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Students wait to hear Donald Trump speak Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty
With the final ballots yet to be counted, and with the next President still unknown, the polling post-mortem is well under way.
“So much of the experience of watching returns,” remarked frustrated MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes to two leading pollsters, “was anchored by the polling going into it. And it was a bad night for polling—an enormous polling miss.”
Far from learning from the mistakes of 2016, the polling industry seemed to have got things worse. Whether conducted by private or public firms, at the national or local, presidential or senatorial, levels, polls were off by wide margins. The Five Thirty-Eight final poll of polls put Biden ahead by 8.4 points, but the actual difference in popular vote is likely to be closer to 3-4 points. In some close state races, the error was even greater.
Why did they get it so wrong? Pollsters typically receive low response rates to calls, which leads them to undercount key demographics. To get around this, they typically weight for key categories like race, education or gender. If they get too few Latinos or whites without degrees, they adjust their numbers to match the actual electorate.
But most attitudes vary far more within a group like university graduates, than between graduates and non-graduates. So even if you have the correct share of graduates and non-graduates, you might be selecting the more liberal-minded among them. For example, in the 2019 American National Election Study pilot survey, education level predicts less than 1% of the variation in whether a white person voted for Trump in 2016. By contrast, their feelings towards illegal immigrants on a 0-100 thermometer predicts over 30% of the variation. Moreover, immigration views pick out Trump from Clinton voters better within the university-educated white population than among high school-educated whites. Unless pollsters weight for attitudes and psychology – which is tricky because these positions can be caused by candidate support – they miss much of the action.
Looking at this election’s errors — which seems to have been concentrated among white college graduates — I wonder if political correctness lies at the heart of the problem.
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SubscribeI’m only surprised that the pollsters still haven’t figured this out. We live in a world where at least 50% and probably a majority of the population have the ‘wrong’ views, and face punishment for expressing them. Intimidating and insulting someone doesn’t change their opinions, it just forces them to hide them while reinforcing their (correct) impression that they are being attacked by the very people they distrust.
Pollsters, perhaps unfairly, have found themselves lumped in with the media and government experts and are distrusted by a significant percentage of the population. With that in mind, I really can’t see any reason for us UnWoke types to spend 20 minutes on the phone with a pollster other than mischief or spleen-venting.
It’s a good point, but surely the election of a populist like Trump has made that problem much worse. Left and right can politely disagree while they’re both operating around the centre. But once you have a president who seems happy to encourage his support by white supremacists etc, it becomes difficult to respect someone who turns a blind eye to that. John McCain was a rare man of principle, it’s a pity there aren’t more like him in the Republican party.
Oh dear, this is so brainwashed. Try listening to the man himself, rather than carefully distorted reports of what he says. If the same old long debunked misquotation keeps reappearing, year after year, you should be suspicious. If the media and politicians had a leg to stand on they would engage with what he actually says, but they don’t. They are lazy and they are liars. They just keep wheeling out the same old lies, without even bothering to think up new ones. As they all do it together, it becomes more extreme. That is how extremism works.
Meanwhile, the real racism and supremacy are on the other side. We see them all the time, and cower and cringe. Some people genuflect. Nigel Farage was sacked overnight from LBC for not toeing the line on that. A good illustration of what this article is about.
If Trump were the man you are lazily summing up, why would he have increased his vote amongst women, all kinds of Hispanics, African Americans, other minorities – and lost support from Caucasian males? Why did 70 million people vote for him? Millions more than last time? It is difficult to respect the people who are turning a blind eye to all those people being cheated. There is nothing polite about the Left, and they invented the pejorative word “populist” in order to delegitimise successful politicians.
The fact is, men like this get thrown up when there is a need for them, when the other side have gone too far, and there has to be a correction. Conventional politicians haven’t the guts to do it, which is why we should all be very frightened if this coup has succeeded. The third attempted coup, or is it the fourth?.
And by the way, the Proud Boys, whose name the media love to conjure with in the context you have ventured into, are led by an African Cuban American.
John McCain betrayed the Republican Party and betrayed America.
The pollsters must surely know what they are doing, just as the Californian billionaire hippies know what they are doing each time they censor the President – or anyone else who looks as if they might persuade the electorate to vote the wrong way. All these people are pulling their weight, in their own way, to influence the outcome of elections. Just as the Fake News Media do. This time the collective effort all round was even more brazen and united than last time, and when that didn’t work, the Democrats launched their pre-planned fraud, which the MSM and Big Tech are now covering up.
