• TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    43
    ·
    5 months ago

    Unlikely to improve. The Biden team is making it clear that they intend to move to the right to get the voters they think they need this election cycle.

    Its also pretty clear to any one with eyes that he’s not going to find the voters he needs there, but it is what it is.

    For context, no incumbent has ever won a second term with an approval of less than 51%.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        5 months ago

        You are misinterpretting the XKCD.

        Its not as if incumbents with approvals this low haven’t competed. They have.

        We have the data on it. You don’t win the presidency with an approval this low.

        • otp@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          5 months ago

          Its not as if incumbents with approvals this low haven’t competed. They have.

          And he’s up against a convicted felon. And we have the data on it. You don’t win the presidency with a felony conviction.

          • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            5 months ago

            against a convicted felon. And we have the data on it. You don’t win the presidency with a felony conviction.

            I mean the felon part actually would be in bounds of the logic of the comic. We can’t observe the probability of a felon getting elected because it hasn’t occurred before, and therefore we can’t calculate a statistic.

              • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                5 months ago

                Its a divide by 0. We can absolutely put down a probability of Bidens likelihood to win based on current polling or approval, because we have an N to divide by.

                We don’t have an N to divide by in the felony issue (or any of the issues cited in the comic), and so can’t calculate a probability.

                • otp@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  4
                  ·
                  5 months ago

                  “X has never happened (until it happened)” is literally the point of the comic.

                  It’s not a divide by zero problem because we’re looking at all the presidents for a given criteria. N is the number of presidents elected.

                  Every one of those blurbs, and the two additional ones suggested here, are a situation where N equals the number of prior presidential elections. And all of them are 0%, because the listed criteria were always 0/N.

              • catloaf@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                5 months ago

                Based on historical data, no, they are undefined. It’s expressed as the number of historical wins divided by the total number of historical felons running. There have been zero historical felons running, and dividing by zero is undefined.

                • otp@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  5 months ago

                  I’d rather express it as the number of federally-elected felons over the total number of historical presidential elects… which seems to be what the comic is using.

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      5 months ago

      And no challenger has ever won with an approval rating as bad as Trump’s. One way or another a historically unpopular candidate is going to get their second term.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        5 months ago

        Yeah, I mean, its super interesting in an academic way.

        And, you know… panic inducing in almost every other way.

        If Cornell West hadn’t clustered the fuck out of his candidacy, we could have been seeing a Green party & Independent coalition representing a viable third party threat this year. The Green party is the only third party that had the infrastructure in place to get onto the ballot in all 50 states. But West screwed the pooch. I think he with Stein as running mate might have actually been able to make it happen, purely based on how hated the two extant candidates are.

  • MartianRecon@lemmus.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    5 months ago

    So the biggest issue on polling is that it’s a broken system. It relies on all people to answer when asked, and what we’re seeing is people flat out aren’t doing it. Think about it. When’s the last time you answered an unknown number, and if that number wasn’t something you were expecting (like your car repair person telling you your vehicle was ready) did you stay on the line?

    This same kind of thing is popping up when we look at polling for the primaries and then see the actual voter data. They haven’t been lining up for a while.

    Think back to 2022. The media, for months, was saying there was going to be a red wave election. Polling was supporting this as well. And… they had a measly 5 seat majority.

    I think people are putting way too much faith in polling the past few cycles, because something fundamentally changed in how people interact with them.

      • MartianRecon@lemmus.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        5 months ago

        Precisely.

        If you look at the underlying metrics for this election, it shouldn’t be anywhere near to being close. Multiple state republican parties are literally bankrupt, the primary demographic of the GOP is dying due to old age, and they are running a convicted felon.

        You also have stuff like trump paying for biased polls. Are we really going to think that other people; didn’t know about this and are now doing it as well?

        It just doesn’t make any sense, and of course our corporate owned media flat out refuses to be the 4th wall and be objective in their reporting. It’s infuriating.

      • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        5 months ago

        Approval is not the same as “won’t vote for”, and even if it was, if enough of the other guy’s base won’t vote for him an unpopular person can still win. There’s nothing incompatible about an unpopular candidate leading in polls. Whoever wins this election will have a net-negative approval rating.

        • Blackbeard@lemmy.worldM
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          5 months ago

          I also question whether or not we’ll ever see significant, sustained net approval of a President in the internet/social media age. Information is so decentralized and echo chambered now that there will simply never be a shortage of media describing why President ______ is bad and everyone is poor and in mortal danger.

      • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        5 months ago

        I mean you can still have a low ass approval rating and best an opponent who has an even lower approval rating. Two things can be true at once. People people can dislike Biden, and dislike the other guy more.

    • pezmaker@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      5 months ago

      Yeah, I was texted the other day to fill out a survey and didn’t even reply with the “stop to opt out”. Just, leave me alone. I’m not excited for Biden but I’m going to do what I need to do. That won’t show in any polls.

