Thanks, @stonespring, that all makes a lot of sense. I do have years of experience being nice to people on the phone who aren't being nice to me -- though at the church I never hung up on someone!
Thanks, @stonespring, that all makes a lot of sense. I do have years of experience being nice to people on the phone who aren't being nice to me -- though at the church I never hung up on someone!
If they say they are voting for Trump, just say thank you and hope you have a good day, don’t just hang up!
But if they start yelling abuse at you, then you can interrupt them to say have a good day and hang up. No need to let someone yell at you or say really nasty things about Harris or Democrats.
This almost never happens when you are making calls for Get out the vote. At this stage most people they are targeting are likely to vote for Democrats and we just want to follow up with them to make sure they have a plan to vote, know all they need to know about how/where to vote, if they need a ride to the polls, etc.
So, the Iowa which was released on Friday or Saturday shows Harris ahead of Trump by three points. They interviewed 1000 individuals and narrowed the responses down to those who said they will vote or plan to vote. It found Harris was leading more among older white males than had been previously assumed. The thought is the abortion question is moving the scale. The males have wives, daughters, and granddaughters who are pushing for a pro-abortion amendment. While the parties have not spent much money in Iowa, Iowa voters are in the major media markets of Minnesota, Nebraska and Wisconsin/
This poll is raising a number of questions about the polls this year. For one, has there been too much emphasis on the swing states and not enough polling on states that are assumed to be solid red or blue. Then too, maybe the national polls put to much weight on Trump voters. Also, the national polls started out comparing two old white men. When Biden dropped out and Harris took over, it does not appear the national polls made an adjustment for a woman candidate. Finally, the Iowa poll is suggesting the national polls have not taken the question of abortion into account.
Well, typically fascistically, Tr*mp has declared the pollster his enemy. In response, the pollster, Ann Selzer, has rather deftly responded to his tantrum.
Well, typically fascistically, Tr*mp has declared the pollster his enemy. In response, the pollster, Ann Selzer, has rather deftly responded to his tantrum.
Heh! Ann Selzer is, to the best of my knowledge at least, a very well-respected pollster.
This poll is raising a number of questions about the polls this year. For one, has there been too much emphasis on the swing states and not enough polling on states that are assumed to be solid red or blue. Then too, maybe the national polls put to much weight on Trump voters. Also, the national polls started out comparing two old white men. When Biden dropped out and Harris took over, it does not appear the national polls made an adjustment for a woman candidate. Finally, the Iowa poll is suggesting the national polls have not taken the question of abortion into account.
If a race in this world was truly tied 50%-50%, the polls would not all produce results that split 50%-50%. Imagine if pollsters in this world conducted 100 identical surveys of 863 randomly selected voters (that’s the average sample size of this year’s swing state polls). The results in 95 of those polls would show candidates getting support somewhere in a range of 46.7% to 53.3% — even though we know in this imaginary world that the race is actually tied at 50%. The other five polls would show the candidates earning something even larger or smaller outside that range.
This variation is known as the “margin of error” in a poll — i.e., how much randomly selecting voters who always respond may affect a poll’s estimate for a candidate.
Because each candidate’s support varies randomly, these polls predict a margin in a tied race that ranges from -6.6 to +6.6 for 95 out of 100 polls (with even larger margins for the other five).
It is important to highlight that the range of margins we can expect in a tied race (and in a perfect world for polling) is much larger than the margins in the swing states in 2020. Even in ideal circumstances for polling, it is difficult, if not impossible, for a poll to be very informative about who is leading a tight race. And this is arguably a lower bound for what we should observe in the messier real world, where polls vary in how respondents are selected, contacted and weighted to match the electorate pollsters believe will turn out in 2024.
We can also calculate what share of 863-person polls we should expect to show various margins in a truly tied race. Rounded to the nearest percentage point, roughly 11% of polls in a tied race should show a tie.
That means that almost 9 out of 10 polls of a tied race shouldn’t actually show a tied poll result, due to randomness and the margin of error.
About 32% of polls should have a 1-point margin or closer, 55% should have a 2-point margin or closer, and 69% should have a 3-point margin or closer. Even in a 50-50 race, roughly 10% of the polls should have more than a 5-point margin because of inherent randomness — nearly the same percentage that show a (rounded) tie!
In other words, the lack of outlier polls in this presidential election is itself something to be suspicious of. Read the rest for more details.
Indeed it is, because regardless of which candidate wins, We The People are responsible.
