General US Politics

[-Cynthia-]

The Republicans ran almost no negative campaigning against Bernie(because giving Hillary a challenge hurts her more overall) and Hillary didn't campaign negatively against him because she was confident of winning the nomination and alienating his supporters would hurt her in the long run. Stuff like Bernie writing an editorial on how women fantasize about being raped by multiple men was not featured very much in the news, but you can bet that Trump would bring that up continually and it would look really bad.

[Nobody]

i'm sure all the cubans in florida would absolutely love the fact that sanders refused to say bad things about fidel castro and actually praised him in the past

i mean, i think sanders would win against trump, but he against Kasich or Rubio? No way he'd win.

BTW, I don't get why this "sanders would do better against trump" stuff is being brought up right now, considering Hillary is leading polls with huge margins. If the polls numbers are correct and are kept until november, Hillary would win the biggest victory since 1984. I mean, she's leading in Arizona and Georgia lol

Edited August 11, 2016 by Nooooooooooooooooooooobody

[Tryhard]

The Republicans ran almost no negative campaigning against Bernie(because giving Hillary a challenge hurts her more overall) and Hillary didn't campaign negatively against him because she was confident of winning the nomination and alienating his supporters would hurt her in the long run. Stuff like Bernie writing an editorial on how women fantasize about being raped by multiple men was not featured very much in the news, but you can bet that Trump would bring that up continually and it would look really bad.

and everything with hillary won't make her look bad? i don't know about you, but i have much more confidence for sanders to actually attack trump's policies than hillary.

she pretty much did alienate his supporters.

BTW, I don't get why this "sanders would do better against trump" stuff is being brought up right now, considering Hillary is leading polls with huge margins. If the polls numbers are correct and are kept until november, Hillary would win the biggest victory since 1984. I mean, she's leading in Arizona and Georgia lol

because sanders was literally doubling or even tripling hilarys lead in polls versus trump consistently (hillary was often +5 while sanders was often +10-15). if you want a higher chance of a landslide victory well those number speak for themselves.

granted, for hillary they have fluctuated. right after the DNC leaks, trump was on average winning.

Edited August 11, 2016 by Tryhard

[Nobody]

Because sanders was literally doubling or even tripling hilarys lead in polls versus trump consistently (hillary was often +5 while sanders was often +10-15). if you want a higher chance of a landslide victory well those number speak for themselves.

granted, for hillary they have fluctuated. right after the DNC leaks, trump was on average winning.

Hillary is literally getting that sort of lead on polls right now. There have been a handful of polls released latter in which she had 10~15 point advantages, and that's after how much she's been attacked. No one laid a finger on Bernie Sanders.

This video alone would deeply damage him on Florida. Imagine if the republicans decided to air that on ads around Miami.

Edited August 11, 2016 by Nooooooooooooooooooooobody

[Tryhard]

Hillary is literally getting that sort of lead on polls right now. There have been a handful of polls released latter in which she had 10~15 point advantages, and that's after extreme attacks from both the republicans and the far left. No one laid a finger on Bernie Sanders.

This video alone would deeply damage him on Florida. Imagine if the republicans decided to air that on ads around Miami.

yes, and that lead is due to trump imploding, disrespecting a dead soldiers family and pretty much hinting that second ammendment people can "stop hillary" as well as many other gaffes. we'll see how it develops over the next few months. well, trump did take a few potshots at sanders, but all he had was ad hominems. you're probably right about there being a much bigger campaign to attack sanders if he won the primary candidacy, but there's nothing to suggest that sanders wouldn't have done as well if not better than hillary based on those preliminary polls.

i've seen polls of 10% leads months before get completely turned over in the event of the brexit vote. you don't really want to leave anything to chance when you might have a better option and i don't think me saying sanders having a better chance against trump was inaccurate.

even if she does win, it really has nothing to do with any competence on her part.

Edited August 11, 2016 by Tryhard

[Time the Crestfallen]

I feel like I need to remind everyone that many polls also said that Brexit wouldn't go through, yet here we are. I get using them as an indicator of something, but sometimes it feels like people put way too much trust into such things.

[BrightBow]

I suppose there isn't a way to tell how many people questioned in these polls would even bother to vote? I would expect that Trump's supporters are the most enthusiastic about voting.

