What will be the results of the election?

[infection]

It's funny, when you're talking about how there are few Republicans who don't support this time around, that the Lincoln Project and the 780 retired generals and security leaders who are opposed to him. But I guess they don't count.

Also, I'd like to see a citation on the "Trump won because voting was down" claim, because I have literally never heard that. I have heard that lots of Hillary voters stayed home because they knew she was going to win, but that's hardly the same thing.

I was pretty clear that of course these people exist. What I qualified this with is that the people who oppose him this time all voted last time, but that more people who opposed him last time support him this time than vice versa. Of course there are prominent exceptions. However, it's important to look at trends. Trump won last time with limited support from the Republican party. A good measure for enthusiasm can be looking at the voter turnout in the primaries for an incumbent president. In 2012, President Obama garnered 6,158,064 votes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries). The previous record for turnout for an incumbent was President Clinton in 1996 with 9,706,802 votes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries). This year President Trump secured 18,159,752 votes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2020_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries). He wouldn't be doubling Clinton's record if the Lincoln Project (who didn't vote for him the first time) was representative.

 

[infection]

It's a little odd that in this analysis neither the covid crisis nor the poor economy were mentioned. Those two things are on the forefront of every American's mind, and are very significant motivators to vote him out.

I believe the correlation between the views implied above and having voted against Trump in 2016 is reasonably high. In any case, it's still a vote against him, rather than a vote for something specific (and for people that are motivated to have their vote be "for Science!," those are people who voted last time). But I guess we'll see in a week.

 

[Red]

Voting is not down. It’s going to be high turnout. Many counties are already past their 2016 numbers in early voting.

It’s shaping up as the largest turnout since 1908.

 

[Gameface]

It’s shaping up as the largest turnout since 1908.

Not if the Republicans can do anything about it!

 

[infection]

What a weird ****ing bubble you live in, brough. One of the strange things about sports forums is that it brings people like you and people like me into regular, virtual contact. Because otherwise, frrreal, this **** above would be alien to me.

Cool example of theorizing things you want to be true whilst backgrounding a blizzard of data, doe

My career specialty is hard left-leaning. My field more in general is not at all "pro-Trump," particularly the past year. I'm not isolated from anything, and I think JFC is a good example of that, in that you're hard-pressed to find many right-leaning arguments around here. I'm not oblivious to polling and what's being said. People still don't understand what got Trump elected last time, and that's apparent precisely because I'm in those bubbles where I constantly see people not being able to understand it.

Rs gotta get even busier stamping out the vote, then. Good thing they’ve already dispensed with shame.... that’ll make doing so even easier.

I will say this, however, that the foregone conclusion that Trump cannot win this election will provide fertile ground for conspiracy explanation in the event that he should win.

I'm not saying there's any for-sure win. I feel I've qualified my statements fairly well that it would be tough with which states Trump has to win, and I specified the battleground states that I believe he'll win and the ones that will be tough. But I think people are discounting his possibilities of winning. That's fine. Time will tell.

 

[NAOS]

My career specialty is hard left-leaning. My field more in general is not at all "pro-Trump," particularly the past year. I'm not isolated from anything, and I think JFC is a good example of that, in that you're hard-pressed to find many right-leaning arguments around here. I'm not oblivious to polling and what's being said. People still don't understand what got Trump elected last time, and that's apparent precisely because I'm in those bubbles where I constantly see people not being able to understand it.

I will say this, however, that the foregone conclusion that Trump cannot win this election will provide fertile ground for conspiracy explanation in the event that he should win.

I'm not saying there's any for-sure win. I feel I've qualified my statements fairly well that it would be tough with which states Trump has to win, and I specified the battleground states that I believe he'll win and the ones that will be tough. But I think people are discounting his possibilities of winning. That's fine. Time will tell.

If you’d qualified your arguments well, then there wouldn’t be so many huge lacunae in your reasoning. For example, the effect of the pandemic, the uneven economic recovery, racial strife, etc. There’s nothing resembling a kitchen-table issue in what you said; you seem drilled into the particulars of election dynamics at the exclusion of all else.... but then also somehow fail to acknowledge the full-scale legal assault that Trump and the Republicans are waging on the access to the vote (during a ****ing pandemic, no less).

Please don’t act as if the Right isn’t also heavily seeded with the ingredients of election-related conspiracy. It seems they have already gone into full-bloom in many places.

 

[Ron Mexico]

For all you people who support “Trump’s policies”. Just don’t be deluded: you are supporting naked power by minority rule.

