US Poll-itics

[IheartIheartTesla]

In PA, 3 million ballots have been requested of which 1.7 million have been returned. I am taking a close look at that to see how many will be outstanding come Nov 3, because the SC may not allow counting those mailed on Nov 3 and postmarked (not sure if they can drop it off at a clerk's office day of election or not).

Regarding TX, it will almost certainly reach higher than 2016 numbers, but how much is anyone's guess

[Maithanet]

3 hours ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-joe-biden-toast-if-he-loses-pennsylvania/

A loss in PA isnt the end of it for Biden, but he's have to hold on to other Midwest states (which are somewhat correlated to PA), maybe grab AZ etc...

But that article is a little misleading.  If Trump wins PA because he actually got more votes then Biden is probably finished, becuase he's already looking at one massive polling error in Trump's favor, of a state that has been polled extensively.

However, the scenario we're worrying about is Trump and the Supreme Court stopping counting the votes to hand Trump a victory.  Which is very possible.  But that scenario doesn't mean that the polls missed, they just didn't balance out cheating.  If you look at the most likely Electoral College counts, Biden breaks 290 (and thus doesn't need PA) at least 75% of the time.  Which is a big part of why I think that the polls DO matter, because the bigger the landslide Biden has, the harder it will be to steal.  If Biden wins at least two of NC, AZ, TX, GA, FL, and OH on election night, then he's very likely to win.  Now, those are very conservative states, and it is total bullshit that we're in this situation, but what can you do?  We're a failing democracy. 

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Yep, but the overall number has never hit 40 or below (or at least this millennia).  Compare that to Congress.  Here's a link with more detailed items demonstrating the court has maintained very solid institutional approval.  You're objectively wrong that the court doesn't have legitimacy, no real point in arguing.

The Supreme Court does not currently have a crisis of legitimacy.  It is possible that is about to change with the addition of Barrett.  We'll see. 

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Should be noted that the 2018 races in Florida even further reinforced a lack of confidence in Dems leading on election eve.

Yes, polls had Dems slightly ahead in 2016 and 2018, and they lost both times.  2018 is particularly disheartening, because it demonstrated that even in a Dem wave year, Republicans can sweep Florida.  It definitely could happen again. 

However, pollsters rarely miss the same way over and over again.  Pollsters are building their 2020 samples on 2016 (and to a lesser extent, 2018), so it's not like they aren't aware of the Republican victories there.  Maybe Trump can do it again, it is clearly possible.  But it's foolish to give up hope there.  A 2-3 point lead is not a bad place to be, even if we all wish it were 5 or 8 points more. 

15 minutes ago, Alarich II said:

One question from an ignorant European: If Texas has already achieved 87% of the votes cast in 2016, is this an indicator for a massive increase in turnout or a massive shift towards early voting?

Both.  Texas is also much more competitive this year than it has been in decades.  Competitive states always have higher turnout.  In 2016, they had less than 10 million votes.  This time it will be above 12 million for sure, and possibly much higher.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

7 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

In PA, 3 million ballots have been requested of which 1.7 million have been returned. I am taking a close look at that to see how many will be outstanding come Nov 3, because the SC may not allow counting those mailed on Nov 3 and postmarked (not sure if they can drop it off at a clerk's office day of election or not).

This might be my own ignorance, but it sounds like the assumption is that PA and other states that may have problems counting ballots may have a lead for the Republicans in on-person voting on Election Day, because early voters are disproportionately going to go for Biden, and shenanigans will prevent those from being counted?

Is there any data around this?  Do we think it will really be an issue, say, if the tally for Biden is up by 5% at midnight in PA?  Think that there will be calls to “count all votes” by Trump or that Biden could ask for SC intervention based on Kavanaughs opinion on intervening in state voting?

[IheartIheartTesla]

17 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I was starting to feel an unhealthy optimism that maybe the election will actually play out ok, today has dashed that and I'm safely back to cynically hoping to be wrong but bracing for the worst.

I am trying to be rational and logical, but its proving to be hard with all the last minute stuff. And this is precisely Trump's plan (maybe not a plan but a series of fortuitous circumstances).

All told a Trump win wont be catastrophic for me personally (mostly) but it will be disastrous for this nation.

[Maithanet]

1 minute ago, VigoTheCarpathian said:

This might be my own ignorance, but it sounds like the assumption is that PA and other states that may have problems counting ballots may have a lead for the Republicans in on-person voting on Election Day, because early voters are disproportionately going to go for Biden, and shenanigans will prevent those from being counted?