Well, We The People as interpreted by the electoral college. As I've noted before it is almost a certainty that Donald Trump will receive a lot less votes than Kamala Harris. The question is whether Harris will receive enough of a surplus in exactly the right geographic regions to overcome the bias towards Republican inherent in the electoral college's structure.
I feel sort of sick with stress. Haven't voted yet, made my plans for Election Day.
You are not alone, I have had one neighbor and one friend speak to me about how stressed they are. So sorry it is not easy. Remember, your worst fears have not happened and may not.
For those who are interested here is a list of the poll closing times tomorrow (5 November) in various states, given in Eastern Standard Time and UTC:
6:00 pm EST (11:00 pm UTC): Most of Indiana and half of Kentucky. These states span multiple time zones so returns won't be announced until the polls close in the rest of the state an hour later.
7:00 pm EST (12:00 am UTC 6-Nov):Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia, plus the remaining parts of Indiana and Kentucky, plus most of Florida.
7:30 pm EST (12:30 am UTC 6-Nov):North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia.
8:00 pm EST (1:00 am UTC 6-Nov): The rest of Florida plus Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia. Parts of Kansas, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas.
8:30 pm EST (1:30 am UTC 6-Nov): Arkansas. When Arkansas closes its polls states controlling 274 electoral votes (a majority) will have stopped accepting in-person ballots.
9:00 pm EST (2:00 am UTC 6-Nov): The rest of Kansas, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas plus Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
10:00 pm EST (3:00 am UTC6-Nov): Montana, Nevada, and Utah plus most of Idaho and a little bit of Oregon.
11:00 pm EST (4:00 am UTC 6-Nov): The rest of Idaho and Oregon plus California and Washington.
12:00 am EST 6-Nov (5:00 am UTC 6-Nov): Hawaii and most of Alaska.
1:00 am EST 6-Nov (6:00 am UTC 6-Nov): Polling stations in Alaska's Aleutian Islands close. These are the last polling stations in the U.S. to close.
States that are bold underlined are the ones that most pundits consider to be swing states. As always, if you're uncertain about the closing time of your local polling station consult your registrar of elections (or equivalent official), not some internet rando.
I would say most if not all Americans are in limbo right now. Many are definitely stressed.
While the times for the closing of the polls have been listed, it might be more than a week before we have any sense of the actual results since many of the mail in ballots do not have to be at the voting office until a week after the polls close.
It just may be a very long week.
Then if the one side wants to contest the election, it might not be until 17 December, when the electoral college officially cast their votes.
But then it can also go to when the congress meets to count the votes on 6 January.
While the times for the closing of the polls have been listed, it might be more than a week before we have any sense of the actual results since many of the mail in ballots do not have to be at the voting office until a week after the polls close.
And that too varies by state. In some states, absentee ballots must be received by tomorrow. In my state, they must be postmarked no later than tomorrow, and they must be received by close of business Friday (Nov. 8).
And also worth remembering that Georgia is requiring that ballots be counted by hand, which will not be a quick process.
In California mail-in ballots have to be postmarked on or before Election Day and received within 7 days. These ballots, provisional ballots, and ballots from people who registered on Election Day mean at least some county officials may take the full 30 days allowed by law to report their full results. The vote-by-mail ballots that come in earlier and same-day votes are processed a lot faster, with the first batch of results coming soon after polls close.
This doesn't matter for president, but it does for the six close races for California House seats which will help determine whether Democrats take the House. In 2022 it took weeks for Kern County to count their votes for the 22nd CA House seat. They had just one ballot sorting machine, and it broke down.
Several states have put some of their National Guard Units on stand--by. Some of the units specialize in cybersecurity others will back up law enforcement units.
As a Canadian neighbour, I feel the limbo, too. I just had a call from my son who will be coming home from university early today because his head, heart, and stomach are too nervous to attend to class well.
We'll see whether he manages to make it to classes tomorrow. He's now 22, and has been doing polling aggregation since he was 12. Elections are a BIG deal for him. I suspect the physical strain might debilitate this dear, autistic, young adult child of mine.
A recent comment observed that both candidates are within the polling margin of error of a blowout.
Kamala Harris appeared on Saturday Night Live (as the reflection in a mirror of the cast member who was portraying her). Some years ago, Trump was the MC for the show one night, but he seems to have soured on it since because they keep making fun of him.
A new series of ads are reminding people that nobody will know who they vote for. In fact, "Republican women who are secretly voting for Harris but not telling their husbands" is becoming a thing that folks are discussing. Republican men have likened it to having an affair. Other ads are encouraging fathers to think of their children and grandchildren, and the world they will inherit, and vote for Harris, but they don't have to admit to their friends.