[CyborgZeta]

We know polls don't reflect actual turnout. I imagine a lot of the polls showing Remain as being favored asked a lot of people, like millennials, who said they'd vote Remain but didn't actually turn out to vote (millennials in the UK had the lowest turnout in the referendum).

Another thing I'm wondering is how certain polls are conducted. Like for Georgia polls, are they oversampling people from Atlanta? Outside of Atlanta, Georgia is a pretty red state, and I can't imagine it going blue despite what polls suggest.

[Alertcircuit]

Sanders was untested though. We don't know how he'd poll after the GOP run the hammer and sickle ads on him.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

yeah polls aren't really reliable.

a good example is this one news channel i was watchin while working out where they discussed that 60% of voters in this poll said america was heading in the wrong direction in the past 8 years, 40% blamed democrats for everything going on, but the majority of 80 thought obama was doing a good job, dispite the previous two polls saying otherwise.

they just aren't accurate in terms of what everyone thinks, as polls are just random people's opinions (who as Cyborg Zeta said, might not actually vote), the actual cast in votes are the ones that matter by election day.

Edited August 11, 2016 by HF Makalov Fanboy Kai

[-Cynthia-]

We know polls don't reflect actual turnout. I imagine a lot of the polls showing Remain as being favored asked a lot of people, like millennials, who said they'd vote Remain but didn't actually turn out to vote (millennials in the UK had the lowest turnout in the referendum).

Another thing I'm wondering is how certain polls are conducted. Like for Georgia polls, are they oversampling people from Atlanta? Outside of Atlanta, Georgia is a pretty red state, and I can't imagine it going blue despite what polls suggest.

Georgia has a few factors that make it a potential blue state:

1) As you mentioned, Atlanta is a large urban area which tend to vote very blue, even for white voters. This differentiates it from say, neighboring South Carolina which is more rural and less urban.

2) Georgia has a large black population which votes very blue.

3) Increasing number of young professionals moving to the area, who tend to vote blue.

4) increasing Hispanic population, who also is voting very blue in recent elections

Georgia shares a lot of these factors with Virginia (a former solid red state that now leans blue) and North Carolina (which polls indicate is now a toss up like Ohio and Florida and voted for Obama in '08 and almost voted for him in 2012), so despite people thinking of Georgia as a very solid red state a flip isn't inconceivable, particularly given that the Clinton campaign has a lot more money to throw around and a more established ground campaign.

Edited August 11, 2016 by -Cynthia-

[Nobody]

We know polls don't reflect actual turnout. I imagine a lot of the polls showing Remain as being favored asked a lot of people, like millennials, who said they'd vote Remain but didn't actually turn out to vote (millennials in the UK had the lowest turnout in the referendum).

Another thing I'm wondering is how certain polls are conducted. Like for Georgia polls, are they oversampling people from Atlanta? Outside of Atlanta, Georgia is a pretty red state, and I can't imagine it going blue despite what polls suggest.

eh, in 2008 georgia went 52-47, not that much of a gap. Combine that with what Cynthia said in the post above and it's not that hard to see it going blue this time.

yeah polls aren't really reliable.

a good example is this one news channel i was watchin while working out where they discussed that 60% of voters in this poll said america was heading in the wrong direction in the past 8 years, 40% blamed democrats for everything going on, but the majority of 80 thought obama was doing a good job, dispite the previous two polls saying otherwise.

they just aren't accurate in terms of what everyone thinks, as polls are just random people's opinions (who as Cyborg Zeta said, might not actually vote), the actual cast in votes are the ones that matter by election day.

polls aren't just "just random people's opinions" there are plenty of studies behind them, and the pollsters pick people according to methodologies to make sure they're as accurate as possible. Also, polling in the USA has been pretty reliable in presidential elections, including this circle's primaries.

I mean, yeah, we don't know how the turn out between the electors of the different candidates go, which could definitely be a factor (though I doubt it'd be enough to overcome a 10% gap), and that was probably the reason of the tight Brexit victory (polls were indicating it'd be really close. IIRC the result fell in the margin of error), but just by polling like 2000 people (those polls generally interview even more people), you get satisfactory results in a presidential election, if the methodology used is adequate. It's something anyone who studied statistics know.

