Sit down to write post on election polling. Read comments in Tuesday Morning Open Thread. Say fuck it – let the punters field this one. Cut, paste. Wander off to search out another drink.
dm says:
August 9, 2016 at 7:39 amI see these polls and I think: Bradley Effect Bradley Effect Bradley Effect. Who wants to admit to a pollster that they’re voting for an idiot? So… expect Trump to do better at the ballot box than he does in polls.
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer says:
August 9, 2016 at 7:46 am
@dm:My prediction all along has been that Hill is actually underpolling, that conservative women aged 50+ will go ahead and vote for her in the privacy of the voting booth. They’re polling differently because they’re worried about people overhearing, return calls, direct mail, etc.
Trump reminds them too much of their husbands.
It’s gonna play hell with exit polls, while leading to squealing accusations of rampant fraud.
Expect big surprises, maybe even in the plains.
Amir Khalid says:
August 9, 2016 at 8:02 amMy own suspicion about the polling is that I don’t know if the Trump campaign is capable of performing to its candidate’s polling. He might poll at x% in such-and-such state, and fall short of that number on election day because he didn’t have the organisation to get the vote out for him.
Shalimar says:
August 9, 2016 at 8:28 am@Amir Khalid: I am not sure a major American party has ever had a candidate who thought his supporters would all go to the polls on their own because he was so awesome. If great organization was really a big difference between Obama and Romney/McCain, then it should mean Trump gets at least 5% below his projections. And his projections are beginning to look really horrible.
Have at it.
ETA: The discussion in the comment thread is wonderful. I love you all. rikyrah wins though.
rikyrah says:
August 9, 2016 at 10:08 am (Edit)
GET.OUT.THE.VOTE.
Pound these muthaphuckas INTO THE GROUND!!!!
LesBonnesFemmes
Love you, Sarah.
The Czar of All the Stupids
I’m afraid of the unexpected in this one…
This situation looks so… volatile… and combustible… to me…
If it looks like Trump is really going down in November, and it does, and he threatens to take the entire Republican Party w/ him on a nationwide basis, which it appears he might do, how will extreme conservatives react?
Attempted military coup to ‘save the country’?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Good morning, Sarah!
DanF
And when you start complaining that the election is rigged, you give your supporters a reason to not go out and vote on election day. “Yeah … I might vote today if I have the time. Doesn’t matter though – Trump says it’s rigged any ways.”
ChicagoPat
“Who wants to admit to a pollster that they’re voting for an idiot?”
An idiot willing to vote for Trump. In my recent facebook experience, most of them are probably standing on their roofs at night, shouting it to their neighbors, and thinking themselves persuasive.
randy khan
@The Czar of All the Stupids:
A military coup is incredibly unlikely – there’s basically no commander above the regiment level who’d be stupid enough to go along, and probably nobody that high.
People attempting “Second Amendment remedies” might be possible, but these folks couldn’t organize their way out of a paper bag.
Hedgehogs are Cute
I still think we’re in the convention bounce timeframe; Georgia and Arizona aren’t actually toss-ups, for that matter, I don’t think NC is either. It’s nice to dream, but I expect the actual map to look something like Obama-Romney. If Trump can continue to not say things that are grossly inappropriate/offensive (I think he’s at a week now), then Republicans outraged on principle will come back and vote for him. I also think Gary Johnson won’t get the 6% or so he’s getting now on Election Day, and Libertarian voters are more likely to go Republican.
Still, good news. I hope we can get a couple Senate seats out of this.
SRW1
Trump will do great.
He’s a shoo-in for the silver medal!
Punchy
It’s going to be really tough to claim “rigged” and “stolen election” if he’s 12–15 points down going into Tuesday. Sure, you’ll have the “unskew the polls!” fuckdummery and the Uber Dons making a little noise (that certainly the media will pimp constantly), but a vast majority of Republicans will understand they lost due to sheer stupidity of their candidate and accept the outcome.
If it’s a 2-3% diff going into Tuesday, all bets are off on the reaction by the losing party.
Major Major Major Major
“At least 5%”? A good ground game is worth 3% tops–and that’s the number that ground game people tell themselves for motivation when they’re having a hard time getting out of bed!
Emma
@The Czar of All the Stupids: If our military is so far gone as to think “coup”, Trump is the least of our problems.
dm
Well, I guess I never have to mention the Bradley Effect again.
I’m still going to work on GOTV, though it’s looking increasingly like it will be phone only, since it’s looking more and more like swing states are a thousand or more miles away (instead of being next door).
Bruuuuce
“Who wants to admit to a pollster that they’re voting for an idiot?”
SATSQ: The kind who claims that having their 12-foot Trump for Preznit sign burned down is a hate crime. Because, after all, idiocy of that magnitude must constitute a protected group, somehow :-P
Keith G
@ChicagoPat: As my sainted Pap used to say: That’s more truth than poetry.
There is a core GOP voter that is a mirror image of the old Yellow Dogs – they will vote for anything if it is running against a Democrat. Ran across one last night.
To paraphrase:
The ones that I talk to usually can’t be budged off that script.
I would say that it would be fun to see their hearts broken – their world view smacked til it breaks, but that won’t happen since they seem to operate on some deeply entrenched Pavlovian conditioning.
mdblanche
@The Czar of All the Stupids: I must admit thinking about what sort of incitement Trump could make in his concession speech leaves me queasy.
JMG
Among the vast majority of Americans of all political opinions, the first reaction to the results of an election is “Thank God that’s over.” An attempt to stir up resistance to a result would not go well for the resisters due to massive resistance to thinking about it.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
Hello all
nonynony
@The Czar of All the Stupids:
He can’t. He can grievously injure the national Republican party such as it is – but W already mostly destroyed it in 2006, and McCain and Romney did nothing to revitalize it in 2008 and 2012. At this point what Trump is doing to the national party is basically just beating a near-dead corpse.
But the Republican party as a whole is a distributed system. Think of the Republican party as a network of 51 nodes, each operating independently. One node is the national party – the one that runs presidential elections. The other 50 nodes are the individual state parties – these run not just state-level elections, but also Senate and House elections for their individual states. Some of these nodes are incredibly strong – most of the South is a one party state at this point, as is quite a bit of the West. A few of them – like California – are incredibly weak. All of them operate independently of the national party, though they have historically looked to the national party to set the agenda.
