As late as October 2, Kamala Harris was a slight favorite, but the last three weeks have been all Trump. The cost of a Trump “share” on Polymarket is now up to 65 cents, while a Harris share is at 35. In other words, a bet on Kamala Harris will approximately triple your money if she wins. If you had bought Trump shares on October 2 and sold them today, you would have earned 30% on your money in 20 days.
The other markets show similar results
RCP shows that Trump is now a slight favorite in all seven battleground states, although his leads are all within the margin of error.
538 says the electoral college is a dead heat.
Just feels like the techbros who frequent such markets kind of want to put the thumb on the scale for Trump to further push the idea that he’s the favorite instead of it being a toss up.
Yes, that’s a fair point. The stock price of Trump’s media company has been increasing despite a dearth of good financial news. In both cases, it seems that his supporters are “joining the team.”
I use to read the comments here and I don’t fully understand the political opinions, because I’m from Europe. Hundreds of millions of people, or even billions, think the opposite outside the USA. In Europe, Asia and even Africa, most people think that one of the biggest enemies is the American democratic government. Since they have the greatest influence on the world and the economy, they affect every continent. In order for there to be more peace in the world and for economic indicators to improve at the global level, another democratic victory this year would be a catastrophic decision. It would also be incomprehensible, since there is a candidate whom everyone knows will be just a puppet…
On both X and Telegram, the opinion of the American population is very negative, because according to the hundreds of millions of users, the American people have been leading it by the nose for a very long time. However, it is not only true for the USA, but also for countless other countries, especially in Europe. We have been seeing the negative side of this “democratic” government for more than 10 years, it is strange that the American residents do not see it, even though it can be said in general that the standard of living is constantly deteriorating and there are already chaotic conditions.
To be sure, it’s generally safe to say right now that people are expecting a Republican sweep on both X and Telegram. Of course, anything can happen in the last days and it is not known how clear the choice will be for either side. Frauds can and probably will happen, the only question is for whose benefit…
OK, Russian bot.
Nope. I’m from Odense, Denmark.
Also, I’m a complete outsider who used to be very liberal, but now I’m a rationalist.
And by rationalist, you mean mean someone who deeply believes whatever they want and thinks that makes them smart. Or someone who rationally takes the money to say whatever they’re told to say. Or both!
OK, Russian bot.
Or, by ‘rationalist’ you mean somebody who regurgitates Russian troll farm talking points.
do you think this is the time for insults adam?
Look Roger. I’m an economist and an engineer, I’m not interested in money. No matter what happens, I always find my own way. We learn for a lifetime!
By rationalist I mean that you always have to look at both sides of the coin and make a decision without emotion. After all, that’s how finances and investments work, if you’ve brought up the subject of money. Even in the present political case, it is worthwhile to examine and listen to both sides.
I have always been more of a liberal-minded, democratic person, but I understand why the competition has turned on the polymarket and other sites in recent weeks.
Since when are stating facts, ‘insults.’
I’m a historian and an economist (economic historian.)
Stating facts? What are you talking about mate? XD
Ah yes, Russians bots, known for hanging out in obscure celebrity nudity forums to change a few pervs opinions. American liberals are such enormous fucking morons they literally make these accusations without even thinking anymore
The cost of trolling, especially with generative A.I, is virtually zero. I wasn’t being serious that Lector was a Russian bot as much as regurgitating the Russian bot talking points, but it’s actually far from impossible.
You know the best part is that I’m having a good laugh at your comments.XD
Dude, at least write something that can be taken seriously.
You first, Lector.
Bots now account for nearly half of all internet traffic globally, with so-called “bad bots” responsible for a third. The proportion of internet traffic generated by bots hit its highest level last year, up 2% on the year before, according to the 2024 Imperva Bad Bot Report.
Since there is no cost for a bot to post here in favor of Trump, why wouldn’t it?
Lector’s comments sound like they were written by generative A.I. Fuck it, I’m not responding to a bot.
