politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Amazing what a stellar State of the Union can do, but as always... national polls are useless because we don't have national elections.
Watch the polling in the key swing states. So far, it doesn't appear that new polling has been done since the State of the Union.
These are the states we want to see swing Biden.
Arizona:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/arizona/
Georgia:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/georgia/
Michigan:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/michigan/
Nevada:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/nevada/
New Mexico:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/new-mexico/
North Carolina:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/north-carolina/
Pennsylvania:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/pennsylvania/
Virginia:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/virginia/
Wisconsin:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/wisconsin/
Didn't 538 recently ditch a right-wing poll that was skewing their polling data?
Rasmussen and it's been a long time coming.
Oh, they ditched Rasmussen? Makes sense. Leading up to 2020, I think they were showing Trump up by something like 5-8 points - my memory is fuzzy.
So is Trump's.
Biden's is fuzzy, Trump's is corrupted/glitched
Yes but Biden's comes with a slate of competent advisors. Trumps comes with a lukewarm hamberder and throwable ketchup
heyoo!
Nate Silver has long defended keeping them in. It's not that the absolute number is any good, but a change in the number can be good. If Rasmussen shows a 3 point shift between two polls, that's probably real and can be applied to the model.
It's not a bad take - if it shows a consistent bias, it's still consistent data. It's translating the bias from a descriptive to a predictive model that's the hard part. Maybe they found that the swings in correlation were too wide.
IIRC they ejected them because Rasmussen Reports put out a ridiculously flawed article that called the results of the Arizona gubernatorial election into question based on a study whose methodology was so flawed that it could be torn apart by a particularly sharp grade schooler--they took a poll, sponsored by a Republican group, four months after the election, then weighted it against exit polls (not the actual election results), and then used that to claim the Republican won by eight points instead of losing by 1. This prompted the guy in charge of 538 to send them a letter basically saying "are you gonna fix your methodology to reflect something close to reality, orrrrr...." and Rasmussen said "lol no"
Yeah. Article is bragging about 3 national polls, where Biden is winning by 3% at most...
Because of the system, Dems need popular vote, to make up for the flyover states going conservative and be worth more due to electoral college
If Biden was polling 5% over trump nationally, we should be concerned.
And I have zero faith in the DNC and people running Joe's campaign to focus on the right states to win the electoral college.
Why? They've done it once already.
And then there's 2016...
I don't think Hillary, on her own, CHOSE to ignore Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016. Somebody told her campaign "Yeah, those are safe, you don't need to go there..." and that was one of the factors that tanked her campaign.
Joe cannot win without them. He needs to campaign HARD there.
Latest polling in Michigan shows it at a virtual tie, 43% to 43%.
Primary data shows more energy on the Republican side:
Donald Trump - 68.1% - 759,122 votes
Nikki Haley - 26.6% - 296,431 votes
Uncommitted - 3% - 33,561 votes
Joe Biden - 81.1% - 623,642 votes
Uncommitted - 13.2% - 101,457 votes
Now, you can argue more people came out on the Republican side because they were motivated by having a choice, but just over a million Republican votes to just over 600K Democratic votes needs to be a giant fucking wake up call.
Same deal for Wisconsin, polls showing Trump +2, +3, +4:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/wisconsin/
Their primary is on 2/20. It will be interesting to see how the vote goes as Haley is officially out.
I, a Michigander, voted against Trump in the primary and will be voting against him again in the general. And I know I wasn’t alone, which accounts for some of the total Republican ballots. Open primaries mean that can happen.
Against an incumbent trump when people believed Biden's campaign promises...
This time being the incumbent hurts Biden. 4 years ago if someone said Biden would be supporting a genocide, trying to codify Trump's border policies, and calling migrants "illegals" I'd have laughed in their face.
Biden is less popular now then when all most voters knew about him was he was Obama's VP.
Dude took 36 years to win his first presidential primary, he wasn't that popular to begin with.
Hes more popular for me. I still can't believe how much he has done in one term with an adversarial congress that improves my quality of life. and yeah I feel sad about international affairs but I vote on internal affairs. especiallly when its so obvious how much worse the alternative is internationally.
Well, less then a third of Americans hold a favorable opinion of Biden like you do...
Just slightly better than trumps numbers.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-unpopular-polls-2024-election-1877870
I hope it's enough, and I do feel a lot more comfortable now then a week ago. We just need Biden to stop reaching out to Haley voters and start trying to get liberal votes on his side.
It's just insane to me that less than two thirds of the country hold a favorable opinion of either candidate. No matter what happens, the majority of the country will be unhappy with it.
That means depressed turnout, and those are the only elections republicans have a chance at winning. I'd rather not give them that chance
Historically incumbent presidents always have the upper hand.
