2024 Presidential Election | ELECTION DAY 2024

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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?
 
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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Or, alternatively, maybe I am older than you and I'm sick and tired of "holier than thou" progressives thinking their feces doesn't sink because they refuse to compromise on anything. And such refusal is based on their self-perception that they are morally and intellectually superior to riffraff such as me because of how I talk and that I believe that compromise is not an evil that dooms every society that practices it. And further, if imbeciles like me would just do as I was told by my betters, everything would be better. I have neither use nor time for the high and mighty who deem compromise as being unworthy of someone of their moral and intellectual superiority.
 
Paine said:
Progressives have tried to do that time after time. There’s always an excuse as to why progressive policy proposals aren’t being adopted. Now progressives are being sidelined for the Cheneys?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m voting for Harris. If she loses, it won’t be the fault of progressives any more than it is the fault of the Harris campaign for not engaging progressives.

In fact, if she loses, we should immediately question the strategy of trying to peel off suburban conservative voters. That strategy failed once already in 2016. Progressives were also blamed for that loss though.

Somehow, no matter the outcome, it’s progressives’ fault. This tires people out who would otherwise be a reliably Democratic bloc.
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First of all, nobody is "sidelining" progressives. That's your inherent progressive low self-esteem mindset taking hold again. Always the victim with you guys. Kamala has to make up some of the Biden coalition from 2020 that peeled off, particularly in black and latino voters. She does that by lessening Trump's margins in the red areas, and adding to her current coalition with disaffected moderate Republicans and independents. That's just smart politics. Her coalition will hopefully make up in breadth what it lacks in depth from 2020.

Second, in regards to the Cheney's endorsement, please list all of the concessions Kamala had to agree to in order to get that endorsement. Same with numerous other Republicans who have endorsed her. List all the ways she had to compromise on her core beliefs in order to appease those people.

I'll wait...

That's right, those endorsements came free, with no concessions, and no pulling back on her Democratic ideals. Those Republicans simply see Trump for what he is, and understand the inherent danger that he poses needs to be eliminated before they can ever hope to get their party back. Kamala is quite capable of accepting their endorsements while still sticking with her ideals.

You want our country to become more progressive? I'm going to let you in on a little secret how that happens. It doesn't happen by nominating a pure progressive candidate. That's the quickest way to get you crushed in an election. The majority of voters in this country still skew moderate. They want normal, don't rock the boat candidates. You can't run a progressive and expect to capture those folks. What you CAN do is back the Democratic candidates that are nominated, and then use your influence within your caucus to push for progressive policies in a piecemeal approach. I say that as someone who leans more progressive the older I get. I LIKE progressive policies. I want more of them. But they need to be introduced slowly. A bit at a time. Give the citizens of this country a chance to experience them working to make their lives better.

A perfect example of this is the ACA. The first iterations of it were EXTREMELY progressive for the time. So much so that many people were scared to death of it. So much so that they had to strip a lot of stuff out of it to make it more digestible just to get through Congress, which it barely did. Remember how much anger there was over the ACA? 15 years later, and now two-thirds of the country is in favor of it. During the time the ACA was cementing itself as popular policy in the U.S., you know what else was becoming a more a popular idea? Universal Healthcare. Medicare For All. The majority of the country now believe that the government should be responsible for providing healthcare for its citizens, and Medicare For All has an approval rating in the high 60's. This acceptance of socialized healthcare probably doesn't happen without the baby steps taken with the ACA.

Now quick...name the most progressive president we've had since FDR.

I'll wait...

His name is Joe Biden. He shouldn't be labelled as a "progressive," but he is legislatively the most successfully progressive president we've had in some time. He ran as a moderate "bridge" candidate, which is why he beat Trump in 2020. Had he run as a pure progressive like Sanders or Warren, he'd have been trounced, just like they would have been. Once in the White House, he surrounded himself with competent people, many of whom believe in a progressive agenda, and many of whom he listened to in enacting progressive policies. American Recovery Act, Build Back Better, Infrastructure Investment Act, Chips Act, gun control legislation, his various attempts at student loan forgiveness...etc.

I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that Kamala will show the same willingness to adopt progressive ideals, do you? But the first thing she needs to do is win the election. To do that, she needs to lean into an approach that appeals to the most Americans, not one that will be demonized by half the country.

Incremental change, one policy at a time, is how policies STICK. That's how you shift the country left. Or, you can just complain that Democrat Nominee So-And-So isn't progressive enough all the time on every single issue, and sit it out for an election cycle. Then you get four more years of movement back to the right.
 
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