US Election

[EACLucifer]

At least several Texas counties, and Maricopa County in Arizona, now have early voting levels past 2016 total turnout.

Urban or rural counties? That’s where the big divide is after all.

I think the Texan ones were suburban. Maricopa contains four and a half million people, the city of Phoenix, and a number of smaller cities.

[EACLucifer]

At least several Texas counties, and Maricopa County in Arizona, now have early voting levels past 2016 total turnout.

Today's Siena/NYT poll has Trump +4 in Texas. Thatsca top rated pollster.

Biden doing well with white suburban, but badly with Hispanic males. Apparently this divide helps certain Texas state rep districts overall, which is good, but it's disappointing to be worse than Clinton with Hispanic voters.

On the other hand, they failed to predict the level of Hispanic turnout in 2018, and their leading Nate has acknowledged this is still really difficult to predict and relevant to the race.

[EACLucifer]

At least several Texas counties, and Maricopa County in Arizona, now have early voting levels past 2016 total turnout.

Urban or rural counties? That’s where the big divide is after all.

I think the Texan ones were suburban. Maricopa contains four and a half million people, the city of Phoenix, and a number of smaller cities.

My mistake, I'm afraid. There are several Texas counties - Denton, Williamson and Hays - above 2016 total turnout, but Maricopa is just about 2016 early turnout. It's at 1157000 roughly, or about 72% of 2016 turnout.

Denton County is the edge of the Dallas/Fort Worth conglomeration
Williamson County is Austin suburbs, by the look of it
Hays county appears to be suburban, between Austin and San Antonio.

[dyqik]

At least several Texas counties, and Maricopa County in Arizona, now have early voting levels past 2016 total turnout.

Today's Siena/NYT poll has Trump +4 in Texas. Thatsca top rated pollster.

Biden doing well with white suburban, but badly with Hispanic males. Apparently this divide helps certain Texas state rep districts overall, which is good, but it's disappointing to be worse than Clinton with Hispanic voters.

On the other hand, they failed to predict the level of Hispanic turnout in 2018, and their leading Nate has acknowledged this is still really difficult to predict and relevant to the race.

A different poll had Biden doing as well as Clinton with Hispanics, and Trump doing a few points worse. High undecideds and variable turnout though, so it depends on the LV model, as well as polling in Spanish, etc.

[jimbob]

At least several Texas counties, and Maricopa County in Arizona, now have early voting levels past 2016 total turnout.

Today's Siena/NYT poll has Trump +4 in Texas. Thatsca top rated pollster.

Biden doing well with white suburban, but badly with Hispanic males. Apparently this divide helps certain Texas state rep districts overall, which is good, but it's disappointing to be worse than Clinton with Hispanic voters.

On the other hand, they failed to predict the level of Hispanic turnout in 2018, and their leading Nate has acknowledged this is still really difficult to predict and relevant to the race.

There's a lot of anti Biden fake news that we are aware of that's targeting Hispanics

[El Pollo Diablo]

Markey is 34 points up

Be interesting to compare this time to last for Massachusetts. Last time he won by 24 points, so that's the Markey mark to beat.

[Bird on a Fire]

Markey is 34 points up

Be interesting to compare this time to last for Massachusetts. Last time he won by 24 points, so that's the Markey mark to beat.

You have become the very thing you swore to destroy!

[Little waster]

Markey is 34 points up

Be interesting to compare this time to last for Massachusetts. Last time he won by 24 points, so that's the Markey mark to beat.

You have become the very thing you swore to destroy!

No Mercy.

[lpm]

We haven't talked about governor races at all. I've seen nothing online. Are there any?

Haven't talked about the House but it's all set for a repeat of 2018. I can't be arsed to track individual races again, though I'm looking at Iowa district polling as part of tracking the Senate race.

[dyqik]

We haven't talked about governor races at all. I've seen nothing online. Are there any?

Montana looks close. Other than that, there doesn't seem to be anything doing. Missouri, West Virginia and North Carolina are in the recent 538 polls list, along with PR.

[lpm]

Ah yes, Montana, and our old favourite - Greg "dinosaurs on Noah Ark and body-slam Guardian journalists" Gianforte.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Georgia's fun. Could have two democrat senators by January.

[Vertigowooyay]

Trump, leaving the White House today:

"It would be very very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November 3rd, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate and I don't believe that that's by our laws. I don't believe that. So we'll see what happens”

Regardless of opinion polls, this election is going to make Florida 2000 look like good natured too-ing and fro-ing.

[dyqik]

Trump, leaving the White House today:

"It would be very very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November 3rd, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate and I don't believe that that's by our laws. I don't believe that. So we'll see what happens”

Regardless of opinion polls, this election is going to make Florida 2000 look like good natured too-ing and fro-ing.

Of course, in reality, the final results aren't declared until weeks after election day. There's never been a winner declared on election night.

[Vertigowooyay]

Trump, leaving the White House today:

"It would be very very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November 3rd, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate and I don't believe that that's by our laws. I don't believe that. So we'll see what happens”

Regardless of opinion polls, this election is going to make Florida 2000 look like good natured too-ing and fro-ing.

Of course, in reality, the final results aren't declared until weeks after election day. There's never been a winner declared on election night.

Well quite. But when has reality ever troubled him?

[lpm]

In 2000 I was watching CNN. There was the internet as well for news pages but not for video, and Wolf on CNN was as good as it got (can't remember if Wolf was anchoring yet in 2000 though).

The cooperative effort existed then too, in a similar form to today. The major news networks, plus AP, share all data from polling and results, and share number crunching. In theory individual networks should herd together.

