A new set of Times/Siena polls, including one with The Philadelphia Inquirer, reveal an erosion of support for the president among young and nonwhite voters upset about the economy and Gaza.
lol. Okay, “young people.” If you don’t vote for Biden, you get Trump. And it won’t be the “burn it down and rebuild it” you think it will. It will be right-wing totalitarianism for the next hundred years.
I don’t like it any more than you do. But sometimes our choices are limited.
Well, in his defense, the burn it down part is true.
In all seriousness, he’s already caused damage that far outlasted his term. The Supreme Court, District court, and Appeals court appointments will affect them for decades. His environmental and industrial regulations repeals will take over a decade to reenact. His tax reform exploitatively widened the already oppressive wealth inequality. We may not fully recover from a second term in their lifetime.
That's what everyone kept saying in 2016, but he didn't destroy the oligarchy. He raided the coffers and shat in the well water. His destruction of the status quo was entirely self-serving, and he left in place all of the systems he could abuse to benefit himself at the expense of everyone else.
Proof in point: We're still suffering from the lingerings of Reaganomics. Both Bushs caused their own shifts against a progressive society, often by throwing out things built up by the previous administration to improve things. Trump did a lot of things too, but the ironic one is where he dismantled the very things that GWB helped create to fight worldwide pandemics (credit to George there for reading a book, asking his advisors how true it was, and doing something).
What people thinking this don't understand is how much and how long it will burn.
Certainly all the "burn it all down" voters are going to get is they'll spend the rest of their life in the fire they helped start. Maybe they'll watch all the people they care about burn first, via health care, LGTBQ rights, prosection of political enemies, etc.
All it takes is one Supreme Court nomination during Trump’s term and we’re fucked for that much longer. There’s a good chance Thomas dies in the next 4 years, do we really want 40 more years of some young right wing radical in that seat?
I think that’s what young people really don’t get. It’s not just 4 bad years (although even that argument is a pretty privileged thing to say).
Thomas won't even have to die. If Trump wins you can be sure we'll see at least 1 resignation and replacement. They aren't going to make the same mistake that RBG made, especially since they've had their eye on the ball when it comes to packing the courts with conservative judges at every level for decades.
Everything is in place for Trump to perform an autocratic authoritarian takeover of America. People need to be mentally prepared to fight or flight.
He repealed 112 environmental regulations in one term and wrote a record 220 Executive Orders, without any familiarity with the job of holding office, and during a pandemic. Imagine how much more effective he’ll be at destroying our progress this time around.
Alito and Thomas are the two oldest on the court at 74 and 75 respectively. So there's a good chance that whoever is elected in '24 gets a shot at replacing one or both of them.
DEFINITELY whoever is elected in '28.
So, for safety's sake, we need a D win in BOTH '24 AND '28.
Replacing them flips the court from 6-3 Conservative to 5-4 Liberal.
BUT - then the next two oldest are Roberts, who would be the swing vote, and Sotomayor. Both 69 currently.
So in '28, they'll be the same age as Alito and Thomas now. Likely to be replaced in either the '28 or '32 cycle.
If we get Trump, I'm fairly certain we won't have another real national election again. It'll be like Russia with massive "voter fraud" bills and EOs passed that completely neuter the ability to vote. The treasonous Project 2025 would gut the government and we'll probably get that Schedule F bullshit that brings back the spoils system.
So while Biden is wonderful (he's done a bunch of good stuff recently at least), Trump is so far down the fascist ladder there really isn't any choice. I'm not excited to vote for Biden, I'm terrified of Trump being elected.
He had his chance to effect massive change, and he made everything he touched worse. His plan for healthcare was just "undo Obamacare" because everything was perfect before. I'm very glad he didn't get a chance to touch that.
Burn everything down and rebuild is clearly not the panacea some folks wish. I get it, though. In 2016, most of the pro-Trump voters I knew self-identified as anarchists.
We have to fix this shit without burning it down. Too many people rely on things as they are (for good and ill) to enact dramatic change overnight.
I'll be real. There was only one candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary that I disliked more than biden. And that was culty gabbard. I voted for Bernie Sanders in the last two presidential primaries. Biden is so far from perfect or what we really need. But has still been astonishingly good on so many things. Granted in our current state that's a low bar. But I honestly struggle to think what Sanders could have done in a meaningful sense that Biden has not. I'm sure Sanders would have spoken out against the violence in Palestine sooner. It would still be happening exactly as it is now. But he would have spoken out sooner. So that is a plus.
