U.S. Politics megathread (merged)

[Cade]

I will remind everyone, yet again, that Ukraine was provided with legally binding security guarantees by The West when it handed its nukes over to Russia in 1994.

Those guarantees have proven almost worthless.

But they are the only thing that's keeping the aid flowing, because even The West cannot be seen to abandon an ally too easily.

 

Now that Ukraine is a NATO applicant, this only means that Putin won't stop. He can't. Because if Ukraine wins then it joins NATO and becomes untouchable for the rest of time.

So this is his one chance. He'll not stop until Russia is rendered physically incapable of fighting on.

So it's in NATO's interests to ensure that Ukraine is given the tools it needs to do just that.

[Maple Leaf]

2 hours ago, Ulysses said:

NBC News and CNN polls published at the weekend showing Trump 5 and 4 percentage points ahead of Biden nationally.  Haley is even further ahead of Biden, but that's no help to her if she's not going to get the GOP nomination.

I share your opinion on the value of polls as indicators.  But the election in November is not really one election, it's 50 elections, one per state.  Rather than a national poll, I'd be more interested in what the polls are saying at the state level.

[FWJ]

There may also (like there is in this country with the Conservatives) be people who will vote for Trump but are too embarrassed to say so.

Polls here were adjusted in the past to allow for this, I don’t know if they still are.

 

I’m sure they’re not all MAGA-baseball-cap-wearing fanatics, there will be some moderate Republicans who dislike Trump but dislike Biden / Democrats more.

Edited February 7 by FWJ

[Ulysses]

2 hours ago, Maple Leaf said:

I share your opinion on the value of polls as indicators.  But the election in November is not really one election, it's 50 elections, one per state.  Rather than a national poll, I'd be more interested in what the polls are saying at the state level.

 

They're saying that Trump is going to win.  Another poll last week has him comfortably ahead in Georgia, for example.

[Mikey1874]

22 hours ago, Ulysses said:

 

Polls are almost always the best indication. People on the wrong side of polls always go on about them not necessarily being a good indication of the thinking of the population at large, but the simple truth is that they are a very accurate guide.

 

That doesn't mean Trump will definitely win.  The polls don't indicate how people will feel in October and November. But if the election was today, the strong probability is that Trump would win.

 

Polls all have issues. Previously Trump was actually under estimated and this has happened on other occasions. How certain categories of people are under represented one of the main issues.

 

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/polling-public-opinion-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

 

Trump himself has created the uncertainty. I do find the arguments that the legal cases against him are his biggest benefit interesting. But some of the cases especially Georgia could be devastating. Every poll says a conviction will lead to a Trump defeat. 

Edited February 7 by Mikey1874

[Ulysses]

54 minutes ago, Mikey1874 said:

 

Polls all have issues. Previously Trump was actually under estimated and this has happened on other occasions. How certain categories of people are under represented one of the main issues.

 

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/polling-public-opinion-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

 

Trump himself has created the uncertainty. I do find the arguments that the legal cases against him are his biggest benefit interesting. But some of the cases especially Georgia could be devastating. Every poll says a conviction will lead to a Trump defeat. 

 

Show me the polling that got it wrong, rather than an abstract discussion of "polling issues".

[Mikey1874]

5 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

 

Show me the polling that got it wrong, rather than an abstract discussion of "polling issues".

 

You can search on the Internet. Plenty examples. 

[Watt-Zeefuik]

On 06/02/2024 at 09:59, Bigsmak said:

 

What am I missing. I understand how he is attractive to the racists, the ignorants, the biggots , the high school bullies, rich white men... 

 

But what am I missing to understand why he is so popular.. he's a moron

 

8 hours ago, Ulysses said:

NBC News and CNN polls published at the weekend showing Trump 5 and 4 percentage points ahead of Biden nationally.  Haley is even further ahead of Biden, but that's no help to her if she's not going to get the GOP nomination.

 

After the last 10 years of pretty bad polling errors (badly underestimating Trump's support in 2016, underestimating Biden in 2020, badly overestimating support for Congressional Republicans in 2022), aside from the fact that polling this far out is mostly meaningless, I have made it a point to studiously ignore polls as much as possible. It's not like they give me any actionable information, after all.

 

That said, I have yet to see a national poll that has Trump over about 46%. The biggest variation is in support for Biden. An awful lot of the Democratic coalition is pissed at him at the moment because of Israel and a fair few would rather have someone else, but that doesn't mean they'll vote for Trump or not vote when it comes down to it.

 

Don't get me wrong, it's much closer than it should be in any sane world. But it's worth remembering that 4 years ago the polls and conventional wisdom (and me, I confess) all had Biden's candidacy as absolutely dead in the water. He's made mistakes, certainly, but he's played the long, slow, ground game in two straight national elections and largely come up roses.

 

Work to be done, certainly, but very little evidence even in the polls for Trump having grown his support from 2020.

[Watt-Zeefuik]

In other news, the self-owning for the Congressional GOP is now complete:

 

- Block widely supported Ukraine/Israel support bill, demand border provisions

- Spend 4 months negotiating most conservative, draconian, anti-immigrant bill to have even a chance of passing in decades

- Get the Democrats to unhappily acquiesce to it in order to get aid bill through

- Orange shitstain doesn't want the problem solved in an election year so he can run on it

- House GOP throws a fit on his behalf

- Senate GOP unhappily capitulates, blocks bill using filibuster

- Original Ukraine/Israel bill will probably now get passed without any border provisions

- Biden has already started campaigning blaming Trump for the fact that the border hasn't been solved

[Ulysses]

1 hour ago, Mikey1874 said:

 

You can search on the Internet. Plenty examples. 

 

You're the one saying polls are unreliable, and I'm not your secretary.

 

Does that mean you never post links to opinion polls anywhere on JKB?

[Ulysses]

28 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

 

 

After the last 10 years of pretty bad polling errors (badly underestimating Trump's support in 2016, underestimating Biden in 2020, badly overestimating support for Congressional Republicans in 2022), aside from the fact that polling this far out is mostly meaningless, I have made it a point to studiously ignore polls as much as possible. It's not like they give me any actionable information, after all.

 

That said, I have yet to see a national poll that has Trump over about 46%. The biggest variation is in support for Biden. An awful lot of the Democratic coalition is pissed at him at the moment because of Israel and a fair few would rather have someone else, but that doesn't mean they'll vote for Trump or not vote when it comes down to it.

 

Don't get me wrong, it's much closer than it should be in any sane world. But it's worth remembering that 4 years ago the polls and conventional wisdom (and me, I confess) all had Biden's candidacy as absolutely dead in the water. He's made mistakes, certainly, but he's played the long, slow, ground game in two straight national elections and largely come up roses.

 

Work to be done, certainly, but very little evidence even in the polls for Trump having grown his support from 2020.

 

Wishful thinking, eh?

[Ulysses]

47 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

 

 

After the last 10 years of pretty bad polling errors (badly underestimating Trump's support in 2016, underestimating Biden in 2020, badly overestimating support for Congressional Republicans in 2022), aside from the fact that polling this far out is mostly meaningless, I have made it a point to studiously ignore polls as much as possible. It's not like they give me any actionable information, after all.

