Who wasn't heard? Credit: Megan Jelinger/SOPA Images/LightRocket/ Getty
They’re celebrating in the streets of Washington DC and New York, and President-Elect Joe Biden opened his victory speech with the words “The people of this nation have spoken and delivered us a clear victory…” It’s starting to feel like the promised Democratic landslide happened after all.
The pollsters, after three or four days of intense anxiety and abuse, are basking in this last-minute reprieve. If, as is now likely, Biden ends up with 306 Electoral College votes to Donald Trump’s 232, that looks a lot like the comfortable win they predicted — and the final 4-5% popular vote advantage will be only a few points off. OK, they got Florida wrong, but basically the polls were right, right?
Of all people, I should be pushing this latest version of events. I predicted on election day that even if the polls were as wrong as they were in 2016, Biden would still win comfortably. So am I now vindicated too?
Sadly not. The word ‘comfortably’ is not just a detail, it’s the whole story. And there has been nothing comfortable about the past week.
The overall story that the polls told was that this election was not even going to be close — as YouGov’s Doug Rivers put it with admirable candour in our pre-election interview, “either we’re badly off or this is not going to be close.” Trump obviously didn’t win, so the praise being heaped on Robert Cahaly, the pollster who forecast a Trump victory, is equally misplaced — but the President came a lot closer than he was supposed to, and that’s important.
One of the many facts Democrats have deployed for years when discussing the shock 2016 result is that as few as 70,000 voters across crucial swing states handed Donald Trump his victory. Poll watcher Nate Silver’s explanation for why he gave a Trump victory such a low probability at the time is that it was a genuine “low probability event” — a number of states that were incredibly close just all happened to flip into Trump’s column. It was kind of a fluke, in other words.
But contrary to the forecasts, we’ve just been through another nail-biter. As results stand, if just 25,000 voters across Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia had chosen Trump instead, Biden could never have reached the magic 270 electoral college votes. Commentators were right to observe that 2016 was weirdly close, but then so was 2020.
In 2012, the last “normal” presidential election, only 4 out of 50 states were even close, with final victory margins of under 5%; in 2016 that number more than doubled to 10, and in 2020 it was still 8. In 2012, there was only one state that had a final margin of under 1% (FL), but there were 4 such states in both 2016 (MI-NH-PA-WI) and 2020 (AZ-GA-PA-WI). If these four states had edged in the other direction, in both elections the other candidate would have won. No polling company can realistically measure a state-wide difference that small — in both elections those four states could easily have gone either way.
Once again, the polls systematically underestimated the Trump vote across the country: states such as Ohio, Iowa and Texas were widely predicted to be close when they weren’t, and Wisconsin was predicted to be in the bag for Biden when it should have been too close to call. Looking only at states where 100% of the votes have been counted, the YouGov 50-state model has an average of over 5 points margin error in the Democratic direction, and in deep Red states such as Arkansas and Mississippi the error increases to over 8 points.
The reason this matters is not to give pollsters another shellacking — they have been doing their best to get it right — but to reckon with the profoundly important fact that, once again, there was a slice of the electorate that simply wasn’t showing up in the official measures. It is analogous to the wider political situation: just as these voters aren’t properly represented in opinion polls, they still aren’t well understood in the mainstream conversation. The fact that the 2020 result will probably end up with an identical Electoral College margin to the 2016 result, with just a few states flipped narrowly the other way, is a sign of how little we have moved on in the past four years in terms of understanding this hidden part of the population.
The New York Times’ graphics showing whether each county moved more Republican (red) or Democrat (blue) shows near-stasis this year compared to the strong red shift in 2016.
Pollsters will soon start coming out with technical postmortems which, while no doubt useful, must not be allowed to confuse the bigger picture. Sure, the demographics were different this time — this time it wasn’t poor white men that they miscounted so much as certain sections of the Latino and Black populations, alongside the college-educated and suburban white women.
But the fact that their blind spot has shifted does not make it less concerning. The two most common explanations — “shy Trump” voters not admitting the truth to pollsters (or perhaps even themselves), and the (in my view more salient) fact that less engaged members of each of these demographic groups are less likely to end up taking a survey in the first place — both point to the same bigger problem. There is a section of the population that is almost invisible to the mainstream and incomprehensible to polite society. They are as “unheard” as ever, and it must be our mission to understand them better.
The opposite instinct, dangerously tempting for some American liberals, is to sit in moral condemnation of the over 70m of their compatriots who voted for Donald Trump. This attitude requires us to believe that 70% of the citizens of Wyoming, and 40% of the population of New York, are bad people — the idea is itself morally repugnant and will only lead to future electoral failure.
A more useful objective for Democrats would now be to focus, in a way they failed to do in the past four years, on what about Trump’s offer made it so attractive to so many good people, despite his glaringly obvious personality flaws. This is their best bet to taking their party out of margin-of-error territory next time round. Happily, in his remarks so far, Joe Biden has emphasised the need for healing and speaking for all Americans, but there will be many in his administration who take a sharper view and it will be a daily struggle to resist them.