All of Oregon votes by mail, or local drop boxes. So far the system has worked well - the biggest reported problem is coffee stains on the ballots. This has increased the turnout rate, especially in rural areas that tend to vote Republican. Any advantage that one side or the other might have obtained is lost in the noise. The recent fire in a ballot drop-off box in Portland was quickly handled by the built-in fire suppression system. (And the boxes are generally emptied in the evening, so there were a limited number of ballots in the box overnight.)
Stressed by it? No, not really. I just ignore as much of it as possible if I can't do anything about it, and wait to see the result. My wife is worrying enough for both of us.
I don’t know if I want to try to hover in front of the TV all night tomorrow or avoid it… I’m not sure if I can avoid it and just wait. I wish I could watch it with friends or something. Cubby and I would of course watch it together.
Quite apart from Trump's obvious 'orribleness, the voices we're hearing from Trump supporters on the radio here, when they're not talking about immigration, are talking about the economy and inflation. Can US shipmates say how much truth is there in the narrative that Biden's policies have made inflation worse and Trump's would reduce it?
As I understand it, inflation has risen worldwide because Putin invaded the Ukraine, and has come down worldwide.
Trump's economic policies aiui are to cut taxes on the wealthy and to impose tariffs on all imports; it is the consensus of mainstream economists that this will have the same effect on inflation as Truss' budget had on UK government borrowing rates.
As I understand it, inflation has risen worldwide because Putin invaded the Ukraine, and has come down worldwide.
Trump's economic policies aiui are to cut taxes on the wealthy and to impose tariffs on all imports; it is the consensus of mainstream economists that this will have the same effect on inflation as Truss' budget had on UK government borrowing rates.
Also Trump's mass deportation plans, if carried out, would be massively inflationary. Shrinking the workforce tends to drive up wages (inflation) and the cost of goods produced by workers (also inflation). So both of Trump's main policy proposals (really his only policy proposals other than "vengeance on my enemies") are inflationary.
As I noted three years months ago inflation was low for Trump's term because there was a massive recession right at the end of it.
I just got back from voting. The lines were amazing, but there were issues with the ballot scanners. They kept jamming, and not accepting ballots. I finally got mine accepted. But even considering the issues there were unusual crowds, and a lot of people I'm sure were first time voters. This was in NYC Flushing.
Oddly enough I just spoke to my daughter who had also just voted in her section of NYC, Astoria, and she said it was empty, no lines or issues at all.
Regarding the stress of the day: this morning I realized no matter what, the sun will come up tomorrow.
A meme going around this morning. A girl is speaking to her mother.
Girl: What if they win?
Mother: We keep fighting for individual rights.
Girl: What if they lose?
Mother: We keep fighting for individual rights.
There is no finish line.
For those who will be watching the results come in tonight, the folks at More Perfect Union have teamed up with Popular Information to prepare this video on how ballots are counted in each swing state and whether that would tend to cause a blue mirage (where early results lean Democratic only to narrow later) or a red one.
Here's a similar video (only a minute long) from the Associated Press via Xitter.
Quite apart from Trump's obvious 'orribleness, the voices we're hearing from Trump supporters on the radio here, when they're not talking about immigration, are talking about the economy and inflation. Can US shipmates say how much truth is there in the narrative that Biden's policies have made inflation worse and Trump's would reduce it?
As I understand it, inflation has risen worldwide because Putin invaded the Ukraine, and has come down worldwide.
That doesn't tell you what's happened in the US. The US inflation rate jumped a whole year prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine (monthly inflation rates here); core inflation in the US diverged from what peer nations saw starting in 2021. The Russian invasion of Ukraine drove up fuel prices for a few months, but they quickly dropped. The release of pent-up demand following the worst of the pandemic combined with continuing supply chain issues meant we were going to have inflation no matter what, but the enormous Biden stimulus package that came in early 2021, following hard upon pandemic stimulus from the Trump administration only months earlier and right when covid vaccines became widely available, did make it worse, though economists are not in agreement about how much worse.
That stimulus also made our post-pandemic recovery stronger than that of peer nations. Last time I looked the US economy was growing at something like 3% a year. Inflation has come down, but costs have not (negative inflation would be bad!) and mortgage rates are still higher than what we were used to for years. People are still looking at the prices of groceries and gasoline and thinking they're high, even if their pay has kept up. And housing costs really are high; the increase there has outstripped overall inflation by a lot. So do Americans have grounds for griping about the economy? Depends on who you are, what you make, where you live, and whether you already own a home.
