• Jordan Lund
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    1 year ago

    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.

      • Jordan Lund
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Kleinbonum@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • Jordan Lund
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            1 year ago

            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?

    • sweeny@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      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

      • Jordan Lund
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • sweeny@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          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

          • Wiz@midwest.social
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            1 year ago

            This is true. 77k vastly undercounts the number of idiots that voted for that guy.

    • Doc Avid Mornington@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Jordan Lund
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Doc Avid Mornington@midwest.social
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • Jordan Lund
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            1 year ago

            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.