I concluded my pre-election piece by saying that, if Trump ended up surprising everyone and actually winning re-election, “it would mean we have to rethink the basic epistemic foundations of our public conversation”. We didn’t reach that rather hyperbolic-sounding moment, but those foundations took another knock last week. The close result means that Donald Trump and his millions of supporters were not entirely wrong, even though they weren’t right either, to dismiss the opinion polls as part of a wider mainstream stitch-up; it means that his low approval ratings, endlessly referred to throughout his presidency, were probably also off by a similar margin, and that the whole framing of the race was misconceived.
It is a powerful reminder that we should be careful before writing off those who reject the establishment way of thinking alongside the sophisticated tools used to reinforce that reality. It also serves as a warning to the many wielders-of-charts to be more humble in their presentation of them (note to Nate Silver: “Fuck You, we did a good job” is not quite the right tone).
At points during results night, I had the eerily familiar feeling that Trump had gone and done it again. At those times it almost felt uncanny, as if he had been able to reach otherwise hidden voters using intuitions that the pollsters and pundits simply didn’t possess. In the cool light of day, with Biden’s electoral college victory now clear, that sensation is receding with all the speed of a bad dream. A few more months and perhaps the whole Trump era will start to feel the same way. But we mustn’t let it — the issues and people he spoke to remain all too real, and must now be taken seriously, not forgotten.
Freddie Sayers is the Editor-in-Chief & CEO of UnHerd. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of YouGov, and founder of PoliticsHome.
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SubscribeWhy is NO-ONE talking about the huge fault in the Biden “Victory”?
A crucial principle of democratic elections is the secret ballot. Secret voting booths were introduced because previously voters were intimidated by “superior” more powerful people to vote for candidates not of their choosing.
With postal voting it is impossible to prevent such intimidation, because the voting no longer takes place in a supervised voting booth. It follows that an election with any significant proportion of mail-in voting is invalid due to breach of the secret ballot principle. Postal voting can be justified only in respect of people who would be unable to travel to a voting booth.
So while Trump’s words about vote-stealing are incompetently-expressed, they actually have a profound truth behind them.
The election of Biden is in breach of a fundamental principle shared by all European countries – yet no-one is talking about it.
Hardly… In Britain postal vote is ever expanding, but nobody makes such claims.
Are you serious? Ask any Scottish nationalist (and note the correct use of upper and lower case letters here; I’m not talking about just SNP members) knew never to vote by post in any council area controlled by a leftist council.
I am in Scotland, and I have never heard of it. If anything it proves the point that Trump, Brexit party and SNP are triplets separated at birth.
(But I do agree with your
choice of capitalization)
While having no truck with the idea that officialdom has connived to change postal votes I agree with Robin Clarke that it is dangerous for democracy to make postal, or any other kind of remote voting, the norm.
Unless it can be proved that each voter has genuinely himself/herself cast the vote without outside pressure then that vote should not be counted. This means that voting in person should be mandatory save for a few medical exceptions.
I say all this as a general principle rather than in any way having any sympathy with Trump’s view that he has been cheated.
I’m a Green Scottish nationalist, and I guess I reside in what you might call a ‘left wing’ council area: assuming that you mean that Labour are Left-Wing, which these days is frankly silly. I always vote by post. Your suggestion that elections, which are run by politically impartial public servants, could be ‘fixed’ in Scotland is both absurd and deeply insulting to their high standards, as well as ignorant and highly mischievous, and I would suggest that you either withdraw it, or apologise.
Yes, of course, sorry. Things like that could not possibly happen in the UK. In other countries, certainly, but never in the UK. What was I thinking.
https://www.youtube.com/wat… I hope Trump exposes the fraud in the USA. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Did you say “thinking” ?
It can in London and has over and over. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Oh yes they do. And the cases of fraudulent postal voting are known, and have resulted in jail sentences for Labour party activists.
Admittedly, you won’t know about this if you get your news from the BBC/Channel 4/Guardian.
I read about it on the Guardian, who covered it in many articles. It’s your bias that makes you think the BBC and Guardian did not cover this, and it’s your bias that makes you wrong.
https://www.theguardian.com…
Google “Guardian Lutfur Rahman” and you’ll see they’ve covered it amply.
It’s your bias that makes you think these media outlets did not cover them, and it’s your bias that makes you wrong.
It is not what you cover it is how you present it. I assume both the Guardian and the BBC will claim that their coverage of the Trump presidency was impartial and unbiased
Well, you do hear about it (or so I seem to remember), but they have never amounted to much, have they?
2005in Birmingham Led to Suspended Jail sentences ,2013 Tower Hamlets .2017 Peterborough,Brexit party was on course to Win by election,labour mP was helped by a Jailed postal voting fraudster &lost by 1,000 votes ALL postal…hardly nothing.. banana republic in some ‘Rotten boroughs”.
thanks to multiculturism from the Third world.
Peterborough by-election: one ward had hundreds and hundreds of postal votes, all for one party. The overall result was very close.
Your Comment is Worthy of Dementia ukrainian candidate Biden..