 

Most national polls with fieldwork carried out in the last few days of the 2016 campaign suggested that Clinton would win the popular vote by a margin of 3 or 4 percentage points, with margins of error of 2-3 percent, and sample sizes of between 800 and 3,000.  Clinton led the popular vote by 2.1%.  That's not badly underestimating anything.  What pundits and analysts missed was that the national polls showed the Clinton lead shrinking in the closing couple of weeks.  If her lead was shrinking nationally, then by definition Trump was also gaining in swing states.  State polls conducted in early November overestimated Trump's lead in a few states, including Florida, Georgia and Michigan.

 

 

Most national polls with fieldwork carried out in the closing days of the 2020 campaign showed Biden with a clear lead.  In the main, if they had a fault it was that the overestimated Biden's lead rather than underestimating it, although for the most part that was within the poll margin of error.

 

 

47 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

 

But it's worth remembering that 4 years ago the polls and conventional wisdom (and me, I confess) all had Biden's candidacy as absolutely dead in the water. He's made mistakes, certainly, but he's played the long, slow, ground game in two straight national elections and largely come up roses.

 

 

This time 4 years ago (February 2020), according to Real Clear Politics' poll tracker, Biden was on average leading Trump by 5.4 percentage points in opinion polls.  Whatever that could be described as, it wasn't "dead in the water".  Link below:

 

2020 General Election: Trump vs. Biden Polls | RealClearPolling

 

 

[Watt-Zeefuik]

1 minute ago, Ulysses said:

 

Most national polls with fieldwork carried out in the last few days of the 2016 campaign suggested that Clinton would win the popular vote by a margin of 3 or 4 percentage points, with margins of error of 2-3 percent, and sample sizes of between 800 and 3,000.  Clinton led the popular vote by 2.1%.  That's not badly underestimating anything.  What pundits and analysts missed was that the national polls showed the Clinton lead shrinking in the closing couple of weeks.  If her lead was shrinking nationally, then by definition Trump was also gaining in swing states.  State polls conducted in early November overestimated Trump's lead in a few states, including Florida, Georgia and Michigan.

 

 

Most national polls with fieldwork carried out in the closing days of the 2020 campaign showed Biden with a clear lead.  In the main, if they had a fault it was that the overestimated Biden's lead rather than underestimating it, although for the most part that was within the poll margin of error.

 

 

 

This time 4 years ago (February 2020), according to Real Clear Politics' poll tracker, Biden was on average leading Trump by 5.4 percentage points in opinion polls.  Whatever that could be described as, it wasn't "dead in the water".  Link below:

 

2020 General Election: Trump vs. Biden Polls | RealClearPolling

 

 

 

4 years ago Biden had just lost two primaries rather badly amid an exceptionally talented field of Democratic candidates. He looked old, tired, and out of touch.

 

He then went on to win South Carolina by a huge margin and rolled out big wins on Super Tuesday (much to my dismay and annoyance at the time), and within six weeks had the nomination totally sewn up.

 

I'll repeat what I said. Unless he changes the dynamic, Trump's ceiling is effectively 47-48% of the electorate. To expand a bit, within that there's a small but electorally important bloc of staunchly Republican-leaning voters who are repulsed by Trump and everything he's done. The question that will decide everything in November is not a popularity contest held in telephone polls which increasingly have difficulty reaching young voters. It's who decides to show up. If Republican-leaning voters can't stomach voting for Trump and they sit on their hands and the Democrats have a big turnout, Trump is 100% toast, no matter what the polls say now. If, on the other hand, Arab Americans and other pro-Palestinian groups find Biden unforgiveable, and Black voters decide that Biden hasn't done enough for him and stay home, and Trump gets all the GOP onside, then we're right back into the nightmare.

 

A head-to-head poll right now has only the tiniest amount of meaningful information to speak to that question, because so much is still in the air between now and then. Pretending we know how this is going to turn out, 9 months from now, is hubris in the extreme.

[Cade]

It all hangs on a KC victory this Sunday and Taylor Swift picking the next President

 

[Mikey1874]

1 hour ago, Ulysses said:

 

You're the one saying polls are unreliable, and I'm not your secretary.

 

Does that mean you never post links to opinion polls anywhere on JKB?

 

You just lazy then. You need to read more. 

[Ulysses]

55 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

 

4 years ago Biden had just lost two primaries rather badly amid an exceptionally talented field of Democratic candidates. He looked old, tired, and out of touch.

 

He then went on to win South Carolina by a huge margin and rolled out big wins on Super Tuesday (much to my dismay and annoyance at the time), and within six weeks had the nomination totally sewn up.

 

I'll repeat what I said. Unless he changes the dynamic, Trump's ceiling is effectively 47-48% of the electorate. To expand a bit, within that there's a small but electorally important bloc of staunchly Republican-leaning voters who are repulsed by Trump and everything he's done. The question that will decide everything in November is not a popularity contest held in telephone polls which increasingly have difficulty reaching young voters. It's who decides to show up. If Republican-leaning voters can't stomach voting for Trump and they sit on their hands and the Democrats have a big turnout, Trump is 100% toast, no matter what the polls say now. If, on the other hand, Arab Americans and other pro-Palestinian groups find Biden unforgiveable, and Black voters decide that Biden hasn't done enough for him and stay home, and Trump gets all the GOP onside, then we're right back into the nightmare.

 

A head-to-head poll right now has only the tiniest amount of meaningful information to speak to that question, because so much is still in the air between now and then. Pretending we know how this is going to turn out, 9 months from now, is hubris in the extreme.

 

You're talking politics.  I'm talking psephology.  The question is not about politics, or what you think is going to happen or what you'd like to happen.  It's about statistical analysis and what the numbers tell us.

 

 

Today's opinion polls don't tell us what will happen in November.  They tell us what people are thinking today.  So if someone tries to claim that polls don't give you reliable information, all you have to do is compare the actual results of elections with polling taken on or close to the vote.  In 2016 and 2020 they show that the opinion polls were generally accurate and sometimes highly accurate.  The same is true of elections the world over for many, many years - and only a mathematical amateur would try to argue otherwise.

 

That means - whether you like it or not - that Trump is more popular with today's voters than Biden is.  If the election was held this week, Trump would win, and probably by a bigger margin than in 2016.  It also means that unless people change their minds between now and early November, Trump will win.  People on the losing side of the numbers always tell the world how the opinion polling numbers don't count because of hidden factors, silent majorities for their candidate, turnout conditions that they can predict and no-one else can, and all that good political stuff.  Yet pretty much every time they do that, the public go out and vote more or less the way the opinion polls predict that they will.

 

Trump scored 46% in 2016, and won, so having a "ceiling" of 47-48% is neither here nor there.  You know the Electoral College at least as well as I do, and you know that unless a Democrat candidate outscores a Republican by at least 2% nationally they're in potential trouble.  Right here, right now the polls are pointing to more people voting for Trump than for Biden.

 

Head-to-head polls right now might not tell you anything much, but they tell us all this:  Biden has a big, big hill to climb.  He's a couple of percentage points behind, and he needs to get a couple of points (at least) ahead.  Moreover, history is not on his side.  In 2016 Trump got a lot closer to Clinton in the popular vote nationwide in November than he was in polls in February.  In 2020, he got a wee bit closer to Biden in November than he was in February.  I haven't looked too closely at the effect of the 2012 and 2008 campaigns on polling numbers, but I suspect there's a very similar story there.