But it really boggles the mind to try to comprehend how people can still be this uninformed. To think everything he touches turns to shit. No it just goes to prove the old adage. The left doesn't need enemies with allies like the left.
Well, I don't believe for a second that Biden and Trump and tied with Gen Z. Right now, it's "free" to claim that you won't vote for Biden or won't vote at all. At the end of the day, Gen Z and most young people will come out and vote for the one closer to their world view. Angry or not.
Ok grampa, it just so happens that condescendingly blaming young voters for Biden’s piss poor policies while in office won’t be the get out the vote motivating factor you seem to think it will. If Biden wants votes, he needs to appeal to voters, not just donors.
It's definitely worrying as I sit here North of my American brothers and sisters, to see the sheer amount of "Yeah but Biden sucks". Sure 100% agree, but you're welcoming in Orange Hitler if you don't vote, or vote Republican.
So definitely worrying sleeping beside this particular elephant.
The elephant will do damage to the whole fuckin world if he gets elected, including but not limited to wielding the military in a way that I bet will cause disasters we didn't even really have on the radar as possibilities before they arrived.
So don't worry. Being close up to the carnage probably won't make it any worse, and being far away wouldn't make it any safer.
including but not limited to wielding the military in a way that I bet will cause disasters we didn't even really have on the radar as possibilities before they arrived.
Everyone who paid attention during 2020 and has read the Project 2025 plans should know that this will happen.
But it doesn't even have to be malicious, though he will for sure be malicious, stupidity is enough.
A million people died because Covid was so much worse here than it could've been, all because he was too petty to say "Put on a mask, save your country" which his base would've inevitably eaten up.
But no, his stupidity caused a million avoidable deaths.
I dislike doubting polls, but there's just some odd stuff in here.
10% go for RFK Jr, and it's equal siphoning from both parties? 10%?!
20% more people blame Biden for Roe being overturned than Trump?
They're TIED with Gen Z voters? TIED?!
After the absolute thrashing that Republicans have received on abortion, only like 50% of women would break for Biden?
This is a poll of just the 5 key states, but this part of their methodology gives me significant pause as well: "To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree. "
Emphasis mine. There could be a huge skew. And these results don't make sense. The other NYT poll from several months ago was also incredibly unusual and had very weird findings -- to the point that the Guardian wrote something was very fucky with the results.
This isn't to say this can't be what's going on, but we need corroboration from other polling groups. And it isn't summer yet, which makes polls rather inaccurate too.
TLDR: Something's fucky, we need more information and to monitor this.
EDIT: I just want to use my bully pulpit here to say that my criticisms by no means disprove the poll results. There's oddities, but that doesn't make the results an impossibility. Don't only give credence to criticism of polls. If someone has reasons they believe the poll is accurate, you should give equal attention to it. At the end of the day, we don't know what the actual truth is, and we won't until the election is over. Just remember that we don't want to just win, we want to dominate. We want massive margins. And that means we need to see wins even in less than accurate polls.
we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree
Oooooohhh
All of sudden it makes sense
Here's their methodology page, with in addition to that fuckin fascinating tidbit you quoted, some other things of note:
The New York Times/Siena College Poll is conducted by phone using live interviewers at call centers based in Florida, New York, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. Respondents are randomly selected from a national list of registered voters, and we call voters both on landlines and cellphones.
In the end, fewer than 2 percent of the people our callers try to reach will respond. We try to keep our calls short — less than 15 minutes — because the longer the interview, the fewer people stay on the phone.
We call more people who seem unlikely to respond, like those who don’t vote in every election.
But the truth is that there’s no way to be absolutely sure that the people who respond to surveys are like demographically similar voters who don’t respond. It’s always possible that there’s some hidden variable, some extra dimension of nonresponse that we haven’t considered.
To be clear, polling theory is totally valid and an established science within statistics.
But the challenge is always with methodology, because you can never get a perfect simple random sample. And the methodology here certainly seems terrible.
If the 2024 presidential election were held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were
Then it lists the usual suspects including third parties. The only age group for that question voting for Biden is 65 and older. Maybe so, but that doesn't seem right.
The largest cohort of people in this country want neither Biden nor Trump. Some of that cohort are willing to step out on a limb and support a third party.
If you've been following the polling there is nothing different or unique about this one. It's consistent with pretty much all polling over the past 400 days. Biden is losing. Polling is definitely still broken, but it's consistent. There is no fuckery.