Edited August 11, 2016 by Nooooooooooooooooooooobody

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

even if polls are reliable, which they aren't, that's require the person in question to believe that the media is honest and not running an agenda, which i don't believe we have an honest media and nothing anyone says is going to convince me on that.

calling it now, Indiana has a better chance of going red than blue, if i'm wrong then so be it but there is barely any Hillary support(at best there are some advertisements, but those still focus more on trump then her) in the major parts of my state, let alone in the capital city where i live.

that and Indiana went Red in 2012 and has been red for most of its recent voting results with the exception of 2008 which barely got blue. http://www.270towin.com/states/Indiana

ok sure polls are nice and reliable, but only after everything is said and done, sure this site claims its favorable in trump's side, which is good news for me but i am not going to take it some internet site or some liberal media site for truth over what i see in front of my eyes every time i go outside, which is "trump 2016" "hillary for prison 2016" and "MAGA hats"

getting abit heated, might have to dunk my head in ice water again soon.

[Nobody]

Uhh, polling IS suggesting Indiana is going red this time, who said otherwise?

Also, i legitimately don't see what the integrity of media and whether or not it's running an agenda has to do with polling results

Edited August 11, 2016 by Nooooooooooooooooooooobody

[-Cynthia-]

Yeah, Indiana going blue would be a surprise. It did happen in '08 but that was...weird. Maybe Indiana Republicans had really low turnout or something.

Individual polls can be conducted in certain ways that over/undersample certain voters, such as only calling people on landlines will oversample older voters. I'd suggest using a poll aggregate site like http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ for the most overall accuracy.

[Sylphid]

Sorry that this is somewhat off-topic, but something caught my attention in this discussion.

It seems comments like "journalism is dead" and "media isn't honest" are being thrown around quite a lot (I admit my sample size isn't the greatest though). What I'm wondering is, how bad are things for this to be the case? Coming from Finland with it's fairly trustworthy/fair media (I like to think, at least), comments like that sound downright scary to me...

[Moblin Major General]

Sorry that this is somewhat off-topic, but something caught my attention in this discussion.

It seems comments like "journalism is dead" and "media isn't honest" are being thrown around quite a lot (I admit my sample size isn't the greatest though). What I'm wondering is, how bad are things for this to be the case? Coming from Finland with it's fairly trustworthy/fair media (I like to think, at least), comments like that sound downright scary to me...

Journalism in the US is almost never honest and is always biased. The media is what got America into the Spanish-American War. They used a design flaw to orchestrate an unnecessary conflict in the Caribbean, not to mentioned they paved the way for the only western-based Communist nation. I'm guessing the association between politicians and the media is much more limited in Finland than in the US, else this wouldn't bother you as much.

[Topazd]

Coming from Finland with it's fairly trustworthy/fair media (I like to think, at least), comments like that sound downright scary to me...

https://rsf.org/en/ranking

Obviously doesn't envoke quality control in any great quantity (MV-lehti), but completely anecdotally I'd say (and argue that the index reflects that) journalism in general is more respected and much less ideologically saturated or polarized than in the US, even including party-produced publications.

Edited August 11, 2016 by Topazd

[Alertcircuit]

And now there's a new problem with the internet, because now that nobody wants to pay for news anymore, news sites have to do clickbait articles and stuff that will net them ad revenue. The whole thing just gets even more muddled.

[CyborgZeta]

Huh, I didn't know Clinton had even made such remarks back in 2008.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

Huh, I didn't know Clinton had even made such remarks back in 2008.

as i said before, clinton and trump both have that credibility score of 3 for a reason ; ]

but yeah its like Feld said regarding social media and Alert said about the internet, i just can not bring myself to trust random sites and strangers if it has anything more then factual numbers(more so when alot of media stuff is liberal and i'm more of a conservative). I will rather trust my own eyes and feelings.

https://rsf.org/en/ranking

Obviously doesn't envoke quality control in any great quantity (MV-lehti), but completely anecdotally I'd say (and argue that the index reflects that) journalism in general is more respected and much less ideologically saturated or polarized than in the US, even including party-produced publications.

interesting link, thanks for the finding.

yeah that sounds about right for the US regarding its rank, not bottom barrel but still not what i'd call fair.