 

I have already expressed the view that there is a lag factor at play, and that the improving economy won't immediately translate into improved support for Biden.  I still think there's room for Biden's numbers to improve, and I'll be interested to see where things are in May.  But right now I don't see reasons for the Democrats to be optimistic.

[Ulysses]

18 minutes ago, Mikey1874 said:

 

You just lazy then. You need to read more. 

 

 

I've told you how it is.  There's overwhelming evidence to show that opinion polls are a reliable guide to what electorates are thinking. Perhaps you should look at the figures as they are, rather than how you might wish them to be.

[Watt-Zeefuik]

1 minute ago, Ulysses said:

 

You're talking politics.  I'm talking psephology.  The question is not about politics, or what you think is going to happen or what you'd like to happen.  It's about statistical analysis and what the numbers tell us.

 

 

Today's opinion polls don't tell us what will happen in November.  They tell us what people are thinking today.  So if someone tries to claim that polls don't give you reliable information, all you have to do is compare the actual results of elections with polling taken on or close to the vote.  In 2016 and 2020 they show that the opinion polls were generally accurate and sometimes highly accurate.  The same is true of elections the world over for many, many years - and only a mathematical amateur would try to argue otherwise.

 

That means - whether you like it or not - that Trump is more popular with today's voters than Biden is.  If the election was held this week, Trump would win, and probably by a bigger margin than in 2016.  It also means that unless people change their minds between now and early November, Trump will win.  People on the losing side of the numbers always tell the world how the opinion polling numbers don't count because of hidden factors, silent majorities for their candidate, turnout conditions that they can predict and no-one else can, and all that good political stuff.  Yet pretty much every time they do that, the public go out and vote more or less the way the opinion polls predict that they will.

 

Trump scored 46% in 2016, and won, so having a "ceiling" of 47-48% is neither here nor there.  You know the Electoral College at least as well as I do, and you know that unless a Democrat candidate outscores a Republican by at least 2% nationally they're in potential trouble.  Right here, right now the polls are pointing to more people voting for Trump than for Biden.

 

Head-to-head polls right now might not tell you anything much, but they tell us all this:  Biden has a big, big hill to climb.  He's a couple of percentage points behind, and he needs to get a couple of points (at least) ahead.  Moreover, history is not on his side.  In 2016 Trump got a lot closer to Clinton in the popular vote nationwide in November than he was in polls in February.  In 2020, he got a wee bit closer to Biden in November than he was in February.  I haven't looked too closely at the effect of the 2012 and 2008 campaigns on polling numbers, but I suspect there's a very similar story there.

 

I have already expressed the view that there is a lag factor at play, and that the improving economy won't immediately translate into improved support for Biden.  I still think there's room for Biden's numbers to improve, and I'll be interested to see where things are in May.  But right now I don't see reasons for the Democrats to be optimistic.

 

I'm not talking politics at this point, I'm talking uncertainty. It's part of analysis and the uncertainty in polling this far out from an election is off the charts. "If the election were held today" is not a meaningful question when the general election campaign hasn't started in earnest and an awful lot of people are simply using the polls to express their dislike for their choices. Hell, Michael Dukakis had a 14 point lead on GHWB in 1998 at one point. Don't remind me how that ended up.

 

As for poll accuracy, there's wasn't single poll tracker in 2016 that had the Democratic margin as small as 2.1%.  Most had the spread at 4%.  There wasn't a single poll tracker in 2022 that had the Republicans gaining such a meager majority in the House. Most forecasts had them getting a 20+ seat majority. There have been polling "misses" that are growing since 2012, and with good reason -- it's become harder and harder for pollsters to get a representative sample with traditional methods. This is widely discussed in the academic literature around polling, it's hardly some conspiracy theory. Pollsters are trying very hard but the biases are changing faster than ever.

 

The electoral college GOP bias is a relatively new thing, and while yes, it probably still holds, eight years is an eternity in American politics. Obama beat Romney by about less than 4% nationally in 2012 and had an electoral college landslide.

 

Optimism is a chimera at this point, but despair would be both counterproductive and detached from empiricism. If we want to get into political analysis, while Trump evidently seems capable of defying basic rules of politics, there are still some political rules that have held for a very long time which provide at least reasons to think it has the chance to be very good for Democrats. Incumbents tend to do well when the economy is good and when perceptions of the economy are good. The economy has been good for about 8 months and perceptions are starting to match that in polling (consumer sentiment has gone up enormous leaps the last three months). Candidates appearing in criminal trials at least tend to struggle more than others, and while a lot of GOP voters (as read by polls) aren't actually aware of his legal jeopardy because of the polarization of news. That gets a lot harder to avoid when he's actually sitting in the defendant box in a trial, should they happen in time (another enormous "if.") Beyond that, incumbent Presidents tend to win re-election unless there's major countervailing forces. Ford, Carter, GHWB, and Trump are the only ones in my life to not get a second term, and there were extenuating circumstances each time. (Ford: wasn't even elected, Carter: Iran hostage crisis, GHWB: a sour economy and Ross Perot, Trump: COVID and also being a colossal ****up)

 

What could screw this up for Biden is if Gaza is still a disaster area come November. He needs leftists and Arab Americans on his side to win. Lose a lot of them and he loses Michigan and Wisconsin. Alternately, if inflation takes off again, he's sunk.

 

So again, polling has, empirically and analytically, absolutely enormous errors this far out from an election. Basic political analysis points to a lot of volatile things that could shape the election which are still very uncertain. At this point I still consider the most likely prediction to be a narrow Biden victory, but a comfortable Trump victory and a Biden landslide are still very much within the realm of reasonable possibility.

[Watt-Zeefuik]

FWIW here's a good article looking at debate among poll watchers right now.

 

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/taking-a-look-at-team-polls-and-team-specials-ahead-of-the-2024-election/sharetoken/8veCgOPWCrCB

 

Cohn and Enten, who Marshall contrasts in this case, are both poll-heads themselves so are hardly polling-ignorant. Marshall's TPM ran one of the better polltrackers for several years before 538 and others came along with house adjustments and similar things. So this isn't just talking heads talking in ignorance of polls.

[Bigsmak]

Do you think that the polls might reflect that Trump is campaigning already (and has been for a long time) and Biden hasn't really started ? 

[Ulysses]

1 hour ago, Bigsmak said:

Do you think that the polls might reflect that Trump is campaigning already (and has been for a long time) and Biden hasn't really started ? 

 

That might be the case.  You could try comparing the current situation to one like it in the past, but it is difficult to recall a situation like it where an incumbent President was up against a candidate who was more or less guaranteed the other party's nomination from day one.

[Ulysses]

1 hour ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

FWIW here's a good article looking at debate among poll watchers right now.

 

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/taking-a-look-at-team-polls-and-team-specials-ahead-of-the-2024-election/sharetoken/8veCgOPWCrCB

 

Cohn and Enten, who Marshall contrasts in this case, are both poll-heads themselves so are hardly polling-ignorant. Marshall's TPM ran one of the better polltrackers for several years before 538 and others came along with house adjustments and similar things. So this isn't just talking heads talking in ignorance of polls.

