151 points

Lol Republicans want no penalty if he’s convicted, but I’m willing to bet those assholes would throw the whole library at any minority breaking the law or woman seeking an abortion.

permalink
report
reply
92 points

you don’t need to bet on that at all it happens every fucking day

permalink
report
parent
reply
-21 points
*

Imagine this, What if it was… Obama instead of Trump?

EDIT: I should have put /s. I don’t care about party affiliation. The comments after mine are right, lock up anyone who attemped a coup.

permalink
report
parent
reply
44 points

If Obama did what Trump did, then he would deserve to spend the rest of his life in prison.

permalink
report
parent
reply
13 points

If a political leader breaks the law they should be punished severely and to the full extent of the law. No matter which affiliation. This isn’t hard logic to understand. In fact, political leaders should face even harsher punishments given the power they are expected to be responsible for.

permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points
*

That doesn’t make any sense, Obama never did anything like what Trump has done. It’s a false equivalence.

So obviously an innocent should go free and the guilty should not.

Seems to me the evidence that Trump is guilty is very strong.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

This isn’t “no stupid questions”.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Can’t really do sarcasm when there is a large section of people who believe “their group” deserves special treatment under the law.

permalink
report
parent
reply
47 points

I’m not super trusting of polls anymore, especially because they’re usually done by telephone. However-

The poll had a sample of 1,032 adults, age 18 or older, who were interviewed online; it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points for all respondents.

This makes me a little more trusting despite that whopping MoE. It sounds like bad news for Trump overall.

permalink
report
reply
42 points

I have a related degree. The reason people distrust polls, is because the media frequently misreports or misrepresents them.

Eg. aggregated polling from the 2016 suggested Trump had a 1/3 chance of winning. If you believed some media coverage every poll said Clinton was certain to win. That was how the media reported on the polling, not the polling itself. Invariably Trump winning in 2016 was within the margin of error.

that whopping MoE

Not a large margin of error. You’re extrapolating from 1000 people to 300 million. It’s astonishing it’s that low if you think about it.

because they’re usually done by telephone

Not that common anymore. Often they’ll do a a telephone poll then supplement it with online or other methods. Here’s IPSOS’s article about this poll:

The study was conducted online in English. The data for the total sample were weighted to adjust for gender by age, race/ethnicity, education, Census region, metropolitan status, household income, and political party affiliation. The demographic benchmarks came from the 2022 March Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS). Party ID benchmarks are from recent ABC News/Washington Post telephone polls.

https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/politico-indictment-august-2023

permalink
report
parent
reply
16 points

I remember reading 538 leading up to the 2016 election, and hearing them say repeatedly that if Trump has a 1 in 4 chance (or whatever amount) of winning the election, not only is it possible for Trump to win, but in fact it means you actually expect it to happen in 1 out of 4 times.

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

Yeah I remember this too. I think the problem is that people simply don’t understand statistics and don’t realize a 70% chance of winning is totally different from getting 70% of the vote. I like what 538 has been doing in recent years by presenting odds rather than percentages, but people like echo chambers that confirm their biases so idk if this “polls don’t work” narrative is going to go away any time soon.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

That’s the article that has caused me to trust 538 above any other election prediction source. When HRC was doing a preemptive victory lap in Texas and HuffPo was publishing articles that said she had a 99% chance of winning, Nate Silver and Co were the only ones willing to admit the possibility of what would later become reality.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

Ok, fair enough. I defer to your expertise.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Indeed, the problem isn’t polls themselves, assuming they’re well constructed they’re generally sound data, it’s the interpretation and packaging of it as reported to the larger populous that gets in the way. Sometimes it gets to the point of funny when someone does an infographic where 30% and 60% somehow appear to have the same weight.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics…

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Not that it matters here, but in case you want to use them somewhere serious:

Populous is an adjective

Populace is a noun

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Considering people tend to view probability as 100% A, 100% B or 50-50, I’m not sure showing a 30-60 split as the same weight is really a bad choice…

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

My biggest issue with polls is that the media tout them as predictions, ignoring the fact that even if the data is 100% valid, circumstances can change dramatically in just a couple of days.

I maintain that polls are not actionable data for voters. They can help campaigns see trends and gauge the effectiveness of messaging, but they are useless to voters.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points
*

They can and do change in just a couple of days, but the real issue is that the media invariably fails to mention the margin of error or confidence interval.

It’s always Candidate A 51%, candidate B 49%. When in reality it’s inevitably something like “There’s 19/20 chance that candidate gets between 48.5-53.5% of the vote, and that candidate gets between 46.5-51.5% of the vote.”

And then when candidate B wins, the media will go “Why did the polls get it wrong?” when the election was always to close to call definitively.