So while Trump may take their national ambitions down, he can’t destroy the party. What his candidacy has done this year is extend the faction war that has been going on in the GOP since 2006 for another four years. For the past two cycles the Establishment and the Movement Conservatives have been battling it out for the soul of the party. As they did in ’92, ’96, ’08 and ’12. In every one of those cycles, the Establishment won and the Movement went off to lick its wounds (in ’00 they found a compromise candidate in George W Bush – and so the faction war died down for a few years until W broke the party in 2006).
(This was the year the Movement really had a shot. The Establishment had a terrible candidate that they’d rallied behind – Jeb! was a stupid decision on their part. And the Movement had the creepy Ted Cruz who should have been able to snap up the vote. Except Trump came along and revealed a split in the Movement that the Movement didn’t even know was there – the White Supremacists were not really happy with the Movement and found a candidate to rally around. And this is the real reason why the #nevertrumpers are still looking for a candidate to wedge in there, and why they didn’t rally round Cruz to fight off Trump. Backing Cruz meant letting the Movement take control of the party. Letting Trump split the Movement was to their advantage – until he became the nominee and destroyed the national brand for the year.)
HRA
There is no privacy of the polling booth at my polling place since 2012. They took away the behind the curtain voting machine and installed the electronic one. They give you a paper ballot (sheet) to mark your vote while you sit next to and across from others at banquet tables. Then you walk over to feed it into a machine while someone watches you do it.
MattF
I guess my assumption is that ‘say X but do Y’ mechanisms mostly cancel out. Insofar as history is a guide, Obama generally over-performed relative to polls– but he was running against McCain and Romney– so there really isn’t valid data for prior estimation of probabilities. So, GOTV.
scav
@Punchy: All depends on the depth of the rabbit hole. Bad polling, AWOL endorcements by traitor republicans, Bad endorsements by corrupt media, Inconvenient fact checking by same corrupt media, the chaos at Faux (they’ve infiltrated allies! All businesses are like that!) it’s all just more proof and fodder for oppressed conspiracy theorists. Rigged Voting must have occurred because they know they pulled the lever and their national gumball didn’t fall out!
Gin & Tonic
@randy khan:
QFT. Anecdata, surely, but I know one current and two recently retired O-5/O-6 officers, very definitely (as most of that class) conservative Republicans, who I’m certain would say “Are you out of your motherfucking mind?”
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Punchy: Oh, they’ll scream to the heavens that it got stolen from them, even if they lose by 20%. The thing is, though, that if they lose badly enough, nobody but the 39% or whatever of Trump voters will buy into it. I don’t even think Fred Hiatt or David Brooks will find it within themselves to “ask questions” about the legitimacy of the election if Trump goes down hard enough. If Clinton can win Arizona and Georgia, and, with some luck and a lot of hard work, maybe even states like Indiana, Missouri and South Carolina (!) that now look kike they might could be on the edge of tipping over, well, there just won’t be any room to whine credibly about it. How can you say the election got stolen in South Carolina? The Republicans run the fucking place from top to bottom.
Major Major Major Major
There has, to my knowledge, never actually been a measured ‘bradley effect’, including in the eponymous election with bradley. It’s just something liberals like to handwring about.
Pete
@SRW1: Nice! The Russian judge gives him 10.0, everyone else 2.7.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): ‘Course, it could well be that I’m giving the Very Serious People too much credit; but in all seriousness, I just can’t see how even they would ever fall for some horseshit like “We was bobbed!” I hope I’m right about this.
nonynony
@Major Major Major Major:
That’s assuming that the person you’re running against is running a comparable ground game. Or at least a typical ground game.
If Trump continues trumping along, we’ll get to find out how important ground game is this election. I can’t think of a test where one side had a good, tested ground game for GOTV and the other side wasn’t even going through the motions. Even in 2012 the Romney team had a ground game comparable to previous election cycles – they just got lapped by Team Dem that cycle. A good ground game may be worth more than 3% this year.
scav
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: Hello Back and thank you for the nice little odd thread you rolled out here. It’s somehow very fractal and meta to have Valued Commenters as subjects, objects, participants and, o! partici-anti-pants (that would be Cole and true followers) all muddled down in the jackel moshpit.
Major Major Major Major
@nonynony: Good point.
cokane
yeah, that’s some poll unskewing. dunno how many 4 year cycles some folks have to witness before they grasp that the polls — or at least their average — is generally spot on in the prez race
prufrock
Even if Hillary Clinton beats Trump by double digits, the diehards won’t go quietly. If you have any wingnuts in your Facebook feed (as I do), you can already see the groundwork being laid.
“Donald Trump has to turn away supporters at rallies, while Hillary can’t even fill a high school gym! The polls are a lie!”
They will say the same thing about the election results.
rikyrah
GET.OUT.THE.VOTE.
Pound these muthaphuckas INTO THE GROUND!!!!
Mike E
@rikyrah: LIKE
Miss Bianca
@mdblanche:
Concession speech? Shit, there’s not going to be any concession speech. Tangerine Mofo’s announcement will be that the election was stolen from him, and he’s going to sue. Someone! Anyone! What do you bet Larry Klayman is already lined up to be part of his crack(ed) legal team?
You heard it here first.
Immanentize
@SRW1: In the election the VP gets the silver metal — Trump will get the First Place Loser ribbon.
(which Satby should probably design and sell on Etsy…. I imagine two little hands on a field of french fries).
Soylent Green
Last night at my sushi track I listened to four nearby young people discuss, like, who they like should vote for, and like, how they could avoid voting for the corporate whore. Should they go with Stein, Johnson, or Sanders write-in? Bernie has poisoned the well here in Portland.
Patricia Kayden
@DanF: Never thought of it that way. Now that you mention it, it would be brilliant if his supporters didn’t bother to vote because they believed Trump’s nonsense about rigged elections.
pragmatic idealist
I think the polls underestimate Clinton’s votes. A record % of Hispanics will vote due to the Trump Latino GOTV operation. African Americans, who had a record turn out in Florida in 2012 due to a backlash against voter suppression, now have that same motivation in many states but with ID cards struck down the turnout will be even higher. It may not effect state outcomes for Hillary but may be the difference in congressional races.
