Augustus wrote:The lawn sign game is pretty pointless imo. I was in western Maryland a few weeks ago hiking the AT and there were Trump flags and signs everywhere. Don’t think Trump’s carrying MD. Not to say that PA isn’t closer than polls suggest, though.

The most memorable analysis I recall of Trump's 2016 from election night was some guy on some network who looked at what counties Barack Obama lost in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin in 2012, all the usual suspects, places you would expect (for reference, York County, Adams County, Berks County, Schuylkill County in PA, as examples - place firmly in the "T"), and showed how while Obama did lose in those places, the margins were typically anywhere from the 55-45 on the low end up through maybe 65-35 in the reddest areas.

Trump was absolutely destroying in those counties in 2016. Margins were LOW end 65-35, and were more regularly 70-30, 75-25. It was those absolute wipe out victories that allowed Trump to eke out wins in PA, WI, and MI, even as he lost by large margins in urban areas and lost ground among suburban voters compared to other Republicans.

The flags are indicative of the enthusiasm and the deep sense of identification white people in those areas of PA, WI, and MI feel with Trump in those areas. Whenever I see those flags and signs I think to myself that I don't see any signs the fundamentals have changed, and that is my fear.

Landlords don’t allow their tenants to display Biden signs.

Slowhand wrote:Landlords don’t allow their tenants to display Biden signs.

Hehe

In my neighborhood walks around Folsom in Ridley, it’s atleast 5-1 Trump signs/Flags to Biden

Wolfgang622 wrote:

Augustus wrote:The lawn sign game is pretty pointless imo. I was in western Maryland a few weeks ago hiking the AT and there were Trump flags and signs everywhere. Don’t think Trump’s carrying MD. Not to say that PA isn’t closer than polls suggest, though.

The most memorable analysis I recall of Trump's 2016 from election night was some guy on some network who looked at what counties Barack Obama lost in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin in 2012, all the usual suspects, places you would expect (for reference, York County, Adams County, Berks County, Schuylkill County in PA, as examples - place firmly in the "T"), and showed how while Obama did lose in those places, the margins were typically anywhere from the 55-45 on the low end up through maybe 65-35 in the reddest areas.

Trump was absolutely destroying in those counties in 2016. Margins were LOW end 65-35, and were more regularly 70-30, 75-25. It was those absolute wipe out victories that allowed Trump to eke out wins in PA, WI, and MI, even as he lost by large margins in urban areas and lost ground among suburban voters compared to other Republicans.

The flags are indicative of the enthusiasm and the deep sense of identification white people in those areas of PA, WI, and MI feel with Trump in those areas. Whenever I see those flags and signs I think to myself that I don't see any signs the fundamentals have changed, and that is my fear.

I hear ya but think that there’s a crowd within that bloc that didn’t like Hilary and didn’t hate trump. And I don’t think that’s an insignificant bloc of people.

Trump is a con man. Always has been. He conned people in 2016. He’s conned new people since. I think the people wise to that con outweigh the latter.

For example, for me in 2016, I didn’t think Trump was a totalitarian. I didn’t vote for him but didn’t separately think he would destroy the country.

I now think he’s literally awful, stupid and incapable of uniting the country which economically and socially speaking is critical.

Playing the lawn sign game instead of looking at the polls is a pretty ridiculous exercise to me. Biden's carried pretty much every poll of Pennsylvania for the last six months with margins ranging from "a little closer than I'd like, but I'll take it" to "we have a projection to make 20 seconds after polls close." It's not like this is a seesaw where we're trying to spot other factors. You'd have to believe a lot of people won't talk to pollsters because they don't trust them and/or are afraid to say they support Trump but have no problem putting up signs and flags in their yards/trucks/business windows.

It's a state where the two top statewide elected offices are held by Democrats, including a Governor who less than two years ago won by 17 points. Biden should win Pennsylvania, and it will be a surprise if he doesn't no matter how much people want to just assume the worst so they can somehow feel better if the shit hits the fan.

I know Trump won in PA in 2016 despite the polling numbers looking bad for him but A LOT OF SHIT has happened since then.

mcare89 wrote:Playing the lawn sign game instead of looking at the polls is a pretty ridiculous exercise to me. Biden's carried pretty much every poll of Pennsylvania for the last six months with margins ranging from "a little closer than I'd like, but I'll take it" to "we have a projection to make 20 seconds after polls close." It's not like this is a seesaw where we're trying to spot other factors. You'd have to believe a lot of people won't talk to pollsters because they don't trust them and/or are afraid to say they support Trump but have no problem putting up signs and flags in their yards/trucks/business windows.

It's a state where the two top statewide elected offices are held by Democrats, including a Governor who less than two years ago won by 17 points. Biden should win Pennsylvania, and it will be a surprise if he doesn't no matter how much people want to just assume the worst so they can somehow feel better if the shit hits the fan.

I know Trump won in PA in 2016 despite the polling numbers looking bad for him but A LOT OF SHIT has happened since then.