 

I haven't read it.  Does it give examples of where opinion polling close to election day got it wrong?  Or is it a theoretical discussion of why the current polling might be wrong?  If it's the former then it might be relevant, if it's the latter then it has nothing to do with the point I'm making.

 

I've explained already how the 2016 and 2020 national polls were very close to nailing the popular vote share.  While you can make arguments at the margins, the reality is that they were well within their margin of error, and in effect called the vote share in both elections correctly.  That's not a discussion point, it's what happened.  As you well know, the concept that a sample poll can accurately predict the overall view of a population is settled science.  There are technical arguments that can be made about the techniques available to polling organisations to correct for sampling biases and errors and to adjust for potential turnout variations, but by and large they are marginal in their effect.  

 

On the other hand, if you want to tell me that what you're really saying is that Trump might be ahead now but that doesn't mean he'll win because there's a campaign to run and all sorts can happen, then all I can say is "so what?  I know that already."  Trump may not win, but he is leading today.  That is an unavoidable reality, no matter how painful one finds it.

[Watt-Zeefuik]

18 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

 

I haven't read it.  Does it give examples of where opinion polling close to election day got it wrong?  Or is it a theoretical discussion of why the current polling might be wrong?  If it's the former then it might be relevant, if it's the latter then it has nothing to do with the point I'm making.

 

I've explained already how the 2016 and 2020 national polls were very close to nailing the popular vote share.  While you can make arguments at the margins, the reality is that they were well within their margin of error, and in effect called the vote share in both elections correctly.  That's not a discussion point, it's what happened.  As you well know, the concept that a sample poll can accurately predict the overall view of a population is settled science.  There are technical arguments that can be made about the techniques available to polling organisations to correct for sampling biases and errors and to adjust for potential turnout variations, but by and large they are marginal in their effect.  

 

On the other hand, if you want to tell me that what you're really saying is that Trump might be ahead now but that doesn't mean he'll win because there's a campaign to run and all sorts can happen, then all I can say is "so what?  I know that already."  Trump may not win, but he is leading today.  That is an unavoidable reality, no matter how painful one finds it.

 

Um I already pointed out that none of the "poll of polls" were within a point of the eventual national margin in 2016? Now you can say, "ah, margin of error!" The margin of error for predicting the results of an election 9 months away is about +-10 points.

 

The concept that a sample poll *can* accurately predict the view of a population is settled science, but so is the notion of sampling error, end population prediction, non-random sampling, tiered sampling, and the rest. The point is that all of this has gotten harder, which is the consensus of the entire academic and commercial statistical community.

 

This isn't even a remotely controversial statement. It is, as you say, settled science that polling error has grown recently, as are the reasons. (more difficulty sampling a population of mobile phones when numbers are largely unlisted vs. residential numbers that used to be listed; political polarization; all samples are stratified to predict eventual turnout pattern, but that means you have to have an accurate model of what the eventual turnout will be, which is hard; generational trends in accepting calls from unknown numbers when everyone has caller ID, etc.)

 

So we have increasingly error-prone polling plus a nine month gap to the election. You say "Trump is leading today" by which I assume you mean a poll like the one that came out from the Economist this week which had him at 44% and Biden at 43%. Simply put, if the election were tomorrow, there would not be 13% undecided in that sample. What *everyone* is arguing about right now is what happens with that 13%. And the poll has nothing to say about that!

 

Well what about a different poll? Well, there's a SurveyUSA poll that says Trump gets 43% and Biden gets 36%. Oh noes! a 7 point lead for the orange dingbat! But the difference between that and the Economist one is 1% when it comes to Trump. How about the Marist/NPR poll that has Biden in a 1 point lead. Yay! It's Biden 48%, Trump 47%.

 

Do you see what I'm pointing to here? Trump's share of the electorate is effectively fixed. He was able to win with 46.1% in 2016 because a lot of anti-Trump vote went to Gary Johnson rather than Clinton. He lost in 2020 with 46.9% because the anti-Trump vote went to Biden. What will determine the election is if Biden can consolidate his coalition. Whatever the polls say right now is effectively completely irrelevant compared to that. Within the very reasonable possibilities in that are a comfortable Trump win and a Biden landslide.  That's all the polls say right now. Drawing any other conclusions from those data right now is bad science.

[Ulysses]

2 hours ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

 

I'm not talking politics at this point, I'm talking uncertainty. It's part of analysis and the uncertainty in polling this far out from an election is off the charts. "If the election were held today" is not a meaningful question when the general election campaign hasn't started in earnest and an awful lot of people are simply using the polls to express their dislike for their choices. Hell, Michael Dukakis had a 14 point lead on GHWB in 1998 at one point. Don't remind me how that ended up.

 

So what?  Sorry, but so what?  There's a campaign to run.  You think I don't know that?  But right now, Trump is leading.  Your point about Dukakis only reinforces that there's a campaign to run.  At the end of the campaign the opinion polls taken close to the date of the election pointed to a 10-point Bush win.  Bear in mind as well that Dukakis' lead turned into a 7-8 point deficit within a couple of weeks of the party conventions, when (let's be completely honest) the Rev. Jesse Jackson was off the ticket.  

 

 

2 hours ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

As for poll accuracy, there's wasn't single poll tracker in 2016 that had the Democratic margin as small as 2.1%.  Most had the spread at 4%.  There wasn't a single poll tracker in 2022 that had the Republicans gaining such a meager majority in the House. Most forecasts had them getting a 20+ seat majority. There have been polling "misses" that are growing since 2012, and with good reason -- it's become harder and harder for pollsters to get a representative sample with traditional methods. This is widely discussed in the academic literature around polling, it's hardly some conspiracy theory. Pollsters are trying very hard but the biases are changing faster than ever.

 

Most of the polls carried out within a couple of days of polling day in 2016 showed a Clinton margin of either 3% or 4%.  That is well within any margin of error.  One or two had the margin higher, and one or two had it at 1% or tied.  The last 4 polls featured on RCP's poll tracker before the election showed Clinton +3, +1 and +4, and Trump +3.

 

In 2022, the RCP poll tracker showed an overall Republican lead of 2.5%.  The Republicans won the real vote by 2.8%.  Do you think that 0.3 percentage points is a wild miss?

 

If, as you claim, it is getting harder and harder to get a representative sample, how come the 2016 and 2020 Presidential election polls were well within their margins of error?  How come the polls published late in 2022 almost all showed the Republicans winning by 1-4 points?  By the way, look at the 2018 version of the same tracker - it got the Democrat winning margin pretty close, though not as close as 2022.  The 2016 House elections were a bit of a disaster, not because the polls were wildly inaccurate, but because the result itself was so tight - so the polls predicted a Democrat popular vote win of less than 1%, but the real poll had a Republican win by about the same margin.  So opinion polls can't work miracles, but the idea that they can be badly inaccurate isn't backed up by the actual outcomes of elections.