Edited August 11, 2016 by HF Makalov Fanboy Kai

[Tryhard]

polls aren't just "just random people's opinions" there are plenty of studies behind them, and the pollsters pick people according to methodologies to make sure they're as accurate as possible. Also, polling in the USA has been pretty reliable in presidential elections, including this circle's primaries.

I mean, yeah, we don't know how the turn out between the electors of the different candidates go, which could definitely be a factor (though I doubt it'd be enough to overcome a 10% gap), and that was probably the reason of the tight Brexit victory (polls were indicating it'd be really close. IIRC the result fell in the margin of error), but just by polling like 2000 people (those polls generally interview even more people), you get satisfactory results in a presidential election, if the methodology used is adequate. It's something anyone who studied statistics know.

I'm not talking about the polls within a few days of the vote, though. I'm talking about the ones some months away from it in comparison. Some of them had majority 10% leads (far outside the standard 3% margin of error iirc) for Remain. It's natural for it to become tighter as it reaches the vote and complacency could lead to an unexpected result.

My point is that likability polls don't fluctuate as much, as it is simply asking your opinion on someone. They would change over, say, a four/eight year presidency for someone like Obama (even then, he's still generally well liked... so much so that most democrats would seem to prefer a third term from him than Hillary). The fact that Hillary and Trump are record unlikable candidates for both parties does not exactly not make a good case for the stability of US politics in any regard. You're essentially hoping for "the lesser of two evils" crowd to come out and vote for Hillary, while Bernie is just statistically far better liked. That does lead to what Hillary should do, though - drop all pretenses of trying to be liked by the public and just attack Trump on his positions repeatedly.

Sanders was untested though. We don't know how he'd poll after the GOP run the hammer and sickle ads on him.

if the general populace is dumb enough to not know the difference between a democratic socialist and a communist or are deceived by such then they deserve Trump

I feel like I need to remind everyone that many polls also said that Brexit wouldn't go through, yet here we are. I get using them as an indicator of something, but sometimes it feels like people put way too much trust into such things.

They are probably the only way to back up my claims in any way, though I acknowledge their fallibility. Edited August 11, 2016 by Tryhard

[Moblin Major General]

if the general populace is dumb enough to not know the difference between a democratic socialist and a communist or are deceived by such then they deserve Trump.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! You expect a country that ousted several DS leaders during the Cold War to understand the difference between Democratic Socialism and Communism? Not insulting you, just saying that America literally is that stupid.

Edit: This would've been a great time to use Risitas.

Edited August 11, 2016 by Feldmarschall Rommel

[Tryhard]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! You expect a country that ousted several DS leaders during the Cold War to understand the difference between Democratic Socialism and Communism? Not insulting you, just saying that America literally is that stupid.

I know, friend, but I have to remain hopeful. I'm emotionally disconnected from it all, anyway. I find it entertaining and interesting. I honestly hope Trump wins because hey, may as well see the fireworks, right?

[Nobody]

My point is that likability polls don't fluctuate as much, as it is simply asking your opinion on someone. They would change over, say, a four/eight year presidency for someone like Obama (even then, he's still generally well liked... so much so that most democrats would seem to prefer a third term from him than Hillary). The fact that Hillary and Trump are record unlikable candidates for both parties does not exactly not make a good case for the stability of US politics in any regard. You're essentially hoping for "the lesser of two evils" crowd to come out and vote for Hillary, while Bernie is just statistically far better liked. That does lead to what Hillary should do, though - drop all pretenses of trying to be liked by the public and just attack Trump on his positions repeatedly.

well, tbh we don't know exactly how it'd have gone had Sanders won the primaries. It's all up to speculation.

I disagree that Clinton should only attack Trump, though, rather than trying to promote herself and her policies and try to convince people why they work. An campaign that is only full of attacks isn't exactly healthy and gets old after a while.

if the general populace is dumb enough to not know the difference between a democratic socialist and a communist or are deceived by such then they deserve Trump

What if they do know the difference, but would rather not vote for a democratic socialist as their first option? I myself would only vote for a democratic socialist (as opposed to social democrats, which are way more moderate and more to my liking) as the lesser of the two evils (which tbf would be true in a case of Sanders x all of the republicans in the primaries). I'm a centrist and I'm sure there are plenty of people who also are, and many of them would take Clinton over Sanders, just because they think her policies are better.

Edited August 11, 2016 by Nooooooooooooooooooooobody