At 00:50 UK time, 19:50 Eastern time, CNN called Florida for Gore. I cheered and settled down to spend the rest of the night gloating.

Famously, the polls in the Florida panhandle closed an hour later than the rest of Florida, at 20:00. There was 10 minutes of voting left in part of a state that CNN had called. Did it persuade any voters in a queue to not bother and go home? Nobody knows. And of course polls further west had hours left and Florida for Gore meant the race was over.

In fact, NBC was the first to call Florida, 2 minutes before CNN. The other networks and AP soon followed, by 20:02, as they were herded by the shared data.

After about an hour, 21:00, people on CNN were worrying about the Florida call. People were talking about absentee ballots.

AP retracted their call at 21:50. CNN announced they were retracting their call at 21:54. Everyone else retracted by 22:18. Oh f.ck.

It got worse.

At some point I gave up and got some sleep. I checked in again about 02:00 eastern time.

A few minutes later CNN called Florida for Bush. It was all over, Florida got him to 271. CNN made the formal announcement that George W Bush would be the next President of the United States.

All other networks did the same.

Al Gore phones Bush at about 3 a.m. and concedes. The networks announce this.

Al Gore heads to his Tennessee headquarters to give his concession speech.

Errors are found in the raw results data. Gore doesn't show. The networks start to worry.

At 3:40 Gore phones Bush back and retracts his concession.

At 3:57 CNN retracts their call for the second time in the night. Florida is again too close to call. What a double f.ck up.

All the other networks withdraw their calls. CNN later conducts an enquiry and concluded it had done itself the most damage, but at least everyone else had trashed their reputations as well.

For the next 36 days I became an amateur expert in hanging chads. There were only primitive forums to talk about it, though. Was a lot of fun. Until, you know, the 8 years of Bush and the destruction of the global climate.

[dyqik]

The Economist forecast is a lot more soothing than the 538 one right now.

[nekomatic]

NBC will not predict the winner at 8.32 on reports from 29 districts. That much is for certain.

[FlammableFlower]

God knows if it's true, but in the House reaction in Minnesota, there is apparently a voice message left by the late Legal Pot Now candidate (died in September) to a friend in which he claims to have been put up by the GOP to be a third party to siphon off liberal votes...

just

[nekomatic]

Why rushing Amy Coney Barrett on to the Supreme Court may hurt Trump more than it helps him

[Little waster]

With concerns about technical difficulties and hacking, the US unveils the latest innovation in securely and simply correctly registering a person's vote.

Marking an X on a piece of paper!

“We’re really excited about the move to paper but this has not been a terrific year for any kind of technological transition.”

Well mistakes will happen.

We truly live in an Age of Wonder.

*puts on aviators as the future is so bright*

[EACLucifer]

God knows if it's true, but in the House reaction in Minnesota, there is apparently a voice message left by the late Legal Pot Now candidate (died in September) to a friend in which he claims to have been put up by the GOP to be a third party to siphon off liberal votes...

just

Supporting third parties to siphon off votes is a long and inglorious tradition in American politics. Right now, for example, the Lincoln Project are running ads for Bill Bledsoe, a hard-right Constitution Party candidate who withdrew too late to not be on the ballot in South Carolina, with the hope of undermining Lindsey Graham and helping Jaime Harrison. Harrison's own campaign are running adverts that don't strictly speaking support Bledsoe, but rather re-iterate that South Carolinians need to make sure they don't vote for the pro-guns, anti-abortion, right-of flip-flopping Lindsey Graham, hardline Pro-Trump Bledsoe, with more than 50% of the ad outlining Bledsoe's policies.

That said, Linsey Graham's an odious sh.t and the senate is functionally gerrymandered for the Republicans, so I don't mind in this situation.

[dyqik]

God knows if it's true, but in the House reaction in Minnesota, there is apparently a voice message left by the late Legal Pot Now candidate (died in September) to a friend in which he claims to have been put up by the GOP to be a third party to siphon off liberal votes...

just

And SCOTUS denied the Republican party's request to cancel the election because the Legal Pot Now candidate died.

[dyqik]

God knows if it's true, but in the House reaction in Minnesota, there is apparently a voice message left by the late Legal Pot Now candidate (died in September) to a friend in which he claims to have been put up by the GOP to be a third party to siphon off liberal votes...

just

Supporting third parties to siphon off votes is a long and inglorious tradition in American politics. Right now, for example, the Lincoln Project are running ads for Bill Bledsoe, a hard-right Constitution Party candidate who withdrew too late to not be on the ballot in South Carolina, with the hope of undermining Lindsey Graham and helping Jaime Harrison. Harrison's own campaign are running adverts that don't strictly speaking support Bledsoe, but rather re-iterate that South Carolinians need to make sure they don't vote for the pro-guns, anti-abortion, right-of flip-flopping Lindsey Graham, hardline Pro-Trump Bledsoe, with more than 50% of the ad outlining Bledsoe's policies.

That said, Linsey Graham's an odious sh.t and the senate is functionally gerrymandered for the Republicans, so I don't mind in this situation.

There's also Kanye West, who the GOP likely supplied with fake ballot signatures, and then there's whatever Lieberman is doing in the Georgia special race.

[Grumble]

Why rushing Amy Coney Barrett on to the Supreme Court may hurt Trump more than it helps him

I’m not going to go back and find it, but I did say this a while back. I’m a bit behind with podcasts but Cecil from Cognitive Dissonance said this too. Silver linings I suppose. But if it would be a reason to vote for trump it’s possible that we’d have both trump and a conservative judge next year instead of just the one.