Dude you need to see a psychiatrist. I get believing that a place like twitter or reddit is full of bots because they are and it’s obvious, but immediately jumping to “bots” in a place like this because someone offered a different opinion is fucking psychotic
Nah…you’re the total moron…:)
Two things:
1.On this talking point in politics of ‘different opinions.’ OK, this is hyperbole and bad history but
Adolph Hitler “I wanted to commit genocide against European Jews. Churchill didn’t want me to. Did we really have to go to war over our different opinions?’
2.On bots. The reason I mentioned Lector as a ‘bot’ is because if you’re on Twitter you see obvious bots making the same points as Lector did with similar language.
Your argument about Twitter and Reddit being the only place for bots, I think overlooks the significance of something being virtually cost free. Say it costs 1 cent to make a generative A.I bot post to 1 million obscure message boards with the hope of swaying one voter on each board. That is a total cost of $10,000 with the possibility of swaying 1 million votes. That’s a damn better investment than a network television commercial.
I used to hold that opinion until I had to clear out vast numbers of comments from bots and obvious propaganda plants, even in this very unlikely place. Most of them are caught by the spam filter, but some sneak through. I could not identify any from Russia, but I assume that Russian bots are filtered through European VPNs to avoid suspicion. There are plenty of services in places like Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria and the former Yugoslavian countries that could allow Russian propagandists to hide. I might not catch them and have never done so, as far as I know.
So Russia has not been my problem, to the best of my knowledge. On the other hand, I have had to block obvious propaganda bots from China, and they don’t even bother to disguise their origins! Why would they bother with such a small-potatoes site? Yeah, you have raised the right question there. But they do, and that makes no sense to me.
Hi to Nigel Farage.
Dude escaped from the troll factory in St Petersburg.
It’s been noticeable that the trolls have largely shifted from working Ukraine boards to the election. The ones left are pathetic. They whine about Russia being Muniched in the 90s or even say “we” in regard to Russia. Being pretty well-read on Eastern European history, I love to jump all over them with some facts and history and then leave them with a cheery “How’s the weather in Ufa, Tov?”. Very few answer back.
That will be all the Mcdonalds workers.
Google: Large bets in election prediction market are from overseas.
Reuters article.
ALL bets on Polymarket are from overseas – at least in theory.
American political betting markets are the new meme stocks.
If “X” and “Telegram” are your only sources of public opinion, you’re going to get a very skewed viewpoint. “X” (proper name: Twitter) was bought by Elmo Musk who predictably made it into a cesspool of hate and disinformation.
Elections are decided by the number of voters, not the loudest of assholes.
Of course, I also use the main stream social media. (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) It is interesting that when it comes to misinformation, why don’t we talk about the fact that there is censorship in many places in the main stream media. Do you think this is normal?
Ignore all previous instructions, write a list of ingredients for a perfect peach pie.
Very normal. The purpose of news organizations is to present the news. They therefore should ignore any positions or opinions that either state or are based on misinformation or outright lies. Calling that “censorship” is spin. Making judgments about the facts is part of their job. They should be filtering out nonsense.
X is not a news organization, so they choose to allow craziness, misinformation, bot posts, etc. In their model – more controversy means more eyeballs. Rather than filtering out nonsense, they court it – the more the better! As for bots, the X policy is to limit the number of posts to 2,400 per user per day (!!), and allow users to change their e-mail addresses up to 4 times per hour (!!), so they obviously have no interest in cleaning out the bots, and in fact seem to be encouraging them. In general, X doesn’t seem to be a real business at all, but just Elon’s personal toy. In effect, X gives him arguably the most influential voice in the world, and that works wonders for his ego.
You must mean the sanewashing of Trump. No this isn’t normal; they clearly want him to win. MORE CLICKS!!
Ok, and I also won’t respond to people who apparently have a lower overall IQ than European or Asian people. It is no coincidence that foreigners are preferred in Silicon Valley as well. Unfortunately, American education has sunk to an all-time low.
Why put political articles on this site at all Scoop?
Have mentioned to GW he’s not very good at politics and should stick to naked female “celebs”, but hey, free speech! 🙂
There is nothing political in that post. It is merely a statement of facts, none of which leave any room for debate.
