Only twice in three elections. This means Trump had a one third chance to win that election. Which, sadly, he did.
If the weather forecast says 30% chance of rain and it rains do you question the validity of the forecast or do you think “I guess I ended up getting some of that rain”?
Yep. Polls are getting less reliable anyway, because so many of them rely on landlines, and some segments of the population are less likely to respond to surveys than others.
It’s a little more complex than that. The national polls had him losing solidly to Clinton on the popular vote, which actually happened. The real polling errors occurred at the state level, in a few key states.
To be fair, Clinton won the popular vote by a large margin, it's just that the House has not been expanded in 100 years despite the population more than tripling, so some states have outsized impact during a presidential election.
If you increase the members of congress, then that’s going to increase the number of electoral college votes needed to win as well. So, proportionally, it all stays the same.
They wouldn’t though, the people in charge of changing this would not allow states like California and New York to dominate the process, which they would if it were based purely on population.
The problem is the people proposing the change and the people in charge of implementing the change are two different groups of people. ;)
You think, for a minute, the people responsible for blocking Merrick Garland from getting a Supreme Court hearing, are going to give states like California even an inch more power in Presidential elections, well… you have a greater faith in humanity than I do.
The only reason they haven’t changed the congressional makeup is because they haven’t (yet) figured out how to empower low population red states at the expense of high population blue states.
Congressional districts are divided among states based on the census, and then become the count of electoral votes, which in turn award the presidency. So they have a lot to do with presidential elections.
But you wouldn't just double it for each state. You'd increase the total number of House seats, and then portion them out according to the populations of each state. That's how it was always done before they capped the size of the House.
Currently, Wyoming has just one House seat. If you double the number of total House seats, Wyoming still only gets one. They currently have a larger impact on Presidential elections than they should if it were decided strictly by population, and that's due entirely to the Electoral College and the cap on the size of the House.
The size of the electoral college is based on the size of the House, because the House (currently) has a fixed size, the states each get a set number of electoral votes, that do not actually match the populations of those states.
This is due to a law passed in 1929 called the permanent apportionment act, which froze the size of the House, despite the fact that we've added two new states since then.
So States like California have less electoral power than they should, while states like Rhode Island have more than they should. Well, technically Rhode Island should have more as well, every state should have more.
This actually kind of sucks because then if/when the votes don’t look close to how they expect according to polls they automatically assume something fishy happened.
And yes, I realize many will think that regardless.
Allow me to evangelize the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which aims to bypass the Electoral College and elect the president by popular vote.
It’s bad per se and also ludicrous. It gives way too much power to states with small populations, which tend to be rural and very right wing. But it is also ludicrous, we should all vote for the person selected to rule the nation, and every vote should have equal weight. Those same states - the right has a hugely unbalanced say in the senate for the same reason, small rural states have massively disproportionate representation. Reforming presidential elections can be done by amendment or by efforts like the popular vote compact, by agreement between enough states. The stupid constitution forbids amending the way the senate is apportioned, so there might have to be a court fight over changing that rule.
Again… The outsized power of smaller states is 100% an artifact of the permanent apportionment act of 1929. It decreed that the size of the House would be set at 435 members. And then we added two states and tripled the population.
And the House is still 435 members. Some congressional districts have more than a million people. How the hell can a Representative actually be said to represent 1 million people?
To fix this would take a single act of congress. Just a simple repeal of one law, and the adoption of a new apportionment standard. That's it. Then the popular vote would mostly line up with the electoral college, because the votes would have to line up. Because it would actually be representative of the actual population.
Just massively increase the size of the house to match the actual population.
I agree the house needs expansion, however I also think that would only moderately address the electoral college skew toward rural states. Also it is in my opinion irrelevant as it does not address the core problem: the president should be elected by a direct national vote, each person getting one vote of equal weight to every other vote.
I'm saying that if you expand the house, the skew that you are complaining about goes away.
Here's a Time article on the subject that uses the current algorithm to find the most representative number of Representatives while still being a fairly low number. The answer comes out to 930.
That's the on the lower end of fixing the House. There are proposals that go much higher.
And all it takes to get to any of them is a simple act of congress. No need for a constitutional amendment, no need to get the states on board, just one law passed.
Fixing the House would also massively curtail gerrymandering. Particularly the packing and stacking tactics.
And again, all it takes to do this is a single law passed by congress.
Ditching the electoral college completely? That's either get the states to agree to the National Interstate Compact, or a constitutional amendment.
The skew in the house would be reduced, it might even go away, but with 2 exceptions the states do not allocate electoral college electors proportionally , it’s winner takes all, and doesn’t even require a majority. The small population rural states would continue to have inordinate representation in the presidential vote.