Eric S.
@Punchy: First time I’ve seen your name while I’m in comments. How’d your Tri go Sunday?
Culture of Truth
If anything Clinton is underpolling, relative to the results on election day, because it’s not about what people feel or tell pollsters, but votes cast. The Clinton team, with the Obama squad, is out there registering voters, and pushing turnout, every day, made all the easier due to Trump’s antics. Trump’s awfulness plus Clinton’s outreach is energizing women and minorities, he’s turning off a generation of young people; now add to that, every day Trump is turning off more and more rational people of all kinds, and you have the makings of a crushing defeat.
Matt McIrvin
@HRA: That is strange–Massachusetts uses optical-scan ballots and electronic ballot boxes like those, but we have little cubbies to stand in while you fill out the ballot, and you hold it face-down while sticking it into the slot (though I think some years they put the initiative questions on the back).
Tim C.
@randy khan: The “2nd Amendment remedies” crew are also pretty much cowards. They love trading rumors about secret Mulsims, and FEMA trailers, and ammo confiscations, but for the last 8 years, 99.9% of them haven’t actually done anything more than be Keyboard Commandos. Like most of the Anti-Abortion movement, all talk, no spine.
nonynony
@Soylent Green:
Eh – it’s Portland. Assuming you mean Oregon and not Maine, that well was infested with Kool-aid a long time ago.
Patricia Kayden
@Miss Bianca: That would be a perfect ending to a trainwreck campaign. When that ridiculous lawsuit is finally dismissed (which is inevitable), he’ll go down in history as the Huuuge Loser he is. He should thank his lucky stars every day that he was born into a wealthy family. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be on our radar.
nonynony
@Patricia Kayden:
Amusingly, when he’s casting about for someone to sue he’s likely to settle on the Republican National Committee as much as anyone else. Which would be hilarious.
OzarkHillbilly
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): The fact of the matter is that in order for the election to have been rigged, a large # of Republicans would have to be in on the conspiracy. Like the Republican Secs of State in Ohio, and Florida and Pennsylvania** and…. etc etc etc. Elections are run by bipartisan election boards.
** can’t remember for sure if the SoS of PA is a GOP or DEM, the point remains the same
Patricia Kayden
@Culture of Truth:
Yep. We have many BJ commentators who can attest to Secretary Clinton’s behind-the-scenes efforts to get out the vote. She’s not just going on political shows, making speeches and tweeting like Trump. Plus, I keep hearing that in many states, Trump hasn’t even started airing any ads.
schrodinger's cat
We just have to work our butt off and GOTV and leave the navel gazing to the Punditry.
Mai.naem.mobile
I have no idea which way it goes but I am scared shitless of waking up to President Trump on the Wed after election. My opinion is definitely colored by the people I work with and. my experiences in AZ. I know two people who will vote for Trump and several who won’t bother to vote but would be Hillary voters. Also I think BJrs in general underestimate the number of people scared by the changing complexion of the US. My old younger college educated neighbors(white couple) made a crack about their two young kids being the rare special precious white babies…harhar…
randy khan
@Tim C.:
Can’t argue with that.
schrodinger's cat
@Soylent Green: I swear these Bernie dead enders are drunk on their own self righteousness are beyond annoying. I had a frustrating encounter with one IRL last weekend.
Punchy
FWIW, offshore odds went from HRC -240 to -340. I really thought, at this point, they’d be more like HRC -700 or better. He’s getting killed in so many swing states that -340 seems like free money. Dems chances at taking the Senate moved from -150 to -175, but odds to take both branches (ie., House, too) was +320-ish. So House is not likely to fall into friendly territory, as expected.
Even with GA polling HRC up ~6 pts, chance for Repub to take GA is -160. I find this really strange, unless offshores have no faith in current polling.
Chris
@randy khan:
Beyond that, I think that whatever criticism can be made of the U.S. military, it’s been very good at absorbing the ethos of obedience to the lawfully elected civilian authority – regardless of how you feel about that authority.
I remember being at a family reunion the week Obama fired McChrystal. Several relatives there were ex-military, all of them wingnuts, some of whom I’d heard criticize Obama in pretty much the same terms that McChrystal had. But not one of them was sore about his being fired. The consensus was that it was insubordination and that “yeah, well, if you’re going to trash the Commander-In-Chief in Rolling Stone, this is what’s going to happen to you.”
Patricia Kayden
@nonynony: Ha! Reince would have a life-ending heart attack if that was to happen.
@prufrock: Wingnuts are nothing but hypocrites. President Obama had much bigger crowds (especially in 2008) than Trump could dream of and yet look how Wingnuts have treated him and tried to delegitimize his wins. I guess big crowds are only important if they are rallying around Republican candidates.
Cat48
Stu Rothenberg is tired of pretending. He says it is over, Hillz by at least 4, but probably larger #. He just doesn’t see Trump improving.
I agree with him about Trump since Trump is telling Fox interviewers today that he is winning. Fox is telling their viewers the polls are wrong. I saw video of it on MSNBC last night.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Saw the tail end of my first Trump/Pence ad in NC last night. Looked up just in time to see the logo plastered across the screen.
philadelphialawyer
At a huge family reunion picnic in a blue state last week there were plenty of stupid red hats. The Trump voters are not shy, at all. The Hillary supporters are the type of people (ie nicer, more considerate, less confrontational, etc) who don’t wear contentious hats to family gatherings. Nor do they pick arguments about politics in non political settings. Maybe too, as mentioned, Hillary supporters are a little bit afraid, as the Trump supporters tend to be the gun owning, loud mouthed, quick to threaten or boast about physical violence, white male, kind of redneck-y persons. But not so afraid as to not vote for her. I think the polls are accurate as of now. I also think Trump’s support will shrink as election day approaches, and on on election day itself, as it becomes more and more clear that he won’t win, and because of his failure to do real GOTV work.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@The Czar of All the Stupids: I work with the military. I think quite a few of them will be very quietly voting for Hillary. And none of them is going to risk a trip to the scaffold for Ol’ Little Hands.