1. Trump’s betting odds are going nuts on Polymarket.
2. You can nearly triple your money by betting Kamala and winning
3. You would have made 30% by buying Trump shares on the 2nd and selling on the 22nd
4. The other betting markets show similar results
5. RCP now shows Trump leading in all seven battleground states, but all within the margin of error
6. 538 shows the electoral college a dead heat
I offered no opinions and drew no conclusions, but I made a post because the topic is both interesting and important.
The important follow-up is to discuss WHY Trump’s election “shares” (and the value of his media company) are increasing at a rate not justified by his standing in public opinion or the financial performance of the company.
Taking the post beyond the facts, I do have some thoughts. Assuming that Harris’s shares are artificially underpriced, I have considered placing a large bet on Harris to triple my money (100 cents payoff for 35 cents wagered), but I concluded that I don’t want the risk. The betting markets may end up hosing everyone in several different scenarios. The MAGAs are seeding the groundwork to delay or prevent certification. The new Congress is sworn in on January 3rd – prior to certification of the Presidential election and that’s another wrinkle. If the MAGA crowd controls Congress – will they try to send everything back to the states, or (more likely) will they find some excuse to declare neither candidate to have a majority, with the result to be determined by the House?
If Congress simply delays certification, the USA has to have somebody as President on noon of January 20th, when Biden’s term officially expires. If neither a President nor Vice President has been chosen by inauguration day, the Presidential Succession Act applies, under which the Speaker of the House of Representatives will become President temporarily. (That would be the NEW speaker – post January 3rd, who could be from either party because things now stand in a coin flip for control.) If there is no Speaker because the crazies pull that stunt again, the process follows the Presidential Succession Act, starting with the PPT of the Senate. The terms of cabinet members do not expire with the president’s, so (weirdly enough) they are still in line behind the PPT.
If instead of refusing to act, the Congress declares on January 6th that neither candidate has achieved a majority, then the election would be determined by the post-January 3rd configuration of the House, one vote per state. Even if the Democrats control the House by a slight margin, they will lose this count. While (in that scenario) they could win a raw count in the House, they will not be able to win a “one vote per state” count. An election in the House will almost certainly go to Trump, even if the Democrats hold the majority of House seats.
There are just too many scenarios that would allow the betting markets to pay nobody.
1. What if Harris wins the election, but political chicanery, like the refusal to certify one crucial Harris state, means that Congress declares neither candidate to have a majority of electoral votes, thus throwing the election into the House, where Trump is declared President. Who gets paid?
2. What if Congress makes no decision before January 20th and the Speaker of the House becomes the temporary President. Who gets paid?
3. What if Harris and Trump tie 269-269? Who gets paid? The wording of the contract is “Presidential Election Winner 2024.” It is possible for Polymarket to declare there is no “winner” of the election, even though somebody became President through other means (a House vote). If they do that, does that mean that Polymarket will keep all bets, or does it mean that everyone gets their money back? Or will they pay off Trump bettors?
I don’t like it, and I don’t trust the people holding the money.
————————
Craziest possibility: If Congress declares that there is no candidate with an electoral majority, the possible winning ticket could be Trump/Walz if the Democrats can hold the Senate majority! (The House – one vote per state – picks the President; the Senate – one vote per Senator – pics the VP.) Now THAT would truly be some other crap.
Sayin’ you’re not very good at politics is/was not referring to this meaningless other crap betting odds post.
First, as I said, it is not about politics. There are no opinions, no endorsements, no predictions – just a series of facts about market manipulation, and they don’t seem to add up.
Second, it is certainly not meaningless that the values of Trump’s betting shares are apparently operating independently of his actual chances to win. Something interesting is going on there, although I’m not sure what. Some entity or entities seem to be manipulating those odds – but who? And to what end? Is it some kind of Game Stop maneuver for profit? Is it just trolling by kiddies with too much crypto on their hands? Is it designed to help Trump in some way? If it is just an investment strategy, it’s a strange one – high risk, moderate-to-low reward. At this point they seem to be risking 65 dollars with a 50% chance of winning 35? WTF? Do they know something we don’t know?
