It's been one of the many weird things in this election. The Trump campaign has generally been hurting for money so bad that they haven't built up any ground game at all. What ground game they do have they've handed over to their PACs, like Elon, and those groups are mostly focused on rural areas and making sure those people vote rather than hitting more densely populated areas.

*If* get out the vote efforts matter.

One of the crazy things, I think, is that we spend literal billions on presidential campaigns, and I think we still don't have a great idea of what works and what does not. Where is the best ROI?

How much do candidate in-person rallies matter?
How much does tacking to the middle matter?
How much does consolidating the base matter?
How much does TV advertising matter?
How much do get out the vote boots on the ground matter?
How much does encouraging early voting matter?
How much do yard signs matter?

We don't have a huge sample size--these things happen once every four years. And eleventy-billion variables exist. And the people who tend to do the analysis and post-mortems tend to be insiders who want a certain thing to be true. (If I am a politial consultant who focuses on selling TV ads, it is not hard to guess what my analysis will show vis a vis the importance of ads vs. get-out-the vote)

It seems like if McDonalds had a billion-dollar product launch, they'd know to the second decimal place where the best ROI of their marketing spending would come from.

But with campaigns? Somehow, it is still just "we've decided to focus on X" based on gut feelings.

Why? He was losing. Polls where bad and going the wrong way for him. There is no way he could handle the campaign schedule she as had, and the more he did interviews and puts himself out, the worse it would have been. He is not the Biden of 2020, we are not in the same situation as a country we were in 2020, and if Biden had stayed in all we would be doing is preparing for a Trump presidency.

Yeah, while I agree Harris is not as good a candidate as Biden 2020, this is 2024 and she is miles ahead of Biden 2024 as a candidate. Even if she handily lost, there would be no basis for Biden to go on a "you all should eat crow" tour. If Harris loses, it just means Biden would have been trounced.

And those PAC's may not be up to the task:


Exclusive: Trump ground game in key states flagged as potentially fake | Donald Trump | The Guardian

If Harris loses, Biden should bear much of the blame. Had he done the right thing and announced early in his presidency that he wouldn't be running for a second term, the Democratic party would have had a full primary season for a candidate to secure the nomination.

OK Biden, yes, but really a very broad array of the Democratic establishment. The Democratic party needs root-and-branch reform regardless of whether Harris wins or not, but if she loses it really needs to be comprehensive.

fixed

That is completely backwards.

And you are both right

They've needed it badly since losing in 2016, but they're so focused on fighting off MAGA (Tbf, does need to be done) to sit down and have the debate. And the Republican Party as is should probably be tossed out and replaced by a conservative party that isn't hooked on white nationalism and strongman worship.

This focus on 'fix the party' will never cease to amaze me. The parties mostly are what they are because people want them to be that. Most Republicans want Trumpism, rather than a sane conservative party. Similar things to a somewhat lesser degree are true of Democrats.

You have to fix the people first before you can try to fix the party.

Yeah, as we've said before on this board, we have an electorate problem. Having said that, we're only ever going to have to parties, and they could be better parties.

The voters might have picked Trump anyway, but I wonder if it would have been better for the GOP if Haley's primary strategy had been to attack some of Trump's weaknesses instead of a platform of "Trump is awesome, and you should vote for him and not me."

His ego STILL won't allow him to use her to try to shore up support with women. It might be too late and not work, but his people were (are still?) trying to make it happen last week and then Trump.went on Fox this weekend and talked about how badly he beat her in the primaries, especially in her home state.

Instead, he gives speeches condescendingly talking to women about how only he can relieve their fears and anxieties and will be their protector. *Biggest roll eyes ever*

If polls are your things not looking good for Harris

Well, what I've been wondering about the polls for some time: https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/v...gn-are-working

There's a lot of bad polling flooding the averages right now. One poll i looked at had Trump slightly up but when you dig deeper they had him winning with women by nearly 5 points. Another poll had Trump up by 5 points nationally. Another had Trump slightly up overall and winning Pennsylvania and Michigan in state polling but losing every other battleground.

I think that's partly true. Most of the first three are, point 4 is a lot more shaky. You cheat when you think there's a chance you might lose is a lot better way of framing it, and yeah it's gotten worse but there's never been a shortage of biased polling; particularly since it's an inexact science what the 'right' assumptions actually are.