 

 

2 hours ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

The electoral college GOP bias is a relatively new thing, and while yes, it probably still holds, eight years is an eternity in American politics. Obama beat Romney by about less than 4% nationally in 2012 and had an electoral college landslide.

 

I think Al Gore might disagree with your point about the bias being a relatively new thing.   

 

In fairness, 2016 was a bit special in that regard.  Like it or not, the Trump campaign did a superb job of targeting specific demographics in certain states, helped by the incompetence of the Clinton campaign in giving Trump a golden opportunity to rope in the "deplorables".

 

Obama beat Romney by 3.9%, and won 332-206.  Biden beat Trump by 4.5%, and won 306-232.  If you win by 4% nationally, it's very hard for your opponent to win all that many states.

 

By the way, if you want a good example of a set of opinion polls that didn't get it right, look to this one rather than any of the later polls.  Most of the late polls in 2012 pointed to a tie or at best a marginal Obama poll lead.  Oddly enough, the 2012 House polls were a lot closer to the mark, but they suffered from a similar but opposite problem to the 2018 House polls.  They pointed to a tiny GOP win, but in fact the Democrats won by 1%.

 

 

2 hours ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

 

Optimism is a chimera at this point, but despair would be both counterproductive and detached from empiricism. 

 

I'm neither optimistic nor despairing; I'm just saying how it is.

 

 

2 hours ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

 

So again, polling has, empirically and analytically, absolutely enormous errors this far out from an election. 

 

This is factually incorrect, with all due respect.  People can change their minds, and if they do then polling results change to reflect that.  That's not an error; it's a reflection of what people think when the poll fieldwork is done.

[Ulysses]

9 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

 

Um I already pointed out that none of the "poll of polls" were within a point of the eventual national margin in 2016? Now you can say, "ah, margin of error!" The margin of error for predicting the results of an election 9 months away is about +-10 points.

 

What sort of lunatic would use a poll taken now to predict a result in 9 months' time, FFS?  Seriously, what does your point even mean?

 

 

9 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

The concept that a sample poll *can* accurately predict the view of a population is settled science, but so is the notion of sampling error, end population prediction, non-random sampling, tiered sampling, and the rest. The point is that all of this has gotten harder, which is the consensus of the entire academic and commercial statistical community.

 

So what?  Despite all of that, as I keep saying, the polls taken close to the election dates are generally very close to the election outcomes - not just in the US, but all over the world.  Why?  Because polling organisations work hard at their methodologies to try to get it right.  And when they get it wrong, they work at refining their methodologies.

 

 

9 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

So we have increasingly error-prone polling plus a nine month gap to the election. You say "Trump is leading today" by which I assume you mean a poll like the one that came out from the Economist this week which had him at 44% and Biden at 43%. Simply put, if the election were tomorrow, there would not be 13% undecided in that sample. What *everyone* is arguing about right now is what happens with that 13%. And the poll has nothing to say about that!

 

We don't have increasingly error-prone polling.  If we did, how come the most inaccurate opinion polls in recent history were in 2012, and they've been more accurate since?

 

I say "Trump is leading today" because almost every single poll says the same thing.  

 

 

9 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

Well what about a different poll? Well, there's a SurveyUSA poll that says Trump gets 43% and Biden gets 36%. Oh noes! a 7 point lead for the orange dingbat! But the difference between that and the Economist one is 1% when it comes to Trump. How about the Marist/NPR poll that has Biden in a 1 point lead. Yay! It's Biden 48%, Trump 47%.

 

 

It's not just one poll.  Polls can have errors, but when different polls repeatedly point to the same outcome, then that outcome really starts to stack up as a genuine probability.  Even the whole business of undecideds and "turnout variation" doesn't change any of that.  If it did, then you wouldn't see the consistent pattern I have repeatedly, repeatedly, and repeatedly described to you.  Look at the detailed polls taken late in 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022 - they all have percentages of undecideds, and despite that they all made good predictions of the margin between the Republicans and Democrats in the real polls.  And this is consistently the case in opinion polling all over the world.  The questions you raise are old news to the polling organisations.  Find a different pattern, of things that have actually happened in the past, backed up by the data, and then you can start trying to convince me otherwise.

 

It doesn't matter how hard you argue, or how passionately you feel.  These polls are not showing a Trump lead because of errors and biases.  They're showing a Trump lead because right now he's more popular - or to be precise, less unpopular - than Biden.   

[Ulysses]

It's weird how most of us have to project our hopes and fears onto these numbers, instead of seeing them for what they are.

 

In the personal world we all like to inhabit, opinion polls are always right when they contain good news, and flawed when they don't.  Meanwhile, in the real world, the numbers just describe how things are, for good or ill.

 

If you've never read it before, I strongly recommend the classic The Inner Game Of Tennis (W Timothy Gallwey).  I think the book is about 50 years old now, but is still one of the all-time great books about psychology and personal mindset.

[Watt-Zeefuik]

36 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

 

So what?  Sorry, but so what?  There's a campaign to run.  You think I don't know that?  But right now, Trump is leading.  Your point about Dukakis only reinforces that there's a campaign to run.  At the end of the campaign the opinion polls taken close to the date of the election pointed to a 10-point Bush win.  Bear in mind as well that Dukakis' lead turned into a 7-8 point deficit within a couple of weeks of the party conventions, when (let's be completely honest) the Rev. Jesse Jackson was off the ticket.  

 

 

The point is specifically about modeling the result of an election based on the responses to a poll at a certain point in time. I'm not sure why this keeps getting missed.

 

36 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

 

Most of the polls carried out within a couple of days of polling day in 2016 showed a Clinton margin of either 3% or 4%.  That is well within any margin of error.  One or two had the margin higher, and one or two had it at 1% or tied.  The last 4 polls featured on RCP's poll tracker before the election showed Clinton +3, +1 and +4, and Trump +3.

 

The margin of error seems to appear in your argument when it suits you and disappear when you want to claim polling science. (I will also say the RCP tracker is my least favorite of the poll trackers as I think its averaging method is suspect.) But in this case, sure, RCP was in range. 538 had Clinton with a 72% chance to win the day before based on state-by-state polling.

 

But let's go to 2020. The Economist had Biden with a 10% lead on the eve of the election. Rasmussen had a 1% lead. The real result was 5%, which was outside the margin of error of both polls.The RCP average had Biden at 7.2% with I believe an estimated MoE of 2%. So it was also a miss. 538 and 270 to Win missed by even more.

 

36 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

In 2022, the RCP poll tracker showed an overall Republican lead of 2.5%.  The Republicans won the real vote by 2.8%.  Do you think that 0.3 percentage points is a wild miss?

 

The Congressional generic ballot is a really inexact instrument because so much is down to district effects. State-by-state polls had given the GOP confidence that there was a "red wave" coming, which of course never materialized.

 

36 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

If, as you claim, it is getting harder and harder to get a representative sample, how come the 2016 and 2020 Presidential election polls were well within their margins of error?  How come the polls published late in 2022 almost all showed the Republicans winning by 1-4 points?  By the way, look at the 2018 version of the same tracker - it got the Democrat winning margin pretty close, though not as close as 2022.  The 2016 House elections were a bit of a disaster, not because the polls were wildly inaccurate, but because the result itself was so tight - so the polls predicted a Democrat popular vote win of less than 1%, but the real poll had a Republican win by about the same margin.  So opinion polls can't work miracles, but the idea that they can be badly inaccurate isn't backed up by the actual outcomes of elections.