Biden needs to be up by 4-12 in those states if he wants to win.
See my posts in [email protected] . I make a map of the offset in polling Biden needs to win a given state based on the fact that polls consistently overestimate how well Biden will do, and underestimate how well Trump will do.
When you see these poll numbers, you should subtract 4 for Biden, and add 8 for Trump. That was the offsets we observed from the 2020 election.
So keeping in mind data you already have about Trump, Biden, polling and it's departure from real election results, it's not even a question. Mortgage you house and out all your money on Trump to win. You have a differential polling error of 12 points in a Biden Trump head to head. Biden needs to be in the mid to high fifties across the board to have a chance.
He's in the low forties.
If you don't end up clicking the link:
Relative polling error for Biden V Trump, 2020.
My only critique is that I don't think 2020 skew is valid anymore. After Dobbs, the landscape seems to have significantly changed. 2022 was predicted to favor Republicans by a strong margin, but it ended up being a tie pretty much. And a lot of special elections have had surprising results too.
My personal opinion is that polling methodology may have overcorrected for 2020, and we're getting a picture now that's skewed right, versus left from beforehand.
It's really hard to say though. There weren't a lot of great polls to start with in 2022, and special elections don't have significant polling either. It's a weird position where the only good data set we have is from 2020, but there have been so many changes in the national environment that we have reason to doubt the skews from 2020 are still valid. But at the same time, what else do we have? Vibes and feelings and anecdotes. And the engineer in me dislikes dismissing data in favor of vibes. It's important to consider still I think, because none of this is infallible. But I honestly couldn't tell you what the "right" outlook to have is. Maybe I'm onto something, but maybe I'm just letting optimism bleed into my better judgement.
If you've been following the polling there is nothing different or unique about this one.
They posted their methodology and to me, as an unqualified lay person, it's clearly shit, and there's no reason to think it'll yield anything even resembling an accurate picture of how people are going to vote in the election. It's not surprising to me that recent polls in general tend to be as inaccurate as you're saying they are.
I would be interested to go back and look at some of the polling that led up to recent special elections where Democrats won, and see how the poll results compared with the election results -- if you follow polling in detail (which again, I don't), do you happen to know where I could look to find that?
Your issue is you fail to understand how stupid and shortsighted and uninformed the average person is.
I live in one of the most educated states in american, and plenty of people here are complete idiots when it comes to politics and pretty much everyone under 30 is anti-biden and anti-trump and pro-being a whiny bitch about life who refuses to take any accountability but delights in trash talking how everything sucks and the world will end. Along with some grandstanding about how 'alt' they are for being anarchist or communist or whatever. But if you ask them specific policy questions they lose their shit because they don't know and don't care. Politics is all about image/branding for them so they can feel smug and superior to 'boring old status quo people' like myself who will vote for Biden.
I voted for Clinton with a funeral dirge in my heart at an empty polling place. Then I voted for Biden.
I despise Neoliberals. I'm a socialist. If I can swallow my pride and volunteer to be fucked with no lube instead of being hit by a fascist freight train yet again, you can too.
That said, this country is over, Rejecting the Reagan giveaway was the last chance to begin righting this ship now halfway under water from decades of celebrated antisocial avarice made legal. I'm voting Biden to minimize needless cruelty and scapegoating of vulnerable groups as we collapse from capitalist greed rot and firesale. That is the extent of our vote's power as our owners bought both parties on economic policy allegiance decades ago, so be kind with it.
We don't need to collapse AND have our chosen Nero in the white house using their bully pulpit to blame it on everyone from undocumented immigrants to pregnant women to lgbtq, etc and getting them murdered in the streets for what Wall Street profiteers, safe in their guarded towers and luxury bunkers, have wrought.
The impending food shortages and mass homelessness crises will be bad enough.
If Biden and Trump really are tied among Gen Z voters, I'm afraid Gen Z voters just don't understand the American election system. If we don't get Biden, we get Trump, which would be infinitely worse for most of the causes they are angry with Biden on.
I'm afraid Gen Z voters just don't understand the American election system
Maybe they’re fucking tired of pretending they can influence anything in this rigged bullshit of a world?
Trump looses and still doesn’t get any justice in court, there is still no healthcare and minimum wage remains at 1856 levels because FoReFatHeRs of some bullshit, while jeff bezos fucks them in the ass along with their boss and landlord. Tiktok gets banned because the government doesn’t want them to laugh at „israel bad” memes and the climate still falls apart after 10-20 years.