Is there any data around this?  Do we think it will really be an issue, say, if the tally for Biden is up by 5% at midnight in PA?  Think that there will be calls to “count all votes” by Trump or that Biden could ask for SC intervention based on Kavanaughs opinion on intervening in state voting?

Polling and early voting patterns clearly show that Democrats are voting absentee in much higher numbers than Republicans.  If the early vote in PA is 50% of all voters, and Biden is winning them by 20, and the election day vote is Trump by 10, then the question is just what portion of the early vote will they be reporting on election night.  If it's only 20% (which is very possible because PA election officials are not experienced with this level of absentee ballots), then Trump will be ahead. 

[Maithanet]

Final national poll from CNBC/Hart has Biden +11.  I'm not too familiar with them, but they're an A- rated pollster on 538, so that's good.  Poll is 50% post debate. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Right, to me the biggest problem is how many ballots will be returned by mail that are postmarked election day (or even returned after election day) but subject to not being counted because of SC. There are still 1.3 million ballots requested outstanding of which 800k are D and 400k are R based on party affiliation (about 150k unaffiliated as well). For simplicity if you assume 400k are outstanding that cant be counted, then you have Biden having a deficit of 133k votes (thats not insurmountable but just an additional barrier for him to overcome)

[IheartIheartTesla]

4 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Final national poll from CNBC/Hart has Biden +11.  I'm not too familiar with them, but they're an A- rated pollster on 538, so that's good.  Poll is 50% post debate. 

Based on the NYT page, its the same as NBC/WSJ. In other news, Rasmussen has Biden up by 2 so there's your landslide with Biden surging.

[Fez]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

But as you said, if the other five just tell him to kick rocks, there isn't much he can do, and four of the five probably can't wait to do so. Hanging your hopes on Gorsuch is not a great place to be.

True. However, every vote on SCOTUS is invaluable and it would be silly for the conservatives to try icing out Roberts entirely. His vote still matters, especially since there will undoubtedly still be 5-4 decisions that require his vote to make a majority. Gorsuch has already shown he'll sometimes vote with the liberals, so did Kavanaugh (though not in any 5-4s, just 6-3s). Even Thomas and Alito occasionally do; though it's almost never just them with 4 liberals. But, for instance, there were 42 cases total where Ginsburg and Thomas were on the same side in a 5-4 case, and 17 times where Ginsburg and Alito were. (Source: https://apnews.com/article/e33ef9b1f5c94155a7cc38adeceed14d)

That only adds up to once or twice per term, but it does happen. Many of those would now be 5-4 conservative wins, because Barrett has replaced Ginsburg. Unless Roberts got iced out, it makes him rethink some things, and he starts voting the liberal bloc more. And then there's the really unexpected alignments. Like the case this year where it was 5-4 Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Kagan, and Sotoymayor. Thomas/Alito/Ginsbug/Breyer were the dissents.

None of this is necessarily relevant for a high-stakes election case; I'm just talking about Roberts relationship with the conservatives in general in the future.

22 minutes ago, karaddin said:

If I was in the US I'd be very fucking scared my marriage was going to get tossed out by the court even if Biden does win but fails to address the SCOTUS issue.

I'd be surprised if existing marriages got tossed. But, yeah, I could easily see this court stopping new marriages from happening.

2 minutes ago, VigoTheCarpathian said:

This might be my own ignorance, but it sounds like the assumption is that PA and other states that may have problems counting ballots may have a lead for the Republicans in on-person voting on Election Day, because early voters are disproportionately going to go for Biden, and shenanigans will prevent those from being counted?

Is there any data around this?  Do we think it will really be an issue, say, if the tally for Biden is up by 5% at midnight in PA?  Think that there will be calls to “count all votes” by Trump or that Biden could ask for SC intervention based on Kavanaughs opinion on intervening in state voting?

That is the great unknown. It seems likely that Trump could be up in Pennsylvania and maybe Michigan, regardless of the final tally. On the other hand, if the vote count was cutoff at midnight, that could easily cause Biden to "win" some southern states that he might not truly have. Biden is going to start out up big in NC, GA, FL, and TX (and maybe also SC and a few other southern states) since they all count absentee ballots as they come. Trump will be trying to catch up all night as election day votes as added. It would be some tricky timing to finding a spot where he's up in PA and those southern states the night of the election. All bets off by the morning of Nov. 4 though.