I chalk this nonsense up as a symptom of the collective PTSD we have all experienced for the past four years. We are girding ourselves for disappointment so that it doesn't sting so bad this time.

Does not change the fact that Trump won't win the electoral college vote unless he steals the election, which he very well may accomplish. That has zip to do with fucking yard signs and flags though.

CalvinBall wrote:Bill lives in the very red part of Chester county.

I see plenty of Biden signs all over Chester County. Certainly more than Trump stuff.

Truly can't recall seeing anything HRC related. People have Biden flags and banners all over.

Yeah it’s overwhelmingly Trump signs flags etc. here. There are 3 Biden signs in my area now (one in my yard h/t Cal) the most recent one came up today and is the most interesting. They’ve got signs for the Republicans in all the local races and a Biden/Harris sign. That’s the shit that gives me hope.

Re: signs and PA

There are massive groups now that are reaching out to voters. Swing Left and Turn PA Blue here in PA specifically. Smaller ones like PA Stands Up too. Western PA Counties have some more locally focused groups.

These did not exist in 2016. They played a significant role in flipping a lot of state house seats in 2018 and haven't stopped working since.

I was looking through the 538 state projections last and something really caught my eye. Mississippi is listed as I think "favored" for Trump - but not "clearly favored" or "very likely to win," its top two designations. That said, Trump's chances of winning MS are 87/13 over Biden. However, what was truly eye-popping was that in one of their "sample" 100 simulations (they do 20,000 on each state), which are supposedly representative of the larger group, Biden wins MS 60-39.

I realize MS, relative to other Southern states outside of maybe SC, has a larger share of AA population. That probably means Dems do a little better there nationally than, say, AL. But what the fuck is with their model? First of all, Trump isn't losing MS barring some kind of astoundingly unthinkable scandal, like he is caught burning an American flag while urinating on a picture of Jesus, and everyone knows it.

And even if he did those things, in no known universe is he losing MS 60-39.

So Bloomberg is actually gonna spend some of his money?

Wolfgang622 wrote:

Augustus wrote:The lawn sign game is pretty pointless imo. I was in western Maryland a few weeks ago hiking the AT and there were Trump flags and signs everywhere. Don’t think Trump’s carrying MD. Not to say that PA isn’t closer than polls suggest, though.

The most memorable analysis I recall of Trump's 2016 from election night was some guy on some network who looked at what counties Barack Obama lost in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin in 2012, all the usual suspects, places you would expect (for reference, York County, Adams County, Berks County, Schuylkill County in PA, as examples - place firmly in the "T"), and showed how while Obama did lose in those places, the margins were typically anywhere from the 55-45 on the low end up through maybe 65-35 in the reddest areas.

Trump was absolutely destroying in those counties in 2016. Margins were LOW end 65-35, and were more regularly 70-30, 75-25. It was those absolute wipe out victories that allowed Trump to eke out wins in PA, WI, and MI, even as he lost by large margins in urban areas and lost ground among suburban voters compared to other Republicans.

The flags are indicative of the enthusiasm and the deep sense of identification white people in those areas of PA, WI, and MI feel with Trump in those areas. Whenever I see those flags and signs I think to myself that I don't see any signs the fundamentals have changed, and that is my fear.

This here is the kind of thing I am talking about:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opin ... ices-heard

Don't take this the wrong way because I agree with your sentiments about white voters and Trump, but Salena Zito is a total joke. The most charitable take on her is that she misrepresents Republican Party officials and wealthy business owners as white working class swing voters. Less charitably she's a serial plagiarist who invents anecdotes, quotes, and perhaps people out of thin air.

The way she sets up this whole article is totally misleading. Lots of talk about coal miners and hard work blah blah blah, picture of the guy in a cutoff t-shirt and camo hat. But she quickly slips in that he is a "retired insurance manager." The only other person she talks to is a Republican official. Trumpism is an alliance between the petit bourgeois and the 1%, not a working class movement. These guys are switching registration because while their dads might have been coal miners and told them to register Democrat, they're small business owners and office managers.

Edit: Good read about her "work" https://www.vox.com/2018/9/5/17791350/salena-zito-trump-voter-new-york-post-reporter-plagiarism-quotes

As near as I can tell, none of the polls in the RCP average (which has Biden ahead by 7.5%) were conducted in time to fully absorb the revelations about Covid in the Woodward book.

Wolfgang622 wrote:I was looking through the 538 state projections last and something really caught my eye. Mississippi is listed as I think "favored" for Trump - but not "clearly favored" or "very likely to win," its top two designations. That said, Trump's chances of winning MS are 87/13 over Biden. However, what was truly eye-popping was that in one of their "sample" 100 simulations (they do 20,000 on each state), which are supposedly representative of the larger group, Biden wins MS 60-39.

