s still just 3 electors in the end. No one will pay much attention to them either way, unlike the more populous states which can swing elections.
unlike the more populous states which can swing elections.
You say that like it’s a bad thing for people to be in charge rather than arbitrary lines drawn on maps.
I’m saying they don’t matter with their 3 votes, I don’t think the people there feel very important in deciding the presidential election.
It is not just Wyoming, but many states. States like Wyoming and North Dakota get 2-3 times the votes per population as states like California, Florida or Illinois. For states such as New Mexico and Arkansas, the ratio is more like 1.5 times the more populous states. It just doesn’t make sense according to how the system is supposed to work.
Some people’s vote being worth more is not exactly fair. Having equal representation isn’t changing the rules to be in favor of one side, unless you count democracy as a “side”.
One party wants to directly fuck with your life removing things people have found a need for, the other is slow. Pick your poison I guess.
No, that’s a straight up lie. Multiple blue states have independent commissions that draw the maps, meanwhile red states refuse to allow even that.
I’m sick of fascists trying to gaslight people into believing that everyone is the same as they are. You’re a blatant liar.
You’re delusional
Typical repug, zero counter argument because you know you’re a liar. Thanks for proving it.
We can all see you upvote your own posts
FYI: When you post, there’s a single upvote automatically comes up.
And then you woke up.
Almond joys got deez nuts, Mounds don’t
Both candy bars are underrated though :3
Both candy bars are underrated though
I’ll die on this hill with you.
Fuck the teams. What’s my team? I’m an independent. I’ve never once been registered in a party in my decades of voting. Knock off the team bullshit. It’s how idiots think
It would be nice if 40-45% of the country didn’t try to force the other 60% to live by their rules.
Lol you’re only an independent because it inflates your ego. You actually think you’re smarter than everyone else. You even say as much. It has fuck all to do with your political views or any desire to make the country a better place.
I’m an independent because I will vote for whoever makes sense. I never vote party line and I never vote for only one party consistently. If I’m calling people stupid it’s because they think aligning with a party no matter what makes sense. It doesn’t. It’s rigid and ignorant. So yeah, I’m smarter than people like that
Just lately, republicans have become so toxic and stupid, I wouldn’t dare vote that way. It’s objectively terrible
We need and deserve ranked-choice voting.
And for that to happen we need the current gatekeepers to allow the change. There’s no incentive for them to ever do what voters want or need
Would be nice if the majority doesn’t force the minority to live by their rules either.
So instead you allow a crazy ass minority most people don’t agree with to do the same thing. How convenient for you.
remember that the trump campaign spent money convincing people to stay home in 2016. their two messages were “clinton’s got this in the bag, your vote doesn’t matter” and “trump and clinton are basically the same anyway”. vote early and vote often, nothing is sure until after the post-election terrorism has died down.
Literally no polls matter outside of election season, people lie to them, often for protest or primary reasons. Plenty of fascists want desantis because he’s a much bigger monster.
I’m just assuming Trump will win at this point, psychologically prepare myself for the absolute worst outcome currently plausible
Percentages are not electoral college votes and that’s what matters (even though it shouldn’t). No complacency on this!
It’s hilarious, country of “FREEDOM” isn’t even a democracy. Democracy doesn’t work in electoral college concept.
Google the term “representative democracy”
When rural states are given more voting power, that’s an unfair advantage given to a political party. One vote should be one vote. Oh, conservatives can’t win presidential election? That’s a reflection of how bad their ideas are. If we fix Senate for more proportional representation on top of that, then I can believe that it is a full-fledged democracy.
I am aware of the shittier aspects of our system
However those aspects were installed by democratically elected representatives and we have a democratic process by which those aspects can be changed. turns out some of the people being represented really want those things.
Nah because I already know America isn’t a real democracy with electoral colleges, and gerrymandering. You’re kidding yourself if you think it is.
Without the electoral college, conservatives would have to try with more palatable policies. But even so, bad ideas don’t stand, which is the conservatives’ problem.
“Ackshully look up the definition of democracy!”
These polls are fun and all, but I don’t trust them, especially a over a year out. Things can change drastically.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the right pushing these poll reports to galvanize their own voters and make their opponents think they can relax.
When it comes to power, I don’t think it’s ever safe to relax.
I remember 2016. All polls are bullshit. Assume the worst and vote in anticipation of the worst case scenario.
I had my absentee ballot sitting on the dining room table for about a month in 2016. I kept on procrastinating getting it in the mail and finally remembered the day before the election. I live in a swing state 😞
I’m not sure if it was counted and take my share of responsibility for what happened next. I’m definitely not the only one who didn’t take it seriously because of all the polls. Never again.
Exactly. Fuck the polls, get out there and vote.
