Camestros Felapton

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Straw Puppy’s POTUS Polls: OCT13-14

Those drapes really bring the room together.

Every Wednesday morning (Au/NZ)/Tuesday evening (other places), Straw Puppy presents a post for people to provide their startling insights, general commentary and pleas of ‘please let this horror show be over soon’ about the United States Presidential Election.

The issues! The analysis! The actual complete lack of content from the titular host who probably isn’t real but maybe is real just like Mr Snuffleupagus turned out to be real. What was a snuffleupagus anyway? A mammoth? A giant aardvark? A hairy dinosaur? A furry dinosaur i.e. a dinosaur that has adopted the furry subculture? We just don’t know and notably the mainstream media and the candidates in the election WILL NOT ENGAGE WITH THIS QUESTION.

Also, you don’t HAVE to talk about the election. There are no rules here only the arbitrary whims of a cat’s dream of a dog.

More sensibly the current FiveThirtyEight aggregate of polls is here https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/?ex_cid=story-twitter

camestrosfelapton

50 responses to “Straw Puppy’s POTUS Polls: OCT13-14”

  1. (PROFILE: USian, center-left with a vengeance, Democrat)

    For me, this is been a four-year slog, not just the 2020 election season. Keeping track of the Trump/GOP antics is like trying to stop a four-year-old—so much non-stop disaster that your brain seized up and it’s hard to think.

    But here we are in the endgame and the final wildcard is Republican voter suppression. For wildest examples is the California GOP’s fake ballot boxes. State officials have told them to take the boxes down but the GOP has refused. Evidently the California GOP has decided to see what they can get away with, which is an unfortunate trend amongst state GOP groups.

    Yet the polls are on our side. So we’ll see what happens.

    Liked by 2 people

    • New Zealander watching from afar, and I agree that voter suppression will be a significant factor in the USA elections.

      New Zealand (coincidentally) has its General Election shortly. The Election Day for us is tomorrow (October 17) but early voting commenced two weeks before that date. I voted in person on the first day of early voting. The whole process took five minutes at our local community centre (and it’s been much the same in early voting places scattered around the country). So to see American voters lining up for hours to get to vote is a vivid contrast to how voting is conducted in two countries, both democracies. One democracy is clearly more democratic than the other.

      Liked by 1 person

  2. Despite Biden’s expanding lead in the polls, I keep urging people to vote because we know Trump is going to refuse to accept the outcome of the election, but the bigger Biden’s victory, the less blood there will be in the streets.

    I did a post on Facebook about what to expect to see on Election Night in terms of “how can we tell is Biden is winning despite all the delayed mail-in ballots?” For that I relied on Sam Wang’s analysis last month and Nate Silver’s latest numbers.

    Briefly, if Trump takes Florida, it could be a long time before we know who won, but if Biden takes it, we’ll probably see the major networks (even Fox) calling the race before the next morning.

    Liked by 2 people

    • If Biden takes Florida, I think the major networks will call the race pretty quickly thereafter. Without Florida, Trump has almost no path to reelection.

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    • I sort of expect that even with a relatively large Biden win, there will be legal battles and delays in getting an actual decision – like Florida in 2000 – in several states.

      Hopefully those arguments will be settled in court, and not by militias.

      Liked by 1 person

      • I vote we stop calling them “militias” and call them what they really are: domestic terrorists.

        Real militias are organized and answerable to the populace at large.

        The only real militias in the US are the National Guard troops.

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  3. Mr. Snuffleupagus is Big Bird’s friend, and I trust Big Bird.

    More seriously, I’m doing a lot of get-out-the-vote texting and calling to people in other states: I’m in Massachusetts, and yes please do vote, but we’re calling places like Florida and Maine, where the presidential and/or senate races are close.

    (I’m to the left of everyone I’m calling on behalf of, but replacing the incumbents with Democrats would be a real improvement.)

    Liked by 2 people

    • Just a personal note —

      I appreciate your dedication, but personally, getting all these campaign texts irritates the everlovin’ hell out of me. It does NOT make me more likely to go vote — it just pisses me off.

      Liked by 2 people

      • I don’t mind the texts; it’s the endless appeals for money that I get tired of.

        By the way, that’s how I know ANTIFA isn’t a real group; they never ask me for money. 🙂

        Liked by 3 people

        • Texts feel more intrusive to me than phone calls. I ignore any phone call from a number I don’t know, but there’s no way to “ignore” a text without having to actually look at it first. And then I have to manually delete it to get it out of my way. And I’m sure some folks out there (not me) are still having to pay for texts on their phones, which just adds insult to injury.