 

 

Again, I'm not just pulling polling errors out of my arse. Vanderbilt University did a review and found that 2020 was the least accurate election polling in 40 years. https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2021/07/19/pre-election-polls-in-2020-had-the-largest-errors-in-40-years/

 

36 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

 

I think Al Gore might disagree with your point about the bias being a relatively new thing.   

 

Al Gore won the popular vote by a half of a percentage point, or a few hundred thousand votes, and missed winning Florida by 500 votes. If he'd flipped either Florida or New Hampshire (7k vote margin), he would have been President.

 

In 2016 Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes but would have required multiple state flips to get the Presidency, none of which were terribly close.

 

36 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

 

In fairness, 2016 was a bit special in that regard.  Like it or not, the Trump campaign did a superb job of targeting specific demographics in certain states, helped by the incompetence of the Clinton campaign in giving Trump a golden opportunity to rope in the "deplorables".

 

100% accurate.

 

36 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

 

 

This is factually incorrect, with all due respect.  People can change their minds, and if they do then polling results change to reflect that.  That's not an error; it's a reflection of what people think when the poll fieldwork is done.

 

I think you're misreading what I'm saying pretty badly. I'm not saying polling doesn't reflect the state of minds of people right now (it kinda does and kinda doesn't, this is what polling science is about). I'm saying the states of minds of people right now is of passing but very limited interest when it comes to what is going to happen 9 months from now. You're saying "I don't see much reason for optimism" and keep getting hung up on what the polls say right now. But nobody is voting in the general right now, and anything else is just horse race nonsense that's supremely unhelpful.

 

And now I'm just going onto the next message here, which is kinda weird because it opens with . . .

 

20 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

 

What sort of lunatic would use a poll taken now to predict a result in 9 months' time, FFS?  Seriously, what does your point even mean?

 

This is exactly what you're doing, though. I don't give a shit what people think about Biden right now. I care what they do when they go into a voting booth in November. All of the worry and all of the work is about shaping what happens in November. Looking at the polls right now for most people is a mistake because it's near meaningless as you say. But you keep changing the subject back to the polls!

 

20 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

So what?  Despite all of that, as I keep saying, the polls taken close to the election dates are generally very close to the election outcomes - not just in the US, but all over the world.  Why?  Because polling organisations work hard at their methodologies to try to get it right.  And when they get it wrong, they work at refining their methodologies.

 

I'll let the above reports by actual scholars of polling about how 2020 was the worst in 40 years speak for themselves. You can deny that all you want but that's just anti-empiricism.

 

20 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

We don't have increasingly error-prone polling.  If we did, how come the most inaccurate opinion polls in recent history were in 2012, and they've been more accurate since?

 

Same as above.

 

20 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

I say "Trump is leading today" because almost every single poll says the same thing.  

 

If by "some say Biden is up 3 and others say Trump is up 13" you mean the same thing, well, okay?

 

20 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

It doesn't matter how hard you argue, or how passionately you feel.  These polls are not showing a Trump lead because of errors and biases.  They're showing a Trump lead because right now he's more popular - or to be precise, less unpopular - than Biden.   

 

I don't mean to be a dick about this and I hate pulling rank, but I'm getting a little sick of being lectured about how statistics work, so I'll just point out that my current job description includes the words "data scientist" and my masters thesis has "statistics" in the title. Kindly stop reciting the basics of statistics to me and maybe actually read the empirical scholarship above that refutes your repeated point about polling accuracy not declining?

 

What is entirely accurate to say about the polling right now is that Trump has thus far consolidated his base better than Biden has. I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing whether that says even a little bit about how the election will turn out in November. This isn't a football table where they're amassing points and Trump being up 3 means that Biden has to somehow haul back 3 points on him. All the polling says right now is that there's a huge number of undecideds and that Biden needs to consolidate those if he wants another term. Which has been blindingly obvious for about six months now and is better measured in his approval rating, so I don't need a poll to tell me that. Hence, polls right now are fairly light on added information to the obvious.

 

So how can Biden win? Fortunately the opinion polls *also* tell us generally why Biden hasn't consolidated his base. It roughly comes down to the economy, Gaza, and perceptions that he's old. On the economy, consumer sentiment is rising. If that continues, the economy should become an asset to him. On Gaza, he has a lot of work to do. Maybe he can do it, maybe he can't. He's not going to get younger, but part of campaigning will be at least debunking some of the horseshit about him being a doddering old fool, and frankly reminding everyone that Trump is no spring chicken either.

 

Absolutely nothing about polling in February will explain how this will pan out in November. As such, I find it incredibly uninteresting and in fact highly distracting as to whether Trump is up 2 or Biden up 1 in what is currently little more than a popularity contest. The real work is all ahead.

[Ulysses]

^^^^

 

A good starting point for a data scientist would be to distinguish between the data and the people using the data to make predictions.

 

You've repeatedly remarked about projections of seat numbers or percentage probabilities of winning.  They are not polls - they are what happens when people review polls and tell us what they think will happen.  I've never made any comments about the accuracy or inaccuracy of predictions made by analysts.  They aren't sample polls; they are the opinions of their writers, no more and no less.

 

You've more than once claimed that I've said that a poll carried out on one day can tell you what will happen on a completely different day.  Yet I've said over and over again in plain English that it can't.  All an opinion poll can do is tell you what people think at the time the fieldwork is carried out.

 

You've picked a couple of outlier polls and ignored all those that aren't outlying as if somehow that proves that polls are unreliable. Of course some polls are going to be outliers - and others won't be. 

 

The evidence is that most polls are reasonably accurate, and I've given you example after example from five US national elections in recent years.  Yet your only response is to say you don't like someone's way of averaging - without explaining why how you feel about that would matter.  On the other hand, I neither like nor dislike their way of averaging.  in fact, I neither like nor dislike any of this stuff, because my own opinions would only get in the way of the information.  It's not as if I've invented the polls and made up stuff that didn't happen.  I've just pointed that these opinion polls came out shortly before people went to the polls in all these elections and were very close to the actual results of how people voted.  That is the measure of whether an opinion poll is reliable or not, and if you can't see that then you need to reassess your view.  If the polls had said something else, I'd say something else as well - which is why I made my point about the 2012 Presidential election opinion polls, which were in my view the least reliable set of opinion polls in recent history.

 

A good starting point for a data scientist would be to correctly read what I'm saying and respond to that.  Just saying.

 

There's a whole other debate we could have about the effectiveness of campaigns.  I have a view that campaigns - more often than not - have a relatively limited effect on election results.  But that is only an opinion, and I'm open to persuasion.

 

That's the real reason for my lack of optimism about Biden's prospects. There are months to go in the campaign, and plenty of scope for Biden to move the dial. But often in election campaigns the dial hardly ever moves.  We like to tell ourselves that it does, and that the huffing and puffing and countless hundreds of millions of dollars of campaign spending all matter.  But sometimes you'd have to wonder does it all really alter what people decide to do, and maybe we're just comforting ourselves with the notion that the whole "democratic circus" actually makes much of a difference. But as I say that's an opinion rather than an analysis.

