In addition to all the things said elsewhere in this thread, younger demographics are less likely to engage with polling, which is likely effecting the outcome of the polls. The emails/texts/phone calls/etc just get ignored, so that leaves the older generations as the only ones who actually answer.
I know the polls try to take that into account, but it's never going to be possible to do so perfectly.
So tldr: fuck the polls go vote, and make sure your friends/family votes
45% of American voters will vote for Trump even if every accusation against him is true. 45% of American voters will vote for Harris even if every accusation against her is true.
It stopped being about issues decades ago. It's about ideologies.
why is this race so close?
Two words: Electoral College.
If you go by the polls, the two candidates are within margin of error of each other, or very close. We're looking at a possibility that Trump would not only win the EC, but the overall popular vote, as well.
The EC is not the only issue at play. Millions of Americans either like Trump or are willing to handwave his behavior away rather than vote for a Democrat.
The electoral college takes it from a 45-55 to a 50-50. But what on God's green earth gets him that 45% of the votes?
One word: stupidity.
Pam_from_The_Office.jpg
The electoral collage an years of disinformation and latent bigotry plus corporate greed screwing us all over...did I miss anything?
Republicans don’t want the country to be educated.
People with college degrees are overwhelmingly voting Harris. Republicans know that if we make the country smarter they’re screwed
Pretty sure it's the economy. Despite the fact that the US economy has been reasonably well managed, by international standards, people are hurting -- which is the perfect recipe for changing the governing party. Telling people that things aren't as bad as they think they are makes you sound out of touch.
You talking about this person?
They're more on the prison side of the school-to-prison pipeline.
As opposed convicted and pending prison time on the school to prison pipeline?
Just say you're a Trump supporter and save us all some time.
She has no policy. Everything that she believed three years ago and four years ago is out the window. She’s going to my philosophy now, in fact, I was gonna send her a MAGA hat,” Trump
Harris "I'm honored to have Dick Cheney on board."
Me: Yeah okay you're just going to prove his point then?
As opposed to concepts of plans?
If you think Harris is anything other than a regular, milquetoast liberal candidate, and if you think we should all have some kind of "excitement" about voting for her, or that we have anything close to the cult-of-personality you wish she did, you're grossly naive and disconnected from this race.
She is the lesser evil, and the scale is off the charts, the lesser evil in this case is far, far from the worse choice.
The lesser evil is still evil. This is why are picking between two genocidal options between both mainstream parties.
You mean these policies don't exist?
She does have concepts of a policy
It's entirely the EC.
Biden won by ten million votes, and it was still a clencher because some idjit in kansas thinks the candidates sucking Pennsylvania's fracking drill all election keeps their interests represented.
We need to stop letting land vote.
If it was 70-30, like it should be, the electoral college wouldn't be relevant.
Both are pro-genocide and that's why the race is close
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/07/us/politics/michigan-harris-arab-muslim-jewish-voters.html
This comment being remove I didn't expect... I guess the NYT is misinformation now, or people would rather not know "why is this race so close"?
And it's not just arabs as the NYTrash would want us to believe.
It's anybody who's opposed to genocide.
Because Trump is energizing his base with lies and propaganda designed to get them angry and motivated, while Kamala has squandered the enthusiasm her base had for her by pursuing disaffected center-right never-Trumpers. It's basically the same strategy Hillary Clinton ran in 2016 and it's terrifying to watch the Democrats gamble on it yet again.
Those semi-con swing voters are deciding this election though. Nobody else is "on the fence" right now.
Jesus christ, we saw two assassination attempts on Trump and it didn't change polls. While polls are trash and not to be trusted, they still would have changed if there was some large amount of moderate undecided voters.
And lets not forget H. Clinton won the popular vote by millions of votes. Yes, the Dems are addicting to losing and make the worst decisions in order to appeal to the most useless people, but they're also playing against a stacked deck here.
The Harris campaign must pursue those voters in order to win. They are the voters who live in battleground states. Pursuing a hard-left strategy the way everyone on lemmy wants is a guaranteed loss.
This is the problem with the non-proportional EC makeup. Unfortunately it’s not going to change any time soon because the party who wins got there on the old system.
Thank you, this is a spectacular example of how Democrats use faulty logic and bad faith arguments to defeat themselves. I'm going to break it down for everybody so we can all understand why they keep losing.
The Harris campaign must pursue those voters in order to win. They are the voters who live in battleground states.
This is confidently stated as fact, but not only is there no evidence to support this statement, there's strong evidence against it. This is, at its core, the same statement that Chuck Schumer made when predicting a Democratic sweep in 2016:
"For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia. And you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin."