Oh, and this is obviously ignoring the far more sinister use of misrepresented polling data, micro-demographically targetted thanks to big data harvested from social media. Think Cambridge Analytica algorithms which have determined that women in village X with one child and dog, being more likely to vote party Y, and then targetting them on social media with stories about the polls showing the result is a foreglone conclusion and that there’s no point voting.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Thanks! I really like how Lemmy users with expertise in their area can add nuance to a lot of reporting, it really matters.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

The 2 percent of Democrats who don’t think he’s guilty are suspect at least.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-9 points

I’m not super trusting of polls anymore

Like, do you not believe the people responded the way they say they did?

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

No, I’m just not certain it’s an accurate sample. Polls were way off in 2020 and 2016.

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points

They actually weren’t though. Trump lost the popular vote by a huge margin in both cases, which is what was predicted.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

They weren’t. Aggregated polling in 2016 gave Trump a 1/3 chance of winning. That’s not low. It’s actually quite likely. Him becoming president was invariably within the margin of error in many polls.

Eg. 2016

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

2020:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/senate/

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/house/

2022:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/

The media reporting on polls (and anything scientific for that matter) is universally abysmal, that’s why you mistakenly think otherwise.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Define “accurate”. Define “way off”. What do you think a poll tells you?

What you’re upset about is how you’re interpreting polls - and I guarantee you you’re doing it wrong.

90% chance is not a guarantee success. 30% chance is not a guarantee fail. They’re probabilities.

This poll, taken alone, tells you what these people think. It’s not a prediction and by itself doesn’t really say much. Taken in aggregate with other polls you can start to form an idea. But NO POLL will ever tell you the future.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

Not the responses themselves but the methodologies of collecting responses don’t result in accurate representation of the population.

Using collection methods that skew demographics in one direction or another, like older people being more likely to pick up a phone call.

Failing to account for other potentially major variables. Like the 2016 and 2020 elections, pollsters failed to account for negative voter turnout, people who were motivated to vote against a specific candidate, which had major impacts on the elections.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

In this poll responses were collected online and the sample was weighted to reflect census demographics

permalink
report
parent
reply
-2 points

Most polling is done via landline phone. Thus polling does reflect well on the actual voting population.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

It would probably particularly represent older voters, who might lean towards Trump. Although I’m over 60 and white and answer the landline phone, and I abhor him and get more progressive every day. Come to think of it, I also hang up on pollsters, so…

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

I’m not so sure that’s true anymore. I don’t go looking at every single study but I usually see a mix of landline, cell/sms, and online samples

permalink
report
parent
reply
45 points

Bad news, the court of public opinion has or should have little to no bearing on legal proceedings.

But hey great news, the court of public opinion has or should have little to no bearing on legal proceedings.

permalink
report
reply
43 points

The court of public opinion has a lot to do with an election, however. And that’s the problem for Trump now.

permalink
report
parent
reply
24 points

Yep. Trump’s only way of actually staying out of prison at this point isn’t winning in an actual courtroom. It’s delaying the trials for as long as he possibly can and then winning the general election.

So polls that show he’s unlikely to be able to do so are indeed bad news for him.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Luckily for us, that can’t keep him out of Georgia prison. He can only pardon himself of federal charges. Granted I don’t think he has a chance in a general election. The Republican party is so screwed up they keep picking more and more extreme candidates even though those candidates usually lose in the general.

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

When you get to the second question, “Do you believe that Donald Trump is guilty of the alleged crimes in the federal 2020 election subversion election case?” and 14% of Republicans think he is guilty. If they are unwilling to vote for Trump, that’s potentially an election flusher. While popular vote doesn’t win elections (Hillary pulled 2.1% more of the popular vote than Trump in 2016), it can shift the electoral college votes in states, turning red states (potentially) to blue.

In the 2020 election, Trump won North Carolina (15 electoral college votes), Trump got 2,758,775 votes, Biden 2,684,292. If 14% of the republicans abstained from voting in 2020, Trump would have received about 2,372,547 votes, losing the state to Biden rather than winning it.

Yes, Trump lost to Biden anyway in 2020, but Republicans that won’t vote for Trump, nor a Democrat, just won’t vote. And voters not voting can shift Electoral College votes in states.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Relatively small shifts on the margins can have huge consequences in the electoral college.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

It has a lot to do with it. Where do you think a jury comes from?

permalink
report
parent
reply
17 points

Jesus fuck, look at those republican numbers. Fucking cunts live in an imagined fascist state that they’re trying to make real.

permalink
report
reply
8 points

I have some MAGA family who brush away all these indictments by saying, “The deep state doesn’t want him to win.”

I have no idea what it’s going to take for these cultists to drop their Trump

permalink
report
reply
2 points

Nothing. We win elections in 2024 and exceed how many voted last time. Volunteer with voting groups and get people registered and aware of how important it is.

Once some normality is restored, only then do these people realize the world moved on without them and possibly stop.

permalink
report
parent
reply

politics

!politics@lemmy.world

Create post

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to “Mom! He’s bugging me!” and “I’m not touching you!” Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That’s all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

Community stats

  • 15K

    Monthly active users

  • 16K

    Posts

  • 478K

    Comments