      • MartianRecon@lemmus.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        5 months ago

        Yeah like, most people have shit to do. I’m excited to vote for Biden again actually (he did get a lot of good stuff done with an extremely tight congress), and sure there are things he 100% did that I’m not on board with, but that’s everything. You’re never going to get 100% of what you want, but he’s the closest I’ll get so lets do it!

        It’s just very frustrating how they’re framing the race this cycle. They completely ignore trumps many disqualifiers while talking about polling that, by all rights, he’s paying for bad results again.

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      5 months ago

      IMHO, I think the bigger issue is that people don’t understand statistics. They see a poll that says Trump has a 25% of winning, then when Trump wins, they think the poll is wrong. That’s not how statistics works.

      That means if you held the same close election four times, Trump would win one.

      People mock the polls, but I wonder how many of those people actually took a basic GE statistics 101 glass.

      • catloaf@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        5 months ago

        For random events, that’s true. But we are able to poll people before the event to see how it will turn out. With a big enough sample size, you’re able to get pretty close to actual results. After all, the election itself is just one big poll, not a die roll.

        • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          5 months ago

          I say this as someone who went to school for this stuff and does a lot of surveying and statistics daily.

          This doesn’t work when you’re comparing things that are going to be neck and neck. In order forecast with very high confidence, with something that is neck and neck, you need a huuuuge sample size and absolutely perfect surveying conditions.

          The reason polls have been a toss up lately isn’t because the polling is bad. The problem is that the big races were also ways going to be nail biters, and we’re looking at the odds that a race will be 1% one way or another.

          The good polls have been pretty damn close to the final vote percentages numbers. The problem is that the variance needed to swing a win right or left is absolutely minuscule. We’re often talking about percentages that are less than 2%, or less than 1%.

      • MartianRecon@lemmus.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        5 months ago

        I’m not mocking polls here. I’m saying that if you have a sizeable population of people that refuse to participate in them, even if you get to a statistically significant number of people, the poll will be off. trump was also found to have been paying for polls that were slanted towards him to be put out there.

        So, if a candidate is using bad polls to flood the zone with bad results, and then on top of that you have a statistically significant number of people who refuse to participate in said polling, your data is corrupted, is it not? This is exactly how people can use statistics to lie to people.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      Calls, rarely. Texts and Facebook polls, every chance I get (though I don’t use Facebook that much any more).

  • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    5 months ago

    Genocide “Not a Felon” Joe finds out being pro genocide, not-a-felon, are not enough to get votes. Oh if there was something he could do about that.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        5 months ago

        I think that tells you everything you need to know about Biden as a candidate.

        Non-viable. If you can’t out approval a 34-count convicted felon, we shouldn’t be running you as candidate.

        • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          5 months ago

          I think that tells you everything you need to know about Biden as a candidate.

          It absolutely does. Biden is the right pick over Trump.

          Non-viable. If you can’t out approval a 34-count convicted felon, we shouldn’t be running you as candidate.

          Did you have reading comprehension error? Trump was more than 3% LOWER in approval. Than this new low for Biden. As in, even Biden as his worst approval rating is better than Trump (at his worst).

          • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            5 months ago

            It absolutely does. Biden is the right pick over Trump.

            I mean that’s an editorial or moral opinion. Which is fine, but not relevant.

            Trump was more than 3% LOWER in approval.

            Was. Not is. Trumps approval was also much higher then Bidens ever has been at some points. Do those times not count?

            What should matter is that right now. Trumps approval is 5 points higher than Biden. Not at some other time. Not cherry picking one time for one and a different time for the other. Just the facts ma’am.

            Living in exacerbated disbelief of reality or in a heighten state of moral panic over the fact that, apparently, the country approves of Trump more than they do Biden does nothing to change the political reality we find ourselves in.

            There is no moral comment being made when we show through data that Biden is losing this election. Living in a constant state of outrage because reality doesn’t meet your expectations and other people obviously don’t share them is delusional to the point of exhaustion.

            • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              5 months ago

              Was. Not is.

              Was, when President. Which is the equal measure.

              Trumps approval was also much higher then Bidens ever has been at some points. Do those times not count?

              Not cherry picking one time for one and a different time for the other. Just the facts ma’am.

              Now who’s cherry picking? Biden’s highest approval is above Trumps highest approval, during both of their Presidencies. With Biden at 59% and Trump only reaching 47%.

              Living in a constant state of outrage because reality doesn’t meet your expectations and other people obviously don’t share them is delusional to the point of exhaustion.

              You brought your whole army of strawmen didn’t you? Did you even see how I started this thread?

              Feel free to respond to the void. I won’t be wasting more time on you and your bad faith arguments.

      • Soup@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        5 months ago

        And it’s stressful as hell because they keep shaping the world around them to be worse, too. Canada’s got too many wannabe republicans and it’s starting to really piss me off.

  • randon31415@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    5 months ago

    This right here -> “Joe Biden: Nothing would fundamentally change if he’s (re)elected”.

    Yes, things would get worse with Trump, but you got to verbalize your plan to MAKE THINGS BETTER.

  • 3volver@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    5 months ago

    If Biden wins the popular vote and the convicted felon orange man ends up winning we’re so fucked. This entire system is shaking.