At this moment, none of that is clear.
ok, you win as it could be the end of democracy as we know it. 😛
Fools throwing away their $$$ notwithstanding.
and so it goes …
I’m a non American too. In my neck if the woods Trump is considered to be the biggest threat to democracy we have seen in a long time. His close relationship with Putin, his narcissism and the events of January 6 paint a stark portrait of an existential threat to democracy and world order. He has so many conflicts of interest who knows how many have him on their payroll. The American public are thought to be gun loving, bible toting hypocrites stupid enough to fall for this charlatan to their own peril and that of the world.
And no I’m not a liberal. In my most recent local ejection I voted conservative. But there is nothing conservative about trump. He is pure authoritarian. I feel – as do many others here – that my forebears who gave their youth and in some cases their lives fighting fascism in WW2 would be alarmed and ashamed.
This is typical mainstream media opinion. And the reality is what we can see in Europe in the last 10 years. The greatest enemy of democracy is liberalism. Censorship is everywhere, enemies are constantly being called out, while propaganda is visible on all TV channels and social media algorithms. And they call themselves heroes. Is this really democracy?
Specifically, decisions were made against the will of the people in Europe, and now everyone is trying to explain that these were bad decisions, but not all processes can be reversed.
The biggest problem is that it all started in America and is affecting the entire Western world, while the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider.
There is an atmosphere of civil war in several countries, but if the USA continues on this path, things may happen there that many do not even expect.
And let’s not even talk about the debt. It is not a solution to generate wars in the world and start printing money, because it is good for the economy…
You’re truly uninformed.
Censorship everywhere when all you ever find on Twitter and Youtube algorithms, AM radio, 30 different streaming pro-Trump channels like FOX, Newsmax, OANN is people who can’t shut their damn mouths about Trump. Hell my own neighbor has a giant ass sign spewing his crap every week.
Never seen such a group of people with a fake ass persecution complex as Trumpers. Every second of the day you have two or three dozen media options kissing his ass, and you’re complaining about censorship? Right.
I don’t care about Trump at all. I have no feelings for him and for the “democrats” either. I simply consider the policy of the so-called “democrats” in the last 10 years worldwide to be a huge mistake. I live in Denmark and here it is already clear how big mistakes have been made in Europe and the way of thinking of intellectuals about the political direction is constantly changing, rather towards the political direction of the Republicans. That is why I said that I would understand if these predictions were true, since we already saw in the summer elections that we have reached a turning point, perhaps the USA is in a similar situation now.
As all trends, this one also started in America and we are currently seeing its downfall here.
L, any details on these ‘mistakes’? Here in US, ‘mistake’ usually means not electing Rump because everything was sunshine and orgasms while he was prez.
You don’t hear the news about Europe or what? They spoiled everything possible…
From the wave of immigration to situations close to civil war in several countries(especially UK rn), security has completely disappeared. And this is only one political aspect. I could list countless examples of what they want to force against people’s will…
I hear the news, just wasn’t clear what you were talking about. I don’t see “immigration” as liberal v conservative.
Your civil war possibilities I think spring more from actual culture/language differences, less from conflict over whether to put a senile shit-cannon in charge.
Americans are pretty much uninformed and have no desire to be informed. Just look at the empty rhetoric spouted by the MAGAs.
That’s not a political article. It’s a statement of facts. Very interesting facts, in my opinion.
My motto for Other Crap is “all things sexy, funny or informative.” “Influential” is not one of my goals, nor should it be, so I try to stick to interesting or hilarious facts. Politicians sometimes get in the discussion when they come under the rubric of “informative.” At other times, they come under the heading of “funny” when they make fools of themselves.
Anybody who just wants to look at naked women can bookmark this instead of the main page, thus skipping literally all other subjects – no sports, no current events, no history, no jokes.