Pollsters believe their results depress the vote by depressing the voters; that people will not vote if there is no hope of winning. They are not providing information, any more than the Fake News: they are manipulating the voting.
Similarly, the “networks” did not “call” Florida till well after midnight their time, fearing it would put heart into the late leaning voters on the West Coast. Arizona was “called” prematurely for Biden for the same sort of reason, to dishearten and disrupt.
Good analysis, but maybe the term ‘Trump supporter” could just as as easily be replaced with “Democrat fearer”
Many educated people must strongly fear the increasing influence of the Woke-tendency, and are surely voting on that basis.
Indeed. Anyone concerned about history books being replaced by shoddy journalism in classrooms all over the country, about children who aren’t yet allowed to drink alcohol being allowed to take puberty blockers and worse, about young male college graduates accused of harassment or rape being denied due process, about academics, editors, google engineers and countless others being stripped of their livelihood and vilified for wrongthink – anyone concerned about these evils and others that will have long-term consequences extending far beyond this one presidency would have had to vote for Trump in this election.
Don’t mistake contempt for fear. We’re not “afraid” of the Left’s policies, we just think they range from foolish to ruinous to treasonous.
BTW, I have a PhD in computer engineering–I’m hardly “uneducated.”
Not a word I would use …
In lieu of an Unherd article on what I regard as an unacceptable boundary having been crossed by much of the US media last night namely the censoring of a live press conference by the duly elected President of The United States I am writing a comment here.
Some of the US TV channels cut away from the President’s speech on the legality of the vote counting process in some states, replacing his words and picture with the opinions of their legal experts in order to explain to the viewers that what President Trump was saying was “not true” and in their opinion could cause civil unrest. I was watching the BBC coverage which did not cut the feed but explained afterwards that some of the President’s assertions were not factually correct (in their opinion).
I must stress at this point that I am no fan of Donald Trump and being British have no skin in the US election game. What I do believe in is democracy and the right of the general public to hear what democratically elected officials have to say, especially when it comes from their own mouths free from journalistic spin.
Given that I don’t recall any such censorship of speeches by the likes of Saddam Hussein or Colonel Gaddafi or their representatives, or indeed news anchors’ opinions on the veracity of their statements I can only conclude that this type of censorship of the “wrong” views will become the norm if unchallenged by the heretofore silent majority. As such I will be submitting a complaint to Ofcom regarding the BBC’s stance on this and can only hope that a significant number of the British public do the same.
Stephen Crossley, Thank you for your comments.
MSM in the US and UK have been controlling what we see and hear for years.
Rational discussion has been prevented on most TV programs.
I see Polling as a part of this as many polls are sponsored with an intention to convince others of particular opinion.
Now that some calm and TRUTHFUL guidance may be required to calm millions of upset Americans, there is no one in the Media that can fulfil that important role because no one, probably not even the other side, trusts them.
I gain no pleasure at seeing the Media being distrusted and therefore disregarded, although they have brought this on themselves. Unfortunately others may pay the price.
My experience of talking with random scum in the streets is that a huge proportion of people weren’t believing what the liar media were telling them even before Covid, and now, outside of certain areas such as posh ones inhabited by the self-recognising “good people”, there is overwhelming disbelief. Covid is doing a great job of destroying the credibility of the greed-globalist regimes and of their poodle media.
Indeed. For four years, the left has pushed the “Russians!” narrative despite evidence so lacking not even Robert Mueller could find a single instance of an American being co-opted. For the past several months, the left has tolerated if not encouraged mayhem in multiple cities, and both of those things happened with the full approval of the same media actors who now discount the current situation.
To say the election is rigged is too strong a term. But to ignore the sheer number of anomalies that are way beyond coincidence or totally at odds with statistical probability can only be done willfully.
Are you saying that because you are elected you can come up with anything and has to be left unchallenged?
Being cut off is not being challenged; it’s being cut off. It is the media deciding what the public can or cannot hear, which isn’t how a society works. We’re adult enough to make up our own minds.
This is the same media that not only allowed, but actively participated in, four years worth of Russian collusion conspiracy peddling.
It is how society works in a banana republic
Gosh what an arrogant statement! Only decent do-gooder anti-hate-speechers qualify as adult enough to make up their own minds. The rest are subhuman…..erm…..subhumans.