Yeah, that's the second issue. Now, that might be able to changed with an act of congress.
Congress can change the rules around elections, but the federal government tends to be pretty hands-off with elections at the state level, and we'd have to fix the supreme court to get anything like that to stick.
It might take a constitutional amendment, which again, is almost impossible in today's political climate.
So the easiest thing to work towards is un-capping the House, because that would instantly make the government better represent the people, and being honest here, would deny conservatives the House and probably presidency for the foreseeable future. All because conservatives are not actually as popular as the slanted voting system makes them seem to be.
Because the electoral college includes the sum of all Senators and Representatives in a given state, rural states with low populations presidential votes carry much more weight than urban states with large populations. You're right about the House not expanding, that's also shifting things around - but a huge reason the electoral college exists at all was to assure the southern states that the institution of slavery would be protected in order to get them to ratify the Constitution. It shifted power to shitheads on purpose.
The electoral college didn't shift power to slave states. That was the 3/5ths compromise.
No, the electoral college was created because the fastest way to travel in the 1780s was via foot. There weren't even good roads between the new states. So it could take months to get from Georgia to Washington, DC.
We don't have that problem anymore, but changing things like that would require a constitutional amendment. Something that is fairly hard to do in today's political climate.
And it still wouldn't fix the problem with the House not being representative. But one act of congress to repeal the permanent apportionment act of 1929 would fix both issues.
Massively expanding the size of the House would make it representative, and it would make the electoral college better represent the populations of each state.
It sure did shift power to the slave states. The Senate gives equal power to each state, regardless of population. That's why, as states were allowed to join the union, they were done for quite some time in pairs - one slave, one free - in order to maintain a balance in the Senate.
You're mixing two different things and not quite understanding history.
The House and the Senate are very different things, and together they add up to the electoral college.
The electoral college was created for one reason and one reason alone. To allow people to actually vote in a national election when the fastest way to get from one end of the country to the other was via footpath.
The Senate was actually a check on the power of the slave states, as was the 3/5ths compromise.
Although, the northern states were also slave states at the time the constitution was signed. People often forget that fact.
The problems with slavery were painfully obvious, even then, but rich white guys wanted to own people. This lead to even more problems as the North slowly banned slavery. But that's a different section in the history book.
I'm sorry, but you have this completely backwards.
Yes, I am aware of how the electoral college works, and what the House and Senate are. I have been voting since 1988. Specifically because the electoral college votes from a particular state include those granted by having two senators, low population states' popular vote carries more weight in electing a president (and vice president). I may have worded that badly before, I hope that was clearer.
The three-fifths compromise made it so that, for purposes of counting population, to decide how many representatives in the House a state had, every five slaves were to count as three persons. This gave the southern states a huge boost of power in the House - because slaves got counted to find out how many representatives they had, even though those slaves were in every other way property, with few rights, certainly not the right to vote in the elections for the reps their number served to create seats for.
Again, the fact that each state had two senators, and that those states were kept evenly split between slave and free states (or states which wanted to expand slavery and states which wanted to curtail or outlaw slavery) demonstrates how the balance of power in the senate was kept that way in order to avoid a conflict over the issue of slavery. Since states had different populations, and since much of the concentration of free people was concentrated in the northeast, the Senate (then as now) gives disproportionate power to (I mentioned this before) lower population and more rural states. Then, those states were largely southern slave states. Today, those states are largely rural conservative states.
Yes, of course, there were slaves in northern states, too, but far fewer, and many northern states were curtailing or outlawing slavery while the south was doing everything in its power not only to protect it in the south, but to expand it for all states.
Slavery was a divisive issue in the US from the very beginning, and the issue got kicked down the road many, many times before Lincoln was elected and the south seceded. Everything that happened at the federal level.
Again, you forget that every state was a slave state in 1780. There were agitators who wanted to end slavery, even in southern states, but none had actually achieved it when the constitution was signed.
The split of House and Senate was actually based on geography, as in which states had no defined western boarders.
The Founders called them small states and large states. The house was meant to appease large states, Which included New York and Pennsylvania.
The small states, got the Senate. Several of the small states had higher populations when the constitution was signed, but they knew it would shift out of their favor given enough time.
The line that the House was meant to appease Slave states is true only because New York and Pennsylvania were slave states at the time.
The 3/5ths compromise was thrown in to address this, but it isn't the red herring you think it was.
The electoral college was then added again, because it took months to get from one end of the country to the other, and there was a distinct chance that the winner of an election would be dead by the time the Georgia electors got to Washington in order to officially cast the vote. That's it. That's the full reason it exists.