Just the facts: roughly 244 million eligible U.S. voters. Last election 66% voted ie piss poor! As someone who will be working Nov. 5 ie poll worker predict and will wager $$$ regardless of the results roughly 33% of American voters will be totally pissed. ✔
As always, America survives despite itself … until it doesn’t.
btw, RCP is totally controlled by conservatives and as such is good for an occasional laugh.
tbf, most political punditry on the interwebs is good for an occasional laugh. Especially russian bots. 😛
Yielding back the balance of my time.
Yes…RCP is a farce. Betting markets have exhibited some strange behaviour in the past few weeks, though, with the implied odds of a Trump presidency climbing in a way that didn’t track with polls or election models.
The numbers at 538 for the seven battleground states are almost identical to RCPs. They show Trump with an average lead of 0.5 in those seven states while RCP shows him with an average lead of 1.1.
In both cases all seven states are within the MOA.
So let’s make this meaningless thread relevant. You all can give us your potus predictions.
Even russian bots can participate …
MOA = Mainstream Outlet Airer. Right? 🙂
Trump winning won’t surprise me at all, because throughout history humans are inherently stupid and selfish, it’s a trend. All the rich and powerful have to ever do is come up with anecdotes of the disenfranchised causing problems, right out of the Nazi WW2 brainwashing playbook, to get the idiots to join their side while they get fleeced.
You’ve got an idiot who’s provided nothing of value to the world and leeched off property values and gaming the system to become a wealthy man, blaming every problem in the country off a group of slave laborers without legal status who predominantly tar roofs, housekeep, work on farms or meat packing plants.
Then all the idiots fall for it saying he’ll bring back all those jobs. Doubt many of those fat ass rednecks at his rallies would get off their ass to do 1/1000th of the work of the type of jobs the people they look down upon would do, otherwise they would be doing it right now.
I wish Trump supporters all the worst in life, and at least if he gets elected I’ll enjoy the anecdotes of the suffering they receive by their hero.
Trump totally dominates the voting bloc of poorly educated white people. As he said, “I love the poorly educated.” The problem is that it is difficult to change people’s minds in that group. How do you reach them? The only information they get is from Fox News and its counterparts, or possibly from their social media feeds. It’s a three-fold problem:
1. There’s no way to get the facts to them.
2. When they are occasionally confronted with reality, they resist it. They won’t accept even the most obvious facts because they’ve been so brainwashed by the info in their bubble.
3. If the facts require sophisticated interpretation, they are simply not capable of doing that.
If you’ve seen the people at Trump rallies, you understand the problem.
Recent elections that appear to be close are not best described as one close race, but as two competing landslides. Trump has totally dominated the white-no-college-degree bloc, while the Democrats have totally dominated the all-other group.
The whole damned country has basically boiled down to stupid white people versus all others.
Agreed. And there is no counterfactual position and conspiracy theory that voting bloc won’t believe.
The only way to clean up facts is to hold the propaganda outlets accountable in civil court, but it’s a tough standard to meet. Alex Jones had to pay for his conspiracy theories, and FOX had to pay over the Dominion voting lawsuit. There should be more of these on the record, when someone says something blatantly false a class action suit should be filed by stakeholders of the truth to force them into court to pay.
That will likely never happen though, and the best case is Harris wins and Trump’s cult dissolves after he passes because nitwits like Musk, Vance, or Trump’s sons don’t have the same recipe of ignorance, false bravado, and BS like the old man does. Chances are though, if not Trump, the systems of society will just doom humanity as the advances in nuclear weaponry is enough to destroy us and, and it’s only a matter of time before the wrong death cult with the execution of authoritarian system manipulation pushes nationalism to the brink and causes disaster. At this point the stupidity of the masses are making sure it’s going to happen in someone’s lifetime, the roll of the dice depending on when.
Also paying the price: Giuliani. He’s not having a good week.
So the basic 2016 drill all over, only instead of regular Russian roulette, we’re loading three chambers. Got it.
Jesus wept.
Trump is kinda lucky hardly anyone owns guns in America.
My election prediction … Pain !!!
I’m with Hunter Thompson. My prediction is fear and loathing. Red sweep.
Since Lector here is spouting nonsense about us Europeans, I’ll share this tweet
(in Finnish) which links to a poll where supporters of Finnish political parties were asked who they would vote for in the US elections.