Its hard to tell the difference between satire and leftists these days
Hi Andrea. Absolutely everyone’s views should be open to challenge. The appropriate format in this case would normally be to have a Republican and a Democrat commentator discuss the speech and thus explore opposing sides of the points raised. This shifting of the goalposts whereby a media channel takes it upon itself to decide what is “true” in that speech, thereby deciding on behalf of the viewers that he is lying or even worse in the case of the US channels deciding whether the public will even be allowed to hear the words for themselves and make up their own mind is the new and very disturbing development.
Please rest assured that when people see views being suppressed in this way, it does a GREAT job of undermining trust in the pseudo-media that do it and in increasing belief in the positions being suppressed. But greed-globalists are fortunately too brain-dead to recognise this.
I don’t think so.
If you spout nonsense the fact that you are elected doesn’t necessarily warrant a platform.
If I say that earth is flat I can be the president or the Pope, but doesn’t change things.
Let me cordially disagree with you on one point. You do have skin in the game. Say what you will about Trump, he has not taken us to war with anyone.
Hi Tom. If by “skin in the game” you mean political bias I should clarify I would be equally horrified no matter the speaker. I value democracy and free speech above all, a viewpoint increasingly taking a backseat to partisanship.
Hi Tom. If by “skin in the game” you mean that the POTUS affects us here in the UK whether we like it or not then I reluctantly agree with you!
Just to clarify, the assertions that caused the TV stations to cut away was Trump claiming victory. It’s not ‘their opinion’, it’s a statement of fact that Trump was (again) lying.
Unless you possess information about the future that the rest of us don’t have access to.
Hi Kevin. Trump had claimed victory in a previous statement. In the live press conference he was stating that he believed that the counting process in some states had been conducted in an illegal way. This caused the networks to take their action. As I write even the BBC are now describing the US networks’ decision to cut away as “astonishing”.
To be clear I would have the same objection to cutting a speech by Joe Biden or Jeremy Corbyn.
I was hearing the exact words, and I certainly didn’t hear that. It was his alleging of vote stealing that was what prompted the “that’s not true” intervention.
It is not for the broadcasters or for Big Tech to be the arbiters of truth. That is much too big a job for anyone, let alone them.
If the boot had been on the other foot and Biden had been alleging irregularities, they would not have cut him off. Remember all those assertions of Republican voter suppression? Not only did they omit to report them as “baseless” and “without evidence”, but they even joined in the assertions – without evidence.
Thanks for this article. As a college-educated, anti-Democrat partyist, I find it eye-opening. I suspect that most of these R-voting college grads (I graduated decades ago) probably are less pro-Trump and more anti-Democratic party because they can tell they are being globally gaslighted in virtually every domain by the liberal elites, celebs and media.
They’re sick as fcuk of it. I sure am.
I’m in the post-grad group and I can say without question, the danger cancel culture poses to my career and business is so salient, and the necessity to self-censor so real, that A) I never speak about my views with my colleagues, B) I now simply hang up on pollsters, and C) I voted Republican for the first time in my life — not out of any love for Trump — but with a knot in my stomach and a feeling of vengeance against Democrats because the regressive left with which they have allied themselves, has become everything the evangelical right of the 80s and 90s was.
Our sympathies are with you!
The scary thing to me is to see how these same dynamics are played out in the response to Covid-19. Opposition to government action, however misguided and lacking in scientific rigour, isn’t met with reasoned discussion and evidence, but name-calling and character attacks trying to define who is the acceptable in-group and who is the out-group unworthy of engagement. Discussion is entirely shut down and we end up with completely irrational government policies.
Yes, this year has seen a total and disastrous lack of reason or rigour in government and across the mainstream media. Of course, this trend has been apparent for some decades, but it has manifested with full force this year.
Essentially, the western mind has collapsed. It is no longer capable of thought or able to analyse basic numbers or facts. Meanwhile, people like Whitty and Vallance simply present us with blatantly false figures that would shame even those who created the production figures in the USSR.
As an unfolding spectacle it is both fascinating and horrifying.
Well, of course reason and rigor collapsed. They are White Supremacist ideas. I’m not being flip, either. That’s how universities are actually teaching about reason and evidence, etc. Scary shit.
As in relation to global warming where this tactic was developed and refined
To be fair it’s not clear that government action is being driven by scientific rigour.