[Ulysses]

[Footballfirst]

Observers expect the Supreme Court will rule in Trump's favour after today's hearing about Colorado excluding him from the ballot paper.

 

Meanwhile, Biden will not face any charges after keeping classified documents at his home.

[Maple Leaf]

On 07/02/2024 at 11:53, Ulysses said:

 

They're saying that Trump is going to win.  Another poll last week has him comfortably ahead in Georgia, for example.

I've just had a look at some state-by-state polls.  Alarm bells should be ringing in the White House and in Biden's re-election team.

[Bigsmak]

1 hour ago, Footballfirst said:

Observers expect the Supreme Court will rule in Trump's favour after today's hearing about Colorado excluding him from the ballot paper.

 

Meanwhile, Biden will not face any charges after keeping classified documents at his home.

 

Trump never had any charges because he has classified docs at his home. He has charges because he lied about having documents and never returned them.  Many presidents and gov officials have had docs at their homes, and when asked about them, they say - o crap - sorry and hand them back.  They get told off and not to do it again. 

All except the traitorous trump - who knew he had them, who showed them to other people without clearance and boasted that he had them.  Then lied when he was asked about them, then didn't allow officials to come and take them - then tried to destroy them - then tried to hide them - then tried to cover it all up..

 

So enough with your distractive comments about 'someone else did it and wasn't charged'  - What an uneducated Strawman Fallacy. 

[doddsyJR9]

6 minutes ago, Bigsmak said:

 

Trump never had any charges because he has classified docs at his home. He has charges because he lied about having documents and never returned them.  Many presidents and gov officials have had docs at their homes, and when asked about them, they say - o crap - sorry and hand them back.  They get told off and not to do it again. 

All except the traitorous trump - who knew he had them, who showed them to other people without clearance and boasted that he had them.  Then lied when he was asked about them, then didn't allow officials to come and take them - then tried to destroy them - then tried to hide them - then tried to cover it all up..

 

So enough with your distractive comments about 'someone else did it and wasn't charged'  - What an uneducated Strawman Fallacy. 

Sounds very similar analogy, to a bunch of burglars, who when confronted either - a) Own up right away and hand the ill gotten goods to the cops right away or, b) deny having the ill gotten goods. Same burglary, but different for you depending on which political seat you sit on. Dearie me.

 

What is worse for you? Biden and Trumps alleged taking papers home, or the Snp's Michael Matheson, who lied to all and sundry, and billed the taxpayer for 11 grand, while knowing he wasn't entitled to it? Us plebs would have been charged with fraud, no?

[Bigsmak]

15 minutes ago, doddsyJR9 said:

Sounds very similar analogy, to a bunch of burglars, who when confronted either - a) Own up right away and hand the ill gotten goods to the cops right away or, b) deny having the ill gotten goods. Same burglary, but different for you depending on which political seat you sit on. Dearie me.

 

What is worse for you? Biden and Trumps alleged taking papers home, or the Snp's Michael Matheson, who lied to all and sundry, and billed the taxpayer for 11 grand, while knowing he wasn't entitled to it? Us plebs would have been charged with fraud, no?

 

Sorry, you are very much just talking nonsense. No one burgled these documents.  The majority of times people have classified documents they shouldn't at their home is usually not through nefarious reasons. they would usually be left over from when they did have clearance to have them and that clearance is revoked. This was the case for trump as well. And if he had just said o yea.. I have them.. Here they are back, sorry. That would be fine. Instead he denied having them, then tried to cover it up.

 

You're missing the point. Not sure if it's deliberate or not. 

[Maple Leaf]

2 hours ago, Footballfirst said:

Observers expect the Supreme Court will rule in Trump's favour after today's hearing about Colorado excluding him from the ballot paper.

 

 

That's no surprise to me, nor to probably most other observers.  The Supreme Court has been politicized thanks, in part, to Trump's appointment of three judges. 

 

For the foreseeable future, decisions from the SCOTUS will have a conservative/Republican slant.  People who hold left-of-centre views had better get used to it.

[doddsyJR9]

30 minutes ago, Bigsmak said:

 

Sorry, you are very much just talking nonsense. No one burgled these documents.  The majority of times people have classified documents they shouldn't at their home is usually not through nefarious reasons. they would usually be left over from when they did have clearance to have them and that clearance is revoked. This was the case for trump as well. And if he had just said o yea.. I have them.. Here they are back, sorry. That would be fine. Instead he denied having them, then tried to cover it up.

 

You're missing the point. Not sure if it's deliberate or not. 

No, I'm most certainly not talking nonsense. You must know what an analogy is, and you avoided the Michael Matheson snp/green corruption question. I suggest it is you who were posing as an imposter clever dick.

[Footballfirst]

Time for Biden to call it a day?

 

 

[Bigsmak]

Just now, doddsyJR9 said:

No, I'm most certainly not talking nonsense. You must know what an analogy is, and you avoided the Michael Matheson snp/green corruption question. I suggest it is you who were posing as an imposter clever dick.

 

Ah - I don't know enough about the Matheson question sorry - just seen today that he quit. I'm interested to see what the report says.  But I do agree he should be charged with Fraud for lying on his expense claims. But it will be that whole parliamentary privilege crap. 

 

I do know what an Analogy is - And your comparison was just so far off - its nothing to do with deliberately stealing something - which both the burglars in your analogy did - As Trump never stole anything, or Biden or anyone else -be it Clinton, Bush etc who all would have had something they shouldn't have after their term.  Its nothing to do with having the documents - its all about the fact he lied about having them, then tried to conceal it. 

I don't know how to say it differently - its not about political affiliation, or bias - its just that Trump did something - no one else has, that's why he is a traitor and a criminal.  

[doddsyJR9]

3 minutes ago, Bigsmak said:

 

Ah - I don't know enough about the Matheson question sorry - just seen today that he quit. I'm interested to see what the report says.  But I do agree he should be charged with Fraud for lying on his expense claims. But it will be that whole parliamentary privilege crap. 

 

I do know what an Analogy is - And your comparison was just so far off - its nothing to do with deliberately stealing something - which both the burglars in your analogy did - As Trump never stole anything, or Biden or anyone else -be it Clinton, Bush etc who all would have had something they shouldn't have after their term.  Its nothing to do with having the documents - its all about the fact he lied about having them, then tried to conceal it. 

I don't know how to say it differently - its not about political affiliation, or bias - its just that Trump did something - no one else has, that's why he is a traitor and a criminal.  

Bill Clinton also did something no one else had, with the lovely stripper girl, in the white house. His wife apparently shredded thousands of documents. It seems very weird you want to call Donald a traitor and criminal for what sounds very trivial indeed. You have a selective memory.

[Bigsmak]

4 minutes ago, doddsyJR9 said:

Bill Clinton also did something no one else had, with the lovely stripper girl, in the white house. His wife apparently shredded thousands of documents. It seems very weird you want to call Donald a traitor and criminal for what sounds very trivial indeed. You have a selective memory.

 

lol - In France and Italy if you have a position of power you are expected to have a mistress or two! 