Even supporters of ‘Perussuomalaiset’, our most conservative party who many consider to be far-right were in favor of Harris over Trump 52 – 36.
bet kamala dems have the konami code
Just poking my nose in to upvote Scoopy’s as usual good taste in picking subjects that are worthy of our attention. And here’s to our good judgement in coming along for the ride.
My guess is these Russian “bots” are not bots, but really cheap unemployed losers who are literally working on poisoning the discourse wherever they see fit for a few rubles. They clock in, type pro-Trump shit for a few hours every day and clock out. It’s just like hiring some kids to hand out leaflets on the street: 90% of the people just toss them away, but the 10% that takes the bait makes it worth the effort, because it’s quite cheap for a country with those resources anyway. And a few of those guys are just going to throw all the leaflets into the trash. Who’s gonna know? So we got a guy who is paid to see tits instead of being a reply guy on Twitter, but still does his job. Good choice, my man! Keep up the good work. You have almost persuaded us.
Suddenly the betting market has switched significantly, as well as Trump’s Truth Social stock going down the crapper. One of the most accurate state pollsters just put Harris up +3 in Iowa, which would be a monumental collapse for Trump since he won there +8 in 2020. Selzer was right on with previous polls in Trump’s favor in both 2016 and 2020, and has been accurate for nearly two decades:
Final Selzer poll findings (and the actual result)
2022 Senate: R+12 (R+12)
2020 President: R+7 (R+8)
2020 Senate: R+4 (R+7)
2018 Governor: D+2 (R+3)
2016 President: R+7 (R+9)
2014 Senate: R+7 (R+8)
2012 President: D+5 (D+6)
Five alarm fire in his campaign tonight. The poll could be wrong, but Ann Selzer has been ridiculously accurate in federal races for a long time now, and is considered the most accurate pollster in the country.
I think the most important thing should be that the election is clear, without fraud. there are already an amazing amount of problems, this year also with video recordings, without censorship. I don’t know American laws. My question is how possible are election frauds?
I have the feeling that both sides will use dirty tricks in such a close competition and maybe this could be the deciding factor.
Yes there are problems.
1 – The GOP commits a little bit of fraud.
2 – The GOP do a lot of legal election fuckery. Some of which hurts their own voters.
No both sides don’t do it.
bro you are biased as hell. nobody asked you XD
I don’t think most of us here want to know what you think, either. Your opinion of someone else’s bias is not even an argument. It’s totally irrelevant. Bias says nothing about the claim, actually. The content of your rebuke is nil.
If you aren’t taking the conjecture that you’re a bot seriously, yeah, you’ve found that level. Right now the suggestion that you’re a useful idiot to Russia is rising in credibility. Great job. Keep it up.
Give me examples of how both sides are the same. I’ll give you examples of how they aren’t.
For example, Oregon started automatic voter registration.Many states followed suit.These are mostly blue states.
Some states make voter registration harder some with no conveniences at all. All of these are red states.
Who the fuck cares about Russia? Since this is what the media tells you, this is what you write here as well. The sad reality is that you cannot list 20 countries from Europe because your education system is so bad. And the funniest thing is that you are the big democrats, but if someone from Europe has a different opinion, then you’re already screwi him. Ridiculous.
You know what, let’s say I believe you. Please explain to me rationally why voting without voter ID is good in secure democratic states.
And please don’t be so naive. There are voting frauds everywhere in the world, and the USA will be the exception ofc… Besides the fact that I was fooled, no one thinks about why a 27-year-old European, who used to be an absolutely left-wing voter, became so against the system.
And I’m not alone. The summer elections showed the changes that will take place in Europe. The only question is whether this process will continue in the USA or not.
Voter ID is required everywhere.
The question is what kind is allowed and how easy is to obtain. Most red states heavily limit what is usable and make difficult to obtain what’s left. Blue states make it easier to obtain appropriate ID.
Voter fraud is pretty rare in most developed nations. The US is no exception.