A big problem must be those university educated types who are only too ready to give the woke tendency (and BLM/Antifa in particular) a thumbs up because:
They are seething with moral outrage on behalf of the underdog (surely they must be right)
They are young Lefty rebels-against-the-system (and hey, that’s cool)
There are many young sexy and creative types in their ranks (tomorrow belongs to them)
Their enemies are not young or sexy and many don’t even work in creative jobs (boring!)
Their enemies are just plain vulgar and uncool (people you wouldn’t want to be seen with)
It’s always been the way… Its just the causes which change. When I was at school in the 80s you couldn’t avoid the CND and NUM badges. Difference is, most of those people changed their views when they got jobs and started paying taxes… The current generation don’t seem to be doing that.
It was true in the 60s also. I am not so sure that quite so many people changed their views.
Yes, I definitely see ‘woke’ boomers, especially those who stayed strongly left.
And they are now the teachers educating our children into a particular view about the world. The damaged minds take a long time to reorient.
and….keep talking. The current generation aren’t renouncing their idealism when they get jobs and pay taxes. Which is, in your opinion, a good thing or a bad thing? I heard a recent dinner table conversation where a wealthy father berated his PhD-studying daughter for her views on the importance of social welfare. His exact words were “wait until you’re the one paying taxes, then you’ll change your mind”. Firstly, I bet she won’t. Secondly, I thought it was an indictment of many right wing voters. We’re all in favour of a caring society, until we’re asked to put our hands in our pockets.
The bigger question is what does this tell us about the political correct, the authoritarian left, the protagonists of cancel culture? That they are actively and unashamedly demonising their political opponents to the extent their voice is effectively silenced.
Do even they genuinely think that’s a good idea. Scary times ahead if that’s the case – I think it is I’m sorry to say.
I think the problem is actually that they have lost faith in one of the foundational beliefs of progressivism, that “the arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.” They have come to believe – with, it must be admitted, considerable reason – that humans are too flawed to choose virtue on their own, and must therefore be forcibly conditioned to never even see sin as an option.
And yes, that is extremely dangerous.
The only progress I can see that the woke believe in is inevitable neo-liberal economic progress. The pauperisation of the middle class, which follows the destruction of the working class. A world divided into the haves and the have-nots, the rulers and the ruled, the people with stock options and the people on the universal dole. People genuinely interested in helping poor Blacks would come up with something where you could obviously see that the intent is to make some sort of material improvement in their lives. You might argue that any particular policy is unlikely to give the result wanted, but you wouldn’t have a problem understanding what the intent was. Instead, racism, a social ill which has persisted for generations is all supposed to get fixed if white people only dug deeper inside themselves to find tinier and tinier allotments of hidden racism.
Personally, I think that if instead of looking for racism inside themselves they looked for pride, (especially contemptuousness), envy, greed, and the slothfulness that confuses talking about a problem with actually going out and doing something about it, they’d hit so much pay-dirt that they have to open a score or more university departments to study the amazing new things they found. (Unless their universities already have a theology department, where they might find some people who are part of a tradition that has been considering this stuff for hundreds of years.)
So true.
Yes. And this self-righteous imposition of ‘virtue’ from on high strangely resembles, to my mind at least, the we-know-betterism of imperial/colonial powers forcing ‘civilisation’ on the poor benighted natives of this or that country. ‘After all, you can’t expect these poor child-like indigenous peoples to understand things for themselves, can you?’ Problem is, now the poor child-like indigenous peoples so in need of having values forced on them from on high are … us.
In my experience it’s not specifically a left/right thing. Growing up in South Arica in the 1980s, there was a lot of pressure to NOT discuss racial inequality. The irony is that apartheid can be viewed as the ultimate expression of identity politics and cancel culture…
Polling is a symptom of a wider disease being caused by political correctness, namely that it skews perceptions of reality in general.
Yes, if you suppress the reality of people’s opinions, you suppress information feedback.
Political correctness has left a cadre of white graduates unwilling to reveal their voting intention.
It’s a total mystery, isn’t it. When one party has spent four years creating the modern-day version of the star sewn onto one’s coat, hard to imagine why people might keep political preference to themselves.
On top of that, former Treasury Secretary Robert Reich revealed a colossal level of historical ignorance in suggesting that the US adopt a Truth & Reconciliation Commission like South Africa did. Gee, why don’t leftists just go Pol Pot and make it easier.
“Gee, why don’t leftists just go Pol Pot and make it easier.”