[Maithanet]

5 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Right, to me the biggest problem is how many ballots will be returned by mail that are postmarked election day (or even returned after election day) but subject to not being counted because of SC. There are still 1.3 million ballots requested outstanding of which 800k are D and 400k are R based on party affiliation (about 150k unaffiliated as well). For simplicity if you assume 400k are outstanding that cant be counted, then you have Biden having a deficit of 133k votes (thats not insurmountable but just an additional barrier for him to overcome)

I think that method of back of the envelope calculations is a huge overestimate.  Lots of people who don't return their absentee ballot just vote on election day.  I remember seeing a tweet about a week ago that said that in 2016, only ~ 1% of absentee ballots in PA arrived after election day.  Yes, there were way fewer absentee ballots that year, but expecting that number to balloon to 10-20% of the votes is IMO ridiculous.

[karaddin]

13 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

I am trying to be rational and logical, but its proving to be hard with all the last minute stuff. And this is precisely Trump's plan (maybe not a plan but a series of fortuitous circumstances).

All told a Trump win wont be catastrophic for me personally (mostly) but it will be disastrous for this nation.

It's probably putting an undue level of weight on the election, but it's more than this for me. This is the absolute last chance for humanity to start waking up and stepping back from the brink. If Trump gets another 4 years the US democracy is absolutely toast and not even a pretense anymore, and with that it will rocket us past the point of no return on catastrophic climate change.

And global cooperation relies on mutual good behavior, once the US starts going fash in response to the climate crisis then all the other european derived nations will continue following that example too. Maybe other countries will preserve the social progress internally, but the policy towards those outside our borders will just get worse and worse than they already are, and it's down hill from there.

I don't think Biden is going to magically fix climate change, but him winning at least gives us a chance and a tiny bit more time.

[karaddin]

2 minutes ago, Fez said:

I'd be surprised if existing marriages got tossed. But, yeah, I could easily see this court stopping new marriages from happening.

Doesn't have to be likely to be something I'd be scared of. Just the fact that it's a possibility is more than enough. The part that would really be getting to me is that it's one of the things where Biden winning isn't by itself enough to prevent it.

[IheartIheartTesla]

5 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I think that method of back of the envelope calculations is a huge overestimate.  Lots of people who don't return their absentee ballot just vote on election day.  I remember seeing a tweet about a week ago that said that in 2016, only ~ 1% of absentee ballots in PA arrived after election day.  Yes, there were way fewer absentee ballots that year, but expecting that number to balloon to 10-20% of the votes is IMO ridiculous.

Wisconsin had 80k extra votes received after the day of the primary election in April (2020 to be clear)

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Yep, but the overall number has never hit 40 or below (or at least this millennia).  Compare that to Congress.  Here's a link with more detailed items demonstrating the court has maintained very solid institutional approval.  You're objectively wrong that the court doesn't have legitimacy, no real point in arguing.

We’re talking about different things. You’re right if you want to look backwards, but along the lines of what Maith said, I strongly suspect going forward that the court’s reputation is about to take a beating.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

22 minutes ago, karaddin said:

 

And global cooperation relies on mutual good behavior, once the US starts going fash in response to the climate crisis then all the other european derived nations will continue following that example too. Maybe other countries will preserve the social progress internally, but the policy towards those outside our borders will just get worse and worse than they already are, and it's down hill from there.

I don't think Biden is going to magically fix climate change, but him winning at least gives us a chance and a tiny bit more time.

I'm not much of a believer in Biden, and I think the world is probably fucked no matter what because I don't see the Dems getting their act together and truly meeting the challenge of climate change, among many other issues. But I do agree that Biden at least gives us a small chance, and that's the reason I voted for him. 

But anyway I'm mostly saying this because I read the perfect quote yesterday in a book (Lincoln in the Bardo) to apply to this situation and I want to share:

"A train approaches a wall at a fatal rate of speed. You hold a switch in your hand, that accomplishes you know not what: do you throw it? Disaster is otherwise assured.

It costs you nothing.

Why not try?"

[argonak]

1 minute ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

I'm not much of a believer in Biden, and I think the world is probably fucked no matter what because I don't see the Dems getting their act together and truly meeting the challenge of climate change, among many other issues. But I do agree that Biden at least gives us a small chance, and that's the reason I voted for him. 

But anyway I'm mostly saying this because I read the perfect quote yesterday in a book (Lincoln in the Bardo) to apply to this situation and I want to share:

"A train approaches a wall at a fatal rate of speed. You hold a switch in your hand, that accomplishes you know not what: do you throw it? Disaster is otherwise assured.

It costs you nothing.

Why not try?"

I am hopeful that the the DNC doesn't just forget about state elections again if they're able to take power at federal level after this election.  The USA cannot be led by the federal level alone anymore, if it ever could.   As long as we are crippled by a representation system that value geographic area over actual people, state elections are probably more important than federal.  We saw that in the way the different states handled implementing the Affordable Care Act.  

