2020 Presidential Election

[ClemmonsDevil]

In light of this post, I am postponing my big announcement.



Seriously! There are people today, mostly Democrats, that are in complete denial that Obama is a Keynesian.

I see what you did there.

[PackMan97]

I see what you did there.

You'd be surprised at home many don't

[Skydog]

Yea, in Massachusetts, if you vote in person, you have provide a valid photo ID (license, passport, etc) when you check in at the voting location so the poll workers can verify your identity and that you're listed as a registered voter for that locality. Of course, when I was running the elections, people would ALWAYS show up to vote and claim that they had registered to vote (usually at the Registry of Motor Vehicles when they renewed their driver's license) but they were NOT listed on the voter registration rolls that were provided to each town by the state election division. And the people were usually extremely irritated that they were not listed as a registered voter. It was a total pain.

Were those those irritated unregistered voters allowed to vote?

[-jk]

I worked our small town’s election desk one year. We have a couple cousins with the same name, including middle. Same street. And the person before me at the desk forgot to check house number...

What a mess!

Fortunately, it wasn’t a close vote.

-jk

[Mike Corey]

That being said, there would have to be others involved in the type of charade you’re foreseeing, including Pence. Why in the world would he agree to be a party to such nefarious lunacy? That’s the part I’m having trouble believing.

I do not think this final act is at all inconsistent with Pence's obeisance to Donald over the last four years.

[bundabergdevil]

Biden has a 5M vote lead over Trump and is up 3.5 points...nearly at 51%.

This was not a close election, it just had the illusion of closeness because of Florida and the mail-in ballots.

[Furniture]

NBC calls AZ for Biden...

CNN too...

[Mike Corey]

Amazing.

[cato]

Injunctive relief and dismissal papers have been filed in the federal Pennsylvania case. Notwithstanding the more explosive allegations in the complaint, the motion for injunctive relief is based on somewhat more mundane grounds, asserting a) that certain county election boards voted to count ballots that did not fully comply with Pennsylvania law and b) that certain counties improperly pre-canvassed mail-in ballots and contacted voters to permit them to cure the technical defects with their ballots. As an example of the vote counting that the campaign complains about, the Philadelphia election commission voted to count mail-in ballots that were received before election day, signed by the voter with the voter's printed name and street address, but where the voter did not include the date of signature.

The defendants raised a host of arguments for dismissal, including that the federal court should abstain in favor of the state courts, that the elections procedures challenged are wholly proper, and that there is no constitutional defect in Pennsylvania's procedures. Among other things, the brief argues that the proper avenue for challenging the technical deficiencies would have been through contesting those ballots at a commission hearing and then appealing in state court from an adverse decision before the commissions. The defendants also argue that the state Election Code does not, contrary to the campaign's assertion, prohibit counties from contacting mail-in voters whose ballots contained technical defects and offering them an opportunity to cure those defects. And, not surprisingly, they argue that the record does not support any assertion that a sufficient number of votes would be affected to change the outcome of the vote, given the current 53,000-vote margin.

More to come as responsive briefs are filed Sunday.

Are the plaintiffs also pursuing the same relief in state court? I had assume that was where they would file in the first place and spent a morning last week searching for their complaint in Pennsylvania courts instead of Federal Court.

Stressing again that I am not a litigator, I can’t see how they can go straight to federal court with these types of claims.

[mph]

Biden has a 5M vote lead over Trump and is up 3.5 points...nearly at 51%.

This was not a close election, it just had the illusion of closeness because of Florida and the mail-in ballots.

IDK, 51% to 47.5% seems close to me. 290 to 217 in the Electoral College also seems close, particularly given the close margins in AZ, GA, NV, WI, and even PA.

[Steven43]

IDK, 51% to 47.5% seems close to me. 290 to 217 in the Electoral College also seems close, particularly given the close margins in AZ, GA, NV, WI, and even PA.

I mostly agree with this. Though the popular vote count was not what I would call “close” the electoral college was. Razor-thin margins in GA, AZ, and WI as well as reasonably close margins in NV, PA, and MI.

Trump could have won this election with just a bit more support coupled with Biden losing a tad of his. I had thought Biden was going to win this thing going away, including winning FL and NC, which would have given him 350 electoral votes to 188 for Trump. I was wrong. Yep, this election was pretty darn close. Surprisingly so.

[AustinDevil]

I stand by my memory over 57 years. LBJ wanted a photo of the session because it established that he was a legitimate president.

You’re now arguing that LBJ wanted a photo of his swearing-in. I agree. That’s also quite a different point than “LBJ personally insisted that Jackie stand there beside him in her bloody suit.”

[JasonEvans]

Interesting chart in my NYTimes email this morning about polling:



The problem is not really that the polls were off by a bit... that is not at all uncommon. The problem is that they were uniformly off in a pro-Biden fashion. I mean, you pretty much cannot find a state with a decent number of polls in which Trump did not overperform his polls. Even in the states where the polls were pretty good -- like Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina -- the small misses were always misses in a way that allowed Trump to overperform his polls. Frankly, I have no idea how we deal with the fact that Trump voters just refuse to take part in polls. It may be that he has broken polling in some fundamental way when he is on the ballot.