I think that is coming later.
The mistake the emotionally-discombobulated left has made over the last four years is associating anything to the right of Cenk Uygur as “Trumpism”. The same way shallow thinking rightists somewhat errantly marry fringe PDX destructionists to Biden, much more left liberals have married anyone who remotely disagrees with them as “Trumpers”. It’s a convenient binary heuristic to just tie sides to their respective Republican/Democrat figureheads. But if these exit polls and demographic breakdowns are any indicator, this heuristic has no merit.
Regardless of Trump’s likely coming loss, this growing coterie of racially diverse, classically liberal, anti-woke, [actually] socially tolerant, working class folks aren’t going anywhere. Bernie has recently talked about it. Yang just talked about it. There are a growing number of publications on the topic. The Democrats are hemorrhaging the working class, unions, losing latinos (I’m sorry, Latinx), saw a significant loss in the black vote, cubans, women, and increased in one ironic category: the ever despised white males. They’ve become home to the upper middle class, 1%, elite cosmopolitan self-righteous SJW socialist types, who, as Orwell put it in The Road To Wigan Pier, “…can lash themselves into frenzies of rage against the class to which, by birth or adoption, they themselves invariably belong.”
And one more Wigan quote: “The truth is that, to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which ‘we’, the clever ones, are going to impose upon ‘them’, the Lower Orders.”
The Democrats are now indistinguishable from the Labour Party. Both are the party of the despicable metropolitan elites. They think they are sophisticated but when you talk to them you always discover that they have read nothing and know nothing.
Quite apart from the issue of accuracy, I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with good reasons for having polls at all. Trying to publicly predict the outcome of an election seems to me to be bordering on interference.
The polls have certainly become a form of interference in the US as the modelling and sampling etc are designed to show big leads for the Democrats.
One of the most honest explanations yet.
Never going to happen.
The leftie elites will never give up their moral superiority, it tastes to nice.
Actually, for some weeks I have thought that we should be talking more about ‘shy Biden voters’. After all, there was almost or literally nobody at Biden ‘rallies’, whereas every Trump rally was attended by record breaking numbers.
So, who and where are all these Biden voters? Well, we know that many of them are people who had their mail-in vote filled in for them in the swing states via the process of ballot harvesting. And many others mail-in Biden votes in the swing states are, probably, simply fake ballots.
The good news is that Trump increased the percentage of his vote among every racial, ethnic and gender group except white men. To quote Michael Moore, Stupid White Men. Even 35% of muslims voted for Trump. I was a little disappointed that he didn’t get more of the black vote, although he did increase it by 50% and I calculate that he probably got around 25% of the young black male vote.
You know that do you? and from whence does the source of this wisdom come from?
Well you could try looking at James O’Keefe and “Project Veritas” who handed over their footage to the FBI (also on Youtube). So yes there really is evidence that these things happen.
The question is who and on what scale; and whether the miscreants are adequately sanctioned. The American electoral system(s) badly need revising IMHO.
Trump doubled his support among the LGBQT community, with 28% of their vote.
Among the LGB&Q* community (gay people who do their own home improvements) he achieved a remarkable 56%.
*For our US readers, B&Q is a large home improvements chain store.
Excellent analysis by Eric. The pollsters were useless in 2016. They were again useless in 2020. This raises the question of why so much attention is paid to them. Surely a lot of the time American news spent reporting presidential polls this year could have been more productively spent reporting on crackhead Hunter Biden’s laptop.
This raises the question of why so much attention is paid to them.
Because they are part of the DNC’s media wing. Not that long ago, polls were a mechanism for gauging public opinion. Today, they are a tool for shaping public opinion.
Rightly said that it is communication across the divides that is particularly important. This makes “hate speech” legislation all the worse because it inhibits exactly the interaction that is most important, and encourages non-Muslim people to avoid interacting with Muslims and so on. The most important things to be said are just about always unpleasant things that most people are reluctant to say even without any authoritarian regime clamping down on them.
I actually found myself being Trump shamed by my own son the other day, which was a bit alarming and depressing. However to be fair to him, he kept pushing and I eventually fessed up – but it is both interesting and worrying how strong this effect is – if we really cannot talk across the divide because of it, we’re all doomed. How civil wars start, I imagine, and why they are so horribly internecine.
and BoJo shamed by my daughter – aaaargh. And I have literally nothing to lose by being honest (retired, financially independent and living in France where no one cares what I think) other than the good opinions of people I love.