You see, Trump’s a wildcard. Military guys hate wildcards. They really do. The unknown freaks them out and what would Trump do? Nobody knows. And they’re all thinking…he might just go and start slashing military budgets because someone told him once it was a good idea. The military knows good and damn well that whatever her real or perceived faults, Secretary Clinton does not fix problems by abruptly defunding people, and she doesn’t cause chaos for the lulz. I don’t expect the officer corps to vote for her en masse (enlisted is a different story) but I think more of them will than is expected.
And as for an attempted coup? Will not happen. Gotta keep the cash flow running.
Also, the old military inside “joke” which is a simple truism: we don’t have a “military”. We have four (sorry, Coasties, you just don’t count here). Who leads it? By God none of the generals is going to take orders from some simpleton not even in their branch…
You see? Coup ends right there.
@Tim C.: Malheur. That was their high-water mark. Those people are nothing but tough talking shitheads and they are less of a threat to this nation than dogshit on my shoe.
schrodinger's cat
@Mai.naem.mobile: A nuclear holocaust is not good for anyone, no matter what your complexion. Where I live, clueless Berners are more numerous than Trumpets.
Mike E
Gen Grant orders another round of volleys into the old confederate armory works:
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article94541827.html
Patricia Kayden
@Mai.naem.mobile: The polls show that you have no reason to be scared about waking up to a Trump presidency. That’s really all I can say. Sure there are White people worried about the changing demographics but so what? Trump will get their votes and Secretary Clinton will get the votes of everyone else.
Face
So how many months after Clinton’s inauguration will the media wait until starting the 2020 campaign? 3? 4? OH SHEEEEOOOT! CRUZ IS VISITIN’ IOWA IN APRIL! WHAT COULD THIS MEAN? HOW PREZNITDENCHUL! HERE’S 17 PUNDITS TO DISCUSS IT!
/grabs cyanide pill….grabs water….waits.
Chris
@nonynony:
How much do you differentiate the Movement from the White Supremacists?
Major Major Major Major
@Patricia Kayden: they’re recruiting the crap out of the OFA old timers (lawl), I can tell you that much.
Mike E
Heh, dumbass in moderation (me) forgot to use the link function, so, here’s what happens when Repubs get greedy about voting maps: they get slapped down in the courts
edited for clarity
Patricia Kayden
@Cat48: Fox telling its viewers that the polls are wrong is pretty hilarious when you consider Karl Rove’s election night breakdowns in 2008 and 2012. I’ll definitely be tuning into Fox News a little on election night just to see him meltdown one more time.
Punchy
@Eric S.: It went really well, I guess. I live in a smaller metro area (KC), where races are much smaller, and I normally finish top 3 in my age-group. Here, in the Chicago metro area, I finished 5th (mostly due to a inexplicably excessive T1 time), but the race had about 5X the number of peeps than I’m accustomed to. So part of me thinks top 5 is great in such a large field, the other part is pissed cuz I missed top 3. But otherwise, fantastic bike and run segments. Swim was meh.
nonynony
@Punchy:
Eh – gamblers aren’t stupid. This far out from November crazy things can happen. Some horrible accident on the campaign trail to one of the candidates could swing things. Trump could have a stroke at one of his events and get replaced by a wild card. Telepathic squids from the planet Altair-7 could show up and mind-control half of the US population into becoming fervent Trump supporters. Rl’yeh could rise from the depths of the Pacific and Cthulhu could make Trump look like a lesser evil in comparison. Loki could escape his bonds and ensure Trump wins so he can begin the Ragnarok. Trump could pull off his hairpiece and face makeup and reveal that the real Donald Trump died decades ago and Andy Kaufman took his place back in 1983.
Too much time between now and the election for the odds to get too crazy. Gotta account for the low probability events – the further you are from the event the more you have to account for it.
Shalimar
@Major Major Major Major: then Trump is right. If he is going to lose by 10, there really isn’t much point wasting a huge amount of effort and several hundred million dollars just to lose by 7. Better off pocketing the money by paying for staff to stay in his hotels.
Cat48
@Patricia Kayden:
I know, that should be funny. Fox didn’t cover their own poll last week very much–Hillz was ahead 10 pts. Ouch!
Calouste
@nonynony: And we’re talking about young people. They have a long history of being stupid going way back before when I was young and stupid.
Poopyman
@nonynony:
Especially when they declare bankruptcy (possibly legitimately) to avoid paying.
Major Major Major Major
@nonynony: Altair-7 like juuuuust got Lost so they’ll be sitting this one out, but they’ll be back in a few years to have a chat with Mr. Abrams.
msdc
@Soylent Green: We visited Portland a couple months back – lovely city, too bad about all the Bernie dead-enders. Folks, keeping your yard signs up will not change the nominee. Neither will driving around town with some kind of wire sculpture of that stupid fucking bird on the top of your creepy panel van.
Major Major Major Major
@Shalimar: I am fine with this.
Patricia Kayden
@Cat48: Dang it! Even Fox News is rigging the election for Killary now!
randy khan
@Chris:
I am reminded of a story from just before the Iraq war. GWB had fired a general, and apparently there was a belief in the Iraqi hierarchy that there was some chance this would lead to a coup, which of course was nonsense. I remembered it as an example of how little they understood American culture.
msdc
@Mai.naem.mobile: Your panic does nothing to stop Trump. But you live in a state that is likely to be a swing state come Nov. 8. Get out there, talk to the people who can be talked to, bring them to the polls, and wake up that Wednesday with the satisfaction of knowing you have just dealt a humiliation of historic scale to your asshole coworkers and neighbors.
Major Major Major Major
@Patricia Kayden: Fox is nothing if not The Establishment. I’ll bet they even know Jews.
Senyordave
If you want to try to convince Bernie dead enders to vote for Clinton, remind them, that if she wins and the Dems re-take the Senate, Bernie will probably become head of the budget committee. That would be a huge deal for progressives, that is a very important position.
jonas
I’ve always thought turnout was going to be Trump’s biggest challenge. His supporters are all about the asshole bro “build the wall!” schtick, but also quite likely to rather stay home on election day and play Call of Duty. What’s Trump doing to make sure that everyone who buys one of his stupid hats actually shows up to the polls? Not much from what I can tell, and that’s going to be a problem.
The Ancient Randonneur
@Patricia Kayden: Trump campaign is just this week starting to open offices in New Hampshire. Clinton has field offices all over the state and they’ve been active for months.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: The analyses of it I read back in 2008 seemed to conclude that it did exist in the 1980s, but had disappeared. Some people are still motivated by racism to vote against black candidates, but they don’t lie about it, they just make up neutral rationalizations.