 

I called him a traitor because he .. deliberately showed secrets to people who shouldn't see them. 

 

[doddsyJR9]

3 minutes ago, Bigsmak said:

 

lol - In France and Italy if you have a position of power you are expected to have a mistress or two! 

 

I called him a traitor because he .. deliberately showed secrets to people who shouldn't see them. 

 

CNN the Channel 4 of Global News and Left Wing Agenda. I thought you might have come back with something serious.

[Bigsmak]

8 minutes ago, doddsyJR9 said:

CNN the Channel 4 of Global News and Left Wing Agenda. I thought you might have come back with something serious.

 

They didn't make the recording. 

 

 

[Bigsmak]

Anyway, enough of this back and forth.. . Just seen that sky news is saying bidden also deliberately kept secrets. So he should be charged to. 

 

I don't understand in a country the size of the USA weight they have these two as the main people to be president. Surely they can find someone better

[doddsyJR9]

3 minutes ago, Bigsmak said:

 

They didn't make the recording. 

 

 

There was nothing in the recording that demonstrated Donald was either a criminal or a traitor. And, if there was no serious news outlet would have reported upon it until found guilty. I don't know why I'm replying to you, maybe its your simplicity,

[doddsyJR9]

3 minutes ago, Bigsmak said:

Anyway, enough of this back and forth.. . Just seen that sky news is saying bidden also deliberately kept secrets. So he should be charged to. 

 

I don't understand in a country the size of the USA weight they have these two as the main people to be president. Surely they can find someone better

Everybody has secrets. Some they want to keep, others that they don't. I suggest mildly, that you begin to understand life in general. 

[JFK-1]

6 hours ago, Bigsmak said:

Anyway, enough of this back and forth.. . Just seen that sky news is saying bidden also deliberately kept secrets. So he should be charged to. 

 

I don't understand in a country the size of the USA weight they have these two as the main people to be president. Surely they can find someone better

 

Anyone trying to draw any equivalence between Biden and agent orange on any level aside from age is immediately suspect as someone of a Trump/Carlson kind. Someone blatantly trying to operate outside any norms of good faith non bias debate by for just one thing ignoring obvious realities. Or even saying an obvious reality doesn't exist, while spouting blatantly obvious lies.

 

They often come up with some trivial shite that means little to nothing in the big picture, to stop you talking about the obvious big picture.

While both Trump and Carlson blatantly lie through their teeth every time they speak,  profusely lie. Lies so blatantly obvious anyone of average intelligence and looking outside a narrative bubble cannot fail to see it. Alternative facts.

 

And they can bizarrely draw an equivalence between Biden with this lie machine? That's beyond FUBAR. Behaviour that would be a death sentence in terms of credibility just 10 years ago in both politics and civil society. And that's only one angle of it, this truly bizarre ocean of lies.

What's the major problem with Biden? He's a doddery old guy? Rather than an obviously vile misogynistic sociopathic narcissistic thin skinned serial rapist with obvious and serious lack of intellect. 

Something as unintelligent and uniformed as Trump is fine if he's just cycling through bankruptcy's and scamming idiots while losing money all over the place.

 

A failed wannabe business mogul who was always a cartoon character to the real estate industry in New York, a laughing stock and he knew it. Who got a gig on TV pretending to be a real successful business mogul. And that show gave him the most money he ever made, a winning scam. He should have stuck to it, it was making him rich.

And we're just getting started on his inadequacies, we haven't reached pussy grabbing serial rapist yet. A weirdo who pretty much said he would like to shag his own daughter if she weren't his daughter, while following his defamation of E. Jean Carroll trail the judge stated that by the definition of the law he raped her. I think he put a finger into her which amounts to penetration which amounts to rape.

 

Think of how violent and frightening that must have been for this woman who was trying to resist, he 'grabbed her by the pussy'

 

While during that trial other women were introduced who also described being raped by him. This is a pervert anybody of average intelligence could equate with Biden? In good faith?

 

An unstable individual who lashes out on a whim, a toddler like mentality known for throwing plates of food at walls. An individual facing 4 criminal trails and a total of 91 felony charges of which he is obviously guilty of.

Someone who tried to execute a coup which depended on Mike Pence breaking the law to take part in it, when he didn't then the last throw of the dice was physically prevent the transfer of power. He wanted to go to the barricades himself that day because he wanted to make sure that crowd would become as violent as possible.

 

Which he knew they would if he were there still ranting about Pence being a traitor and a rigged election. He was going to create a gap in those barriers himself, lead the mob through with secrets service creating a path. The secret service prevented him going there because they knew this could end in shooting for just one thing.

Insurrectionist and something that's saying outright he will be an authoritarian dictator, who has stated he will close down any media news that calls his lies what they are, like Putin does in Russia.

And that can be done believe it or not, by taking control of various government agencies by filling them with trumpets and that's just scraping the surface of it.

All that and so much more. if this low IQ mentally unstable toddler were re-elected the strategic global situation would make a greater shift than it did following WW2,  it would happen overnight, and it would most definitely be disastrous for Britain, Europe, and the wider world.

 

On the other hand if Biden were re-elected, doddery or not, in these times of international conflict in Europe and the middle east we can be confident rationality through consultation and discussion will be the governing policy. Not the erratic and irrational impulses of a self obsessed self centered idiot who is obviously an unfit human being far less a leader of anything at all.

 

Anything not seeing all of that is either completely ignorant, like Trump himself, or if seeing it and doesn't care, is a Batman joker like character, just wants to see the world burn down. The joker was insane and so are they.

[Mysterion]

9 hours ago, Maple Leaf said:

That's no surprise to me, nor to probably most other observers.  The Supreme Court has been politicized thanks, in part, to Trump's appointment of three judges. 

 

For the foreseeable future, decisions from the SCOTUS will have a conservative/Republican slant.  People who hold left-of-centre views had better get used to it.

 

No fan of Trump but i did pick up that the focus was on the technicality that Trump was thrown off the ballot because he had participated in insurrection but to date he hasn't been charged with it/found guilty of it. 

 

It's nitpicking stuff but actually what the Supreme Court are there to do. 

[Des Lynam]

11 hours ago, Footballfirst said:

Time for Biden to call it a day?

 

 

I’m not sure who the Democrats would consider at such a late stage. It’s plainly obvious except to the wilfully ignorant that Biden is in cognitive decline. The Democrats seem unable to devise a strategy to really deal with Trump. 

[Ulysses]

3 hours ago, Des Lynam said:

I’m not sure who the Democrats would consider at such a late stage. It’s plainly obvious except to the wilfully ignorant that Biden is in cognitive decline. The Democrats seem unable to devise a strategy to really deal with Trump. 

 

Biden is too old and mixes up names.

 

Trump is too old and tried to cause a coup.

 

If only there was some way you could work out which is worse.

 

[Ulysses]

4 hours ago, Mysterion said:

 

No fan of Trump but i did pick up that the focus was on the technicality that Trump was thrown off the ballot because he had participated in insurrection but to date he hasn't been charged with it/found guilty of it. 

 

It's nitpicking stuff but actually what the Supreme Court are there to do. 

 

You can tell from the questioning that this is not a partisan issue.  Trump should not be barred from the ballot for being accused of something.