Not only did this strategy fail spectacularly in 2016, we're watching it fail in 2024; Harris has recently dropped in all crucial swing states. The only thing backing up this argument is its proponents' self-confidence (or self-delusion).
Moving on:
Pursuing a hard-left strategy the way everyone on lemmy wants is a guaranteed loss.
Here, we leave behind false assertions and move into bad-faith arguments. Notice how the user completely ignored the voters I mentioned (her base) in order to pivot to what they think is an easier target: Lemmy users. Sure, if Kamala Harris came out in support of the abolition of capitalism, she'd lose, but no (or at least no one serious) is saying she'd win if she did.
What people are actually saying is much more tangible and and reasonable: sharpen your criticism of Israel and increase your Palestinian outreach if you want to win Michigan; don't just talk about the middle-class, get your working-class base out with transformative social programs (like Biden proposed in 2020; stop hanging out with Liz Fucking Cheney, for Christ sake. These are all criticisms the user sidestepped by creating a false dichotomy between the, "hard-left," and Harris' current strategy.
Finally:
This is the problem with the non-proportional EC makeup. Unfortunately it’s not going to change any time soon because the party who wins got there on the old system.
This is unrelated, but incorrect. The Democrats have won the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 elections; they would abolish the Electoral College in a heartbeat, but it would require a constitutional amendment, which they'll never get passed. It has nothing to do with the fact that, "the party who wins got there on the old system."
Anyway, this is how the Democrats continuously fail. First, they convinced themselves that the only way to win is to get centrist voters, even though evidence doesn't bear that out. Next, they dismiss criticism of this strategy as, "far-left." Finally, if they lose (which is looking alarming possible this election), they will blame leftists for not supporting them strongly enough, thus allowing them to continue the same strategy next election without self-reflection...assuming there is a next election, which no longer feels like a given.
its because their corporate owners don't want to have to implement left wing economic policies for the good of the nation. unfortunately we'll continue to have fascist bogey men until people start holding dems accountable.
There's also the fact that this, "centrist liberal," strategy worked exactly once in 1992 (and that may have had more to do with Ross Perot than anything else), but now there's an entire pundit and strategist class built around it. Most of these people don't mind losing elections if it means they can keep their jobs.
ENOUGH YANKTARDED SPAM. JAIL THEM BOTH.
You're the one who has been spamming, it would seem, based on how much you've been posting this exact same message everywhere.
I'm not sure what else we were supposed to expect from a 5 hour old account called "antiyanks".
As John Stewart would say: well I'm still undecided... Cause a horse kicked my head.
this race...
this race?
The past three Republican presidents saw a job growth of 1 million, the past three Democratic presidents 51 million. Now sure, the president doesn't define every aspect of the economy, but my god that big a discrepancy is not accidental. As someone not from America, I don't understand why this race is so close, but why any race involving the Republicans, even outside of Trump, would be. I'll consider Romney an exception though, but he doesn't seem representative of the Republican Party before or after him.
Because the democrats are doing everything they can to lose. They don’t message well, and they keep running to the right.
Most Americans want leftist policies, but the Democrats refuse to capitalize on that. Kamala is toting a right wing immigration bill thinking it’s going to help her.
nearly all republicans rig elections to their favor and make decent education an expensive luxury to help maintain their control over poorly educated & informed voting masses and democrats let them since it makes their job easier and they know that there's no viable alternative.
the icing on this shit cake is that most democrat voters will shame you if you don't participate and blame you if you can't because of voter suppression.
the icing on this shit cake is that most democrat voters will shame you if you don't participate
Drag is very surprised you find this odd. Democrat voters want you to fight back against Republican voter suppression. They think keeling over and giving up is a bad idea. The icing on the shit cake is that centrists who would rather have a D than an R choose to cooperate with Republican tactics.
Every time some ridiculous shit like this happens, I remember when Howard Dean yelled a little too loud and that invalidated his entire political career.
Been thinking this thought a lot lately. IIRC he was a decent man and likely would have been a decent president - but god forbid he get a little excited at a rally. Meanwhile, Trump has proven that literally nothing he could do or has done would change the mind of his voters. He could start and end every speech with a Howard Dean scream, and no one would even bat an eye.
(And I seem to also recall hearing that the isolated microphone of his scream that we've all heard a hundred times did not reflect how it even sounded at the event.)
Even worse, apparently we only got the audio from his mic and it was an appropriately loud EEEEAAAAGH given the audience volume
He went on to run the DNC on the platform of healthcare reform and was instrumental in getting Obama elected with a supermajority trifecta. And then he was fired and Lieberman got to kill the public option.
He offered too much to maintain cultural hegemony.
The race is close because Republicans have built something better than a platform when you're dealing with ignorant masses.