…Truth tends to Come out Years later.. nixon was cheated in Chicago in nov 1960 by Kennedy supporters dumping thousands of votes into Lake michigan..nixon who also lost 1962 california Gubertorial was paranoid in 1972,After his narrow win against ‘Humphrey dumphrey” in 1968,no one was going to Steal his 1972 Presidency..That came out two years later..How Can Arizona have 125% turnout,Philadelphia 115% Georgia 105% something is very Wrong…
No, no, Robin. It’s not wrong when the left do it because they’re in the service of a much nobler cause which excuses anything they do.
They definitely do. Postal votes should go back to only being allowed by those with complete medical reason. Should NOT be allowed by normal voters.
While my wife was alive she held my proxy while away
at sea (36 years RN/MN) No problems. For the Brexit
Vote I knew I would be on the way to the Azores so I applied for a Postal Vote. As I was sailing solo there was no chance of me being under any pressure to vote either way – Except from that crotchety old Bxxxxxd that lurked in my cockpit
I agree with you 100% – except that we have postal votes, too, most egregiously used by a certain T Blair in the 90s when he postulated that ‘anyone who even sleeps on a park bench will be able to vote’. This, as far as I know, has never been repealed but we know in many families that the ‘superior’ in the house tells his wife and offspring whom to vote for. (And, yes, it is usually a man). I suspect this is what has just happened big-time in the USA and I think Trump should legislate for recounts in many borderline states.
Don’t forget Tower Hamlets and that Lutfer Rahman episode. It was so bad he was barred from standing the Mayor elections for 5 years. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Have you collected evidence to back this up? Perhaps field research?
Until there’s evidence that this happens in large enough numbers to affect elections (or to even estimate the numbers), this is merely speculation.
And you also assume that the man of the household will force votes for Biden. Consider that Trump won more of the male vote and if we’re in the realm of speculation, there are more dominant men types who support him, then this sort of coercive votes would more likely fall for Trump.
Also, Trump cannot legislate for state voting laws directly – this would be unconstitutional.
The Electoral commission found that Lutfur Rahman had indeed done this in Tower Hamlets.
Postal voting in western states, whether corrupt or not, only justifies the practice in the rest of the world, and is a slippery slope to tyranny
Doesn’t even the possibility of this speculation create a distrust in the system
As well as those families you mention there are those where – as so many here in Wales ‘my grandad always voted Labour’…. So?? i used to work with a young Asian lady who had a first class degree so obviously had a brain and presumably a mind of her own but ‘we always vote Labour’….’why?’ I asked ‘don’t know, we just always do’. Hard line family tradition together with left wing academia cancels out ‘think for yourself’.
This is a good example of postal votes and vote rigging. I recall there was also a problem with the Bush elections!! https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Very good point. Even in one’s own home, someone could be there to intimidate someone to vote a certain way. You are the first person I have heard bring this up. All we heard about here was the risk of mail-in votes being “lost” or delayed which can just sound like trying to conjure up blame. Lack of secrecy/privacy for your vote, way more valid.
Polls should be banned for quite a few weeks before voting. The media makes the polls the news when it should be the campaign messages.
Practically every piece of election coverage has the potential to sway voters, even polls. And polling can both motivate the winners AND the losers to turn up at the polls, and some even say that a big lead demotivates the leader’s supporters to turn up.
So arbitrarily banning one aspect of coverage is, well, arbitrary.
From the moment Trump won, The Democrats and their vitriolic far-left friends refused to accept the election result, attacked and opposed Trump, created a vicious false narrative around his persona, violently demonstrated. pillaged and looted. They then had the astonishing, bare-faced cheek to accuse Trump of being divisive. There is now questionable electoral fraud hanging over Harris (forget Biden, he’s just a temporary smoke-screen) after Trump had won Florida and Ohio. Little wonder that there is now a split and extremely angry country. It’s a good thing that the Trump supporters have dignity in defeat.
The Democrats did accept the result. Hillary Clinton conceded early on. There wasn’t a refusal to accept the result and launch spurious legal challenges.
You’re making things up. And that’s undignified.
Clinton and the Demd NEVER admitted defeat! Bitterly she had to accept reality but as ‘What Happened’ didn’t have a question mark, she stirred up trouble to try to destroy Trump’s presidency: Russia Russia Russia, Ukraine impeachment etc
They did. Just search for Clinton’s concession speech. That’s accepting the results.
Saying that Russia had tried to sway the election (which they did), however successfully or unsuccessfully, is not the same as not accepting the results. Trump was still president.
She may have accepted it in speech, but not in reality. That is the difference between the left and normal people. The left are so used to lying that they are quite prepared to appear to accept while not accepting. Everything you do and say is in support of your political ideology, and the truth doesn’t come into it.
Pity they didn’t investigate Ukraine more fully,oh wait it might show Warmonger Biden up..
BS. Trump had barely been inaugurated and Dems were talking impeachment. But, that’s okay; stay in your bunker where reality cannot threaten you.
