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2024 Presidential Election | ELECTION DAY 2024

  • Thread starter Thread starter nycfan
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rodoheel said:
If you have any data about how donations and grassroots volunteers translate into votes I'm all ears. That stuff is great in theory, but in practice I'm not sure it translates into votes.
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I guess I don’t understand. Do you think that people who donate to a certain candidate aren’t also likely to vote for them, too? The Harris campaign has shattered fundraising records, particularly as it relates to new, first-time, and/or small-dollar donors. They have a massive advantage over the Trump campaign in each of those areas. I guess it’s entirely possible that those folks are donating but not voting but I’d think those odds are kind of low, right?
 
rodoheel said:
If you have any data about how donations and grassroots volunteers translate into votes I'm all ears. That stuff is great in theory, but in practice I'm not sure it translates into votes.
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They do. There's research on that. For one thing, people who volunteer and donate are highly motivated to vote. It's a reflection of expected turnout. Second, those factors help increase turnout.
 
superrific said:
They do. There's research on that. For one thing, people who volunteer and donate are highly motivated to vote. It's a reflection of expected turnout. Second, those factors help increase turnout.
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Can you link it? I'm not trying to be a dick, I'd honestly like to see that.
 
rodoheel said:
I mean, mostly polling data. Pretty much every decent pollster shows a very close race, with battleground states on a knife's edge. We're all aware of the reasons that it's difficult to poll in the current time - I mean I know I sure as hell am not answering a call or text from a pollster - but I've yet to be convinced that there's anything more objectively predictive than polling. Most of the stuff cford mentions boils down to vibes more than anything objective.
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Ok, I hear you, and I join everyone here in wishing the spreads were more than they are. Here are the things I keep coming back to as far as the swing state polls are concerned, and I don't think any of these things are particularly vibey.

1. Kamala has more potential paths to victory than Trump does. In other words, I think she's more likely to pick up NC or GA than Trump is to pick up MI, WI or PA.

2. The state polling averages are being impacted by low quality red-leaning polls as much or more than the national average. If you just focus on the higher quality polls, Kamala does a little better than the averages indicate.

3. These are national numbers, but Kamala's unfavorable is 46.4%. Trump's is 52.1%. Maybe I'm old school, but I really do think that makes a big difference at the end of the day.
 
CFordUNC said:
I guess I don’t understand. Do you think that people who donate to a certain candidate aren’t also likely to vote for them, too? The Harris campaign has shattered fundraising records, particularly as it relates to new, first-time, and/or small-dollar donors. They have a massive advantage over the Trump campaign in each of those areas. I guess it’s entirely possible that those folks are donating but not voting but I’d think those odds are kind of low, right?
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I have no doubt that people who donate to a candidate are highly likely to vote for them. What I'm more skeptical of is that you can look at raw number of donors as predictive of a proportional vote share, given that a large majority of voters likely will not have donated to any candidate.

Like, if 10 million people donate to Kamala and 7 million people donate to Trump, that's obviously better than the inverse. But it doesn't mean that non-donors are going to break for Kamala in a 10:7 ratio, and those 17 million total donors are a small fraction of total overall voters (I have no idea what the real donor numbers are, so if it's like 50 million people who have donated to candidates, you can correct me.)

Plus the number of donors in places like California is virtually meaningless for Kamala's electoral prospects. What really matters, if anything, is how many donors each has in swing states. Has anyone attempted to measure number of donors by state?
 
rodoheel said:
Can you link it? I'm not trying to be a dick, I'd honestly like to see that.
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No, I can't.

1. The link between volunteers and electoral prospects has been known forever. In fact, one of the reasons that campaigns started recruiting volunteers was just for the volunteer part of it. I worked on a campaign in college and I once asked why we had so many volunteers doing something when I could do it much faster just myself (I was also a volunteer but a bit more permanent and more fully embedded). The answer was that the work wasn't all that important; what was more important was having volunteers in the building feeling as though they were contributing.

2. As for small dollar donations, I don't remember where I saw it as it was some time ago. I'd have to look for it. IIRC small dollar donations predicted both Obama and Bernie's surprising strength in 2016.
 
I also wonder as I questioned before how many swing state Trump voters who are being considered by current poll modelers based on the 2020 election are not alive because they refused to take the Covid vaccine when it became available widely in 2021 in comparison to swing state Biden or in this case Harris voters were statistically more likely to take the vaccine And less likely to die. A couple hundred? Couple thousand?
 