I voted in the 1989 Virginia gubernatorial election, Wilder vs. Coleman, that is one of the textbook examples. I remember that much was made of Wilder underperforming even his exit polls, but I know now that exit polls in the US are usually not as accurate as they are touted to be. Still, his margin was lower than his election-eve polling by 8 points. Coleman’s TV ads had been dogwhistling really, really hard.
Jeffro
@JMG:
A question: has there ever been any research into why about half of all American adults don’t exercise their right to vote? What’s the big hold-up: too busy, don’t care, smarter than us partisans,…?
rikyrah
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Elizabeth Warren said it drolly, while asked why Wall Street would be giving money to Clinton over Ferret Head:
Nuclear War is bad for business.
and nobody knows that better than those who would be in charge of carrying it out. They don’t want that. They want to keep the peace.
We talk about the nuclear codes. THEY are the guys on the other end of the phone of the nuclear codes.
Major Major Major Major
@Jeffro: yes.
But yeah, I’m sure people have studied it in some depth. From anecdata, I’ve heard all of those, plus the system is rigged, my preferred candidate isn’t on the ballot, it doesn’t matter anyway, and general bloviation that indicates the person is a self-aggrandizing asshole looking for validation.
J.
Three comments:
1. We still have 3 months until the General Election and a lot can happen between now and then.
2. Polls have become increasingly unreliable in the age of caller ID, people not having land lines, and people telling pollsters what they want to hear. So I don’t put a lot of faith in polls. (Tell me again how those Brexit polls worked out.)
3. Thank whomever that we don’t have general election caucuses!
Gindy51
@randy khan: See Turkey…. even in a shit hole like that with a vile person at the helm, they failed.
Culture of Truth
@Major Major Major Major: Yes, and also those who were with Clinton in 2008 are very enthused, understandably, to see her elected. And it’s not just people. It’s organization, number crunching, data downloads, precision targeting of neighborhoods, streets, households.
catclub
@randy khan:
you wish (and so do I). Flynn and Boykin spring immediately to mind.
nonynony
@Chris:
This is an excellent question, and one without an obvious answer.
Movement Conservatism was built on a foundation of White Supremacy. It’s pretty clear from the record that the coalition built in the 1970s was founded on White Supremacists reaching out to conservative religious groups who were not necessarily white supremacists but were not opposed to making common cause with white supremacists. The Evangelical/Roman Catholic Conservative portion of the movement is basically the result of this bargain made in the 70s. This is where the shift away from segregation and to abortion happened – the white supremacists couldn’t convince the Roman Catholics to care about white supremacy – many of the Roman Catholics were Irish, Italians and Hispanics who were still not considered “white” by much of the white supremacy movement in the 1970s. But they could use abortion as a cover and bring the Catholics in that way. And abortion could be wrapped up as a “religious liberty” ideal much the same way that segregation had been, so by fighting over abortion they white supremacists were re-litigating their segregation ideas under a new guise. Plus the abortion politics fit well with the white supremacists worrying about the “decline of the white race” and trying to force white women to have more babies.
What happened, though, is that they had to speak in code and fight by proxy. Like having abortion sub in for segregation. And the new members who came to the movement didn’t understand that it was a code – they were anti-abortion, not pro-segregation. And children who were raised in the next couple of generations of the movement were taught the cover – to them the “religious liberty” language was the reality, not the cover that was used to make the arguments acceptable to the wider public.
So I think there’s a pretty solid split there between the white supremacists and the non-white supremacist evangelical/Roman Catholic members of the Movement. The latter group had Cruz as their standard bearer this year, while the former flocked to Trump in droves. It’s the difference between the people who heard the coded language and thought it was real, and the ones who saw the religious aspects as secondary to the point of white supremacy. I didn’t even realize there was a wedge to drive between these two groups until Trump showed up – and from what I’ve seen I don’t think that the leaders of the Movement realized it either until it was too late.
Keith G
@Mai.naem.mobile: You really don’t have to spend any time at all groping around in the dark about the unknown mysteries of what will or won’t happen. The polling data is quite good and right now Hillary is operating well above any margin of error.
Replace dread with confidence. Hillary has been upping her game and she is surrounded by a highly competent campaign staff. So even if Trump manages to clean up his act and repair some of the damage already done, it’s going to be very hard for him to make up enough ground to get to 270. And it is likely that he will make back some of the ground he’s lost, if for no other reason than the media at some point will probably begin pushing a recovery narrative.
In the real world of possible outcomes, I can conceive of few likely occurrences that would blow up Hillary’s campaign. On the other hand, Trump has a nearly limitless universe of things he might do that would further handicap his efforts.
catclub
@Gindy51: That coup in Turkey seems weirder and weirder.
I wish there could be a discussion of “what would a better middle east look like, especially in terms of the Kurds”
Is a new partition possible? Of Iraq? Of all of Iraq and Syria? Of Iraq, Syria and Turkey, with a bite off Iran for the Kurds as well?
Turkey being a NATO ally(!?) makes this complicated.
Rob in CT
@J.:
“(Tell me again how those Brexit polls worked out.)”
They were off by ~3%, right? Maybe 4%? The final vote was 52-48 Leave, and IIRC the polls suggested something like 51-49 Remain.
Polls can be off. The more polls you have, the less likely it is that the aggregate will be off. Poll aggregators did very well in 2008 and 2012 (2010 and 2014, mid-term years, were rougher, likely because there is less polling). They will likely do well this cycle as well (and struggle more in 2018).
So, while it’s entirely rational to discount the apparent size of HRC’s lead and note that we have 3 months to go, there’s no reason to think the polls are off by enough to get the basic contours of the election wrong.
sam
@Matt McIrvin: In NYC, we have the same thing, plus manila folders to hold the forms in while we carry them from place to place so that no one can see what’s on them. They do try to let us keep things private to the extent possible.
jeffreyw
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Sounds like a job for Amir’s Johnson Welders
Capri
@Major Major Major Major: But this isn’t a good ground game vs. an average ground game. This is a good ground game vs. no ground game. We’ve never seen a campaign before that has made so little effort – Trump could lose by way more than the polling predicts for that reason.
