Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
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User ID: 373
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
18d ago
The list in that article isn't a list of all pollers, it's just the ones that he's accusing of herding. Atlasintel is borderline. It only looks OK relative to Emerson, where the evidence is more incontrovertible.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
18d ago
It's a pretty mediocre argument for Trump. Polls already try to correct for propensity for voting (read up on "registered voters" vs "likely voters"), and if anyone is doing this correctly, Selzer would. Certainly fewer campaign events on both sides have been held in Iowa, but Trump has always had a relatively poor get-out-the-vote operation, and races have become so nationalized that it's unlikely for local conditions to be particularly anomalous relative to their demographics. It's banking a lot on Trump's rallies having large local effects, when there's not a lot of evidence for that.
The abortion point could be relevant, though, I'll grant you that.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
18d ago
Both Emerson and Atlasintel are on watch as some of the worst herders this year. Emerson is especially bad. I'd trust Selzer over these guys just based on reputation beforehand, but especially after learning they're cooking the statistical books.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
18d ago
Somebody's definitely going to have egg on their face after this. Selzer has a long track record of proving her critics wrong over and over, and most of the rest of the polling industry has been herding more than at a sheep farm in the Scottish highlands.. There's a good chance polling firms have been cooking the results in favor of Trump, in a desperate attempt not to underestimate him for a third time in a row. Even if the result in Iowa is at the extreme end of Selzer's MoE and Trump wins the state by a point or two, that likely bodes ill for his chances elsewhere. Trump's best hope in this case would be that Iowa just really, really likes black people (it voted for Obama twice).
On the other hand, if Trump wins Iowa by 5-10 points as previously expected, then it will be a rare black-eye for Selzer. I really wouldn't want to bet against Selzer given her track record, but 1 in 20 polls will go outside the MoE even if everything is calibrated correctly.
It'll be interesting to watch no matter what happens.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
22d ago
Just use Polymarket. It's way more intuitively expressed as percents instead of bookie returns.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
These discussions aren't "essentially outlawed" anywhere, the people making the claims just need to bring their receipts, which they consistently fail to do. You had Giuliani saying these things on national television, and getting dunked on because he had little evidence.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
This strains credulity when the party controlling the presidency has shifted back-and-forth across US history with a nearly metronomic frequency. Also, if Dems only need to take an L "once in a while", why don't they win, say, 2/3rds of House + Senate seats?
It's like a YEC claiming God specifically buried dinosaur skeletons in the ground to mislead scientists.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
I strongly agree with your first suggestion of requiring IDs + making IDs easy to get for lawful citizens.
Third, I’d take reports of anomalies seriously. I don’t care what people think they’re seeing, but if it’s possible fraud, it deserves a full investigation. And prosecution for fraud should be a part of that.
I disagree here. How would this be different from the status quo? Giuliani and smaller Trump-aligned groups filed tons of lawsuits with next to no evidence... and they mostly just got thrown out of court due to having no evidence. People like Raffensperger were investigating claims people were making, but they consistently came up empty.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
It feels like you're playing motte for the bailey above you. Nobody really denies that gerrymandering happens; we can all see it on the map. So yes, if you define gerrymandering as "rigging" (a word I personally wouldn't use to describe it) then technically US elections can be rigged to some extent. But that's very different from the claims Trump and friends are making, and indeed what many in this thread are making. Such claims involve fabricating votes wholesale up to tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, or even tens of millions. In such scenarios, why not just fabricate X number of votes (whatever is needed) to win every even vaguely competitive election?
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
They did not. When Hillary Clinton says Trump is an "illegitimate President," I just don't understand how you conclude that this is "superficially similar" language with a "real and very important difference."