You’re backing up my arguments: you can only impeach a sitting president. This means they accepted the election result, which the original commenter said the Democrats did not.
Please read the comments.
You have to have a reason to impeach. When a paper like WaPo has an impeachment story in Inauguration Day, spare me the fantasy that the result was accepted.
Usual practice is to wait for him to do something before you impeach. The Democrats were preparing the impeachment papers before he was even sworn in, so no, they never accepted him as president.
I think you need A ”Truth” drug..nancy pelosi &
her Demogogues,sorry democrats have spent 4&half years spouting nonsense that russians aided trump, but ukrainians didn’t give biden a Bank account for Hunter…the Clintons have Questions to answer over ”Whitewater” and mysterious deaths..but hey If ”my side Wins by dubious methods?” lets ignore democracy…one of the reasons i avoid standing for political Parties…Independent
You know exactly what was meant. Over the last 4 years DT was subject to a orchestrated campaign of vitriolic denegation and abuse without parallel clearly intended destroy his presidency.
Given the level outrage into which the Democrats managed to whip themselves, they will not have been able to resist the opportunity to ballot rig and there will have been plenty of opportunity to so. I suspect many of those involved persuaded themselves that it was a moral duty.
Obama moved a few hundred yards from the White House and set up his HQ working to do everything in his power to unseat the President. He failed but in 2020 when the next election was nearing China let loose its nasty virus and the Marxist BLM movement was all set uo to create mayhem. What a coincidence!
Careful, someone will accuse you of being a conspiracy theorist, despite the coincidences which only seem to benefit one side.
I seem to remember desperate suggestions that the Electoral College could still block Trump, by voting independently of the majority in their State. The talk came to nothing, but I don’t think we should underestimate the extremity of the reaction to that election result.
Plus there were years of campaigning and investigations focused on the “Russia collusion” angle. Even though there was no collusion with Russia, Trump;s officials and supporters went to jail as a result of that investigation.
Plus, rather than accept defeat, there were years of blaming it on false news, on foreign agents, on social media and on “hate”.
Finally, and most damning of all, the Democrats felt emboldened to tilt the field in their own direction. The Democrats lost in 2016, they felt, because the media gave too much coverage to Trump. So after 2016 the media no longer reported what Trump actually said, they instead reported on what he had said (eg. provided their own opinions) – they removed the capacity of the President to make a case through themselves to the American people. The Democrats lost in 2016, they felt, because Americans bypassed the news organisations and shared stories and opinions on social media. Democrat legislators subsequently put pressure on social media companies to regulate content, to remove that which was “hateful” or even “untrue” (and with “truth” determined by the opinion of predominantly anti-Trump media sources that means the suppression of pro-Trump opinions and arguments). The Democrats lost in 2016 because their voters are less likely to go to the polls, so they decided in 2020 to encourage postal voting wherever they could, using coronavirus as an excuse.
The Democrats felt it was fine to do all of the above because they didn’t accept the essential legitimacy of the 2016 result.
Had the Democrats secured majorities in all 3 parts of the government, I think we would have seen attempts to add 2 new reliably Democrat States, in order to cement their majority in the Senate. We’ll see what happens about the Supreme Court.
With all this in mind, it’s slightly disingenuous to say that the Democrats accepted the 2016 result early on. They accepted it as a legal reality but they never accepted that they were fairly defeated. They protested against Trump’s inauguration, which is a really strange thing to do – what are you protesting about, democracy?
The polling only “missed” if you remain stuck in the mindset that the purpose of polling is to reflect public opinion. That used to be true, but polling now exists to shape public opinion.
Polling is the embodiment of what was once called “make news,” something that was not really a story but served as the pretext for one. A poll is a snapshot of the moment, nothing more. It reflects what the pollster asked, of whom the question was asked, and that’s about it. But polls over the years have become the peg for stories, one more symptom of journalism’s slow descent into activism.
This. I don’t mind polls being wrong, but I felt they were deliberately leading us astray for their preferred presidential candidate. I fear the same has happened to the media, which once added to our thinking, but now seeks to dominate it.
This post is about polls, but I don’t think poll results can be separated out from the totality of pre-election coverage. In the USA “pre-election coverage” basically started, in this case, on the day after the Nov. 2016 election. It only intensified in this election year. Every tool was deployed in what can only be considered a coordinated fashion to reinforce the “Trump deplorable” meme.In the end the “menu” included not just highlighting Trump negatives bur also suppression of Biden negatives (Hunter Biden scandal among many other things). The questionable polls are part of this orchestration. So are the blitz-schnell “congratulations” of foreign leaders (similar to the quick recognition of Croatia in 1994).
NB, Freddie: I love ya, but Biden is not yet legally the president elect.
This whole propaganda scenario is eerily similar to the Covid=19 campaign: Highlight wished-for or “approved” views and deride/bury opposing views and data,regardless of the eminence of the sources of the latter. E.g., the authors of the Great Barrington Statement.