Im bored with the “silent majority” cowards unwilling to stand. Its pathetic. Its not the Normandy beaches or bomber command. Its twatter. Grow up and grow a pair. At least stand in your own name ffs.
I’m one of those people with a post-graduate degree who remains silent. I’m too old to start my life over and what you are suggesting is that I take all of that work, all of those student loans I spent years repaying, my business I’ve spent years building, and exchange it for complete and total ruin. It’s very easy to easy to suggest that — it’s hard to do it. I have great compassion and respect for those who have taken that hit, but you need to realize that it is an enormous ask.
While what you say is true, just consider the fact that you’re saying it at all. This country loves to tout itself as the global bastion of freedom. If this is what freedom looks like, I’d hate to imagine oppression.
Well, I am saying what I said here after I used a burner email account to register, a VPN to hide my true IP address, I stored the password and email for this site in my brain space rather than on the computer, I’m using a private window in my browser to leave no traces in my history, and I’m doing this on a non-work-personal-use-only computer. I did all that just so I could let out a little of my frustration in the most anonymous way possible. I can imagine worse oppression of course, but I also worry it will happen.
You have my sympathies. In my profession, any deviation from the narrative brings a total shunning, meaning you’d better have something else in the way of income. I’ve seen it happen to a friend of mine.
You’re not alone in your frustration, and the worry about escalation is reasonable to anyone who’s ever read about the Red Guards.
There is also a possibility that the exit polls do not reflect the whole electorate, as they miss postal and early voters. It seems clear that in some large Cities so many Democrat supporters have voted by post that this may skew the final exit poll analysis, given the demographics of these cities. This will make Republican shares of some groups appear higher, as many more Republicans voted on election day.
This does not distract from the overall message that some people will keep their views confidential, as they feel pressured to conform and silence is a pragmatic approach. There are parallels to the Brexit vote in the UK in 2016.
The Edison Research exit poll which is reported in the NYTines which is linked to in the article (which has since updated) – These surveys interviewed voters outside of polling places or early voting sites, or by phone (to account for mail-in voters).
The Critical Race Theory pseudo religion, so popular in academia, left leaning government and now corporate HR departments, implies that white north Europeans are cursed by an original of racism. So I don’t blame for being cagey about stating their beliefs to some random pollster.
Republicans aren’t shy, they’re the Silent Majority. Like a shark, swimming just under the surface, protecting and defending America and the Constitution from treason and insurrection which are both illegal.
So hang on.
Before the election white graduates are ashamed to say they are going to vote for Trump, but during an exit poll they suddenly aren’t?
I don’t get it.
It’s a decent q, but I think the answer is that normal polls have the ability to identify the respondent. I always understood exit polls to be just a quick, anonymous one-on-one outside the polling place.
I don’t think that ‘ashamed’ is the word you wanted here.
The word is ‘afraid’, not ‘ashamed’.
Has nothing to do with shame. Interesting that’s the word you pick.
People such as Adrian have been trained since birth to believe in the distinction between us good people and them bad people. So he can only see Trump supporters as bad people, rightly “ashamed” to be what they are.
I believe the point Adrian was making is that both the Pre-election polls and the exit-polls are “ALL POLLS” – why suddenly are people apparently answering polling questions differently. i.e. if you were a shy-Trump voter before the election why are you not still a shy-Trump voter after the election?
Wasn’t the inaccurate polling intentional? Pour encourager les autres.
Polling was developed in an era where people could be defined by their job and background with amazing accuracy, had at most 10 sources of news and (don’t ask me to remember the authors) data showed that a majority of Americans developed their political opinions based upon chats with respected local figures in their hometown. The core principles of polling haven’t changed since this concept was thrown in the bin and in the internet age, quite simply, polls cannot guess what different groups are important to divide out, never mind guess what those groups think from a sample survey. Best argument for a full census really.
At least part of the polling error is due to the fact that a lot of us deliberately lie to pollsters. Another part is that pollsters calling my house will get different answers depending on who, if anyone, answers the phone.
“The political climate these days prevents me from saying things I believe because others might find them offensive.”
It’s not so much that others might find what one says offensive, more that, taking offence, they then tend to get shoutily aggressive and insulting. Naturally one usually wishes to avoid such confrontations.