Sure, trump wins and everything gets even worse but stop criticizing people who don’t want to vote when their promised „democracy” is terrible and even worse. They simply don’t believe in their freedom anymore and it’s the fault of their country which viscously takes everything from them. Letting it go to shit might just be their form of a protest. First boomers fucked everything up for them and now they’re screaming „save us”.
Fair enough. But running away stomping and screaming never helped anyone. This is a marathon, not a sprint. It's incremental change. Not voting or voting for Trump will never bring about the change they are looking for.
stop criticizing people who don’t want to vote when their promised „democracy” is terrible and even worse.
How exactly do you think a democratic election that runs on votes is supposed to work? What exactly is not voting going to do, other than ensure that the folks who are voting for the candidate that is more inclined to do more damage to this country wins?
Even if you dislike both candidates, not voting isn't going to fix anything. Vote for whoever is least likely to destroy the country and make it hell for certain people, and then focus your efforts locally and trying to inspire change on the local level.
Do you want to teach and encourage them to give up so quickly in the face of long-lasting international issues? That's what you are doing and I hope they see that. This Isreal and Palestine thing did not start in October.
Please redirect your attention to election reform. Fix the system.
The joke of 2020 was people screaming about how Trump was very obviously guilty of very real crimes and we needed to get him out to prosecute him.
Then we... didn't. Ninety-one indictments and the bulk of them have been deferred or dropped. The single remaining case in SDNY isn't stopping him from campaigning and isn't meaningfully threatening his ability to assume office.
Sure, trump wins and everything gets even worse but stop criticizing people who don’t want to vote when their promised „democracy” is terrible and even worse.
I'm living in a city where the school district was simply taken over by the Governor. All the HISD school board elections are rendered meaningless. The superintendent is just a charter school flak who exists to dismantle public education. No democratic accountability. Outright looting of the ISD's budget. The Feds have expressed no interest in interceding in interstate embezzlement.
And we're told the only way to stop this is to vote. Vote for what? Nobody currently running wants to stop this dismantling of a foundational element of modern civilization. Hell, even the Dem-endorsed new Houston Mayor is just along for the ride on this shit.
I wish the DNC started treated them as the main chunk of Dem voters and not a bunch of spoiled children for wanting politicians that represent them instead of their grandparents
It should be comically easy to beat trump, but people just don't like elderly neoliberals, because of their policies, actions, and often lack of actions.
Kids need better civics education so they can keep their expectations of what our government is capable of as low as possible, that way they don't feel like voting is useless and give up.
It would have been the easiest dunk of his life to go to Manchin or sinema’s districts and hold a rally for legislations that they are blocking and would have garnered support from younger people because he is actually trying and applying pressure. Not just making a statement and saying “owell I tried”.
You want Biden to go into ruby red districts where a dem-in-name-only got into power by the skin of their teeth, and campaign for Democratic policies, and you think those people will welcome him? You think it will be easy??
You're in a bubble, dude. There's no silent majority of progressives out there. Just because all of your friends are doesn't mean the whole nation is.
Manchin got elected because he blocked Dem policies. Not in spite of it.
I've said it before and I'll keep saying it again and again; of course you don't like the Democrat candidate; but you've got to swallow your damned medicine or the outcome will be exponentially worse.
Yeah, I voted for Hillary. I hate her so goddamn much. But you know who I hate more? The orange asshole. So I did what I had to do, I swallowed my anger and voted for the bitch. No protest vote, no skipping out on it, just sucking it up and doing what had to be done. If more people had followed my example, and the example of many others, we wouldn't be rapidly watersliding dowe the lubed-up slope to outright, unapologetic fascism.
of course you don’t like the Democrat candidate; but you’ve got to swallow your damned medicine
Tincture of Mercury and a regular bloodletting will give us the strength we need to fight off the Trump Virus.
So I did what I had to do
You did, but when the Dem Party regained office in 2020 they didn't.
Dems had an opportunity to give DC statehood in 2021. Two free senators, a house seat, and an easy 3 EC votes. This legislation was queued up and ready to go and the Dem majority just... didn't do it. So now 660k Americans are once again going into 2024 fully disenfranchised, in an election when every vote counts.