Similar stories were reflected upon after 2016 in much of the popular press but then they quickly deteriorated into ‘orange man bad’. Anybody paying attention, and not in a bubble, should see that the problem is, to quote Freddy, “They are as “unheard” as ever, and it must be our mission to understand them better. Nope, they are our peers, ‘heard’ is condescending.
We need more people from the other classes than the university educated class with political and media _power_. They do not need to be _heard_, they need to wield the power that their numbers warrant. With the meritocratic system we’ve created a monstrous 5-8 year indoctrination machine that uses eugenics to make Uber class membership hereditary. (When at 18, you sort by IQ and put the highest IQ together for 5 years in a university campus you create a very effective selective breeding system that would’ve made the Nazis proud 😧) This class has used its original power to push out the other classes from positions of power. Not because of an evil conspiracy, nope, all with the unintended consequences of good intentions.
The idea that those indoctrinated superior feeling souls would only have to listen to the misguided T. voters to make everybody whole again is preposterous. First, we should stop requiring university degrees for jobs that do not need them, this has killed many paths where working class people could’ve reached management. Then the unions should come back (hopefully in a less corrupt form) to provide more space for talent on the work floor and another growth path for management and political functions. Last, the left should build its staff from its _working_ members, not from people whose experience consists of studying politics, women studies, communication, management, or other studies where it is very hard to see what the value is.
Do not listen to the T. or Brexit voters, just make sure that we have to negotiate with them as peers.
brilliantly put
The “donor class” that runs the DNC, imposes their choice of candidates (no better example than Kamal Harris, who won precisely ZERO delegates in the Democratic Primary) and sets policy aren’t remotely interested in the needs of middle class and poor Americans, especially those with less than a college education. Rural America knows this and votes accordingly.
What, exactly, is mysterious about this? The old parties of labour (US Democrats, UK Labour, European social democratic parties) have betrayed their constituents and are run by and for the professional middle class and the donor classes. Piketty traces this electoral shift in “Capital and Ideology”
I will stick up for New SDP under William Clauston he is Not too radical but has contempt with 3-4 main parties,and disappearing democracy ..however I still dont like Political Parties after several bad experiences..
The Intercept, a publication so lefty that Glenn Greenwald is no longer welcome, sent a letter despairing that 35% of Muslims, 30% of gays, 33% of Hispanics had voted for Trump. He doubled his 2016 support to 18% of Black men and 8% of Black women. Two days later the magazine had solved the issue. These oppressed people had internalized the views of their oppressors. Never let the facts get in the way of a narrative. Of course, we all know the reason 55% of married women voted for Trump.
Reading among the comments, I see the a reason polls are way off – few will answer their phone. I get typically 3-4 robocalls daily that I don’t answer if I don’t recognize the caller ID. They never leave a message unless it’s for some silly scam – credit card relief, arrest warrant, etc. I would never answer blindly nor do any of my friends. I really don’t know anybody who does answer their phone. Clearly those who respond to polls must answer – poor souls. The robocall industry voids the polling industry.
Agreed; I never answer my phone if the number is not in my address book. If it’s important/legit then they’ll leave a message and I’ll call them back.
“it means that his low approval ratings, endlessly referred to throughout his presidency, were probably also off by a similar margin”
Possibly, though it’s always been instructive with Trump to look at a combination of his favorability numbers along with his job approval on handling of the economy. The latter number was consistently much stronger than the former. The RCP polling average right before the election put him at +1.2 on handling of the economy: far down from his pre-COVID levels but still in positive territory.
Perhaps I’m projecting too much from my own views, but I find it very easy to imagine some people answering “disapprove” on Trump and still voting for him. It comes down to how some fraction of the population reconciles disapproval on behavior (tweeting, false statements, etc.) with satisfaction on economic policies. Late 2019 and early 2020 (i.e., pre-COVID) Trump was polling at +10 points or better on the economy even while his job approval numbers were underwater. If that had persisted, I think he would have won re-election.
Also, related questions on how polls are structured:
Are the same people normally asked both the job approval question and the economy handling question in the same poll?
If so, which is asked first?
Is that the same for everyone, or is it randomized?
Depending on how that’s done, I could imagine that the structure of the survey leads some subset of people who probably *would* vote for Trump in an election to answer “yes” on the economy question and “no” on the job approval question because the combination is a way to express their status as reluctant voters.
The majority of these polls come from sources with vested interests….Woke “liberal”. IMO these polls were deliberately falsified to encourage undecided and uninformed voters to pick “the winning side” oldest political trick in the stinking book
It’s a mystery to me why President Trump advised his supporters not to use postal votes? Is it possible that he might have done much better if he had encouraged postal voting?
There have been numerous stories of postal workers dumping ballots into the garbage, so what was to be gained? You don’t go along with a badly flawed system because it might be momentarily convenient. The postal worker union endorsed Biden, so pardon me if the group’s professionalism on this matter seems suspect.
These “numerous reports” are unsubstantiated and unproven.
Postal worker union endorsements are pointless. As we can see, many union members voted Trump anyway, which was a key in his 2016 victories in the Rust Belt.
Whatever you say must first be backed by evidence.