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  4. In other news, the guys who were arrested for plotting to kidnap and “put on trial” Governor Whitmer of Michigan, were apparently also considering kidnapping Governor Northam of Virginia.

    In a development that may be related, on the final day for voter registration in Virginia, the state’s online registration portal went dark because a fiber optic cable was cut.

    Liked by 3 people

  5. I mailed in my ballot last week. Just ready for this to be over, both from the existential dread and the knowing what we’re going to be dealing with in 2021 perspectives. There’s such a wide range of outcomes even if Biden wins given how many tight Senate races there are and it makes it hard for me to calibrate my expectations for what can get done the next couple years.

    And of course, there’s all of our state and local elections too. Most notably Prop. 22, which is Uber/Lyft’s attempt to rewrite California labor law to favor them, but there’s just a lot. (The mayor’s race is a particularly annoying voting theory problem, with two good candidates and one bad candidate; the good candidates probably have a majority, but….)

    Liked by 1 person

      • @Greg —

        I think I agree with you that ranked choice would be a Good Thing in theory, but I don’t think it will ever fly in terms of gaining widespread acceptance. It’s just too confusing conceptually.

        @Martin —

        I decided to go with in-person early voting. I enjoy going down to the County Voting Commission building (a cool old building that used to be the post office), and it’s more straightforward than all that requesting and justifying and mailing and signing crap I’d have to do with an absentee ballot. Our early voting starts tomorrow, I think. I drive by that building frequently, so I’ll just keep checking to see when there aren’t any waiting lines.

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        • California sent all registered voters ballots in the mail, and the only signature requirement is just to sign the ballot (there aren’t multiple envelopes or anything like some other states). County registrars here are also required to contact voters if there are errors so they can be fixed. Also, the deadline for the ballot to be received is 17 days after the election (still has to be sent by Election Day, of course) so there’s little chance of postal delays causing problems.

          Liked by 1 person

      • Yes, it’s not going to break a lot of the issues with the US 2-party system but it may soften some of the worst aspects.

        Parties can exploit it by getting more extereme candidates on a ballot and doing deals for preferences to help their main candidate (a common form of legit shenanigan in Australia — although that depends on some specific aspects of the Aus systems) but looking at the GOP in the US currently they are already running Qanon-quoting conspiacy theorists as candidates. The net effect would be to push the GOP towards the centre.

        Liked by 1 person

    • Ranked choice voting is on the Massachusetts ballot this year, and one of the things those of us who support it are saying is “yes it works, they’ve got it in Maine.”

      I don’t think it will lead to the sort of deal-making Camestros is worrying about. Right now, a Maine voter who prefers the Green can put the Democrat second. That doesn’t give the Green party leadership leverage for anything, because each seat in each election is separate: the Green party getting some first-choice votes for each congressional seat and the senate doesn’t mean they get a seat, or part of a seat.

      I was reading Naomi Kritzer’s election blogging this year, and it looks to her (and plausibly from this distance to me) as though at least one of the two pro-marijuana parties in that state is functionally a Republican tool to take votes away from the Democrats–who are also in favor of marijuana legalization, so even a one-issue voter has no reason to vote for those minor parties. (If you’re a single-issue legalize-marijuana voter in the upcoming US elections, I have real doubts about their priorities, even though I agree with them on this issue.)

      Liked by 2 people

      • You are correct — the biggest issue around preference deals in Aus are around senate seats which is more complex than simple ranked choice. I’d also add, that even in those circumstances it’s a relatively minor negative unintended consequence.

        We bemoan here the degree to which parties like Pauline Hanson’s One Nation end up with representation in second chambers at State or Federal level but then I look at the US and to some degree the UK and see the extent to which the main right wing parties have become increasingly beholden to the equivalent extremists inside their parties and…it’s better to have them out in the open.

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  6. Being a lazy ass my web browser log-in is the default Microsoft news page and I can’t wait for the election because if Trump loses, there’s a chance that in six months or a year the first thing I see on the computer won’t be a photo of his big orange mug and his name in four other headlines.

    Liked by 4 people

    • AMEN, Brother Mike.

      I reset my page to Google search, and I use the fabulous “Make Trump Kittens Again” plug-in (only works on Chrome) which turns pictures of him and other people whose names I’ve entered (Pence, B. Johnson, Kardashian) into photos of small credentials. It works off the metadata for the pictures, so it isn’t perfect if the site isn’t following HTML best practice, but it sure helps.