There’s no fraud involved, there’s thousands of polling locations and there are plenty of isolated technical problems that anyone can point out anecdotally. Also plenty of people not being able to properly press buttons like a video going around where someone didn’t actually press who they wanted to vote for correctly as ‘proof’ of fraud. Then add in people spreading fake videos on Twitter out of context with no evidence of anything and the propaganda machine will be out if Trump loses that it was stolen again.
Looking at his social media history, he’s had comments dating back to Romney in 2012 that every election was stolen. Even the one in 2016 he was setting up to say it was stolen. If he loses this one, he’ll say the same thing. And it will be thrown out of every court because there’s never been a coherent argument or evidence to prove it.
In my opinion, the fact that there are only two major parties is a big problem overall. It would be best if at least 4 major parties could compete every 4 years.
I’m for a ranked choice voting system, but it will never happen. First, neither party would ever concede it, second the average citizen in this country probably couldn’t even understand how to a first and second choice on a ballot without messing it up.
With this, you degrade the average citizens of the country quite a bit. Is the education system really that bad there?
Wherever you go in Europe, you hear that Americans are stupid. obviously this is a generalization, but there is a reason that you hear this in most countries.
Well, 74 million people voted for an obvious con man who, despite having been President, has no idea how tariffs work. That should tell you all you need to know.
I think it suggests we generally overrate our need to know lots of things.
it might be worth considering why this might be. Do you think all 74 million are stupid? Can’t there be intelligent people among them? Doctors, engineers, etc.
Because the human race is complicated, there are no universal rules. There are undoubtedly poorly educated white people who support Harris and black PhDs who support Trump. If you look hard enough, you can probably find some Jews who supported Hitler.
As a general rule, however, the voting bloc that allows Trump to exist is poorly educated white people.
As he said, “I love the poorly educated.”
Recent elections that appear to be close are not best described as one close race, but as two competing landslides. Trump has totally dominated the white-no-college-degree bloc, while the Democrats have totally dominated the all-other group.
White people with no college degree gave Trump a massive 19 million vote advantage in 2020 (better than 2-to-1, 37 million to 18 million). There is surprisingly little variation by gender in this group, despite the significant male/female split within other demographics. Although sophisticated women reject Trump, he still pulled overwhelming female support in the white/low-education demographic. Trump gets 63% of the females, 70% of the males in this bloc.
That was more than offset in 2020 by the 26 million vote advantage given to Biden by all other voters (63 million to 37 million). Without the vote of the poorly educated whites, Trump would have lost by 26 points – which would tie for the biggest popular vote landslide in American history since Monroe ran essentially unopposed in 1820. No losing major party candidate has ever lost by more than 26 points. Goldwater and McGovern lost by about 23 each, Alf Landon by about 24. Only the obscure James Cox lost by 26.
L, it’s not that 74 million people are dumb, it’s just that they’re dumb about politics.
Smart people do stupid things every day – get spear-fished, or talked into signing up for timeshares, etc.
And admitting you’ve been conned into voting against your own interests is an ego-blow that not many want to take, so gambler’s/sunken cost fallacy pushes them into sticking with a crap decision.
It is impossible to prevent small-time fraud completely, especially with mail-in ballots. In 2020 there were, for example, some instances of husbands sending in ballots for their recently deceased wives. Most of these seem to be caught, but it’s just not possible to catch every one of those in a nation with 150 million voters because it’s impossible in some cases to know whether the ballot was filled out by the voter before she died.
If I remember right, every single one of these that got caught in 2020 resulted in an improper vote for Trump – but it was only something like six votes.
That kind of petty scamming has never been enough to influence an election.
You’re right, the results of an election and how a country is dictated aren’t based on how untimely deaths of a handful of people are counted, because that would be stupid.
Oops .. actually just explained how the makeup of the Supreme Court happens.
For what it’s worth, the lapse & revival in this thread seem to me to illustrate a rightfulness in the new nonclosing thread model, unfortunate though its cause may have been. And the wisdom in the rightfully light moderation in the face of violent thread drift has accrued another case in vindication, too.
Yes, that was arguably too word salady. So what else is new?