These numerous reports are reality; they didn’t materialize out of the blue. There is video to back up claims, too, unless that’s no longer considered evidence.
Nope, the video “evidence” needs to be presented in court, where counter-arguments can be presented against it. After all, videos can simply be fabricated, misinterpreted etc.
That’s happening a lot now. A video of a polling centre window’s being closed was used as “evidence” of observers being shut out, when in fact observers were clearly seen in the same video, and the explanation given by the authorities was that only some windows where blocked because they were close enough to vote counting that voters’ private details were visible.
Trump’s attempts at legal challenges can show how strong these evidence are.
However, it sould be noted that numerous bipartisan independent investigations have found very, very little evidence. And even today, very little evidence is being brought forward to the courts.
And it will be presented in court, along with other evidence.
And even today, very little evidence is being brought forward to the courts.
The election wasn’t even a week ago and the media declaration didn’t happen until the weekend. This isn’t a tv drama with 60 minute justice.
Aside from following every postal worker to catch them dumping envelopes from Rep leaning areas, how could such proof ever be collected? The postal worker would never admit to a crime and would make sure the dumping was out of sight. The voter might know their vote wasn’t recorded, if they are in a state that allows on-line checking. Some voters do assert their vote didn’t arrive, but who knows why?
When I broke the Habit of A lifetime by Standing for ukip in 2005&2010 Elections, the Postal Union,1) wouldn’t let me speak to Postal Workers that whoever got in,they would use EU directive 67/97 to Privatise Post (It was in Oct 2013 in coalition) 2. in medway Towns hundreds of uKIP literature was put in Skips.
So many thousands of houses didn’t know who there ‘Ukip’ candidate Was ..So Dirty tricks happen see 1972 ”The Candidate” with robert Redford one of most underrated US Political Movies ever….
Well said.
In 2016, a large number of people voted Trump in office in rejection of Clinton. In 2020, most voters who casted their ballot for Biden did so against Trump, however, the people who voted for Trump, support him enthusiastically this time around.
Are you sure? I suspect a lot of the people who voted for Trump were not enthusiastic about him at all, but saw him as the last remaining bulwark against some of the Democrats’ most frightening projects – like abolishing due process for young men accused of rape, giving hysterical adolescent girls puberty blockers, and defunding the police. Contrary to what Michelle Obama says, basing your choice of candidate on legitimate concerns about such policies does not mean that you support lies, hate and division.
I agree with you, I guess what I meant generally speaking is that there are more people feeling strongly about Trump comparatively to Biden. Hence the crowds at Trump’s rallies and the crickets at Biden’s.
Looking at the <1% margin States it makes a lot of sense for Trump to challenge the results in the courts. There is sufficient evidence of dead or absent Dem voters and refusal of Democrat activists to allow OFFICIAL, WARRANTED STATE OBSERVERS into the counts. I just wish Trump would do this with more dignity and say he’ll swiftly concede and congratulate Biden should he emerge as the victor.
Trump thinks he got ripped off. I’m not sure what the dignified way of saying this is. Besides, it’s Trump; he’s gonna be who he’s always been .
There will definitely have been some fraud. This is inevitable with mail-in voting. But the anomalies in turn out and voter preferences are, I think, largely explained by mass mail-in ballot harvesting/laundering as perpetrated by the ruthless and powerful Democrat machines in a few key cities. Of course this is, essentially, fraud, and very difficult to prove.
No it only makes the Republicans look like bad losers. They should follow the example of the remainers in our Brexit referendum who excepted the result gracefully and moved on.
Haha!! I see what you did there.
An interesting question is why the postal votes were overwhelmingly Democrat?
Because Trump specifically told anyone voting for him not to vote by postal vote and only in person on the day. Please do keep up.
No mystery at all! Trump asked his voters to do so in person, and Biden pleaded with his voters to do it by mail.
President Trump told his supporters not to vote by mail. His supporters listened. Biden and the Democrats did not. The Republicans then blocked several states from counting effectively in order to create the mirage of a Republican lead on election day. Now, the postal votes are being counted.
I bet there was a lot of this involved on a bigger scale of course. What happens if they find the polls and voting were rigged like this. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
I think little is to be gained from chasing missed tennis balls, The key questions are now – how will the mid-terms turn out? Having boosted the ballot substantially which must be regarded as a “good thing” for democracy – how will this boost be sustained, Will there be a permanent increase in the postal ballot?
From history, like the mid-terms will turn out very well for the Republicans, as it did for the parties opposing the president in 2018, 2010 and 2006.
Plus, Republicans now hold an edge in holding far more state governments in states where the politicians have the power to draw district borders and gerrymander.
That’s not to say the Democrats do not gerrymander – everyone does. But the Republicans hold far more seats post 2020 (a census year, when redistricting starts) that they can re-cement a strong edge for the next decade as they did in 2010.