Barbara
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): You obviously have never met a conspiracy theorist. If Trump were to lose places like South Carolina (which is still highly unlikely by the way) the fact that he is losing SO BIG will just be offered as further proof that there really IS a conspiracy, because no way could he lose THAT BIG in places like that without their being knickyknack going on behind the scenes. If it’s close, they will complain that the fraud pertained to something that kept voters from exercising the franchise. Close or lopsided, either way, a loss will be all the evidence of fraud they need.
Tim C.
@nonynony: Yes! So much here. Fred Clark at Slacktivist has long tried to explain the Abortion talk being a cover for the White Supremacism. Also, my model of the GOP Electorate was built on a Religious Nuts/Aristocracy alliance, I had no idea the Fragile White Resentment block was so big outside the south.
catclub
@J.:
They worked as well as they could under the circumstances.
The polls were moving around a lot, and the final result was probably within the margin of error. Its is just that the result was on the other side of 50%
while still in the margin of error. If it had been: “polls say 58-42 MOE=4 and final result 54-46” nobody would care. But
“Polls say 52-48 moe=4
and result 48-52” is a big deal.
Barbara
@Soylent Green: Well, just another data point, my formerly Sanders supporting daughter is now posting links and quotes from pieces challenging Sanders supporters to stop wallowing in their white privilege and look around and see how much other people mostly not like them would lose if Trump were elected president.
cmorenc
@The Czar of All the Stupids:
There’s near-zero chance of a military coup. Most of our upper military leadership understands that Clinton is sane and has their back, even though they’d prefer a sane Republican as president.
The real threat could come from local officials, especially sheriffs in sparsely populated western areas, who are adherents of the “constitutional sheriff” movement or otherwise adherents of far-right assertion of local ownership of federal land and resources. Or also, perhaps certain state and county officials in rural Mississippi, Alabama, and perhaps Kentucky. If they could summon a critical mass of defiance across a sufficiently wide, numerous number of jurisdictions – that could prove problematic to put down very easily.
catclub
@Rob in CT: You seem to be inside my head and typing just a hair faster. Great minds, cut of jib, et cetera.
burnspbesq
Yeah, that sounds a lot like what we Californians heard from the Sanders people for the entire month of May.
But I’m still not budging off 57 million as Trump’s popular vote floor. Not yet.
Miss Bianca
@jeffreyw: I was thinkng Lorena Bobbitt, myself.
Soylent Green
@Senyordave: Their minds are made up. Don’t confuse them with facts.
Soylent Green
@Barbara: Actually, kudos to your daughter.
Keith P.
Trump has spent ZERO dollars on advertising. I feel pretty solid about my theory that his whole campaign is a grift to pay off his debts and do repairs on his luxury assets. I’m betting he heard on TV about campaign coffers being used to pay legal fees and debts, and the proverbial light bulb went off.
Joel
UNSKEW THE POLLS EVERYONE
Major Major Major Major
@Rob in CT: the Brexit polls were fine, especially by the standards of British polling. Wang or Silver or one of them wrote a thing on it.
Also, the weather in London probably depressed the Remain vote. Another effect that can be amplified in the absence of a ground game or any coordinated campaign.
Punchy
@nonynony: This is true. Paul Ryan went from 450-1 to be elected to now he’s 80-1 (a move of this magnitude is unheard of post-convention). So bookmakers really factoring a possible shakeup of the ticket, with Ryan the most obs replacement.
cmorenc
@Capri:
Trump’s concept of a “ground game” is to continually stoke the fires of white resentment and fear such that angry outrage is sufficient to drive his supporters to the polls.
eric
@catclub: the polls were not off, the betting markets were off.
peach flavored shampoo
@Jeffro: But is that average a national one or true in every state? If I’m a Dem in Idaho, KS, MS, Bama, AK, Utah, etc, or a Repub in Cali, IL, MA, HI, etc, I believe you’d feel your vote was pointless. And depress participation significantly. Yet if one lived in OH, FL, PA, etc, every single vote matters. So do swing states still only have ~50% participation?
Roger Moore
@Face:
I don’t expect them to wait for Hillary’s inauguration. The 2020 campaign will start the day after the election, unless the outcome is a foregone conclusion, in which case it might start even earlier. I’m pretty sure Ted Cruz is already campaigning.
Gin & Tonic
@Miss Bianca: As the men among us cringe.
scav
@cmorenc: Or, is his idea of a ground game to keep digging?
Blue in SLC
@nonynony: Great comment. I think you’ve hit it spot on. I hope after Trump loses that those two groups fail to reconcile, and that this bleeds into the state parties (though I doubt the latter). Their collaborative efforts have been toxic to our country.
Keith G
@cmorenc:
I imagine that 98+% have fully internalized the values of the military/civilian government split. Most of them would be personally insulted by talk of a coup.
Fidelity to the Constitution aside, most “lifers” are looking at the security of a pretty good benefits package. An attempted coup (for what crazy fucking reason?) would be a threat to that security.
Rob in CT
@Major Major Major Major:
It is kind of horrifying how something important can be decided because of the weather. VOTE, people, even if it’s raining.
BR
Everyone, don’t forget to sign up to volunteer for the campaign.
Roger Moore
@J.:
Brexit was nowhere near as thoroughly polled as the US presidential election, and the final polls were still within their margin of error of the actual result.
nonynony
@Tim C.: As a kid who was raised in the Republican bubble, I didn’t understand any of this. I was one of the guys who was raised to believe in the code words. Abortion Is Wrong, State’s Rights, Level Playing Field Not Affirmative Action, etc. I give my dad and mom the benefit of the doubt – as Roman Catholics I’m pretty sure that they were pulled into it via the codewords as well (though my parents are, as older white people tend to be in the US, secretly far more racist than they present themselves or than I wish they were).
It took getting out before I could look back and see how the codewords operated. And to see how pervasive the racism was in the GOP – even back in the 90s when I got out, let alone now. But Fred’s musings on the subject pretty much match my own observations – and Fred alerted me to a few things that I didn’t know, since he has that Evangelical former-conservative view that I never had as a Catholic.
Stan
@catclub: If you’ve served you know – there’s no way in hell there would be a coup. No way. Just is not happening.
Tim C.