      Liked by 1 person

  7. Data visualization of COVID cases per million shows striking overlap with red/blue state preference. Just watch this thing turn red! Masks are such a cheap and easy way to slow the spread and care for the community, and this is just wilful and wanton disregard (helped along by a lot of message manipulation)

    https://dangoodspeed.com/covid/total-cases-since-june

    I’ve had four friends who have had COVID (and I suspect my sibling did too), all seriously enough to require hospitalization and at least two anticipating significant long term impacts on their health.

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    • *Bugs Bunny sawing Florida off GIF*

      I love these running chart visualizations. I don’t know when they became a thing as I’ve only noticed them since Covid. But they’re useful for so many other stats.

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  9. I just want it to be over. Also, as someone who’s been voting absentee for ages, I wish there was some sort of eye and ear browser extension that would block out all campaign ads after I’ve sent off my ballot.

    I still have to try to figure out some of the trickier propositions, and the city ballot issues.

    My closest ballot drop-off is at the library, so maybe I’ll put in an order for some socially-distanced books. Or I’ll just be lazy and mail it.

    I was quite chuffed a few years ago when they started putting “I Voted” stickers in the absentee ballots. I was always jealous of Mr. LT coming back from the polling place sporting his. Yes, participating in democracy is a reward in itself, but I wanted the sticker too.

    I will miss having Kamala as my senator if the outcome goes well, but am glad the whole country might get her.

    Liked by 1 person

    • If I were going to be anything, I’d probably be Unitarian. I even attended Unitarian Sunday School for a couple of years as a kid.

      Incidentally, both Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams were early Unitarians.

      Gratuitous Thomas Jefferson quotes:

      “No one sees with greater pleasure than myself the progress of reason in it’s advances towards rational Christianity, when we shall have done away the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three[…]I have little doubt that the whole of our country will soon be rallied to the Unity of the Creator…”

      “I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other.”

      “And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. “

      Liked by 1 person

      • If I had to be religious I’d go back to being catholic because a. it’s the best for pointless arguments and b. it’s probably the least anti-alcohol religion there is

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      • As regards booze, there’s a good reason why the American version of Anglicans are nicknamed “Whiskeypalians”.

        As Robin Williams (raised one) said: “It’s Catholicism-light! All of the traditions, half the guilt!”

        Liked by 1 person

  11. I am so, so ready for this election to be DONE. It would really, really be nice if I didn’t start the day bracing myself for WTF is happening now?! Especially since I live in the Pacific time zone so there’s a lotta news already happening by the time I log in.

    Liked by 1 person

    • I too live in the Pacific time zone, plus I sleep very late, then tend to the credentials, eat, etc. So by the time I get to the computer, it’s often after EOB Eastern and ALL the WTF has hit the fan and been rehashed.

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  12. Oh. And Oregon’s Republican wannabe QAnon US senatorial candidate Jo Rae Perkins? Locals are now claiming that she has disavowed QAnon in a local meeting and is blaming “liberal media.” Methinks it’s rather an issue of tailoring her statement to her audience. The Republicans here in this small rural Eastern Oregon county tend to be more centrist and the QAnon stuff does NOT go over well.

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  13. During the state primary (not the presidential primary in the spring), somebody appeared to be trying to steal or tamper with a ballot drop box one county over. So our plan is that as soon as the ballots arrive, we fill them out, sign them, and then we’re driving to the nearest County Vote Center to turn in our ballots.

    It’s not paranoid when you realize the GOP has put fake drop boxes out in at least one state…

    Liked by 2 people

    • I trust the librarians. Theirs is a box listed on the county website, and they’re all about evenhanded public participation.

      The county box is a long way in much traffic; the library is right next to our grocery store.

      With the help of the chart I linked to above, I filled out my ballot last night. As soon as Mr. LT does the same, we’re off to the box. Wearing our stickers. I think I’ll put mine on my mask.

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      • The closest drop box to us in at a library… but it’s out in the parking lot, and the library itself is only doing schedule drop off and pick up of books and such, so while I fully endorse Gaiman’s advice to never mess with Librarians, I know they can’t police what happens outside the building, particularly during hours when no staff is on site.

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  15. Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s town hall got 1M more viewers than Drumpf’s, despite Agent Orange’s being on free, over-the-air TV *plus* 2 cable channels, and Biden’s being on only *one* OTA channel.

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      • Satsuma Spider god had a lot more platforms to be on, thanks to NBC/Comcast. And I forgot to include Telemundo in my OTA count, but I imagine there wasn’t much watching there. 🙂 No Mas Naranja, as the yard signs say.

        Anyway, he’s an old guy and only thinks Nielsens are “real” ratings. He’s obsessed with them and boasted beforehand about how he was going to do so well, the best ever.

        Yeah, not so much.

        Liked by 1 person

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