Paine said:
The people who read the headline of an article about progressives possibly not voting for Harris and have a knee jerk reaction of preemptive blame for progressives should Harris lose.

The article is just good intentioned people warning that it might not be a wise strategy, in terms of turning out the base, to be amplifying Liz Cheney in the waning days of the election.

I think progressives in the party should be allowed to voice these criticisms without people saying the same shit over and over again about sucking it up or being an adult.
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If progressives vote for Trump or sit out the election, they deserve any blame that comes their way. The question is whether Trump or Harris is better for them going forward. If they can't make up their mind on that, they deserve whatever comes their way if Trump wins.
 
statboy2 said:
I also wonder as I questioned before how many swing state Trump voters who are being considered by current poll modelers based on the 2020 election are not alive because they refused to take the Covid vaccine when it became available widely in 2021 in comparison to swing state Biden or in this case Harris voters were statistically more likely to take the vaccine And less likely to die. A couple hundred? Couple thousand?
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I thought about this a while back. I think the numbers I estimated was that, on net, about 200K+ conservatives died from Covid after election day 2020. That's nationally. That's less than a tenth of a percent of the total population. About a tenth of a percent of the voting age population. So maybe it could make a difference but not as much as you might think.

There are just a lot of people in this country.
 
superrific said:
I thought about this a while back. I think the numbers I estimated was that, on net, about 200K+ conservatives died from Covid after election day 2020. That's nationally. That's less than a tenth of a percent of the total population. About a tenth of a percent of the voting age population. So maybe it could make a difference but not as much as you might think.

There are just a lot of people in this country.
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Is that 200K+ total or net?
 
Calheel said:
Is that 200K+ total or net?
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Net. Of course, it's not uniformly distributed. The one place where this would, I think, make potentially a big difference is WI. There was a huge rash of infections there in November-December 2020 and the skew was estimated to be quite strong IIRC. Maybe MI also. While there wasn't as much Covid in Michigan after election day, it probably skewed even more because Covid hit Michigan and especially Detroit so hard at the very beginning. Detroit was, IIRC, as badly hit as NYC in March and April of that year.

Well, not big difference. Bigger than other places, perhaps.
 
superrific said:
Net. Of course, it's not uniformly distributed. The one place where this would, I think, make potentially a big difference is WI. There was a huge rash of infections there in November-December 2020 and the skew was estimated to be quite strong IIRC. Maybe MI also. While there wasn't as much Covid in Michigan after election day, it probably skewed even more because Covid hit Michigan and especially Detroit so hard at the very beginning. Detroit was, IIRC, as badly hit as NYC in March and April of that year.

Well, not big difference. Bigger than other places, perhaps.
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Assuming that 200K is randomly spread out through the US, that would be about 40k less Republicans in the 7 swing states. To be charitable to your argument above, maybe 30k of them would still be alive today (although I think that number is way high). I don't think 30k less Republicans in 7 swing states is going to move the needle in this election, unless we get a 2000 Florida type situation.
 
Calheel said:
Assuming that 200K is randomly spread out through the US, that would be about 40k less Republicans in the 7 swing states. To be charitable to your argument above, maybe 30k of them would still be alive today (although I think that number is way high). I don't think 30k less Republicans in 7 swing states is going to move the needle in this election, unless we get a 2000 Florida type situation.
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But I don't think the deaths were randomly distributed. When I looked at this, I specifically noted Wisconsin having a high proportion of deaths and a high partisan skew of them post Election Day. I think I remember an estimate of 5-10K in WI. Probably not enough to make a difference but who knows.

To me, the point of this isn't to blame Covid but to assess the likelihood that the recall vote models are good. This is another strike against those models. I don't know how much difference it would make in the model.
 
Paine said:
The people who read the headline of an article about progressives possibly not voting for Harris and have a knee jerk reaction of preemptive blame for progressives should Harris lose.

The article is just good intentioned people warning that it might not be a wise strategy, in terms of turning out the base, to be amplifying Liz Cheney in the waning days of the election.

I think progressives in the party should be allowed to voice these criticisms without people saying the same shit over and over again about sucking it up or being an adult.
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And also, maybe Progressives can find a way to voice those concerns without actually threatening to take their ball and go home?
 
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