@cmorenc: Doubt even this is a realistic scenario. The far right has had the dial up to 11 for almost eight years straight. They’ve reached homeostasis in their environment, and again I go with my “they are mostly big baby cowards.” Isolated nuts will be isolated nuts and perhaps something slightly worse than the bird rufuge loon might happen in a couple of places, but beyond that I would be surprised. It’s not totally impossible, but I’d be surprised.
Mike E
srv endorses Clinton!
Keith P.
@Punchy: I’m kind of surprised he didn’t run (he would have been a tough opponent to beat). He’s one of the few people in the GOP who actually has a legislative resume outside showing up on TV to grandstand, plus he fits almost all other checkboxes (and he’s young). This ordeal may ruin him, particularly if Ted Cruz ends up controlling the remnants of the part.
scav
@Roger Moore: They also had that murder of Jo Cox right at the end, to throw things into more uncertainty. And if things are running close — if more people dragged themselves to the polling stations to vote Leave because of fear it would motivate the Remainers and sympathy voting, well, there you are.
SFAW
@The Czar of All the Stupids:
Well, if President Obama and President-Elect Clinton get on prime time TV, and say “Whatever you do, PLEASE DON’T DRINK ANTIFREEZE!” the question might become moot.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Czar of All the Stupids:
Why would you think that was a possibility?
Peale
BTW, while the right has its belief that Obama wins by shipping around busloads of Somalis in Maine, the moderate Democrats still cling to the belief that White Women secretly vote differently than how they say they’ll vote when they talk to pollsters. I think its kind of cute. That was what was going to put Kerry over the top. The belief that white women have this secret ballot box moment is one of the great myths. Fortunately, we’re ahead and don’t have to put our faith in their changes of hearts this time.
Roger Moore
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned it yet, but the biggest reason to doubt Trump would benefit from a Bradley Effect is that he generally underperformed the polls while the nomination was still in doubt.
Mike E
@Keith P.: no GOPer had a chance this year, especially Ryan who would fold like a cheap suit under the travails of a rigorous presidential campaign, let alone any single debate
SFAW
@srv:
I don’t think they exactly equate Trump’s sticking a shiv between their scapulae as “having their backs.”
Christ, I hope not. That would turn California red overnight, rivers would flow backward, plagues of locusts, things like that.
amk
@prufrock: So?
Joel
@nonynony: At least the Kool-aid is unfluorinated!
J.
@Rob in CT: I hope you are right!
Joel
@Punchy: Still a ways to go until election day. Regression isn’t just possible, it’s likely. Predictwise has Clinton at ~80% to win; this pretty much mirrors PEC/538/etc. odds. I’m conservative about these things by nature, so I’ll stick to the models, but I’m starting to be convinced that this will, in fact, be an atypical election.
Major Major Major Major
@Joel: every election is the “this time it’s different” election until it isn’t. But we’ll see.
? Martin
Well, the way we conduct polling assumes that we can build representative samples, and that is based on certain assumptions about the makeup of the electorate. Some are easy to predict like how many registered voters in a given demographic, but some can be difficult to predict like turnout rates. When you have an atypical election like this, take all polls with a grain of salt because those assumptions just aren’t as confident as normal. Polling is as much an art form as a science. Good polling will anticipate those variations from the norm. Biases will always permeate.
Election data is a massive, massive dataset. If a non partisan data engineer with a machine learning bent got ahold of the gerrymander datasets that each party has, they could probably build a pretty good unbiased polling AI. To my knowledge that hasn’t been done yet, but it should be possible now.
Calouste
@Keith P.: Ryan didn’t even really want to be Speaker. Why would he want to be President?
He seemed to be quite happy when the media praised him as a policy wonk every time he put out a six-pager with three graphs in it.
Keith P.
@Mike E: Media would LOVE Paul Ryan running for president. They’d probably create a special glow filter for him when he’s on TV.
Joel
@J.: Polls have gotten more reliable, not less.
But that doesn’t mean they’re 100% reliable. Appropriate regression is warranted.
Lurker Extraordinaire
@randy khan: Shinseki, probably. Forced into retirement for stating the obvious.
Mike E
@Keith P.: true…they sure enjoy tongue-kissing frogs, seemingly
Eric S.
@Punchy: I think I mentioned the other day that the Chicago are and Naperville in particular are hotbeds of triathalon training. I’m not surprised it was a crowded field. Nice job on the #5 finish. When I run half marathons I’m not even considering which place I’m in so much as can I break the 2 hour mark this time.
Shalimar
@Mike E: Anecdote on Paul Ryan, he visited near here in the month before the 2012 election, private invitation-only dinner, no press invited and no mention of it in the local media that I saw. Romney’s people were basically hiding him from answering questions about his toxic budget proposals. Some national figure he was. Just as embarrassing foe the candidate as Palin, for a different reason.
eric
@Calouste: three full page, multicolor graphs
Hal
I’m not trying to pull a Peggy Noonan, but I feel like I haven’t seen too many Trump supporters who weren’t willing to voice their support, especially if they feel that all this negative coverage is just the big, bad libtard media at work. Hillary on the other hand seems to have a large number of silent supporters. Wasn’t that one reason she performed better against Sanders in California than people predicted? It’s not cool to like or vote for Hillary Clinton. Like that story from Quartz in February, Hillary is unpopular when she runs for a new job, and once she has it, she suddenly becomes very popular.
http://qz.com/624346/america-loves-women-like-hillary-clinton-as-long-as-theyre-not-asking-for-a-promotion/
HeartlandLiberal
I look forward to those on the right who for eight f******* years tried to claim Obama was unqualified to be president because he used a teleprompter to get right on this and point out the incompetence of Drumpf.
Wait, what is that I hear? The sound of crickets?