The presidential election was in the fall, and the certification was in the spring. All because there were no roads up and down the East Coast. No rail lines, no anything.
You could take a ship, but there was a distinct risk of dying at sea.
The Electoral College did give the slave states more power, by way of the three-fifths compromise: the number of Electors depends on the number of Representatives, which depends on the census of inhabitants, not vote-eligible citizens, including, at the time, 3/5 of the slave population. So a state like Virginia, with more slaves than free people, got a boost compared to a state with only free residents.
Interviews were conducted in English, and included 319 live landline telephone interviews, 480 live cell phone interviews, and 111 online surveys via a cell phone text
But you are right on polls not really meaning that much. Especially over a year away.
That’s a valid point. Not many people do. Pollsters have a tough road ahead of them, because actually doing a scientifically valid poll is getting harder.
It was a self inflicted injury, which was so, so avoidable.
She COULD have rolled it into a victory like this:
“I’m going to tell you something right now that not a lot of people know… my great grandfather was a coal miner in Durham, England. Moved to Scranton with his six kids dreaming of a better life for all of them. I’d like to see a better life for your fathers, brothers, and sons that doesn’t involve risking their lives underground for a few scraps of coal that they’ll never share in the profits on.”
77,744 people made Trump a President. The rest of us knew better.
Sorry but that’s not how math works. 63 million people made trump president, and only 66 million of us knew better. That huge number of trump voters is the horrible reality of American politics weve had to come to terms with. Luckily some of the trump supporters learned from their mistake, but there’s still millions of them out there, not <100k
Yeah I get that, but what I’m saying is it’s not like the rest of the US knew better than that 77k figure. 77k is just the difference in votes, it doesn’t represent the only 77k people that did wrong
I mean, pollsters actually do account for how elections work in their models. There are all sorts of actual reasons polls have failed to be reliable lately, but if you think it’s because they just count total responses across the country, that isn’t the case.
So, I think you’re probably right, in this case. But you’re just quoting the reporting on the poll, which is very misleading. It makes it sound like there is no statistical model involved at all. From the methodology on the linked full poll results: “The full sample is weighted for region, age, education, gender and race based on US Census information”. Like I said, I think you’re right - I doubt if they mean weighting for “region” to imply they did an electoral college analysis - but until you look at the actual poll and it’s methodology, you can’t just assume that an article reporting on the poll is giving an accurate impression. There are polls that do account for state breakdown, and the reporting in an article on such a poll would probably be just the same as here.
It seems the focus of this poll was to get some initial idea what kind of impact a third-party run with Manchin and some Republican running mate would have, and looking at weighted national numbers is probably “good enough” for that purpose, at this time. Definitely not a basis to conclude Biden has it in the bag, and the poll itself doesn’t seem to be trying to claim that.
Sorry I’m going on, but yeah, big picture, you are correct, at least in this case.
Oh, there’s no doubt a statistical model to represent the entire country. The problem with popularity contest polling like this is the election isn’t a popularity contest.
Now, a similar survey running down each contested state and calling out the electoral college votes, that would be useful.
Anything that leads with “a national poll…” can be safely disregarded.
Nothing Clinton said about coal was “stupid shit.”
She just told people the truth, and people prefer to be lied to over hearing uncomfortable truths.
Same happened to Al Gore: he told people the truth, and people went absolutely bonkers over that.
By contrast, Trump told people exactly what they wanted to hear, even though it was clear to anyone that he was lying to them or promising them things that he could never, ever fulfill - and people loved it.
Telling blue collar workers your goal is to end their industry is, indeed, stupid shit.
We complain bitterly on the Left about Republican voters voting against their own self interest… well, when you have a Democratic candidate telling them the intent is to put them out of work? What do you expect them to do?
Literally nobody wants conservative garbage in office. The party of liars and frauds always defanging enforcement of laws and regulations and everyone knows because we have been talking about it since that Liar War George WMD Bush and housing crash that he did.
Every chance we had at reigning in the psychopathic elites was thwarted by the Conservatives ONLY.
The white dudes sold half of my generation to a liar war and the other half to crippling debt. So we voted in a black man and they revolted by selling out to foreign enemies to steal an election because they got caught stealing 2000 with the Brooks Brothers Riot.
The party of garbage is being taken out and the midterms show it. Polls are garbage and we don’t answer them because we want them to look like assholes like we did during the mid terms AND 2024.
What’s their plan? Ruin our lines of communication from now until 2024 by buying and destroying media in a way that looks like incompetence.
They might go and get crazy and attack the country again OR start pretending they’re Democrats - they already do.
Look at Ron ShitSandwich. Total incompetent shit bag. And he’s only 44. Plenty of time to get worse.