“

Pennsylvania: The state’s highest court has ruled that election officials should count mailed ballots that arrive up to three days after Election Day. Pennsylvania Republicans are trying to get the Supreme Court to reverse the order, so that only ballots received by Election Day will count.​

North Carolina: Republicans and the Trump campaign have asked the Supreme Court to block the state’s board of elections from extending the deadline to receive mail ballots. The board has said ballots can arrive until Nov. 12, as long as they were mailed by Election Day.​

Wisconsin: The five Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court sided on Monday with Republican officials in Wisconsin, ruling that ballots must arrive by 8 p.m. on Election Day to count. (A lower-court ruling would have allowed state officials to count any mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day and received up to six days later.) In response, the state’s Democratic Party is urging voters to return mail ballots in person — to a drop box or clerk’s office — rather than mailing them.​

Nevada: The Trump campaign has sued to stop the counting of absentee ballots in the Las Vegas area, evidently hoping to challenge the signatures on many ballots. Last night, the campaign and Nevada Republican Party filed a separate lawsuit, seeking detailed information on the vote-counting process.​

Texas: The state’s top court yesterday upheld a policy announced by Greg Abbott, the Republican governor, which limits each county to a single drop-off box for mailed ballots. The state’s largest county — Harris, which includes Houston — is home to 4.7 million people.​

Michigan: A conservative judge yesterday overturned an order by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, and ruled that people could carry unconcealed guns at polling places on Election Day.​

In many of these cases, Republicans have argued that changing voting rules because of the pandemic could lead to fraud (a claim that’s largely baseless) and that allowing ballots to be counted after Election Day leads to confusion and chaos.​

Democrats have argued that protecting people’s right to vote, during a national crisis, should be top priority. Democrats have also pointed out that some Republicans have changed their position on the counting of mailed ballots: When late-arriving ballots seemed likely to help George W. Bush in Florida in 2000, Republicans argued that the state should count them”​

Hey! I just finished reading the NY Times daily email as well.

 

[infection]

If you’d qualified your arguments well, then there wouldn’t be so many huge lacunae in your reasoning. For example, the effect of the pandemic, the uneven economic recovery, racial strife, etc. There’s nothing resembling a kitchen-table issue in what you said; you seem drilled into the particulars of election dynamics at the exclusion of all else.... but then also somehow fail to acknowledge the full-scale legal assault that Trump and the Republicans are waging on the access to the vote (during a ****ing pandemic, no less).

Please don’t act as if the Right isn’t also heavily seeded with the ingredients of election-related conspiracy. It seems they have already gone into full-bloom in many places.

I've qualified my statements to include that if Trump loses, it's not because he lost Texas, Florida, Arizona, Ohio or Georgia. It will be because he couldn't hold on to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan. While you're suggesting that I'm ignoring pandemic effects, it's important to understand that those cut both ways, and Michigan (a battleground state) has been under lockdown under a Democratic administration, and if the assumption is that people will just default to saying that's a result of Trump, I'd argue that it likely won't be so clear cut in the actual vote.

 

[NAOS]

I've qualified my statements to include that if Trump loses, it's not because he lost Texas, Florida, Arizona, Ohio or Georgia. It will be because he couldn't hold on to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan. While you're suggesting that I'm ignoring pandemic effects, it's important to understand that those cut both ways, and Michigan (a battleground state) has been under lockdown under a Democratic administration, and if the assumption is that people will just default to saying that's a result of Trump, I'd argue that it likely won't be so clear cut in the actual vote.

.... I don’t think either of us want to get into a richly textured back-n-forth, but I’ll just note at least this one more time that you’ve still yet to acknowledge the nationwide, Republican-led effort to restrict the vote during a pandemic (and how they’ve weaponized their packed courts in the effort). This is naked, minoritarian power; and it’s distorting all the lovely nuances that you outlined in your earlier post. It’s arguably the dominant force in the specific electoral dynamics... so it’s just sad or laughable to see it go unacknowledged.

 

[Zombie]

I believe the correlation between the views implied above and having voted against Trump in 2016 is reasonably high. In any case, it's still a vote against him, rather than a vote for something specific (and for people that are motivated to have their vote be "for Science!," those are people who voted last time). But I guess we'll see in a week.

I agree that correlation is reasonably high, but elections in the US are won at the margins, a few points here or there are all it takes to win the handful of swing states necessary to get elected. And I think you're drastically underestimating the effect that an uncontrolled pandemic and poor economy has on an incumbent.

My main issue is that you take more seriously a bunch political operatives shifting their support to align with the GOP base as a sign that Trump's base has grown, than the idea that in a year of unprecedented chaos where two hundred thousand people have died there might be a shift of say suburban women, or first time voters to put an end to this insanity.

I'm not saying it's a done deal and Trump can't win, but there are some pretty obvious blindspots in your takes about this.