this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
-6 points (45.3% liked)

politics

19088 readers
4076 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] RaincoatsGeorge@lemmy.zip 47 points 11 months ago (32 children)

Polls are completely unreliable, especially this far out. They predicted trumps loss the first go around and we endured 4 years of that POS. They predicted red waves the last 2 election cycles and it never manifested.

Its a problem with the techniques they're using to gather data I guess. Whether it's the cold calling or what, I don't know, but it clearly isn't effective to get honest assessments anymore.

That being said it will never not blow my mind that it's even slightly close. Last election millions of Americans sat through 4 years of trump and said yep that worked out great for me. Everyone I talked to who was in that camp had various incorrect reasons but you don't need to be right, you just have to feel like you're right.

I think the reality is that Biden is not and has never been a popular candidate. His age works against him. Kamala is equally unappealing and doesn't help things either. The biggest problem right now is that Biden has come out very strongly pro Israel (which every single president has done including Trump) and he has not done enough to condemn the Israeli genocide. Millenials and Gen z are at the very least anti genocide and largely pro Palestine so that's not helping his case, although they're short sighted if they assume Trump would be the better answer here.

If Trump wins our democracy is over. 'Oh you're overreacting'. Yeah they said that to me before Trumps presidency and I was correct then as I am correct now.

We have to get through 24 and not have a deranged traitorous lunatic take the reigns of the country again. We can discuss the next steps in the post Trump era but we won't get the option to discuss it if Trump somehow wins.

Vote like you value this country. Convince others to vote. Apathy is a vote for Trump. Choosing not to vote for Biden because you're anti Israel is voting for Trump, who is also going to continue right along supporting Israel.

[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (4 children)

We have to get through 24 and not have a deranged traitorous lunatic take the reigns of the country again. We can discuss the next steps in the post Trump era but we won’t get the option to discuss it if Trump somehow wins.

This has been every election since 2012, and the discussion doesn't happen.

[–] RaincoatsGeorge@lemmy.zip 22 points 11 months ago (19 children)

No I don't think that's accurate. If McCain or Romney had won I never had a fear that our democracy would have eroded. I certainly wouldn't have agreed with all of their policy choices but both men I think are old guard politicians and would have largely done the job with an undercurrent of honor that just doesn't exist with trump. I never would have had any fear that if they lost the next election they wouldn't peacefully turn over power.

With trump all of that has changed. The only reason his coup didn't work is because most everyone involved was dense as fuck and couldn't come up with a cohesive strategy to get it done. Give him another chance and 4 years to prepare and he will find success.

Biden is not the candidate I wanted, but he's the candidate we've got, and in our broken political system that's as good as it's going to get. We can talk about 3rd parties and changing the system but none of that is happening before 24.

The polls are right about one thing. Trump definitely could win again. That should be very alarming to any rational American.

load more comments (19 replies)
[–] return2ozma@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

2020: "Elect Biden and once he's POTUS then we can push him left!" ... They never pushed him left.

[–] Thecornershop@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago (10 children)

So vote for the white nationalist Fascist instead?? Yeah that's what the left should do.

How about instead you get this drowning US democracy onto the safety of the beach then you can start resuscitating it.

load more comments (10 replies)
[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

Precisely. It was a steaming crock of shit then, and has no credibility as a message now.

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The game is rigged, and if you lose people die. Potentially heaps of them.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

And that's one of the main reasons why Biden is the candidate AND why most people who weren't alive the last time the US had a president to the left of Reagan don't trust the DNC much.

[–] Rolder@reddthat.com 3 points 11 months ago

I reckon the techniques they use favor older people. For example, I can see a boomer answering a cold call no problem, but I couldn’t say the same for a younger generation.

[–] Hypx@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

One problem is cost. It takes millions of dollars to do a truly scientific poll these days. Robocalls don't work anymore due to cell phone penetration. The phonebook is dead, and along with it any credible listings of numbers that represent real people. Plus very low response rates and spam filters blocking much of polling calls even then. You pretty much have to go door-to-door in order to get a truly good poll, which is something few organizations can do.

As a result, most cheaply done polls use non-random samples and add a giant "fudge factor" to make it look random. It's not clear how there models really work and there's no way to audit them.

load more comments (29 replies)
[–] Jaysyn@kbin.social 17 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, Romney & Clinton were also "winning" at this point in their respective elections. The media wants a horse race.

Polls are garbage & Democrats have been beating them by 9+ points at the voting booth since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Biden has a $1B election warchest that hasn't even been tapped into yet.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 3 points 11 months ago

"Panic! Check back with us to see what's happening!" —Media

Yeah, fuck that. Real journalism is happening, but it isn't coming from MSM.

[–] n1ckn4m3@kbin.social 10 points 11 months ago

If anyone has watched the last 8-12 years, they'd realize polls exist solely to suck people into a false sense of security to manipulate the vote.

Ignore the fucking polls. GO VOTE. Vote in your local elections. Vote in the primaries. Vote in national elections. Polls are completely and utterly bullshit, just ignore them and GO VOTE.

[–] Chainweasel@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

Good, the last thing we need is for people to get complacent and think Biden has this in the bag. People stay home when they think it's a sure thing.

They really need to restructure how they do polls in general to specifically address the fact that American politics are extremely polarized and kind of a shitshow at this point. All they’d need to do is to tweak the questions asked to include the context “in the election” as well as “in the general election”.

Biden’s definitely done some decent stuff, but he’s also done a bunch of stuff that I legitimately hate, as well as sandbagged and slow-walked a bunch of really crucial stuff. At the same time: there is no fucking way I will ever vote for a GOP candidate ever again after watching them become what they are today. The Republican party is, with complete seriousness, too far gone.

[–] Pratai@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago

lol…. Polls.

[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Centrists are just gonna dismiss any poll they don't like. Gonna see a lot of that in this thread. "I imagine they only called landlines, therefore [vaguely ageist sentiment]!"; "The election's a year away!"; "Clinton lost, so polls mean nothing!"

Generally speaking, you want polls to get better for your candidate, not worse. Even if all the flaws they imagine are present in every poll as part of a nefarious plot by multiple pollsters to make Biden look bad, the numbers shouldn't be dropping relative to the last round of polls that were totally all rigged by the evil conspiiiiiracy of pollsters.

load more comments
view more: next ›