Statistical analysis sis of election data sets will reveal the extent of fraud enabled by the combination of mail in voting and ballot harvesting. Here is an example showing clear discontinuities in the middle of the night in the battleground states after it became evident that video was losing – https://threadreaderapp.com…. There are a number of similar analysis starting to flood the internet using real data both cross sectionally across states in 2020 and longitudinally over various presidential elections. Such analysis is permissible as evidence in a law suit. I say this as someone who despises Trumps persona but believes in fair play.
Nicely put. “There is a section of the population that is almost invisible to the
mainstream and incomprehensible to polite society. They are as “unheard”
as ever, and it must be our mission to understand them better”.
But – how to figure them out? Their motivations must be powerful since 70 odd million freely voted to choose a leader who was allegedly a liar and a cheat.
One starting point might be gleaned from a map of the counties in the states. In virtually every state the large cities are BLUE.. but the small cities, towns and countryside are RED.! AS if misogyny, racism and xenophobia weren’t enough, now we see a conflict between city and countryside. What a mess!
I’m actually curious whether the polls were, historically, just a tool for parties themselves, ie. for their own analytics, not for the public? Does anyone know? And if so, why did it morph into a public spectacle?
The polls in 2020 missed by way more than this article concedes. Forget the fraud anecdotes, just focus on a deep analysis of the results. Statistical analysis of election data sets will reveal the extent of fraud enabled by the combination of mail in voting and ballot harvesting. Here is an example showing clear discontinuities in the middle of the night in the battleground states after it became evident that Biden was losing – https://threadreaderapp.com. There are a number of similar analysis starting to flood the internet using real data both cross sectionally across states in 2020 and longitudinally over various time frames in this election and over various presidential elections. Such analysis is permissible as evidence in a lawsuit as long as the sample size is large and expertly backed. There is no larger sample than a US Presidential election. Most polls were clearly suppression polls, given the size and the consistency of the misses. I say this as someone who despises Trumps persona but believes in fair play.
Riddle me this: Why was it that just the swing States had voting issues? Methinks something right is not. That’s my “field research” 😉
25,000 votes in certain states would have swung it the other way? Spread that across the number of individual counties and Trump’s claims of electoral malpractice look more plausible.
There is a large segment of opinion that has certainly being ignored for years by politicians and the media. Trump was crass but he certainly achieved more than Obama in foreign policy and his pre-covid economic record wasn’t bad either. What is certain is that Trump gave voice to many anxieties in a way that Cessminster would be foolish to ignore!
Takeaway: the unexpectedly close result of both the last two presidential elections shows that what is purported to be public opinion is skewed to the preferences of the coasts, not the heartland. This bias exists not because the pollsters are pushing the coastal point-of-view, but because they don’t see the full spectrum of opinion in the mainland.
This means that ALL reports of what “Americans think,” whether in politics or in other preferences, are short-changing the heartland and are therefore untrustworthy.
A pollster doesn’t miss a segment of public opinion only during presidential surveys. If someone is colorblind they don’t see red all the time.
I feel one aspect of polling that’s less discussed isn’t just the mistakes around election time but the way it drives the Broadcast and Radio news, and so written news, which is then amplified across social media platforms and channels, almost daily , between elections.
The x% of people think this about this, and the endless *if there was an election now this is the way people would vote*, often with conditional questions, crafted by people commissioning polls (in order to nudge towards the *right* result.
All of these fold into the broader narratives that themselves are fuelling the various culture wars that really are starting to threaten the stability of traditional western states maybe it’s about time we dropped the various hate speech laws being brought in to restrict free speech and started to restrict the polling companies a bit more.
Mr. Sayers, since 2016 the narrative has been that “the Democrats are out of touch”.
In 2020 Joe Biden received 75 million votes, more than any Presidential candidate in US history, and he is leading Donald Trump in the popular vote by a margin of more than 4 million.
At what point do the Republicans need to focus on what made Biden “so attractive to so many good people, despite his glaringly obvious personality flaws”? The opposite instinct, dangerously tempting for some American conservatives, is to sit in moral condemnation of the over 75 million of their compatriots who voted for Joe Biden. This attitude requires us to believe that 64% of the citizens of California, and 55% of the population of New York are bad people, “the idea itself is morally repugnant and will only lead to future electoral failure”.
Maybe its time for OAN and Fox News to get out of their bubbles and talk to real Biden supporters in the coastal cities.
What made Biden so attractive was his moderate tone and – I think at least partly – his proven willingness to bridge the party divide. Can’t say he has significant personality flaws… though people who voted for him had to do so despite the divisive nutters on the left of the Democratic party.
I really hope he has the strength of conviction to govern as a unifier and in the best interests of the nation as a whole.
Biden wasn’t attractive; he won on illegitimate (because not secret) postal votes
You might want to take a look at who he is planning to have for his cabinet and initial plans of action. It couldn’t be further from unifying a divided nation.
oh BLm has said they’ll only burn down a few towns…USA has never been ultra left or ultra Right….but most Are Centre -right…..
I was being sarcastic and paraphrasing Freddie Sayers (“A more useful objective for Democrats would now be to focus, in a way they failed to do in the past four years, on what about Trump’s offer made it so attractive to so many good people”). Maybe I was trying to be too clever, the point I was trying to make is Freddie Sayers argument cuts both ways. The Republicans have to try to understand the Democrat voters too.