Latest averaging of polls puts Clinton at something like 96% or more chance of winning. I do not want her to just win. I want the Democratic party to do to the GOP what Conan suggests:
To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
As a Conan fan, I heartily approve his message. Note, I am ignoring the sexist part just for the sake of the crushing of enemies. I probably have 99% of all Conan comics ever published, and am presently using my retirement to read through every last issue, starting from the first Marvel series Conan and Savage Sword, from the seventies to date, through all the different publishers and varieties. I just wish someone would make another great Conan movie.
mike in dc
Romney and Obama were nearly even in polling at the end of the race, and Obama won by 5 points. So, I’d suggest that Clinton’s ceiling is probably 4-5 points higher than whatever the final polling suggests. Which means if she’s up by at least 6, a double digit popular vote win is within reach. If she’s up 15, a 20 point blowout is doable. I think a substantial polling lead will depress R voter turnout a bit and that non-white voter turnout, particularly latino, will be higher than simple demographic modeling would suggest. Winning by double digits puts everything on the table. A blowout wipes out the national GOP and also in many state legislatures and gubernatorial races.
mike in dc
@srv:
So, a poll from 3 months ago suggests that Trump could barely get past 50% with active duty military. He has subsequently offended veterans, has been condemned by virtually the entire national security establishment, and has multiple retired generals saying publicly that he’s unfit to be C-I-C. Yeah, you should take that poll to the bank.
Major Major Major Major
@Hal: Hillary performed just as well in California as the polls predicted, if you looked at the polling averages. Hillary ‘outperformed’ some people’s expectations because her supporters tended to be quieter about it than the Bernie people were–not quieter to pollsters, just quieter in general.
So if your metric was “what all my friends say and what the signs in windows and bumper stickers look like”, then yes, the California results might have been a surprise to you. But the actual metrics were accurate.
Tim C.
@HeartlandLiberal: Conan stole it from Gengas Khan….. either way, I metaphorically agree.
Lurking Canadian
@Punchy: That is phenomenal! Wow.
Chris
@nonynony:
I certainly believe this:
… and those who understood that it was always about the racism. And I believe that the fifty years of dogwhistle racism have done a lot to create this split.
I don’t know to what extent I would assimilate it to religion in particular, much less to a Catholic/Protestant split. Plenty of those Irish and Italians who jumped ship for the GOP were themselves racist as hell, and happily pulling the lever for Nixon years before the “religious right” was even a main part of the Republican message. (See also MLK’s comment that “I think white Southerners need to come to Chicago to learn how to hate,” I don’t think he was just talking about WASPs). And on the other hand, the process of WASPs slowly growing to accept “ethnic white” Catholics as white wasn’t complete but was still well underway at the time, and I’d say it’s pretty much complete now. Abortion probably helped to reach out to Catholic cultures and to maintain the veneer that it was all about religion and not race. But I’m not sure it was really a meaningful thing in causing that alliance or all that meaningful a divide.
If you substitute “ideology” as a whole for “religion,” I think that might be closer to the mark. I’ve had an idea in my head since the primaries that the difference between NotTrump supporters (mostly Ted Cruz, and even beyond that still very right wing) and Trump supporters is the modern version of the difference between conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats/Nixon-Reagan Democrats – basically, between the guys who were Republican all along versus the guys who only joined in the sixties.
For the former (the John Bircher, McCarthyist, National Review crowd), racism was always a thing, but it was only one thing, one component of a larger and comprehensive ideology – one that also included economic royalism, religious fundamentalism, messianic nationalism, etc etc etc. Those guys were the true ideologues. But for the latter (Southern Democrats, and to a lesser extent racist “ethnic whites” in the rest of the country), it was only about race, and the rest of the ideology was optional. They supported New Deal liberalism as long as it kept its peace with white supremacy. When it no longer did, they jumped ship and eventually supported Reaganite economic royalism. Now they’re supporting whatever the fuck Trump is selling; they don’t know what it is and they don’t really care, because the one thing they do care about is the one thing he’s being unambiguous on. Racism.
I don’t know if there’s any literal continuity between the Birchers/Dixiecrats of fifty years ago and the NeverTrump/Trump crowds of today, mind you. It just seems like that’s the “intellectual” divide, if you can still apply that term to these people. Two different strands of conservatism – the heavily ideological versus the purely racist – that have been fused together for so long we don’t even think of them as different anymore, but the difference is reemerging now.
Chris
@HeartlandLiberal:
Although, as I like to point out, the “teleprompter” meme didn’t start with Obama – IIRC, it was originally liberals who applied it to George W. Bush, because it was obvious that the man couldn’t speak on any serious matter without a teleprompter and not come off like a deer in the headlights.
Trumpeting the “Obama teleprompter hurr durr!” meme for the last eight years was Republicans’ way of getting even: you disrespected our president, so we’ll disrespect yours in exactly the same way, applicable or not. Creative these people aren’t.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@randy khan: Given the number of retired military people and national security people speaking out against Trump, I’d worry more about the military coup if he won.
I do not doubt there are people serving in the Armed Forces who loathe Clinton, and who will be unhappy if she wins, just as there were with Obama. But the prevailing attitude seems to be, in practical terms “This too shall pass”, rather than organizing themselves into a norteamericano version of the United Officers’ Group coup in Argentina that help raise Peron to eventual power.
Origuy
@srv: That poll is from early May, before it was revealed that Trump is nuke-curious.
The thing about Brexit polling is that the UK doesn’t have a lot of nationwide referenda; this one may have been unique. The closest thing in recent history is Indyref, but that was only Scotland.
Peter
@srv: A poll from May, conducted online, where the only potential respondents were subscribers to a specific publication?
Oh no. I’m quivering in my boots. Even for you, this is weak trolling.
Mnemosyne
@Peale:
FWIW, current polling is showing that college-educated white women are going for Hillary in somewhat larger numbers than they did for Obama, because some white women are assholes who will vote for a white woman before they will a black man. High-school educated white women are sticking with Trump.
There will also be a similarly small group of Obama-voting white men who will vote for Trump over Hillary because they’re sexist and Trump has a peni$. It’s what happens.
smintheus
@Keith G: Yes. Trump has a high floor (perhaps 38%) that probably cannot be broken through no matter how obnoxiously he behaves. Already something like 2/3 of his voters say they are voting against Hillary rather than for Trump, which means they know he’s a liar and a jerk but aren’t going to let that affect their voting. My neighbors are two such people; the mocked him right up until he became their party’s nominee, and then 2 Trump signs went up on their property.
Uncle Cosmo
@srv: Fuck off and die, shitstain!
Mayken
@prufrock: Yup! See: The Sanders campaign/supporters. “How could Bernie lose when he draws such crowds and she doesn’t? Must be rigged!!!111” Thanks a lot, Bernie!