Plus, if you look at things like the 538 projections, even if you removed all of the big outliers entirely it would still be really, really close. Fraction of the margin of error close. Push-polling and similar tactics are definitely terrible, but they aren't remotely close to enough to make it look like the wrong candidate is winning.

A couple of questions for the folks in states where there have been ballot initiatives to legalized marijuana about the ad campaign associated with the ballot.

1. What were the main TV ad arguments against it in your area?

Just going by TV ads here, the opposition in Florida is that marijuana smells bad and the initiative to legalize it was written and is being pushed by Big Weed. Now, I have done my own research and read about opposition to the initiative due to it leading to more people being addicted to weed and an increase crime. However if I just went by the TV ads, the opposition can't expect the smell and Big Weed to be enough to convince the public from passing the initiative. Most people I know think tobacco smells worse than weed while the threat of Big Weed (represented by a fat white guy in a suit and tons of jewelry in the commercials I have seen) sending the cops to your house because you have a small plant in your house seems even more far fetched. I guess I was expecting a parent of a child killed by someone high on marijuana or something involving immigrants bringing in the weed to kill Americans as a reason opposing the bill.

2. Did members of law enforcement do ads in favor of passing the initiative?

This part might be even weirder for me. Multiple sheriffs have appeared in ads in support of legalizing weed basically so they can move on from trying to bust people for possession to solving more severe crimes. Whether the initiative passes or not it is weird to see a man with a badge on his chest telling the public to vote to legalize weed. It will be even weirder if the initiative does not pass and the same sheriffs are bragging about busting a weed house and keeping this weed off the streets.

I don't understand why a court can't put a temp stay on this scam Elon is running until the legalities of it are worked out.

dola- how long until the stories start coming out about Elon not paying up.

I feel like Elon keeps pushing the boundry on this because he wants an order to stop it. He can then cry "Election interference! Persecution! They want to stop free speech!" And the lapdogs will eat it up. It doesn't mean they shouldn't do it, but I bet it is part of the plan.

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Just got done with early voting. Now where is the opt-out to not get anymore political commercials on TV?

I think that is just what they want. And I don't think that the Dems are going to give it to them.

I also think that the bad optics of looking desperate enough to buy votes will cancel out the votes bought.

The WaPo polling averages only include high quality polls and they have Harris up 2 in PA, MI, WI and < 1 in NV. Trump up 2 in AZ and GA, and < 1 in NC. Hardly any change in the past week. So there is something to the crappy right wing pollsters pulling the averages on 538 and Silver bulletin. I know they say they don't but there's so many of them now.

We saw this in 2022- Dr Oz was ahead by <1 in the averages and lost by 5, Whitmer was only ahead by 5 in the averages and won by 10. The NH and WA senate races looked closer in the averages and the D incumbent won in a blowout. So I dont know what to think about the polls this time.

Haven't we seen the Dems across the board outperform polls in the last 3 or 4 elections?

lol

I approve this message. pic.twitter.com/O7ZrF9q8um

— Tammy Baldwin (@tammybaldwin) October 20, 2024

2020's polls aggregate had Biden +7.4 and the result was Biden +4.5

Every election post-Dobbs has had Dems overpreform

Every election in which Trump is on the ballot (as opposed to mid-terms, specials, etc.), he has overperformed.

This is a post-Dobbs election with Trump on the ballot.

So there is data to cherry pick for either direction.

(And it is a moving target. Pollsters keep recalibrating after every election based on what they missed. So that makes it even harder to use past performance to judge.)

There is a whole lot of "on the one hand..." in a race that looks like it's been as close to 50-50 as anything that I have ever seen.

For Kamala, what would keep me up at night is that Biden is historically unpopular, that the hammering on immigration and trans-related issues must test well among swing voters because the GOP has based a huge chunk of its resources on it, that the economy has been so mixed over the past few years, that some people are just not going to vote for a woman or non-white person (or the combo), and that Trump has his baked in percentage of fanatical followers.

For Trump, what would keep me up a night is that he lost the last election and subsequently has had all of the legal issues and specifically the Jan. 6th event, that the post-Dobbs world has not been kind to Republicans in just about any races (large and small) over the past few years, that while inflation has raised prices on a lot of things, for a lot of people the economy is really not that bad (and appears to be improving), and that he seems to have trusted the wrong people with his GOTV, so his ground game seems like it may be historically bad and disorganized.