I mistrust polls. Is this a legitimate poll or is this propaganda aimed at Biden voters? The message is that you don’t have to bother voting because your choice is leading the poll. Vote anyway.
If a poll in favour of their candidate is gunna stop people from voting I doubt they were gunna vote in the first place lol
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this poll queried 900 voters. 900 people who are the type of people to respond to political polls
for reference, almost 155 million people voted in 2020
so this poll was conducted with less than 0.0006% of the voting population of 2020, and the group that responded is a particular (and biased) group. edit: for additional reference, biden received 7 million more votes than trump did in 2020, which is roughly 7,800 times more voters than were polled for this article.
ignore this completely
go fucking vote
in fact tell the next 10 people you talk to to vote as well
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thanks for being condescending, but i do understand how sample sizes work. i also know how selection and self-selection biases work.
but by all means, feel free to let me know what meaningful conclusions we should take from this poll.
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Polls exist for pundits and political analysts.
What sample size do ypu think would be appropriate?
in the 2016 election, tens of thousands of people were reached for some polls, and these polls all declared total victory for Clinton
so i cant answer your question directly, but i do know that one single poll of 900 people aint it
But under what factual basis are you discarding a 900 person sample size?
I dont remember polls insisting Clinton would win, I remember dumb people saying thats what polls said, and your source makes me not feel shifted in that opinion.
A 3% margin on a poll in no way is declaring total victory to anybody.
Many of the polls you just shared have a 1% difference in support rate.
So you think a 1% better polling rate is " declared total victory for Clinton" but feel confident in discarding a 900 person sample?
If there was 10k people in the polls ypu are referencing, you are using 900 people as proof of absolute victory lol.
i dont know what point of mine youre arguing against
i dont trust political polls in general, and as far as political polls go this one is on the lower end. all i did was make comparisons to other (larger) polls that did not manage to capture the true distribution of voter intent
Did you seriously make claims about poll data without checking your source?
i dont know what you’re talking about.
I just want to chime in and say I don’t disagree with you. Your tone wasn’t dismissive or condescending at all and the disparaging comments replying to you are pretty rude.
I’ve only been around Lemmy a short time so my sample size is quite small too, but I’ve seen a lot of rude condescending pricks around here so far. There’s all these threads talk about a great lemmy is and how much better than Reddit it is but I’m just seeing a bunch of assholes so far tbh. That doesn’t have anything to do with this post or thread, just venting.
Try reading the link you shared and reading your comment bright guy.
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Speaking for myself, the reason I don’t trust polls is because of how wrong they all were in 2016. Your response is rude and condescending and not at all appropriate. You’re the asshole here, but it’ll probably take you more than an hour or so to fix that.
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I’m still gonna be at the booth voting.
Work and stupid polls like this won’t keep me way.
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This is why Republicans know they have to steal the election any way they can. Polling places with reduced hours, stricter requirements for mail ballots, voter ID laws, not letting people provide water to voters waiting in line, invalidating voter registrations, etc. They want to make voting as difficult as possible.
y’all don’t even make voting day a day off, literally everything America does it to stop people voting, not a democracy at all
You guys don’t hold votes on Sundays?
Not where I live. It depends on the area - but Republicans everywhere are trying to make it harder to vote.
In my area, they give out stickers at polling places, so maybe they think that makes up for it not being considered a holiday…?
That’s not true. Several states, including the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon and California all allow voting by mail. In Oregon, where I live, I get two weeks to fill out my ballot from the comfort of my own home while researching on the internet and watching YouTube videos telling me who to vote for.
Then I have too many beers at night and end up filling out Donald Trump every single time. God damn it. I wrote him in as my county water commissioner, and he never showed up! What a douchebag.
I’m in Florida and even we have several weeks of early voting where you can find time to cast your vote. It’s still weekdays but it’s a lot better than a single day.
Umm, 2016 showed us how reliable polls can be
People look at the big picture in polls(X candidate is leading in polls) and then say they’re wrong when Y candidate wins, but it’s way more nuanced than that.
The 2016 polls were not that far off. Hillary won the popular vote, as the polls predicted. The key states she lost, she lost by small margins within, or not too far from, the margin of error.
If you look at FiveThirtyEight’s final prediction for 2016, Trump had a 28.6% chance of winning. That’s between a 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 chance! But the media narrative was that Trump had 0 chance, and what happened happened.
2016 was the year a whole bunch of people were convinced that “protest voting” was an actual thing and that “both sides are the same so don’t bother voting”. Hopefully a few of those people have learned their lesson.
If there’s ANYTHING us Americans are good at, it’s not learning lessons.
Case in point: we Americans!
Eat poop, Trump.
EDIT: I want to clarify that I do not condone cannibalism.
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(He’s calling trump poop)
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Hahaha he called the trump poop!
VOTE VOTE VOTE