Because of other actions surrounding what they said? While I really don't like that Hillary said the election was "stolen" and that Trump was "illegitimate", I still think there's a big difference between her comments and what Trump did. Hillary conceded almost immediately after the 2016 results were in. To my knowledge, Trump still hasn't conceded for 2020. Hillary never made phone calls demanding governors and secretaries of state "find" enough votes for them to win. Trump did. Hillary never egged on her followers to go to the capitol to protest or disrupt the electoral count. Trump, obviously, did.
To the contrary, I would say that it translated to the political class very well, in a variety of ways.
You linked an article where the Dems put forward abolishing the EC in favor of a direct popular vote (or some other system), but this doesn't seem germane to the argument that EverythingIsFine is making. There wasn't a broad rejection of election results by D leaders. The closest was probably Stacey Abrams refusing to concede in Georgia, but 1) she got a ton of pushback from this from her own party, and 2) even in this most extreme example, she didn't try to interfere directly like Trump did.
No: you are treating Democratic attempts to ensure their own permanent victory as "fix" while treating parallel Republican attempted to ensure their own permanent victory as "change."
What Trump did was fundamentally different from normal election reform, and thus his actions deserve to be seen differently. Dems saying we should abolish the EC (in future elections) or Rs saying we should require IDs to vote (in future elections) are very different proposals from Trump's "we need to overturn the votes from certain states (in an election that just happened).
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
You put it much more eloquently than I could, and I might be yoinking your answer to reply to some others downthread.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
I don't think so. I've argued in the past that Republicans think the economy is far worse than it actually is, that real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) wages are up, etc. but I've never denied inflation was actually happening.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
No, it didn't challenge the idea that Trump won in 2016.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
None of these seriously challenged the idea that Trump won in 2016.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
And Republicans protested in 2012 when Obama won re-election. But in that case and the one you cited, neither were trying to undo the results of the election other than expressing general disapproval that their side lost. Neither went to the federal capital, and neither were egged on by a sitting president.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
I also didn't like the BLM protests, but their major aim wasn't to undo a presidential election. They were a separate issue entirely.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
The question isn’t whether you can prove that the ballots are illegitimate or not. The question is why can’t you?
Because nothing will ever be enough to someone who's engaging in motivated reasoning. I support requiring an ID to vote, fixing gerrymandering, fixing incumbents' free mail privilege, etc. But if all these issues are remedied, I'm sure there will still be others. Yet US elections have been fairly secure so far -- that's why Trump's 2020 crusade kept turning up nothingburgers. The public perception only started diverging from reality (seeing huge issues everywhere, most of which didn't matter) when Trump started being a sore loser.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
That just puts the cart before the horse. Trump has every incentive not to be fair or unbiased, not only because he could keep some small hope of actually overturning the result, but also to muddy the waters and retain his clout within the Republican party ("I'm not a loser, I'm a victim!")
Election skepticism wouldn't be anywhere near as much of a problem if Trump wasn't being a sore loser in the first place.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
Thanks, that'll be a useful bit of info in the future. Saved.
Still, there was nothing even remotely close to J6 on the Democratic side. The likely counter would be the Mueller investigation, but it was very different from J6. It's not an ongoing idea that all elections are fake. Harris isn't implying "wait until I win or lose to see if the election is legitimate" like Trump is.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
Pardon everybody who was involved in “January 6th”
Drop all the lawsuits against Trump.
If somebody actually committed a crime, why should they get automatic clemency? It's like a BLM supporter saying "there will never be racial reconciliation unless you pardon everyone for everything that happened during the BLM riots."
ENCOURAGE as many audits and court cases (with discovery power, that are not dismissed on “standing”) as they want.
Actual, televised court cases for any of the grievances republicans have wrt to “January 6th”.
Televised, with discovery power, and “you are held in contempt” power to investigate the 2020 election, the origins of Covid, and the vaccine.