But I still think our real problem in this country is that we're getting brainwashed by propaganda at every turn.   Unless we can change that, any real progress made will always be one successful ideologue away from being destroyed.

To put it another way, Batman has to save the world from the Joker every time.  But the Joker only has to win once for it to be all over.  

[Kalbear]

11 minutes ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

I'm not much of a believer in Biden, and I think the world is probably fucked no matter what because I don't see the Dems getting their act together and truly meeting the challenge of climate change, among many other issues. But I do agree that Biden at least gives us a small chance, and that's the reason I voted for him. 

But anyway I'm mostly saying this because I read the perfect quote yesterday in a book (Lincoln in the Bardo) to apply to this situation and I want to share:

"A train approaches a wall at a fatal rate of speed. You hold a switch in your hand, that accomplishes you know not what: do you throw it? Disaster is otherwise assured.

It costs you nothing.

Why not try?"

Pretty sure that was at least two boarders rationale for voting for or supporting Trump in 2016. 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

I was starting to feel an unhealthy optimism that maybe the election will actually play out ok, today has dashed that and I'm safely back to cynically hoping to be wrong but bracing for the worst. 

Just curious, is there any reason you've shifted back to cynicism other than Barrett being confirmed?

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

But it's foolish to give up hope there.

Definitely not giving up hope for Florida.  Hell, in 2012 - based on Florida's RCP final average I posted upthread - the polls were off in Obama's favor by 2.4%.  I'm just pretty cynical about the state after 2016 and 2018 - and the fact they got a bunch of Trumpist hacks at the top levels of state government/overseeing the election.  It also personally pisses me off since my parents, sister and brother in law live in Gainesville and Tampa, plus I lived in Orlando for 7 years (and I still vote there).

34 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I think that method of back of the envelope calculations is a huge overestimate.  Lots of people who don't return their absentee ballot just vote on election day.

Yep, looking at the numbers of ballots returned versus requested is entirely the wrong metric to use.  In 2016 only 69% of ballots requested were returned nationwide.  Who knows if that number will go up or down, but gun to my head if I had to guess my prior would be it should go down simply based on how many more people are able to easily request a mail-in ballot.

30 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Wisconsin had 80k extra votes received after the day of the primary election in April (2020 to be clear)

Now this would be a much better metric to use - albeit still flawed since it was a primary AND this was at the beginning of covid when everything was quite hectic for voters and states (whereas each have had much more time to prepare for the general).  However, the good thing about Wisconsin's April 7 election is it wasn't just a primary - there were also judicial and local elections.  Not sure where you're getting that 80k number, but if it's based off of the total amount of votes cast - 1,551,711 - that's about 5 percent of the total vote.  So let's take that number and assume the cutoff ballots would go 2 to 1 for Biden.  That would mean Biden would lose out on a 1.7% margin.  So, if Biden's up by 5 in PA, that would mean he only has breathing room for about a 3 point polling error.  That totally sucks, but still a very good chance that can be overcome - and I think those (rather baseless and wild) assumptions are on the highest end of how much such a cutoff would hurt.

35 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

We’re talking about different things. You’re right if you want to look backwards, but along the lines of what Maith said, I strongly suspect going forward that the court’s reputation is about to take a beating.

Obviously, Barrett's confirmation likely meant Dems' approval of SCOTUS took at least decent hit.  Be nice if there coulda been polling on that, but they're kinda busy right now.  However, I don't see any reason why that hit should be much more pronounced than the hit it took when McConnell refused to take up Garland's nomination.  Plus, gotta figure there'll be a boost from GOP respondents that are happy with the Barrett confirmation.  Regardless, I'm not interested in the future - or at least anything beyond deciding this election.  And really the only thing that matters in terms of the court's legitimacy in the context of this conversation is that Roberts currently thinks the court holds legitimacy and wants to maintain that.  I'm very (very) confident both of those are the case.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Since about 6 million people voted in PA, a 5% cutoff would imply ~300k votes (lower end, since turnout will be higher) not being counted, not that far off from my 400k number. Which itself was arbitrarily assumed to be a third of the outstanding mail-in ballots. These are of course estimates since we are in uncharted waters. I'm not sure 2016 numbers about ballot returns are the greatest to anchor ourselves to.

I read about the 80k number from a Guardian article about the Supreme Court decision regarding the Wisconsin ballot extension.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

a 5% cutoff would imply 300k votes not being counted, not that far off from my 400k number.

Proper methodology still counts!