[Matches]

Are the plaintiffs also pursuing the same relief in state court? I had assume that was where they would file in the first place and spent a morning last week searching for their complaint in Pennsylvania courts instead of Federal Court.

Stressing again that I am not a litigator, I can’t see how they can go straight to federal court with these types of claims.

Typically any case can be filed in federal vs state court if there is diversity of citizenship between the parties, i.e. they are not residents of the same state.

[Tripping William]

{NM} Post #20607 from Furniture had it covered. {NM}

[jv001]

Interesting chart in my NYTimes email this morning about polling:



The problem is not really that the polls were off by a bit... that is not at all uncommon. The problem is that they were uniformly off in a pro-Biden fashion. I mean, you pretty much cannot find a state with a decent number of polls in which Trump did not overperform his polls. Even in the states where the polls were pretty good -- like Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina -- the small misses were always misses in a way that allowed Trump to overperform his polls. Frankly, I have no idea how we deal with the fact that Trump voters just refuse to take part in polls. It may be that he has broken polling in some fundamental way when he is on the ballot.

Thanks for the chart Jason. As for why voters don't take part in polls, I can honestly say that on average, I get about 5-10 phone calls per day trying to sell; car insurance, life insurance, vehicle warranty, Spectrum TV, Home security, requests for donations, vacation/time share deals and there's many more that I will think of later, or I will receive a call not listed above. So, when I get a call from a polling agency(Rep or Dem), I'm not interested in giving up my time. At this stage in my life, I don't have that many minutes/seconds left and I don't want them wasted on a survey.

[bundabergdevil]

Interesting chart in my NYTimes email this morning about polling:



The problem is not really that the polls were off by a bit... that is not at all uncommon. The problem is that they were uniformly off in a pro-Biden fashion. I mean, you pretty much cannot find a state with a decent number of polls in which Trump did not overperform his polls. Even in the states where the polls were pretty good -- like Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina -- the small misses were always misses in a way that allowed Trump to overperform his polls. Frankly, I have no idea how we deal with the fact that Trump voters just refuse to take part in polls. It may be that he has broken polling in some fundamental way when he is on the ballot.

This year can’t really be judged without looking at how polling has performed historically. It’s clear the polls underestimated Trump support but, as an example, they also underestimated Obama’s eventual margins in 2012 3-4 points. There was plenty of “what’d we miss” analysis then, too, most famously from Gallup. Biden is going to end up with 51-52% of the national vote, EXACTLY in line with final polling averages. Trump looks to outperform by 3-4 points. In terms of calling states red/blue, the final polls got 47 or 48 right, which is great against past performance. Silver rose to fame on the back of 49/50 in 2008.

A couple of states, like WI, were WAY off and that’s a problem. Polling clearly has t nailed how to calibrate the opinions of hard to reach demographics. This year they underestimated blue collar Latino support for Trump. Apparently that’s a hard demographic to get on the phone. Little sample, more room for error. The polling profession will take its licks, adapt, and improve like any other pursuit but I don’t think when all the numbers are in, things are going to be as bad as the narrative is suggesting.

[bundabergdevil]

This thread moves fast so apologies if I missed the post but NYT reporting Trump has begun asking about the “elector replacement” gambit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/u...e=articleShare

[Phredd3]

This year can’t really be judged without looking at how polling has performed historically. It’s clear the polls underestimated Trump support but, as an example, they also underestimated Obama’s eventual margins in 2012 3-4 points. There was plenty of “what’d we miss” analysis then, too, most famously from Gallup. Biden is going to end up with 51-52% of the national vote, EXACTLY in line with final polling averages. Trump looks to outperform by 3-4 points. In terms of calling states red/blue, the final polls got 47 or 48 right, which is great against past performance. Silver rose to fame on the back of 49/50 in 2008.

A couple of states, like WI, were WAY off and that’s a problem. Polling clearly has t nailed how to calibrate the opinions of hard to reach demographics. This year they underestimated blue collar Latino support for Trump. Apparently that’s a hard demographic to get on the phone. Little sample, more room for error. The polling profession will take its licks, adapt, and improve like any other pursuit but I don’t think when all the numbers are in, things are going to be as bad as the narrative is suggesting.

I think there's a decent argument to be made here that this may be a Trump-specific issue rather than a random miss. Polls were pro-Hillary by 3+ points in 2016, dead-on for the mid-terms in 2018, then pro-Biden by 3-4 or so points this time around, depending on state. I think the list of states with the biggest misses shows that it is something about certain types of voters that is motivated to come out for Trump, even though they may not bother for "lesser" candidates. And given the Obama errors you point out, this may be a hard-to-measure characteristic of charismatic candidates more generally.

Granted, second-guessing presidential elections is always going a bit of a guess, since we only get a data point once every four years and voting trends change every time out. But I think that's a decent working hypothesis, even if it may be very hard to test.

[Tripping William]

Granted, second-guessing presidential elections is always going a bit of a guess . . . .

Tautologically, if nothing else.

[Sorry; I tried to resist, but failed. I blame Friday the 13th in 2020. For everything.]