This isn't the only way in which the Dems sabotage their own success. But it can't be ignored how a party that zealously backed guys like Henry Cuellar and Bob Menendez during primaries, long after they'd been outed as crooks and frauds, are the biggest threats to their own success. Never even mind the horrifying genocide in Palestine or the slavish devotion to fossil fuel subsidies or the shameless pandering to crypto-bros.
If more people had followed my example, and the example of many others, we wouldn’t be rapidly watersliding dowe the lubed-up slope to outright, unapologetic fascism.
Every election gives the fascist party larger voter turnout. This isn't an issue of apathy, but of escalating tensions. Election turnout over the last six years has been reaching century-long highs but its a two-edged sword. Republican activists have been very successful in building up their own local majorities.
More people are following your example. Even in the face of gerrymandering. Even in the face of voter caging. Even in the face of shameless criminal-but-unprosecuted efforts at disenfranchisement.
But that includes conservatives. More and more of them, every year, as Trump drives an enthusiasm for the GOP I haven't seen since Reagan.
While I agree with your message, can you please refrain from name calling Hillary? In particular using that word. She's not perfect, no one is but that term is unnecessary.
This is extremely concerning, not just because of the reality, but the reaction to this news. We should all be terrified, not because young people are too stupid to vote against Republicans, but because Democrats are blaming voters for their fuckups. This is the same fucking bullshit Hillary pulled in 2016, and it's why she shat the bed so hard and left us with the Cheeto Mussolini.
IT'S THE CANDIDATE'S JOB TO WIN VOTES!!
Joe Biden isn't a reluctant general lifted out of obscurity by the adoring masses. He wanted this job, fought really hard to get it, and now it is his responsibility to win reelection. And it's really important that he does, because Trump was a terrible president and will be worse the second time around.
If you're mad about this news story, you should direct your anger at the party and the candidate. Being mad at Gen Z for choosing not to fall in line is like being mad at drivers in traffic. Sure, if we all slow down and leave more space to avoid excessive braking, we can avoid a lot of traffic and have more time to sing kumbaya together. That's not a productive avenue for fixing the problem.
Donald Trump is literally on trial for fraud. This shouldn't even be close. If Biden can't win in a landslide, it's because Joe Biden sucks, not because the youth are entitled, bourgeois, ignorant, lazy, or any of the other insults being thrown around in this comment thread.
Counterpoint: If Biden can pass the biggest infrastructure bill since the New Deal, the biggest climate bill ever, erase tens of billions of dollars of student debt, pull us out of the pandemic economy without a major crash, put together a global coalition to help Ukraine fight against Russian imperialism, reschedule cannabis, etc., then I'm going to blame the stupid voters for not (a) recognizing his achievements and (b) not recognizing the threat that Trump and the Republicans pose to our democracy and the global climate.
Biden has a razor-thin majority in the Senate and has no control of the House. Trump has already personally appointed 33% of the SCOTUS, and has another 66% eating out of the palm of his hand. And people are going to hand our country to the Republicans again (even though they are openly speaking out against democracy every fucking day) because... why...? Because there isn't peace in the middle east and somehow that's Biden's fault?
I'll accept your premise at face value, let's say he has accomplished a lot. Personally, I'd like to see him doing more, but let's set that aside and say that his accomplishments would be enough to win the support of the progressive youths, and yet it hasn't. The problem is still not with the "stupid" voters failing to recognize Biden's achievements or the existential threat Trump represents. It's still Biden's job to sell it to the voters. It's up to Biden and his campaign to put those issues front and center, to talk about what he's trying to do and what his vision is for America. If he isn't getting the message out, then he is failing at one of the critical aspects of his job.
But really, I don't think the problem is messaging. I think the problem is that Biden isn't the guy people want him to be. He's a moderate neoliberal who backs progressive issues when he believes it will help him in the polls. I think he doesn't put those issues front and center or push very hard or make persuasive arguments because he doesn't want to piss off the center (or his donors).
Biden has a problem with the House. Why hasn't he done more to push progressive candidates in downticket races? Biden has a problem with the court. Why isn't he packing the court and working to eliminate corruption? We still have a massive infrastructure debt, catastrophic climate change, crippling economic inequality.
Yes, his half measures are better than the swift kick in the balls that comprises the Republican agenda. But he needs to recognize that he isn't fighting hard enough to win the support of people who are looking down the barrel of extinction. That's not hyperbole. My generation doesn't expect to retire, and the next generation doesn't expect humanity to survive. They're not having kids because the future is that bleak.
