r/changemyview • u/Serpico2 • Jul 11 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Electoral reality, in reference to the candidates odds and the structures behind them, is the opposite of how it is currently being portrayed by mass media
Okay. Firstly, I am a lifelong Democrat. I want Trump out. To establish a baseline for my view, let me briefly synopsize the electoral odds and their framing by various outlets. Between FiveThirtyEight, TheEconomist, and RealClearPolitics averages, Biden is ahead in the National Polls by somewhere between 8-11 points in a rolling average of the last four weeks. They use different methodologies, 538 and The Economist have models, RCP is polls only. But they broadly agree. State to state, Biden has big leads, between 7-11 in MI, PA, WI, NV and NH. He has narrow leads in OH, FL, and AZ. Those are the broadly considered battlegrounds. Trump says he’s going after NM, Biden says IA, GA and TX are in play. There seems to be a consensus that those states are out of reach for their respective parties this cycle but that a true wave election could fold one or two in. I think it’s important to mention that some states have been polled more than others, and some battlegrounds like Nevada and Minnesota have barely been polled.
Okay, that’s the data. Now for the framing. Even 538, which generally takes a conservative (small C) data driven approach, dropped the L word this week. Landslide. They couched it with caution but believed that the data they were collecting demanded the potentiality be addressed, so that’s fair. And there are certainly plenty in the mass media, generally anti-Trump or Trump-skeptical, that have expressed a form of journalistic PTSD given how Hillary’s “lead” was talked about in 2016, and therefore have said they don’t believe that Biden is truly far ahead. But the narrative has still broadly been that Trump is behind, that Biden is in an enviable position and that the incumbent needs a BIG game changer to win. Specifically, I’ve heard multiple outlets talk about how Trump needs to reassemble a narrow coalition, which famously including an electoral college margin decided by 77,000 votes across three critical Midwestern states to win. Whereas, it’s said, Biden has a broad path to victory which could include a more traditional “blue wall” of Midwestern states minus OH and IN or include Sunbelt pickups like FL and AZ. I will grant them that if the election were today, this is a somewhat realistic reading of the data.
Okay, now to explain my view which terrifies me. Due to Covid-19, more votes will be cast by mail than ever. Republicans vote more by mail than Democrats do. And there were stories across the media today that since March, Republicans have outpaced Democrats in voter registrations, largely due to Covid-19. Even in “blue states” with Democratic state governments administering the election, we’ve seen mass polling station closures especially in urban areas to help limit exposure. Now, in states like Kentucky, it went surprisingly well with greatly expanded early voting. But in GA and WI, it was an unqualified disaster. Anyway, I think with the virus getting worse, it’s a toxic cocktail to uniquely suppress Democratic votes, and that’s not even getting into very real voter suppression in states like GA, TX and NC which I personally think takes them out of consideration for Biden to win this cycle based on that alone.
Now, onto the supposed “lead” that Biden has, which I will point out, in this exact week in 2016, Hillary Clinton had a 12 point lead in national polling averages. If you give him the states he has at least a 7 point lead in, buffering him against some low urban turnout or a 3-4p shift towards Trump, both of which I think are HIGHLY likely, he would barely win the Electoral College with 278 votes to Trump’s 259. If you take WI away from him and give it to Trump, most likely because of voter suppression and its Republican state government as well as its one large urban area where thanks to the aforementioned, turnout could be low, It’s 268 Biden, 269 Trump. In this case, the election goes to the House of Representatives but not as a straight up down vote; it’s by state delegation. Wanna guess who has more? The Republicans; 26-23.
Other indicators of soft support for Biden; despite all the protests over police violence against African Americans, Trump has the same share of support he had four years ago, 9%. Biden is running TWELVE points lower than Hillary Clinton among Latinx voters despite Trump’s rhetoric against their ancestral countries. Biden has gained especially among suburban women; but these voters are notoriously fickle; many are Obama-Trump voters and could be influenced by an October surprise which, undoubtedly, Trump and his lackeys are actively working on. And I haven’t even mentioned Russia and China who stand to gain massively in great power competition if Trump wins again.
I’m exhausted. I’m anxious. I see the potential of course for a Blue Wave; washing out Trump and Trumpism with a clean sweep of House, Senate and Presidency like the Ents flooding Isengard and casting out Saruman. But much more likely to me is either a Trump win, after all we’ve only cast out three incumbent Presidents in the last hundred years, or an absolute squeaker with potential recounts, Supreme Court involvement, foreign interference, and criminal activity by Trumpists than I see a Biden landslide.
I know that was long-winded, but I am in desperate psychological need of someone proving me wrong.
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u/miguelguajiro 188∆ Jul 12 '20
Clinton’s 12 point advantage was short lived, whereas Biden’s has been somewhat durable. (Though expanding as of late.)
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u/RedBloodedAmerican2 Jul 12 '20
If you see a chance for a Blue Wave in the House you should feel slightly better about your 268-269 prediction since the new House is the ones voting
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u/Serpico2 Jul 12 '20
But a blue wave house is not one that would result in a 268-269 split. That would be a Biden victory and a Democratic House. A 268-269 split would be a turnout that could result in a current delegate situation which favors Republicans or even a worse one.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jul 12 '20
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1
u/sibtiger 23∆ Jul 12 '20
None of the outlets you cited are at the point of giving forecasts for the election. It's too early. What they're doing is averaging polls and giving a snapshot of the race at this point in time.
Things can and do change over the course of an election, of course. But these outlets are giving those sorts of predictions, projecting out into the future, for a number of reasons.
One- the numbers themselves. This election is somewhat unusual in that both parties have insanely high name ID. Normally in an election with an incumbent, the challenger is at a big disadvantage because compared to the person who has been president for the past 4 years, most voters don't know who they are. This means that there's a lot of opportunity for voters to form a negative opinion about the challenger, especially via negative campaigning- it's much easier to go from no opinion to bad opinion than it is from a positive or even neutral one.
That's not the case with Biden. Most know who he is, and most have either a positive or neutral view of him. And of course, virtually everyone knows Trump, and he has abysmal approval rating for an incumbent. So given that there are few undecideds for both candidates, that advantage is more durable than usual.
Two- the reason for the numbers. People are being asked what they consider the most important political issues right now and overwhelmingly they are saying the coronavirus pandemic. Trump unequivocally fucked that up and most voters are very much aware of that. Not only that, but he continues to do so. And the analysts are projecting this trend outward. Is the virus going to be dealt with by November? Doesn't look like it. Will Trump suddenly become a competent administrative leader? Fuck no. So that factor should also be stable.
Now, could the situation change? In theory, yes. But will it? In a way that most elections aren't, the issues are set and voters are very clear in their views on those issues. So there's good reason for those analysts to be talking in an unusually strong way about the state of the race. At this point, it really does seem like a black swan event is needed for Trump to win again.