If you want details about what Trump's "plan" would do, click here. The short version: he would take the economy that is the greatest producer of wealth the world has ever known and drive it off a cliff, simultaneously creating massive sorrow and death and helping to destroy the Earth.
Re mortgage rates: movement in consumer lending rates tends to relate (if imperfectly) to the prime. So the prime is still up, so we wouldn't expect mortgage rates to be what they were before the 'Rona. Inflation however is at or below pre-pandemic levels, job growth and growth in real wages are breaking historical records, some going back to pre-Depression levels. It's as it always is: the GOP leaves the economy in a shambles, the Dems come in and fix it, and then everybody thinks the GOP is the party of financial prosperity. It's maddening.
Indeed. I can only hope and pray that the worst of Trump's campaign turns out to be bluster and/or that he is foiled by his own incompetence and laziness.
In Pennsylvania he's up by 3 percentage points and they've counted 95% of the votes. That's 19 EC votes, and he only needs 22 from where he's at right now. I am not hopeful.
The Senate is lost. The House probably won't be decided for a while.
Comments
If they say they are voting for Trump, just say thank you and hope you have a good day, don’t just hang up!
But if they start yelling abuse at you, then you can interrupt them to say have a good day and hang up. No need to let someone yell at you or say really nasty things about Harris or Democrats.
This almost never happens when you are making calls for Get out the vote. At this stage most people they are targeting are likely to vote for Democrats and we just want to follow up with them to make sure they have a plan to vote, know all they need to know about how/where to vote, if they need a ride to the polls, etc.
This poll is raising a number of questions about the polls this year. For one, has there been too much emphasis on the swing states and not enough polling on states that are assumed to be solid red or blue. Then too, maybe the national polls put to much weight on Trump voters. Also, the national polls started out comparing two old white men. When Biden dropped out and Harris took over, it does not appear the national polls made an adjustment for a woman candidate. Finally, the Iowa poll is suggesting the national polls have not taken the question of abortion into account.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/iowa-poll/2024/11/02/iowa-poll-kamala-harris-leads-donald-trump-2024-presidential-race/75354033007/
In any case, we are living in interesting times.
Josh Clinton of Vanderbilt University raises some other questions about the 2024 presidential polls.
In other words, the lack of outlier polls in this presidential election is itself something to be suspicious of. Read the rest for more details.
Well, We The People as interpreted by the electoral college. As I've noted before it is almost a certainty that Donald Trump will receive a lot less votes than Kamala Harris. The question is whether Harris will receive enough of a surplus in exactly the right geographic regions to overcome the bias towards Republican inherent in the electoral college's structure.
You are not alone, I have had one neighbor and one friend speak to me about how stressed they are. So sorry it is not easy. Remember, your worst fears have not happened and may not.
6:00 pm EST (11:00 pm UTC): Most of Indiana and half of Kentucky. These states span multiple time zones so returns won't be announced until the polls close in the rest of the state an hour later.
7:00 pm EST (12:00 am UTC 6-Nov): Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia, plus the remaining parts of Indiana and Kentucky, plus most of Florida.
7:30 pm EST (12:30 am UTC 6-Nov): North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia.
8:00 pm EST (1:00 am UTC 6-Nov): The rest of Florida plus Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia. Parts of Kansas, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas.
8:30 pm EST (1:30 am UTC 6-Nov): Arkansas. When Arkansas closes its polls states controlling 274 electoral votes (a majority) will have stopped accepting in-person ballots.
9:00 pm EST (2:00 am UTC 6-Nov): The rest of Kansas, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas plus Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
10:00 pm EST (3:00 am UTC6-Nov): Montana, Nevada, and Utah plus most of Idaho and a little bit of Oregon.
11:00 pm EST (4:00 am UTC 6-Nov): The rest of Idaho and Oregon plus California and Washington.
12:00 am EST 6-Nov (5:00 am UTC 6-Nov): Hawaii and most of Alaska.
1:00 am EST 6-Nov (6:00 am UTC 6-Nov): Polling stations in Alaska's Aleutian Islands close. These are the last polling stations in the U.S. to close.
States that are bold underlined are the ones that most pundits consider to be swing states. As always, if you're uncertain about the closing time of your local polling station consult your registrar of elections (or equivalent official), not some internet rando.
While the times for the closing of the polls have been listed, it might be more than a week before we have any sense of the actual results since many of the mail in ballots do not have to be at the voting office until a week after the polls close.
It just may be a very long week.