Excellent piece as always, Freddie.
What made Biden so attractive is that he is “not Trump”.
The question is whether a scarecrow or a doll or a mannequin would have scored fewer or more votes than “non Trump” Biden.
Excellent point. It’s amazing that a dottering old puppet won, but I guess the media carried him over the line.
Postal voting carried him over the line as others here have pointed out. That’s the one issue no one will confront
The Trump campaign is confronting it right now and has done for four years.
What it lacks is not confrontation but evidence.
The “media” includes Fox News (highest viewership” and Sinclair media (40% reach of local media) and numerous Fox affiliates in local markets.
It includes partisan radio shows (vastly dominated by rightwing pundits) and podcasts.
The “media” as a whole did not favour Biden. You just have a limited view of what the “media” is in the US.
The “media” as a whole did not favour Biden.
That may be the ridiculous thing posted on the Internet all year. Are you for real? EVERY major US daily carried his water along with the alphabet soup networks and much of the cable universe.
Also, a local Fox affiliate is just that, a local affiliate. It has nothing to do with Fox itself beyond carrying the network’s prime time programming.
CBS,NBC,CNN,ABC, Sky,(BBC,iTV in uk) all favoured idiot Globalist biden. Press USA Today etc….To Say because Some reporters on fox news didn’t is laughable.!. Biden will try to interfere in ireland, and Uk exiting the EU,he should stay away or be given A riotous Welcome..
What made Biden so attractive I suspect was (at least partly) that he’s not Hillary. I think Freddy’s point is that the liberal establishment needs to stop dismissing Trump voters as “deplorable”. But then those “liberals” have always felt they were ethically and intellectually superior
In 2020 Trump also received more votes than any Presidential candidate in US history – apart from Biden. Don’t forget that.
I don’t think that’s accurate. Hillary Clinton received 65,853,514 votes in 2016, Trump received 62,984,828 votes. The record at that time was held by Obama, 69,498,516 votes in 2008.
Haven’t heard or seen anybody (you might have different info) saying that people, who voted for Biden, are “bad people”. Very different from very prominent Dems and MSM commentators, who call Trump voters “deplorable”, “hicks” and some even want to put them on lists, to be publicly shamed …
That’s just you being selective in what you read. This is a partisan country. Of course there are insults hurled at Democrats too:
https://www.peninsuladailyn…
You do realise I was being sarcastic? If you read what I wrote I was paraphrasing what Freddie Sayers was saying but writing it from the Democratic point of view. The point I’m trying to make is his argument goes both ways.
Sorry, that doesn’t work. You are not being as clever as you think you are.
I didn’t observe any relentless repetition of the line from the Republicans and Fox news that anyone who even considered voting for Joe Biden must be evil, and a crypto-Nazi,
I did see that line almost every day coming from Democrats, CNN and the NYT.
I was being sarcastic by paraphrasing Freddie Sayers (“This attitude requires us to believe that 70% of the citizens of Wyoming, and 40% of the population of New York, are bad people”).
The point I was trying to make is the Democrats can’t win. If Trump scrapes home in the electoral college, but loses the popular vote like in 2016, people like Freddie Sayers say “the Democrats are out of touch”. If Biden scrapes home and wins the popular vote in 2020, Freddie Sayers say “the Democrats are out of touch”.
Freddie Sayers is right that Trump got a lot of votes. If I were a Democrat, of course I would want to understand why. But you know what? Al Gore got a lot of votes. John Kerry got a lot of votes. Hillary Clinton got a lot of votes. And I never heard people like Freddie Sayers, or Republicans, or Fox News, or OANN, saying we need to listen to those votes too.
Maybe as Trump said they were fraudulent postal votes. The scrutiners were not allowed to get close to see what was going on. And postal votes, that’s a joke. That is how Khan got elected in London and losing ballots.And they moan about Putin!!!
Corruption everywhere. This Muslim guy got barred for 5 years. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Problem is those claims of fraudulent votes have gone to court and Trump has been defeated again and again:
– In Michigan, a state judge threw out a suit attempting to stop the certification of the state for Biden, saying the voter fraud charges were “not credible”
– In Pennsylvania, A federal appeals court rejected a Republican attempt to throw out mail ballots that were postmarked by Election Day but arrived later that week.
– In Arizona, the Trump campaign dropped its lawsuit unable to come up with any grounds on which the results should be reversed.
Even in cases where a judge in Pennsylvania reversed a lower court ruling, and allowed the election observers to be within 6 feet of the canvassing, it’s difficult to see how that is going to be able to overturn a 63,056 majority for Biden.
Maybe there is a very Machiavellian voting plot meant to deliver the Presidency to Biden while ensuring at the same time that the Democrats flip zero house seats, zero state legislatures, and remain in the Senate minority.
But the simplest explanation is that the Republicans know they’ve lost but they want to promote the “stolen election” narrative as they want the Trump voters riled up and angry for the Georgia senate runoff.