They built a brand.
it's close because racism, jeebus, and guns. it seems like it should be more than that, but it isn't. broke uneducated GOP voters literally don't care about anything except for some combination of the above 3 things, because that's what the 1% propaganda machine told them to do
Let's not forget the group that's voting 3rd party due to the situation in Israel. Does it make sense to do, no, but they will do it.
I've tried to discuss it in the ML communities but as soon as you start proving your points with solid facts they just delete everything you said, censored and banned, a bit ironic.
And the Dems will have very little affect (if any) on anyone’s jebus or guns. So it’s really just the racism that’s the distinguishing factor.
The guns thing. There is a rather large swath of rural, liberal gun owners. If you’ve ever lived in a locale that lacks enough ambient light for you to see your hand in front of your face at night, you get it. If you live in a place where you can hear a car approaching from more than a mile away you get it.
Let my handgun have a normal clip (average 9mm is 15 bullets) and we’re probably golden. And yet. DEMs lose moderate libs on this single issue.
Yes, I own a handgun. Off the shelf with no mods it holds 18 per clip standard and comes with 2 clips.
I generally hear them water down the gun control, like a handgun with a stock number of bullets is generally ok. Or a rifle or shot gun. Unless you have some red flags, which you probably don't have. Even in some of the stricter nations of gun control, there's frequently some path for rural folks to at least have long guns.
It makes a lot of sense for very rural living: you need a defense against the wild, and possibly hunting for food. I fully support that.
The general desire among Democrats is stricter regulation, which is a very reasonable thing. People should be required to prove that they can be a responsible gun owner and are mentally fit to own one. I shouldn't be able to pick one up from the sporting goods store like it's a bag of potato chips. It is an incredibly powerful tool and can easily kill others. It should be treated as such.
i live in the mountains in a town of ~3000. i can drive 30 miles without seeing a traffic light. and i also have a gun
i'm still voting D, because i see that as a boneheaded thing to acquiesce to trump over. though to be fair, there IS NO valid defensible reason to vote for that incompetent pluted bloatocrat rapist coward
Most conservatives believe state education isn't anything more than brainwashing against conservative ideas.
They're 100% correct. Education tends to make one confront reality and live in the real world, a very un-conservative concept.
Sucks for them that reality has a liberal bias.
You talking about the place where people pledge their allegiance to a flag every day?
"Go to college and get a good education!"
goes to college, gets educated in class and from people from all over who aren't like me. Realize different people have different needs
"College is a liberal brain wash machine!"
they have to start from kindergarten onward, because it doesn't take much education to make people realize that "because tradition" is just about the dumbest reason to do anything. and if that's the only reason you're doing something, then maybe it's time to grow the fuck up and move on
but no, they've turned words like "progress" and "change" into pejoratives. same as "expert," "science," and "facts/fact-checking"
Compulsory indoctrination is a dumb tradition.
to be fair: reality does have a liberal bias. lol
50% of people have below average intelligence and they finally feel represented... 🤷♂️
he barely danced because he knows he'd bust his ass trying.
Aww, no virtual hand-job boogying?!
It's close because humans are stupid
I'll keep investing in K-12 education
The bulk of elementary education funding comes from the states. So this doesn't mean much in practice.
One place where a federal official (like the President) would be able to help out immensely is by immediately cancelling some (or, fuck it, all) of the outstanding federally held student loan debt. This could be accomplished via the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act of 2003, which authorizes the secretary of the DOE to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to” the Title IV loan programs “as the Secretary deems necessary” to ensure that individuals adversely affected by a Presidentially declared national emergency “are not placed in a worse position financially.”
A number of Presidential contenders promised just this back in 2020 (Warren, Sanders, even Biden himself). Sadly, Harris hedged on this pledge even back then and has not made any attempt to renew it now.
The bulk of student loans is held by private entities
This response seems like it’s missing the last few years: you’re aware that Biden’s administration has gone through multiple attempts of exactly this, right? Mostly struck down by courts as exceeding his authority.
Inertia. Mostly.
Political Memes (and Politics) community when asked about
each party'sKamala's views on genocide.Also conservatives when asked about the same and Russia/Ukraine and school shootings.
Or any recent administration, including the current one that could be contacted and complained to. Or honestly most any of the western world's leading powers. Yes, the US is a big problem because of their supplying arms, but when it comes to the meme of blinders on, they are not the only ones who are pretending this will fix itself.
No no, only Biden/Harris! Well, and Obama and W to a lesser degree. But Trump? He gets a free pass don't-cha know! Because of course he will save all the Palestinians and Lebanese people if he wins!
(obligatory /s for those who don't get it)