Then if the one side wants to contest the election, it might not be until 17 December, when the electoral college officially cast their votes.
But then it can also go to when the congress meets to count the votes on 6 January.
And if there is a tie. well...
Interesting times.
And also worth remembering that Georgia is requiring that ballots be counted by hand, which will not be a quick process.
Judge blocks hand count law
Thanks for the correction.
This doesn't matter for president, but it does for the six close races for California House seats which will help determine whether Democrats take the House. In 2022 it took weeks for Kern County to count their votes for the 22nd CA House seat. They had just one ballot sorting machine, and it broke down.
And props to everyone working the polls tomorrow.
We'll see whether he manages to make it to classes tomorrow. He's now 22, and has been doing polling aggregation since he was 12. Elections are a BIG deal for him. I suspect the physical strain might debilitate this dear, autistic, young adult child of mine.
Kamala Harris appeared on Saturday Night Live (as the reflection in a mirror of the cast member who was portraying her). Some years ago, Trump was the MC for the show one night, but he seems to have soured on it since because they keep making fun of him.
A new series of ads are reminding people that nobody will know who they vote for. In fact, "Republican women who are secretly voting for Harris but not telling their husbands" is becoming a thing that folks are discussing. Republican men have likened it to having an affair. Other ads are encouraging fathers to think of their children and grandchildren, and the world they will inherit, and vote for Harris, but they don't have to admit to their friends.
All of Oregon votes by mail, or local drop boxes. So far the system has worked well - the biggest reported problem is coffee stains on the ballots. This has increased the turnout rate, especially in rural areas that tend to vote Republican. Any advantage that one side or the other might have obtained is lost in the noise. The recent fire in a ballot drop-off box in Portland was quickly handled by the built-in fire suppression system. (And the boxes are generally emptied in the evening, so there were a limited number of ballots in the box overnight.)
Stressed by it? No, not really. I just ignore as much of it as possible if I can't do anything about it, and wait to see the result. My wife is worrying enough for both of us.
No, he needs to grow it out even more! 😜
Trump's economic policies aiui are to cut taxes on the wealthy and to impose tariffs on all imports; it is the consensus of mainstream economists that this will have the same effect on inflation as Truss' budget had on UK government borrowing rates.
Also Trump's mass deportation plans, if carried out, would be massively inflationary. Shrinking the workforce tends to drive up wages (inflation) and the cost of goods produced by workers (also inflation). So both of Trump's main policy proposals (really his only policy proposals other than "vengeance on my enemies") are inflationary.
As I noted three years months ago inflation was low for Trump's term because there was a massive recession right at the end of it.
Oddly enough I just spoke to my daughter who had also just voted in her section of NYC, Astoria, and she said it was empty, no lines or issues at all.
A meme going around this morning. A girl is speaking to her mother.
Girl: What if they win?
Mother: We keep fighting for individual rights.
Girl: What if they lose?
Mother: We keep fighting for individual rights.
There is no finish line.
For those who will be watching the results come in tonight, the folks at More Perfect Union have teamed up with Popular Information to prepare this video on how ballots are counted in each swing state and whether that would tend to cause a blue mirage (where early results lean Democratic only to narrow later) or a red one.
Here's a similar video (only a minute long) from the Associated Press via Xitter.
LET’S GO!!!
That stimulus also made our post-pandemic recovery stronger than that of peer nations. Last time I looked the US economy was growing at something like 3% a year. Inflation has come down, but costs have not (negative inflation would be bad!) and mortgage rates are still higher than what we were used to for years. People are still looking at the prices of groceries and gasoline and thinking they're high, even if their pay has kept up. And housing costs really are high; the increase there has outstripped overall inflation by a lot. So do Americans have grounds for griping about the economy? Depends on who you are, what you make, where you live, and whether you already own a home.
If you want details about what Trump's "plan" would do, click here. The short version: he would take the economy that is the greatest producer of wealth the world has ever known and drive it off a cliff, simultaneously creating massive sorrow and death and helping to destroy the Earth.
Felt great — also made another campaign contribution on my way in.
Indeed. I can only hope and pray that the worst of Trump's campaign turns out to be bluster and/or that he is foiled by his own incompetence and laziness.
Kyrie eleison.
I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry 😞.
The Senate is lost. The House probably won't be decided for a while.
I am sorry. So, so sorry. 😞
Darkness descends.
I keep refreshing the page, hoping it will say something different and better...
It seems woefully inadequate to say I am so sorry and we are thinking of and praying for you all; it is true, nevertheless.