Are they stupid? Sure, of course. Kids are often stupid. We were stupid. Our parents were stupid. If Biden is shocked that he has to convince stupid people to vote, then who's really stupid? Sometimes you gotta make the airplane noise to get kids to eat their vegetables. Biden isn't even trying, though. He's blaming them, calling them anti-Semitic, and acting entitled to our votes.
He needs to win. You think it's frustrating to see stupid people vote for a third party in protest? Imagine how frustrating it is to watch the Biden campaign drive young voters towards third parties.
Nope, but that was a nice try to trivialize the actual problems.
The problem is Biden sending American weapons, paid for with American tax money, to another country to use to indiscriminately kill civilians.
I’m not even going to claim that they want to kill all the gazans.
They were too loose with how they were using them. Too many civilians were being killed, 35,000 minus 15,000, using Israel’s terrorist death count, leaves 20,000 innocents killed in about 6-7 months
It's the news media's job to report the reality of what's going on, not just filter people's explicit-propaganda-created misunderstandings of what's going on through the most slanted methodology they can possibly find and then report it back to us like a money fueled human-centipede loop, but what can you do. We all have bad days doing our jobs sometimes.
The news media is a for-profit industry with a fiduciary duty to shareholders to sell the news as a commodity. If you expect anything noble, moral, or objective, you're being naive.
If Biden can’t win in a landslide, it’s because Joe Biden sucks, not because the youth are entitled, bourgeois, ignorant, lazy, or any of the other insults being thrown around in this comment thread.
I don't think "kids these days" are entitled, lazy or ignorant but to a degree both these types of things can be true. Biden is unappealing, yes, but everywhere I turn are people arguing that both parties are the same and that Democrats have done nothing for them. In these cases, when pressed it turns out they just don't actually know one way or the other. It's a generalized sentiment of "politicians bad" and many are surprised to learn of even a handful of things Dems and Biden have done that they support.
So I guess you could argue that Democrats suck at marketing. But I'd also argue that many of us suck at understanding politics.
Presenting the poll results for registered voters, with candidates limited to Biden or Trump with no RFK involved, both of which are decisions which will swing things towards Trump and away from reality, is a decision that I'm hard pressed to explain any other way than that they're looking for the worst numbers they can present.
It's not even like the answers to the more accurate question were even any better for Biden. To me they look more or less the same (i.e. serious trouble for Biden). My only explanation is that a lot of these likely voters don't know their ass from their elbow (e.g.
Oooooh
This is interesting.
Look at the question "What one issue is most important in deciding your vote this November?"
It leads off with:
The economy (including jobs and the stock market)
Inflation and the cost of living
Abortion
Immigration
Crime
Gun policies
... and then, way down below, is "The state of democracy/corruption" (with 6% still bucking the trend to vote for it), and "The Middle East/Israel/Palestinians" (2%).
Lo and behold, a whole lot of people voted for one of the first two options, and also tended to answer questions about how they felt about the economy overall, and whether they felt overall happy with how things were going, accordingly.
I would be interested to see how this poll was presented exactly (especially whether written or verbal, and what order for the questions), and what the numbers would be if there was a similar weight of questioning and emphasis given to "The state of democracy/corruption" as a major issue. Maybe the results would be the same. Maybe not. I'd be interested to see it.
I know you're not necessarily making this argument but you mention that the most important issue for voters includes...
and "The Middle East/Israel/Palestinians" (2%).
In Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin the margin in 2020 was less than 2%. Michigan and Nevada were under 3%.
It's a small number, yes, but this argument that it "won't matter because people vote on domestic issues" ignores these thin margins, imo. It really might matter more than people think.
I didn't go into it at any length but I think the number of people who, in the actual election, will have the Gaza war impact the way they vote is way higher than 2%. About 13% of Democrats voted "uncommitted" in the Michigan primary, which presumably they wouldn't have done because of crime, immigration, or whatever other "non-most-important" issues according to this poll.
I think hanging out on Lemmy can give you the impression that more people overall care about Palestine than the number that actually do. But the number definitely isn't 2%. I'm not at all saying that the real number is 2% and so it doesn't matter; I'm saying the number is definitely higher than 2% and so this poll is random-phone-number-calling-barking-questions-at-people uninformative garbage.
I would be interested to see how this poll was presented exactly
Have you tried the article?
If that doesn't answer your questions, it links to the poll questions and breakdowns...