The article links to the NYTimes article with the “exit polls conducted by Edison Research for the National Election Pool.”. These exit polls are being continually updated and no longer reflect the number reported in the article
Artcle: , show that Trump ran even among white college graduates 49-49, and even had an edge among white female graduates of 50-49!
Exit poll (with 15,590 interviews) now give Biden up 51 ““ 48 – white college graduates and Biden up 54 ““ 45 with White female college graduate.
The thrust of the article is still salient ““ i.e. white college graduates +3 for Biden rather than the +26 and +31 in the Pew and Politico/ABC polls, but be aware that the underlying numbers have changed and may yet change again
I can explain the polling discrepancy easily. People obsessed with Trump and hate him feel no pain whatsoever — actually they feel pleasure — expounding their views and couldn’t care less what people think, because they trulyl believe everybody thinks like them. People who support Trump, esp. those who support him half-heartedly, will stay quiet when good friends or relatives talk about how happy they are that Trump is gone, or how he should go to jail, etc. Those people aren’t likely to be honest with pollsters, because they’re too scared to say they think Trump is OK, or not that bad, or better than the Democrats into critical race theory and tacitly supporting riots. I know, because just today, I was chatting with my cousin in Atlanta who was thrilled Trump was gone and hoping the two Democratic senators would win. While I didn’t say “Yeah, great,” or anything like that, I certainly didn’t mention that I was hoping Trump would win the election (holding my nose). I’m as guilty as the next person about hiding true intentions, at least in some situations. So I can believe that a significant portion of voters lied to pollsters about their intention to vote for Trump. Double for the hispanics and blacks who supported him. If you were hispanic or black, would you advertise your preference for Trump?
I can explain the polling discrepancy easily. People obsessed with Trump and hate him feel no pain whatsoever — actually they feel pleasure — expounding their views and couldn’t care less what people think, because they trulyl believe everybody thinks like them. People who support Trump, esp. those who support him half-heartedly, will stay quiet when good friends or relatives talk about how happy they are that Trump is gone, or how he should go to jail, etc. Those people aren’t likely to be honest with pollsters, because they’re too scared to say they think Trump is OK, or not that bad, or better than the Democrats into critical race theory and tacitly supporting riots. I know, because just today, I was chatting with my cousin in Atlanta who was thrilled Trump was gone and hoping the two Democratic senators would win. While I didn’t say “Yeah, great,” or anything like that, I certainly didn’t mention that I was hoping Trump would win the election (holding my nose). I’m as guilty as the next person about hiding true intentions, at least in some situations. So I can believe that a significant portion of voters lied to pollsters about their intention to vote for Trump. Double for the hispanics and blacks who supported him. If you were hispanic or black, would you advertise your preference for Trump?
This is a good piece and raises important points about what you’re allowed to say. And its true on both sides of the political divide. Self-respecting lefties can expect to be howled down if they step outside party views on subjects such as Israel, fundamental Islam, LGBTQIA etc.
However, the point not really discussed here is the shy educated Trump voters, who are genuinely shy about the racist views, which they’ll never admit to holding, but which they will vote based on. I’m not, by any means, saying that all Trump voters are racist (Clinton made that mistake) but I’d be confident saying that all racists are Trump supporters. This is the Venn diagram bind that Trump’s nomination put Republican voters in. To my mind, far too many good Republicans held their noses and backed him, instead of showing better judgement and putting their country first.
Your presumption (“all racists are Trumpers”) is erroneous. Richard Spencer endorsed Biden. He did the math on CRT and found it consonant with his brand of racial essentialism. The only difference between Spencer and the Woke Left, is a disagreement on what color should wield power.
I’d be confident saying that all racists are Trump supporters.
Based on what? No, seriously; what is the evidence that supports this claim? It’s not the Trump voter who treats blacks and other minorities as pets and mascots in need of white overseers. That’s the left, the left that accuses any minority who supports Trump or harbors conservative belief of being a traitor. Try again. This time with something more than a talking point you were told to repeat.
Trump’s support included more non-whites than any GOP candidate since 1960. The leader of the WalkAway movement is a gay white guy. The party elected 11 new women to the House, so you can’t make the sexist charge, either.
Wikipedia has a listing of approximately 100 self-declared white supremacist groups – from the ‘Aryan Nations’ to the catchily named ‘Wolves of Vinland’. If you can find me one such group which isn’t an explicit supporter of Trump, I’d be very surprised. You’ll need to work hard to find one, and you know you will, so stop kidding yourself. Again, I’m not saying all Trump supporters are racist. I’m saying that all racists (give or take) are rooting for the man in orange. It’s what you call an SOBO – a statement of the bleedin obvious.