I realize MS, relative to other Southern states outside of maybe SC, has a larger share of AA population. That probably means Dems do a little better there nationally than, say, AL. But what the fuck is with their model? First of all, Trump isn't losing MS barring some kind of astoundingly unthinkable scandal, like he is caught burning an American flag while urinating on a picture of Jesus, and everyone knows it.

And even if he did those things, in no known universe is he losing MS 60-39.

I’m no expert on statistical modeling but when you do a probability curve like that the stuff at the margins can get pretty crazy. Trump’s most extreme result in Mississippi is even further away from the rest of the predictions than that Biden one. Both probably just assume there’s some massive event that cause the election to swing in an unprecedented way. Like one of them dies or drops out of the race or something.

TenuredVulture wrote:As near as I can tell, none of the polls in the RCP average (which has Biden ahead by 7.5%) were conducted in time to fully absorb the revelations about Covid in the Woodward book.

like it matters

MoBettle wrote:

Wolfgang622 wrote:I was looking through the 538 state projections last and something really caught my eye. Mississippi is listed as I think "favored" for Trump - but not "clearly favored" or "very likely to win," its top two designations. That said, Trump's chances of winning MS are 87/13 over Biden. However, what was truly eye-popping was that in one of their "sample" 100 simulations (they do 20,000 on each state), which are supposedly representative of the larger group, Biden wins MS 60-39.

I realize MS, relative to other Southern states outside of maybe SC, has a larger share of AA population. That probably means Dems do a little better there nationally than, say, AL. But what the fuck is with their model? First of all, Trump isn't losing MS barring some kind of astoundingly unthinkable scandal, like he is caught burning an American flag while urinating on a picture of Jesus, and everyone knows it.

And even if he did those things, in no known universe is he losing MS 60-39.

I’m no expert on statistical modeling but when you do a probability curve like that the stuff at the margins can get pretty crazy. Trump’s most extreme result in Mississippi is even further away from the rest of the predictions than that Biden one. Both probably just assume there’s some massive event that cause the election to swing in an unprecedented way. Like one of them dies or drops out of the race or something.

I don't think there really isn't any assumption of "massive events." Rather, I think it is based on the assumptions that underlie the random probability sampling that underlie surveys. This is probably combined with how much the electorate might move between now and November, though I don't know what that would be based on.

Though most people understand the basics of the margin of error in a survey, in a random sample, there's also a confidence interval of 95%. What this means is 95% of the time, the population result will be within the margin of error of the survey. If for example your survey shows Biden leading Trump 55-45, and the moe is +/-2.5, what that really means is that there is a 95% chance that Biden leads Trump between 7.5 and 12.5%

This is based on a normal curve distribution--sample means are assumed to be distributed normally. JH can probably explain this better than me--but there is a 5% chance that the population mean lies outside the moe. And of course, the tails on the normal curve all contain possible population means that even further away than that.

There's probably more to it than that--for example, I don't know how the fact that Mississippi is probably not polled very often factors into all this.

Looking at Arkansas for comparison--back in June we had a poll that showed Trump leading Biden only by 2%. That's likely an example of a sample that lies fairly far out on one of the tails of the normal distribution.

CalvinBall wrote:Re: signs and PA

There are massive groups now that are reaching out to voters. Swing Left and Turn PA Blue here in PA specifically. Smaller ones like PA Stands Up too. Western PA Counties have some more locally focused groups.

These did not exist in 2016. They played a significant role in flipping a lot of state house seats in 2018 and haven't stopped working since.

I think I got a text from PA united. Are they good or fake good?

Bucky wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:As near as I can tell, none of the polls in the RCP average (which has Biden ahead by 7.5%) were conducted in time to fully absorb the revelations about Covid in the Woodward book.

like it matters

Over 50% of the deaths in america are from LTC and ~80% are over 65. I'll call this the invisible population for lack of a better phrase.

From 0 to 65 over 50% of the people that have passed away are hispanic or african american. So if 0 to 65 is half white, then that leaves ~15k white people in the general population that have died.

If I take the assumption that his voting base probably hasn't had much interaction with LTC, then his voting base really has only been adversely affected by lockdowns and not seen anything substantial in the way of the virus. Even more so if they're rural voters where the virus really hasn't had an impact.

I haven't listened to the woodward files or whatever, but if they're 'dont want panic' and 'its not bad' I think his base would largely agree and would only coalesce Republicans more, imo.

The Woodward book and the tapes aren’t going to hurt Trump with his base any more than previous revelations have. It makes for good copy when Draft Dodger Don disses the military or says he intentionally played down a virus which has killed 190k and counting, but his supporters don’t give a crap. They are way, way too far down the right-wing rabbit hole to come up and have a look around at what’s really going on in the world.

Wild conspiracy theories which offer simple explanations to an ambiguous world are much sexier than old people and non-whites dying from a virus or the simple, subtle decency and patriotism of a man like Joe Biden. There’s a special place in hell for those who organize their psychic and emotional lives around hatred, division and exclusion. Unfortunately for them and for us all most won’t learn that in this life, let alone by November 3.