Would these do anything? If they get their day in court, the default outcome would be for them to... still fail on their merits. What happens then? Republicans will then just say the courts are still biased.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
IIRC a pretty similar number of Democrats said the same thing about the 2016 election
I'd be very interested if you have a source on this.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
Is there anything the government could feasibly do to nudge Republicans towards accepting the results of the election in the event that Trump loses? Trump himself has a big personal incentive to say the election is "rigged" if he loses no matter what. It redirects the conversation from analyzing the defeat ("how could we do better"), which will inevitably shine a light on Trump's shortfalls, to one where the basic facts of reality are debated instead. The obvious example is the 2020 election. Lesser known was that Trump did the same thing in 2016 when he lost the Iowa primary to Ted Cruz. Now it seems he's preparing to do the same in 2024.
Many Republicans are more than willing to go along with this, mostly due to either negative partisanship or living in a bubble ("everyone I knew was voting for Trump, then the other guy won? Something doesn't smell right!"). If the pain of defeat stings, why not just be a sore loser instead? I've debated many people who thought the 2020 election was rigged, and inevitably it goes down one of three rabbitholes:
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Vibes-based arguments that are short on substance, but long on vague nihilism that "something was off". Nearly 70% of Republicans think 2020 was stolen in some way, yet most are normies who don't spend a lot of time trying to form a set of coherent opinions, so the fallback of "something was off" serves as a way to affirm their tribal loyalty without expending much effort.
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Motte-and-bailey to Trump's claims by ignoring everything Trump himself says, and instead going after some vague institutional flaw without providing any evidence to how it actually impacted 2020. For instance, while mail-in ballots are a nice convenience for many, there are valid concerns to a lack of oversight in how people fill out their ballots. People can be subjected to peer pressure, either from their family or even from their landlord or another authority figure to fill out their ballot a certain way. However, no election is going to 100% perfect, and just because someone can point out a flaw doesn't mean the entire thing should be thrown out. In a similar vein, Democrats have (rightly) pointed out that gerrymandering can cause skewed results in House elections, yet I doubt many Republicans would say that means results would need to be nullified especially if Democrats had just lost. These things are something to discuss and reform for future elections.
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People who do buy at least some of the object-level claims that Trump or Giuliani has advanced about 2020 being stolen. There's certainly a gish-gallop to choose from. The clearest meta-evidence that these are nonsense is that nearly everyone I've debated with has chosen a different set of claims to really dig deep into. For most political issues, parties tend to organically rally around a few specific examples that have the best evidence or emotional valence. The fact that this hasn't happened for Trump's claims is indicative that none of them are really that good, and they rely more on the reader being unfamiliar with them to try to spin a biased story. One example occurred a few weeks ago on this site, one user claimed the clearest examples were Forex markets (which were subsequently ignored), Ruby Freeman, and the Cyber Ninja's Audit. I was only vaguely aware of these, so I did a quick Google search and found a barrage of stories eviscerating the Ruby Freeman and Cyber Ninja narratives. I then asked for the response, preferably with whatever relatively neutral sources he could find, since I was sure he'd claim the sources I had Googled were all hopelessly biased. But this proved too high a bar to clear for him, and so the conversation went nowhere. Maybe there's a chance that some really compelling evidence exists out there that would easily prove at least some of the major allegations correct, but at this point I doubt it.
At this point it seems like the idea that elections are rigged is functionally unfalsifiable. The big question on the Republican side now would be whether to claim the elections were rigged even if Trump DOES win. The stock explanation would be that the Dems are rigging it so they have +20% more votes than they normally would, so a relatively close election means Trump actually won by a huge margin. On the other hand, saying the election was rigged at all could diminish Trump's win no matter what, and it's not hard to imagine Trump claiming "this was the most legitimate election in the history of our country" if he manages to come out on top.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
welp =/
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
OK, sure, "nothing is neutral", but do you have any evidence or sources that have a reputation for doing good work that you can provide? As in, people who aren't just broken clocks fishing for an answer they want, regardless of what reality might show?
Please provide links.
She's been high-profile since at least 2008. 16 years of bucking conventional wisdom is a lot of record to just dismiss as "random walk".
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