US Politics 2

Cuttooth wrote:It's on page 27 of that SSRS link

http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2020/images/05/1 ... -.2020.pdf

Suppose that the presidential election were being held today and you hawd to choose between Joe Biden as the
Democratic Party's candidate, and Donald Trump as the Republican Party's candidate. Who would you be more likely
to vote for?

I imagine those are the raw numbers that then get put into a formula of some sort. Still, not great.

It seems to be the number for, drum roll, white people. The overall figure is 45% to 52% but among white voters it's 59% to 34%.

I wonder what the percentage of voters who go outside topless with a gun are that vote for Trump?
They also have to be flabby.

Lex-Man wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:It's on page 27 of that SSRS link

http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2020/images/05/1 ... -.2020.pdf

Suppose that the presidential election were being held today and you hawd to choose between Joe Biden as the
Democratic Party's candidate, and Donald Trump as the Republican Party's candidate. Who would you be more likely
to vote for?

I imagine those are the raw numbers that then get put into a formula of some sort. Still, not great.

It seems to be the number for, drum roll, white people. The overall figure is 45% to 52% but among white voters it's 59% to 34%.

Think you might be right, but that page might be excluding non-white people altogether from their sample! So among white people in "battleground" states Trump is ahead by 7%, among white independent voters he's ahead by 25%.

I don't believe independent voters even exist. Partisanship and polarization killed them years ago.

Alvin Flummux wrote:I don't believe independent voters even exist. Partisanship and polarization killed them years ago.

In 2016, 5.7% voted for candidates other than Trump or Clinton.

It's really pathetic.

Alvin Flummux wrote:I don't believe independent voters even exist. Partisanship and polarization killed them years ago.

It does seem to be somewhat odd to swing from Republican and Democrat given how different they are.
If you think the rich and companies are special and deserve all the money then vote Republican.
If you think having decent public services is a nice idea and think asking the rich and companies to pay a reasonable amount of tax is fine then vote Democrat.
If you hate everyone and think all government is gooseberry fool and tax is theft then vote Libertarian.

Moggy wrote:

Alvin Flummux wrote:I don't believe independent voters even exist. Partisanship and polarization killed them years ago.

In 2016, 5.7% voted for candidates other than Trump or Clinton.

It's really pathetic.

I’d be interested to see the percentage of voters who went outside the big three UK parties in December. Partisanship seems to be an endemic issue at the moment.

Certainly does seem to be the way of the world now, on both sides of the political spectrum. The right thinks anyone on the left is a bed-wetting SJW and the left thinks anyone on the right is a Nazi. It's no good.

Corazon de Leon wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Alvin Flummux wrote:I don't believe independent voters even exist. Partisanship and polarization killed them years ago.

In 2016, 5.7% voted for candidates other than Trump or Clinton.

It's really pathetic.

I’d be interested to see the percentage of voters who went outside the big three UK parties in December. Partisanship seems to be an endemic issue at the moment.

12.6% which is markedly better than America especially when you consider votes are already split three ways.

Lex-Man wrote:

Corazon de Leon wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Alvin Flummux wrote:I don't believe independent voters even exist. Partisanship and polarization killed them years ago.

In 2016, 5.7% voted for candidates other than Trump or Clinton.

It's really pathetic.

I’d be interested to see the percentage of voters who went outside the big three UK parties in December. Partisanship seems to be an endemic issue at the moment.

12.6% which is markedly better than America especially when you consider votes are already split three ways.

Thanks. I'm not trying to start a fight over who is better than who by the way - America loses that argument any way you slice it - I was just wondering what the figure was.



Having now looked it up myself, 91.2% of the votes were split across the four main parties, which isn't a huge argument against partisanship in the UK. I'm interested though, I wonder if there's a correlation between the increase in partisanship in the US over the course of the second half of last century and the UK. Certainly Scotland's parliament has hugely changed shape since it came into existence - the rainbow parliament of 2003 is very much the generic parliament of 2016 - almost 99% of the votes to the four main parties. This is just me rambling on about political science and history as usual though, it really doesn't mean anything.

Final thought, I thought the SNP might've managed more than 3.9% in December given their absolute dominance up here but I suppose the entire country of Scotland consists of a little bit more than half of the population of London.

twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1261126114799468549

I guess until 5 hours ago it was supposed to be an insult.

Preezy wrote:Certainly does seem to be the way of the world now, on both sides of the political spectrum. The right thinks anyone on the left is a bed-wetting SJW and the left thinks anyone on the right is a Nazi. It's no good.

This is a very comforting statement but not really true.

Cuttooth wrote:

Preezy wrote:Certainly does seem to be the way of the world now, on both sides of the political spectrum. The right thinks anyone on the left is a bed-wetting SJW and the left thinks anyone on the right is a Nazi. It's no good.

This is a very comforting statement but not really true.

Left = Bed Wetter
Right = Nazi
Centre = Nazi Bed Wetter

Talking of Nazi bed wetters.....

twitter.com/amerindependent/status/1261009511621558272

Seeing a lot more people worried about a recession on Twitter, and they want out of Lockdown to mitigate it. A lot of these people are Brexit supporters. Go figure.

Also seeing this argument about a great depression being more damaging than this pandemic. I haven't really looked into it to gauge it.

Squinty wrote:Also seeing this argument about a great depression being more damaging than this pandemic. I haven't really looked into it to gauge it.

Person: "Sure the pandemic is very bad in the short term, but what about the long term damage from an economic depression?"

Climate Change:

That too.

I actually thought I posted this in the Coronavirus thread tbh. That's why I mentioned Brexit.

Corazon de Leon wrote:Having now looked it up myself, 91.2% of the votes were split across the four main parties, which isn't a huge argument against partisanship in the UK

By partisanship do you mean simply voting intention, or do you mean actually who people support? For myself the first past the post system makes me reluctantly partisan in my voting, and I can't imagine I'm the only one. It seems natural that a fptp system would evolve towards two parties

Cuttooth wrote:

Preezy wrote:Certainly does seem to be the way of the world now, on both sides of the political spectrum. The right thinks anyone on the left is a bed-wetting SJW and the left thinks anyone on the right is a Nazi. It's no good.

This is a very comforting statement but not really true.

Yeah it might not be to be fair, I'm no expert, but that's the general vibe I get from all of my internet political interactions and observations. Sample of 1 though so I admit not accurate.

OrangeRKN wrote:

Corazon de Leon wrote:Having now looked it up myself, 91.2% of the votes were split across the four main parties, which isn't a huge argument against partisanship in the UK

By partisanship do you mean simply voting intention, or do you mean actually who people support? For myself the first past the post system makes me reluctantly partisan in my voting, and I can't imagine I'm the only one. It seems natural that a fptp system would evolve towards two parties

When I say partisanship or refer to partisan politics I generally mean those who unwaveringly support one party regardless of the issue. I think that often it’s very easy to criticise the US because it’s utterly rampant over there, while forgetting that there is a fairly nasty partisan undercurrent in British politics and has been for some time. You only need to have a look on social media to see it.

I agree though, it is difficult to separate true partisanship from reluctant supporters because of what you say - FPTP kind of funnels voters into supporting the most powerful/biggest parties, which is problematic. My sensibilities probably push me towards voting Green, for example, but there’s no point in voting for them because they’ll be lucky to scrape an MP and two MSPs(and not from my Lib Dem/SNP marginal constituency), so I support the biggest nearby party that’s closest to my interests - the SNP.

Weirdly enough, the Simpsons clip I posted supports your view but from the American perspective. “Go ahead, throw your vote away!”