U.S Politics

Beware the polls, in any election with even a semblance of legitimacy Biden will walk it, but I don't know why anybody would assume that this election would have even a semblance of legitimacy

Naturally, its been a seriously subdued election cycle, but I wonder to what extent it has been a product of the binary choice. Sure, the choice is always binary, but I cannot remember an election when there has been a candidate like Trump who engenders such a reaction where people cannot wait to vote for him, or cannot wait for him to be booted from office. From what I can see, it is seen and understood that the popular vote was never within his grasp. He understood that, and like in 2016, he either wins the electoral college, or he wins nothing at all. His voters have either stuck their fingers in their ears over the past four years, or they are actively endorsing what has happened over the past years, which is both unbelievable and grotesque.

The one potential positive to this is that it is unlikely that Trump will have gathered any new voters, in anything more than negligible numbers, and that all he has in his base. Also, Biden has significant leads, comparable to Clinton in polls in places like Wisconsin and Michigan, while places like Pennsylvania could just about withstand a similar swing from the polls on Election Day, and Biden would sneak the win. What was forgotten, is that Clinton suffered a but from being within the margin of error, and this enabled minor Trump wins. In an ideal world, Trump's base would have fallen apart, but polling would suggest that it has never grown. This is helpful, in that it means that he remains reliant on the electoral college, but polls in key states, which point towards Biden victories, and above the margin of error, would suggest he is on borrowed time.

Biden/Harris 2020!

That needs to reach 100 million by election day - at least

The turnout has to be so massive that even the Republicans' attempts to rig this are swamped  - like happened Pinochet in Chile in 1988

The question is - how many of those 66 million votes will actually be counted

The final poll spread in 2016 had Hillary Clinton 6.5 up in Wisconsin and everything pointed to her comfortably winning the state, she was well up in every poll

Trump "won" by 0.7

I don't believe that was legitimate, I think tens of thousands of Clinton votes were thrown out

Michigan polls from 2016 show a similar story

Florida, Georgia, Texas and probably North Carolina will all be fixed for Trump

Any analysis which doesn't factor this in is hopelessly incomplete

I've heard it all about turnout before and am burned by past experience, last year people were telling us that a record turnout for Labour might swing the election but it was obvious that the large early turnout was because the election was in December and they wanted to vote in daylight hours

Similarly I fear that the hopes as regards turnout this time may be misplaced and that people are voting early because of the current pandemic situation but that it will not lead to the overall increase in turnout that will be needed

Obama got 69 million votes in 2008, Clinton got 65.8 or something last time

Officially, there were 136.8 million votes overall in 2016, there needs to be close to 150 million this time

And Biden needs to be hitting at least 75 million votes, I think, or maybe more - whether he can do that is questionable

I would dearly love to be left with egg on my face this time 8 days hence

I needed a good  in these times. Thanks for providing it.

It doesn't matter who the candidate is or how experienced they are, if someone running for office tells me that he's going to raise my taxes if he's elected, that's my vote lost just on that policy alone. 

If there's one thing I learned from 4 years ago, it is never to trust a Presidential poll in America ever again. Same thing is happening again, and  we'll be told all week in the msm that Biden has it in the bag, until the voting stops and the counting starts. 

I know that voters on the ground i.e. those the left wing platforms ignore in their figures, are saying Trump will walk it. Something else I know is that every sitting President bar one, in the last 40 years has been re-elected. I don't expect that to change. 

you mean Oranger