My random and anecdotal observations that tilt me to think that Kamala may be a little more ahead right now are that it sure seems like an unprecedented number of Republicans are supporting for her and voting for her (both national, big names, and people that I know), that I just see far, far fewer Trump signs/bumper stickers/flags on trucks between where I live and the places that I travel, and a lot of the women that I know feel very passionately about voting against Trump. Again, anecdotal things, but things that feel like they have a different energy than 2016 and 2020.

Every non-partisan pollster I have heard says it would be malpractice to call this race either way. It sucks that we have even less certainty than normal, but then we had clear certainty in 2016 and it was completely wrong.

If someone put a gun to my head and said "you have to make a prediction, and not some pansy-ass prediction like '50 million people will cast a ballot'" then I'd predict that the polling is going to be off and whomever wins is going to do so in a manner that leaves no ambiguity (like winning all the swing states by 10:00 PM eastern).

I’ve had multiple very smart people tell me in the last week that if the election was a month earlier Harris would have won, but I think all the signs and polls now only point to one outcome. I also think that it will be a 2016 scenario where a Trump win is immediately obvious once results from PA start coming in. But what the hell do I know.

You know what'll be funny as all hell to me?

If Trump ends up beating Harris by a wider margin than he was being projected to beat Biden.

THAT would be hysterical to me.

I think it's pretty simple. If Trump gets the low-propensity voters who skipped 2020 to vote, he'll win.

But that's a big hill to climb.

I'd say this is also true if Harris beats Trump by much larger margin than Joe beating Trump. Either way, I think the losing party will have a lot of soul searching to do.

What's the latest odds on the Senate & House?

In retrospect, running a campaign centered around the support of Dick Cheney and his loser daughter may not have been wise.

But that would only be because Biden stopped being a candidate 4 months earlier. I have to think he was just going to freefall from where he was if he stayed in the race. So in your scenario, it's not a fair comparison. It would just mean to me that Biden might have gotten pantsed if he remained in the race.

Do you mean searching FOR a soul?

We need this as a country. MAGA is going to cry steal no matter what, but a decisive Harris victory will go a long way.

Not gonna happen. I'll be even more shocked than 2016 if she wins decisively.

Won't happen with the (D). Communists don't generally acknowledge the existence of souls.

Trump has crossed the 60% threshold in the betting markets for the first time since Biden withdrew from the race. He is also a 60% favorite in Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, and a 70% favorite in Georgia. The current betting market have him winning 312 EV's to Harris' 226.

https://electionbettingodds.com/

Arrived about 5 min before opening time, about 20 people before us. In and out in 15 min.

I didn't remember this from 4 years ago, but they placed my DL in a device that was scanned (or something). I think 4 years ago it was manual look and verify.

I can only hope the manipulation theory is what is pushing the polls and betting markets but as I posted above, I'm pretty pessimistic. Both because I don't trust the people of this country and also because even if they pass this test, I'm not sure the system will when pushed and bent by the inevitable challenges.

Nice summary of stuff working against Kamala

[url="https://www.natesilver.net/p/24-reasons-that-trump-could-win"]

The "can Kamala prove she worked at McDonalds 40 years ago" thing reminded me of my interactions with the state of Louisiana.

When I was in high school/college, I worked at Winn Dixie. A few years ago, I got contacted by the Louisiana office of unclaimed property (or whatever it is called) saying that I had, like, $25 or something from Winn Dixie that was unclaimed from the right time period. So I must have forgotten to pick up my last check or something.

So I start filling out the online form, and then I get to this point where it asks me to prove that I am owed the money. And I respond that I have no idea if I am owed the money but y'all got in touch with me to say I was owed the money. And in any event, I certainly can't prove it.

And it ended there because I did not feel like spending the rest of my life chasing down the money.

Anecdotal, but in driving out to IN again last weekend we oddly didn't see many signs at all. Yeah, there was the occasional sarcastic "Thanks Joe" or Trump billboard, but those are there all the time. Lawns there weren't many (if anything, where we were there were a few random Harris/Walz signs and not a lot else; some guy named Ben Carson -- not that one -- too, I guess).