Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: US Elections 2020 - very self such moderated
by
theymos
on 26/10/2020, 21:37:15 UTC
It has become difficult to conduct polling with the advent of the cell phone, and the outrageous number of spam calls in recent years have made it even more difficult.

If Trump wins, it will indicate that polling has utterly failed, which would be interesting. However, the 2016 polls weren't actually that far off, with most being within their margins of error; it was mainly an issue of people ignoring the margins of error and "just knowing" that Trump couldn't possibly win. Now the situation is more-or-less reversed: a lot of people "just know" that the polls are wrong and Trump will somehow pull it off, so they're baking in a several-point swing from current polls. However, if the election were held today, polls would have to be much more wrong than they were in 2016 for Trump to win, and if pollsters overcorrected as I suspect, then the real result may swing against Trump compared to polls, not even for him.

While there are several very bad things about Trump, I think that a Trump victory would be far better than a Biden victory. Trump is more anti-war and anti-regulation, and he's much less effective at actually getting the government to do things. It'd also lead to increased distrust of government and perhaps some serious anti-federalist and secessionist movements among blue states, which is excellent from a libertarian perspective. And on a personal level I'd also find it hilarious to see Democrats' reaction if Trump pulls off a surprise victory again. But I just don't think that it's going to happen.