Depends on your definition of ‘racist’. I come across more racism among Democrat voters who continue to stoke racial grievances and try to divide society along ethnic lines. A few days ago in class we were made to read a text which says that those who wish to bring about racial equity must be open to the notion of white blood being spilled. I don’t really care about, but nor do I approve, those groups you mentioned. They don’t hold the levers of institutional power.
You may find one of those women is a man. Another thing no one is allowed to mention or be insulted harassed and dismissed from your job. Biden will push the trans agenda to the limit, rapists in women’s prisons etc. I can’t bear trump but anyone who thinks men can be women would never get my vote might explain the increase in LGB vote?
I’m pretty sure Ilhan Omar is a democrat. I also can’t imagine Louis Farrakhan voting Republican either.
Oh wait we’ve got another racist who thinks only white people can be racist.
Yes, very clever. All nations and races can be racist towards each other, and usually are. What we’re talking about here is the US (where Trump is president) and the whites are the majority and have the racist sub-section that he specifically targets. (These comments are going to get very long if you need every detail explained)
Given that Trump has strongly pro-Israel policies, it’s certainly possible that some white anti-Semites would vote against him solely on that basis.
To say that all racists are Trump supporters is a disgusting allegation. The white supremacist Richard Spencer supported Biden because CRT promotes the segregation of the races. Indeed, we now see separate black and white areas in Seattle libraries, instigated by the leftie-loonies that run that demented city.
And if Trump is a racist, why was he given awards by the NAACP in the past? And why did he substantially increase his vote share among all races, ethnicities, religions and genders this week – the only exception being among WHITE MEN, who swung towards Biden?
Very funny Fraser. The faux outrage that Trump could be in any way encouraging white supremacists. The Proud Boys? Moi? I didn’t say Trump was a racist. (I’d say he probably is in a lazy thoughtless way, his father had form with evicting black tenants). I don’t think Trump cares for anyone or anything beyond their usefulness to him. White supremacists represent a voting block he’s happy to have on board. Stand down, but stand by.
If you are confused about the “Proud Boys” try watching this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMwUGXol1lY
The “Proud Boys” whose leader is Enrique Tarrio a black hispanic American:
Oh and the big name white supremacist Richard Spencer has publicly stated that he voted for Biden so that doesn’t work either.
Please try checking your own “facts” like a grown up in future.
Go check the Wikipedia entry for Proud Boys and read what the intelligence agencies have to say about them. They were founded by a white supremacist and are attempting a rebrand with Mr Tarrio. Also if you don’t like my example of Proud Boys as a nasty bigoted group who supports Trump, go down the list of self-identifying white supremacist groups in the US and find me one that doesn’t support Trump. Some people will tie themselves in knots rather than accept truths that stare them in the face. Trump is supported by the white supremacists. Deal with it.
the “intelligence” agencies – the ones that fuelled the Russia gate smears and prepared the WMD dossiers you mean?
Look, I didn’t put you guys into bed with the white supremacists. You did it of your own free will and knew you were doing it. Personally, if a politician I’d backed refused to disown his racist support, I’d stop backing that person. You chose not to. Your options are 1. “Yeah so what, I can’t help who else voted for him” or 2. Something mealy mouthed about how Trump did try and disown racists in some subtle way that normal people couldn’t understand.
You don’t get to use option 3, which is to pretend that white supremacists don’t exist and don’t vote for Trump. Thank God it’s finally over with this clown and we can soon go back to boring centrist politics.
3. Of course not
2. He is not a racist, and was not mealy mouthed about disowning both the Proud Boys and the white nationalist/aryan nation types at Charlotteville, as is arguably shown by the increase in support for him among black and Hispanic voters
1. You seem to be suggesting that I can only support someone a) whose views on all matters I 100% agree with and b) whose supporters are all as nice / right thinking as me. This is not very nuanced, and would produce just as many sinners if applied to Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
It’s called the lesser of two evils, although actually I don’t think either man is evil, nor do I think the majority of their supporters and Americans in general are. Unfortunately your intemperate arguments just up the ante all round, as do those of so many others.
Well you do have a point I suppose but this election, being a binary choice, even hard out Marxists, for example, would tick Biden/Harris. You can’t draw any conclusions beyond that really.