The "incumbent advantage" is often misunderstood. Because a weak incumbent gets primaried.
So the DNC says primarying a candidate hurts them, and why NH didn't get delegates this year.
The reality is only weak incumbents get primaried. Whether they get challenged or not in the primary doesn't make them weaker or stronger.
By taking a primary away, we're not helping a candidate, we're throwing away the option to run a more popular candidate. Which hurts the party and every American if it means trump is elected.
It's like saying the only reason trump got caught on his tax fraud was he ran for president. Running for president brought attention to it, but he cheated on taxes decades before running and could have been prosecuted at any time.
An actual primary wouldn't have made Biden unpopular, it would have just made how unpopular he is more public, while giving him a public stage to move left to his voters and win some over for the general.
Hiding it doesn't make it better, it just gives people a false sense of security, which ironically often leads to lower turnout.
And as always:
Low turnout is how republicans become presidents
So incumbency helped trump and hurts Biden. Okay.
Did trump win as an incumbent?
No, because he was incredibly unpopular.
Both Biden and trump are currently sitting just under 1/3 favorably.
Being an unpopular incumbent hurt trump in 2020, and it will hurt Biden in 2024.
That's why I put North Carolina in the watch list. There are folks out there who think it's winnable a) because they assume the Nikki Haley vote will flip to Biden, and b) because the Republicans just picked a batshit CRAZY candidate for Governor on Super Tuesday.
We really need to see new polling there.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/north-carolina/
As of 2/29 to 3/3 it's either Trump +12 or +14, but some folks are still saying Biden can win.
Doubt.
If Biden moves far enough right to grab a handful of Haley voters... Hed lose 10x the votes he gains.
The most we should try to get republicans to do is abstain, the payoff for courting Republican votes has never been worth it.
Biden is definitely trying to get Haley voters, it's just a god awful strategy
Yeah, but what you're missing is that big business Democratic donors love it when the Democrats move right, so that's what they do every single fucking time.
Yup. Turning off Democrats is not going to win Republicans.
I saw a Jordan Klepper clip yesterday where he talked to Haley voters...
Most said Trump was terrible, that 1/6 was a violent insurrection, but that they'd still have to "pick the lesser of two evils" and vote trump because they'd never vote Democrat.
It just doesn't make any sense.
Neither Haley voters or Biden's campaign team. None of what they're doing makes sense.
I don't think he's been appealing to Haley voters on the policy front at all. His new budget proposal is anathema to the republican way of thought, even the less crazy sections. He is appealing to Haley voters on the decency front, which he absolutely should. Even if you are a conservative, Trump should drastically frighten you. Not because he's not a conservative, but because he is a destructive demagogue. Biden is appealing to voters with a distaste for that because he is not that, simple as.
Edit: Can someone help me understand how I said something controversial here? Does anyone have any examples of the Biden campaign making policy adjustments to gain Haley voters?
The thing Dems absolutely refuse to understand is that policy. Does. Not. Matter. Optics matter, that's all. 99% of voters do not know anything about any policies. They know headlines. They know memes. Joe Biden could personally walk in front of IDF bullets to defend Palestinians and it would not matter if the media decided not to cover it.
Win the media, win the election. Truth does not matter. Results do not matter. Only the media matters.
Republicans get this. Democrats keep insisting they can run on substance.
I don't think we're in disagreement? Biden has nothing to lose by playing up his decency factor, because it is Trump's primary weakness. Why would you ever not appeal to potential voters (regardless of political spectrum) by playing up a factor you planned to stress anyway? I only brought up policy in response to commentors saying Biden is kowtowing to the GOP to court Haley voters, which I just do not see happening right now. You would have seen a much more moderate budget proposal (which to be clear, is also optics, because presidential budget proposals are basically just wish lists that don't come true) if that were the case. He's courting the left, if anything.
The only policy proposal I see being affected by Haley voters is Ukraine funding, because Trump's isolationism is a common complaint from her crowd. Democrats were going to support that anyway, so I'm just not seeing it.
Not necessarily in disagreement. I'm just saying "the policy front" does not matter at all.
I'm with you. It does matter a bit, as it has impact on perception, but not much on its face without the appropriate publicizing later.
Especially PA and Georgia, imo. If those two turn blue it decreases RNC victory odds by a metric fuckton.
PA is a nail biter right now, Biden +1 to Trump +6. Could really go either way, and it will be tough for Biden if he doesn't take it. "Son of Scranton" and all that.
I still think Georgia was a fluke in 2020. You have to go back to '92 for a D win there, and that was only because a) Clinton was a Southerner and b) Perot bled off 13% of the vote.