2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[Inanna]

It’s interesting that marketing research has been stating this for years: surveys are biased. Revealed preferences are the way to go; don’t ask people. And if you have to ask them, don’t ask them how *they* would vote/behave, ask them how they think their neighbor would.

[Túrin Turambar]

It’s interesting that marketing research has been stating this for years: surveys are biased. Revealed preferences are the way to go; don’t ask people. And if you have to ask them, don’t ask them how *they* would vote/behave, ask them how they think their neighbor would.

This, I understand, was Trafalgar's methodology, and they were the pollster with results most favourable to President Trump. That said, they were off in 2018, and in states where the President performed more or less as expected, so it's hard to say. For example, why were there apparently so many shy Trump voters in Wisconsin and not Georgia?

[Dave_LF]

Nate Silver has "seen enough," in his own... erm... pictograms (Twitter is aggressively taking down tweets that try to call the election before the networks do, so now everyone is talking in code).

Hidden text.

[Túrin Turambar]

It's now about 12:40am EST Friday, and while it's not impossible to get a result in PA in the next hour or two, or I don't think it's likely. The last few tens of thousands of votes in GA are taking their time, too, and the state is so close I expect networks will be cautious about calling it. Nothing expected from AZ and NV until around midday tomorrow. So it looks like I'll be going to bed tonight and, for the third time, be hoping for a result when I wake up (it's 4:40pm Friday local time for me). But I agree with Nate Silver that the odds are strongly favouring Biden now.

All these time zone jumps are doing my head in, at least twice today I've forgotten what day of the week it is here.

Anyway, here are some more Nevada counting memes.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The Georgia Secretary of State said no more updates tonight, and I don't think we will get enough ballots done in Pennsylvania.

Tomorrow is the day.

[River]

Yesterday a guy at work was wondering out loud how Nevada could just stop counting. I drily pointed out that states make their own rules and some are better at this than others.

GA is going to be recounted.

PA really should have allowed the mail-in ballots to be processed sooner. That was a dumb move.

[Túrin Turambar]

PA really should have allowed the mail-in ballots to be processed sooner. That was a dumb move.

But then we wouldn't all have had the fun of sitting in front of the computer for four days pressing the refresh button every five minutes!

I understand NV's position - they're still counting but will only report daily. But they're still not going all that quickly. I would have thought being able to count quickly would be useful in Las Vegas.

[N.E. Brigand]

Yesterday a guy at work was wondering out loud how Nevada could just stop counting. I drily pointed out that states make their own rules and some are better at this than others.

GA is going to be recounted.

PA really should have allowed the mail-in ballots to be processed sooner. That was a dumb move.

Steve Kornacki just now (2:14 a.m. EST) reporting that a few hundred more votes have been counted in Clayton Co., Georgia, taking Trump's statewide lead down to 1,267.

Edit: Trump's lead in GA is down to 665 as of 2:47 a.m. (based again on a batch from Clayton Co., which appears to have about 5,000 votes still to count), and I'm going to bed. By the time I wake up, Biden probably will lead in that state.

- - - - - - - - -
As for Pennsylvania's decision, despite repeated requests, to start counting mail ballos early: was it dumb or was it devious? It gives President Trump plenty of time to argue that there is fraud working against him, and thus for bad actors who support him to take extreme actions.

For instance, a Republican organization in Wisconsin today sent an email to its volunteers urging them to reach out to Trump supporters in Pennsylvania and encourage them to turn in their absentee ballots NOW, after the deadline, in what appears to be an effort to give Trump's campaign a chance to say: See, there really is fraud going on, so the counting must stop.

Oh, look, just nine minutes agfo (2:22 a.m. EST), President Trump tweeted out that there are no Republican observers in the Philadelphia ballot counting station, and that the votes counted are therefore "illegal."

What a terrible lie. Why does he hate our democracy?

[N.E. Brigand]

There's a claim circulating on the right that Milwaukee's turnout was suspiciously high this year.

It wasn't.

[Cerin]

"Polling is difficult and imperfect, which is evidence that mainstream media outlets are dishonest and biased" is certainly a very post-Trump way of viewing the world.