Both parties are gerrymandering as much as they can get away with. If you meant the electoral college that's part of being a federation of states, sorry. Changing the rules to benefit your team is not exactly fair either, right?
Some people’s vote being worth more is not exactly fair. Having equal representation isn’t changing the rules to be in favor of one side, unless you count democracy as a “side”.
Fuck the teams. What’s my team? I’m an independent. I’ve never once been registered in a party in my decades of voting. Knock off the team bullshit. It’s how idiots think
It would be nice if 40-45% of the country didn’t try to force the other 60% to live by their rules.
Lol you’re only an independent because it inflates your ego. You actually think you’re smarter than everyone else. You even say as much. It has fuck all to do with your political views or any desire to make the country a better place.
I’m an independent because I will vote for whoever makes sense. I never vote party line and I never vote for only one party consistently. If I’m calling people stupid it’s because they think aligning with a party no matter what makes sense. It doesn’t. It’s rigid and ignorant. So yeah, I’m smarter than people like that
Just lately, republicans have become so toxic and stupid, I wouldn’t dare vote that way. It’s objectively terrible
If the number of electors was distributed in a way that didn't give disproportional representation to states with very small populations, that would be great. Also, the notion that the US is truly a federation of independent states hasn't been accurate for at least 200 years.
It's a bit disproportional for a few states but then again, you can say the votes of people in Wyoming are worth more relatively speaking but it's still just 3 electors in the end. No one will pay much attention to them either way, unlike the more populous states which can swing elections.
It is not just Wyoming, but many states. States like Wyoming and North Dakota get 2-3 times the votes per population as states like California, Florida or Illinois. For states such as New Mexico and Arkansas, the ratio is more like 1.5 times the more populous states. It just doesn't make sense according to how the system is supposed to work.
Oof. Almost every institution of politics in America allows them to rule the country as a minority party.
Think about how there are two senators for every state. So tens of millions of people in California get the same political representation as the like one million in Nebraska.
The Supreme Court was designed so that the institution was buffered from political winds. A bunch of conservatives can interpret the Constitution however they want with no political repercussions as a consequence.
States have a lot of leeway in deciding how to conduct elections. That’s why they can have single ballot box at a single location in a district with millions of voters. And they do that and say the elections are fair.
I’m not worried about Trump potentially winning the Republican nomination next year. He’s finished. There are nowhere near enough believers in the alt-right’s QAnon deep state bullshit to prop his campaign up, and anybody moderate would have turned their backs on him after Jan 6th, Mar-A-Lago and all the federal charges now coming to light.
We should be more worried about DeSantis vs Biden.
Idk where this is all coming from, because trumps numbers have only gone up compared to the rest of the Republicans and DeSantis has seen a nosedive in his numbers.
Most Republican primaries are winner-take-all. If enough clowns stay in the clown car, they will all split the anti-Trump vote and Trump can win states with 30-35% .
Trump has enough believers in the QAnon deep state bullshit to kill DeSantis’ campaign. Trump knows that as long as he is running for office, all of the investigations into him will have to be more cautious to avoid looking like they’re persecuting the opposition. He will run 3rd party if he loses the nomination, and he will take enough voters with him to kill DeSantis’ chances in the white house
remember that the trump campaign spent money convincing people to stay home in 2016. their two messages were “clinton’s got this in the bag, your vote doesn’t matter” and “trump and clinton are basically the same anyway”. vote early and vote often, nothing is sure until after the post-election terrorism has died down.
Joe Manchin? Who looks at the gridlock in D.C. and says: “Yes, I want more of that.” Ask me when someone who didn’t vote against Roe v Wade decides to declare.
He’s not saying “I want more gridlock”, he’s saying “I want more of whatever personally benefits me, and I have to cause gridlock to get it, that’s just fine”.
Joe Manchin is such an anachronism at this point. If this were 10-20 years ago, he’d just be a middle of the road Republican. Since it’s 2023, he’s too far left for the nazis modern Republican Party, and on the wrong side of just about every main stream Democrat issue. The only thing you can assume if Manchin runs is that he has some big donors that really want to see Trump win that will set Manchin up with a cushy job as a lobbyist.
Makes me wonder which Republican has the best chance then. My bet is someone who is not at the lead of the fundraising pack as of yet. Nikki Haley? Chris Christie?
I mean with any luck, they have painted themselves into a corner of hypocrisy and wedge issues so heavily they can’t win the presidency for another 12 years. But as we all know, Americans can’t just let OK, they get restless and just vote for change for changes sake eventually.
