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naraburns  nihil supernum  16d ago (text post)   26870 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

If you're a U.S. citizen with voting rights, your polling place can reportedly be located here.

If you're still researching issues, Ballotpedia is usually reasonably helpful.

Any other reasonably neutral election resources you'd like me to add to this notification, I'm happy to add.

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The last poll in 2012 projected Obama with a mere 0.7% lead over Romney. As late as November 4th, Gallup were projecting a Romney victory. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_opinion_polling_for_the_2012_United_States_presidential_election). Obama ended up winning 51% of the popular vote.

The last Gallup poll in 2004 came to a dead heat with each candidate projected to win 49% of the vote. The margin of victory ended up being less than 2.5% in Bush's favour. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polling_for_United_States_presidential_elections#2004)

(And you know, there was this as well. Also a famously close race in which the margin of victory between winner and second place was less than 5%.)

Since the turn of the century, the average margin of victory in American presidential elections has been <=5%. Extremely close races are bound to be harder to predict than landslides, and polling data is bound to be noisier. The election with the widest margin of victory this century was 2008 when Obama defeated McCain by 7 points, and pollsters consistently got this right in the months leading up to the election. I'm not sure if anything else is required to explain the phenomenon.

Thank you for the sources. To be clear, I was being facetious, although I think it's a better argument than most of the 2020 fraud ones that I've seen.

Oh I didn't realise you were being facetious, thank you for clarifying.

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