Polling aside, there is, imo, no question that the media is biased. And yes, the degree to which it has abandoned even a pretense of neutrality and openly embraced a pro-Democrat activist role is a post-Trump effect. Hatred of Trump by the elite is the very reason for it.

(but not, funnily enough, in 2018).

There's nothing funny about it. Trump wasn't on the ballot in 2018. As far as I'm aware, people aren't doxed, cancelled, fired, boycotted or called racist and seven different kinds of phobic for merely admitting support for Republicans (at least, not yet). Those things only happen to people who admit they support Trump.

[Túrin Turambar]

(but not, funnily enough, in 2018).

There's nothing funny about it. Trump wasn't on the ballot in 2018. As far as I'm aware, people aren't doxed, cancelled, fired, boycotted or called racist and seven different kinds of phobic for merely admitting support for Republicans (at least, not yet). Those things only happen to people who admit they support Trump.

There's certainly a link between Trump and polling errors, but I don't know if voter shyness is the cause. There was no shortage of Trump yard signs, bumper stickers, and MAGA hats in red states. I saw some of them on my drive from New Orleans to Washington D.C. in 2018. There may be an element of shy voter syndrome among Black and Latino Trump voters, of whom there was more this year than in 2016. But there also seems to be an issue with modelling turnout. In both 2016 and 2020, people came out to vote for Trump who didn't normally vote.

[yovargas]

Polling aside, there is, imo, no question that the media is biased. And yes, the degree to which it has abandoned even a pretense of neutrality and openly embraced a pro-Democrat activist role is a post-Trump effect. Hatred of Trump by the elite is the very reason for it.

Can't you see here how you yourself have developed a major bias against "the media", and are interpreting everything through that bias? There are plenty of legitimate reasons why polling would have shown and been reported the way it was, but you automatically assume it's because of media bias. That assumption is a reflection of your bias.

[Alatar]

Cold be hand and heart and bone,
And cold be sleep under stone,
Ooooh, there's always Georgia,
Never more to wake on stony bed,
Never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead.
But, ya know, there's always Georgia.
In the black wind the stars shall die,
and still on gold here let them lie,
Baby, there's always Georgia,
'Til the Dark Lord lifts his hand
Over dead sea and withered land,
Mah Precious, there's always Georgia.

Georgia, Georgia, Geooooooooorgia,
There'll always be a Georgia.

This post wins the thread. And maybe the Internet.

[Túrin Turambar]

Cold be hand and heart and bone,
And cold be sleep under stone,
Ooooh, there's always Georgia,
Never more to wake on stony bed,
Never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead.
But, ya know, there's always Georgia.
In the black wind the stars shall die,
and still on gold here let them lie,
Baby, there's always Georgia,
'Til the Dark Lord lifts his hand
Over dead sea and withered land,
Mah Precious, there's always Georgia.

Georgia, Georgia, Geooooooooorgia,
There'll always be a Georgia.

This post wins the thread. And maybe the Internet.

The non-Americans have been doing their best to bring in a bit of levity, but the Americans all seem to be a bit on-edge for some reason...

Biden has now taken a lead in GA, so it's getting there. Slowly.

ETA: Major breaking news - CNN had a PornHub tab open on their election projection computer. I suppose we need to pass the time somehow.

ETA2: OK, looks like that might have been fake news - someone doctored the graphic. Maybe I need to be flagged for spreading misinformation about the election.

[Inanna]

Yes, a bit on-edge. I wonder why.

Somebody decode that Nate Silver pictogram for me?

[Dave_LF]

"I've seen enough" (hive sea knee off).

Yeah, that poem is very funny, Jude. There was some breaking piece of news I was eager to talk about when I first encountered it, so I didn't fully appreciate its subtle (and not-so-subtle) charms until now.

[elengil]

Hatred of Trump by the elite is the very reason for it.

Trump IS the elite.

[Dave_LF]

Biden has taken the lead in PA. At least one media outlet (Decision Desk) has called it and the election.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Nate Silver says that in the end, Biden will probably win Pennsylvania by about 3 points, meaning that the polls were within a normal polling error.

[Dave_LF]

Indeed. Some states including but not necessarily limited to FL, WI, and OH seem like they were polled wrong, but elsewhere, things were basically within in the margin of error.