You make the mistake in thinking right wingers give a shit about hypocrisy and consistency - they don’t. Those are tools they use against their enemies, nothing more.
Right, but you generally need to collect some amount of independents and young people to win an election. Fingers are crossed that if turn outs are high, every election that gets harder and harder to manage.
I’m hoping literally any Republican wins the primary and then trump runs third party. He could pull a Nader for the next three elections easily, stealing a few crucial % of votes. The party deserves it for creating that monster.
Doesn’t 538 have an editorial slant? I was talking about a site that just reports poll results from all the polls and takes an average. I couldn’t find that aggregate analysis and daily poll reporting on 538.
I mistrust polls. Is this a legitimate poll or is this propaganda aimed at Biden voters? The message is that you don’t have to bother voting because your choice is leading the poll. Vote anyway.
Agreed with the others. Nothing is guaranteed and the only thing that matters for election results is votes. Another Trump presidency would be indescribably bad for humanity. We have to take these polls for a grain of salt and VOTE. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with reminding others of this.
Remember that most people thought Trump had no chance in 2016 also. So even if he only has a 25% chance of winning, act as though he’s got a 50% chance and you’re the deciding vote.
I legit thought the “powers that be” would realize how dangerous trump is and wouldn’t allow it. That’s the day I fully realized there truly is no Illuminati, no conspiracy, no dark shadow group in control, nobody in charge.
this poll queried 900 voters. 900 people who are the type of people to respond to political polls
for reference, almost 155 million people voted in 2020
so this poll was conducted with less than 0.0006% of the voting population of 2020, and the group that responded is a particular (and biased) group. edit: for additional reference, biden received 7 million more votes than trump did in 2020, which is roughly 7,800 times more voters than were polled for this article.
ignore this completely
go fucking vote
in fact tell the next 10 people you talk to to vote as well
If you did understand how sample sizes function then your comment regarding the size makes no sense.
It’s not abnormal to think small samples sizes can’t work but if you take the time to look into it you should understand. It isn’t as if we teach anything about polling outside of social sciences or statistics classes.
The fact is you made a lengthy comment propounding on an incorrect premise.
What you should conclude is that in this specific poll the results were as stated. It means nothing by itself.
But under what factual basis are you discarding a 900 person sample size?
I dont remember polls insisting Clinton would win, I remember dumb people saying thats what polls said, and your source makes me not feel shifted in that opinion.
A 3% margin on a poll in no way is declaring total victory to anybody.
Many of the polls you just shared have a 1% difference in support rate.
So you think a 1% better polling rate is " declared total victory for Clinton" but feel confident in discarding a 900 person sample?
If there was 10k people in the polls ypu are referencing, you are using 900 people as proof of absolute victory lol.
i dont know what point of mine youre arguing against
i dont trust political polls in general, and as far as political polls go this one is on the lower end. all i did was make comparisons to other (larger) polls that did not manage to capture the true distribution of voter intent
Why are you so aggressive and condescending? Bring it in will you, you’re making lemmy a toxic shithole like Reddit and this community is like five seconds old.
I just want to chime in and say I don’t disagree with you. Your tone wasn’t dismissive or condescending at all and the disparaging comments replying to you are pretty rude.
I’ve only been around Lemmy a short time so my sample size is quite small too, but I’ve seen a lot of rude condescending pricks around here so far. There’s all these threads talk about a great lemmy is and how much better than Reddit it is but I’m just seeing a bunch of assholes so far tbh. That doesn’t have anything to do with this post or thread, just venting.
I suspect your ignorance of how samples sizes work is the root if why you don’t trust polling. You can easily learn that in an hour or so if you care to fix it.
Speaking for myself, the reason I don’t trust polls is because of how wrong they all were in 2016. Your response is rude and condescending and not at all appropriate. You’re the asshole here, but it’ll probably take you more than an hour or so to fix that.
Their entire premise is flawed from the start and if they are adult enough to be discussing polling they likely can take a mild jab. Im not calling them stupid I’m saying they do not understand something that isn’t part of the general education.
At no point have I addressed you personally let alone with any degree of incivility so how dare you take that tone with me. You are the worst sort of hypocrite if you aren’t just a sockpuppet for the other guy.
That’s not true. Several states, including the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon and California all allow voting by mail. In Oregon, where I live, I get two weeks to fill out my ballot from the comfort of my own home while researching on the internet and watching YouTube videos telling me who to vote for.
Then I have too many beers at night and end up filling out Donald Trump every single time. God damn it. I wrote him in as my county water commissioner, and he never showed up! What a douchebag.
I’m in Florida and even we have several weeks of early voting where you can find time to cast your vote. It’s still weekdays but it’s a lot better than a single day.
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