But it seems like you just don't believe in polls, which is weird because I honestly can't remember presidential polling not getting in the margin of error of the real result.
This is the same shit that happened in 2016 and 202:
The polls say my favorite isn't winning! Polls are lying! Everyone ignore the polls and act smug we'll win!
If you're somehow actually a Biden supporter, these polls should have you working harder to do the only thing that can help him beat Trump:
Pull him to the left.
Or you could spend the run up to the election telling people not to listen to polls and instead...
I dunno? Read tea leaves? What is exactly is your alternative?
Pretend we're ostriches and stick our heads in the sand? We won't be able to see any warning signs but you're gonna ignore them anyways. So sure, you go first and the rest of us will stick our heads in the sand right after you, promise.
Read tea leaves? What is exactly is your alternative?
Other people in other threads have found more of the fucky things about this poll; it was a phone poll which 2% of people answered the phone for, which made no attempt to correct for "what ideological mentalities are likely to answer the phone to random numbers", and then on top of that explicitly made adjustments like increasing the weight of non-college-educated people for some pretty dubious reason.
Polls sound great. The fact that the election is even within 10 points, or 20, should lead to alarm in the Biden camp, and cause some deep soul searching for what went so wrong in the American system that we could be talking about electing Lex Luthor mayor and people are taking it seriously as an idea and it's even a question of who is going to win the election. I think education and media are the main culprits. Concrete things Biden is doing are not unrelated, exactly (especially on aid for Israel), but they honestly don't seem to make all that much difference, and a lot of people who are voicing concerns about him seem totally unaware of concrete things he's been doing.
I'm by no means saying don't be alarmed. I think we should be very alarmed. But yes, also, I think we should call out bullshit polls when they are as clearly bullshit as this one is (as part of examining the reasons why a respectable news outlet would even be reporting a close poll between Biden and Trump as anything other than the absolute looming catastrophe that it objectively is.)
If you're somehow actually a Biden supporter, these polls should have you working harder
That's actually a really good point -- I'll try to come up with some concrete things I can do to help Biden win sometimes later today. I just went to verify that I'm registered to vote (I still am), and I think maybe a good thing politically overall would be a little informational thing about who to vote for in Congress. Presumably some little tool already exists that can tell if your congresspeople have been voting for aid for Israel, inform your voting accordingly instead of just blindly checking the D box, things like that, but I don't know all that much about it.
IDK, I'll see what I can come up with later on today if I have some time. It's a good reminder that talking on the internet without some sort of action isn't always a good investment of time.
The system is old and ossified. No one on the left, save for progressives, seems interested in shaking things up. It's too bad, I would have rather had a leftwing populist revolution. At least workers would get paid fairly...but this is backwards-ass America so, instead, we'll get what we deserve.
The president has little say on the laws that Congress passes. Vote for your local senators and representatives! The only way to realize change is to vote in your local elections!
It is local and state government that is important to making changes! Republicans have figured this out decades ago and have been gerrymandering and packing courts for decades.
The president can’t waive a magic wand and make any change he wants.
They're not useless, but they have an error that can be several points larger than the given margin of error. What this is telling is is that it's a close election. And that's a big deal
Remember though, it’s a poll. And polls are used now for nothing more than manipulation. People in this thread have already torn apart its findings. As they do any time a poll is shared with the intend to misinform.
Now, where Hillary's problem was she took states like Michigan and Wisconsin for granted and failed to campaign there, Biden's problem is he's taking too long to campaign there, and he's burning money in states that his advisors are telling him are in play (Florida, North Carolina) when they really are not.
Biden can't wait until the convention in August to start the campaign proper, and that seems to be what he's doing. That only gives him just 78 days to mount an effective defense. 2 months and change.
What do you expect he has done nothing for what matters rent, food, houses, healthcare, income and the homeless are out of control but hey we might get weed put to schedule 3....woopie
American Rescue Plan reversed much of the damage done by the pandemic
Unemployment at historic lows
Expanded access to healthcare coverage
Passed bipartisan infrastructure bill
CHIPS Act
Inflation Reduction Act has brought inflation back under control
Rejoined the Paris Climate Accord
Passed sweeping student debt relief for millions of students burdened with predatory loans
And yes, rescheduled cannabis after a century of prohibition
All in just one term.
Wow, you're right, he's done nothing, guess I'll just vote for the dude with 91 felony charges who talks about being a dictator on day one, or maybe the dude with the brain worm. Really tough choice.