If the polling is this wacky, why bother publishing it at all?
Over the weekend, ABC and the Washington Post published the results of a poll that made both operations look like its results were the product of a month-long exercise with a Magic 8-Ball. The way you know it was an embarrassment is the Post story about the poll began by telling us all we should probably ignore it completely.
The Post-ABC poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, although the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier.
Commenting to emphasize this for the people who weren’t paying attention in 2016. If you vote for an alternative to what would normally be your candidate, it’s pretty much the same as voting for their competitor. That is, if you vote for a third party alternative to Biden, you’re basically voting for Trump (and if you vote for a third party alternative to Trump, assuming he wins the primary, it’s like voting for Biden).
If there are no candidates running who you are happy with, but there is a candidate that you think would be especially destructive, you should vote for that candidates main competitor. Otherwise you’re contributing to the destructive candidate winning.
That sounds like a Biden problem, DNC runs a weak shit candidate that no one wants to run, if he loses they are to blame.
Sure, the dnc is to blame, but we lose
If liberals support the party’s chosen candidate thats been forced on them then thats the outcome. It doesnt look like all that talk of ‘push him left after the election’ worked out so well
We also didn’t have the whole government apparatus burnt down by a mental three year old. I know it’s not a great choice, but it is a clear one.
Its only a clear choice for those afraid of change, that have a certain level of comfort which the status quo brings them
This is an incredibly privileged take
I voted for Bernie, and I love him, but I would probably vote for a cunt that I hate in hindsight to avoid Trump if I could go back. Not because I think it’s the right thing to do, I just know that so many people won’t do the right thing, that my doing the right thing actually becomes an overall negative. Ranked voting is the ultimate choice and would make this whole fucked up system so much better, but since the pieces of shit we call representation will never make that a reality here, the best option is to go with the lesser of two devils that you know the most idiots are going to gravitate to. Bernie should have won, but I know now that was never even possible and wish it had been Clinton.
Yep, I think you’re 100 percent right. Counting wasn’t my choice in the primary - I wanted someone more progressive and felt she had some other flaws - but I sure as hell voted for her in the general.
It’s theoretically possible for a third party or independent candidate to win, but it’s so colossally unlikely, we’ve never really come that close. From the Wikipedia article:
It’s really a two party system, so the effort needs to be on getting the right candidate to win the primary. So many people stayed home rather than vote for Clinton that we ended up with Trump.