New Poll shows Biden 17 points ahead of Trump in WI

I'm fine with people having different values. I'm not fine with people being too lazy, too gullible, or too blinkered by overpowering emotions to actually utilize their usual intelligence. I am against stupidity when it affects me. Aren't you?
spot on lefty, spot on.I'll fight for the right for people to have and use their vote......but I too will call them out if they do it with without due care and attention to what the outcomes will be
 
No such thing

sorry, that's nonsense, there really isn't a silent vote for Trump, his supporters are very vocal, even the white collar workers in white collar towns in offices full of Trump haters make it known.

Hmmm, not one to speak up for one of our pet right wingers on here, but that's not really true.

In my 4 years in America I only found a handful of people who were willing to admit they voted for Trump, and 3 of those were in a swimming pool in Mexico rather than in California. The couple of people I came across who were willing to admit it were mocked and almost treated as pariah's.

Now it could just be I didn't come across many Trump voters, but I'm more willing to bet that there's people who've kept their choices under their hat simply to avoid confrontation.
 
The electoral college is a nightmare. We think our system needs changing but the Democrats have to win 3 million more votes just to have an equal start.

That isn't really the case. The Dems lost last time while getting a bigger share of the popular vote but, depending on where they get the popular vote, they may not need more votes that the Reps.

The USA is a very big place and the electoral college system is there to make sure that votes from rural farming areas count just as much as votes from prosperous, heavily populated urban areas. The electoral college evens up geography, societal differences and prosperity differences to keep everyone's vote relevant.

Electoral colleges seem flawed but if you read why it was done like that, it makes sense. The founding fathers were an astute lot.
 
Hmmm, not one to speak up for one of our pet right wingers on here, but that's not really true.

In my 4 years in America I only found a handful of people who were willing to admit they voted for Trump, and 3 of those were in a swimming pool in Mexico rather than in California. The couple of people I came across who were willing to admit it were mocked and almost treated as pariah's.

Now it could just be I didn't come across many Trump voters, but I'm more willing to bet that there's people who've kept their choices under their hat simply to avoid confrontation.
but that goes both ways, Biden people in republican areas and Trump people in Democrat areas. But I believe the numbers to be fairly small. I've never seen so much open politicising in america. People have been constantly harping on in person and on social media about their beliefs for the last 5 years, since before the last election. Social media has actually drastically reduced the concept of silent voters, because once you share stuff on line then your FB friends in real life know your stance and the arguments start and the entrenched views are overt.
 
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Looks like its going to be a record turnout, 50% of the electorate have already voted by mail, some 70m people.

I think there is going to be a really big upset in this election and the upset will be the size of the Biden victory - a landslide
 
Hmmm, not one to speak up for one of our pet right wingers on here, but that's not really true.

In my 4 years in America I only found a handful of people who were willing to admit they voted for Trump, and 3 of those were in a swimming pool in Mexico rather than in California. The couple of people I came across who were willing to admit it were mocked and almost treated as pariah's.

Now it could just be I didn't come across many Trump voters, but I'm more willing to bet that there's people who've kept their choices under their hat simply to avoid confrontation.

The treatment Chris Pratt has had on social media makes me think this is probably true, more so this election than last.
 
One more thought on this business of not wanting to admit that you're voting for Trump: the situation has surely changed between 2016 and 2020?

In 2016 Trump was a radical, controversial outsider.
In 2020 he's the incumbent president.

Whatever else I think of him, I think his existing office gives him some degree of respectability and diminishes the reluctance that some might feel to admitting that they're voting for him.
 
Most pollsters (and all of the reputable ones) tend to agree that ‘Shy Trumpers’ don’t really exist. That’s to say they do exist, obviously, but not in the numbers that would make any significant difference to the polls.

The argument, with which I have sympathy, is that the polls weren’t wrong last time because people lied to them about voting intention. They were wrong because of sampling errors and an incorrect weighting of responses, particularly of white non-college educated men.

Polls are only as good as the sample on which they are based. This has to be as random and yet as representative as possible. If you’re ringing people up to ask them their voting intention, you need to allow for the fact that college educated people (who are likely Democrats) are more likely to answer the call and give you a response in the first place.

Pollsters also weight responses on likelihood to vote. In previous elections, college educated people were much more likely to vote than those who were non-college educated. As a result, even if a non-college educated person was polled and responded that they were voting for Trump, most pollsters gave less weighting to that response in their published poll.

So it’s not that people didn’t tell pollsters that they were going to vote for Trump. It’s that not enough of them were asked in the first place, and even those that were hadn’t really been listened to.

All of the above errors have been corrected in this year’s polls. I’m sure there will be polling errors of some sort (but they would need to be colossal to make a significant difference), but I don’t think that Shy Trumpers will be the issue.
 
The USA is a very big place and the electoral college system is there to make sure that votes from rural farming areas count just as much as votes from prosperous, heavily populated urban areas. The electoral college evens up geography, societal differences and prosperity differences to keep everyone's vote relevant.

does it though? It appears to mean rural votes count more than city votes.

A vote in Wyoming appears to be worth more than 3 votes in California.

It would surely be fairer if each vote just counted one? That way, in a tight election, everyone's vote would count, not just those living in marginal states?
 
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The electoral college was a sap to buy off slave owners in the south, btw no one really disputes this
 
There is the same failure of critical thinking, that inability to put reason above emotion, that drives all our most stupid decisions. If we don't all learn that, or should I say re-learn it, we are doomed not just as a nation, but as a species and many others with it. My distaste is for that, not the people themselves. This was not a difference in values, which brexiters, still unable to confront their own flawed 'reasoning', tell themselves this was. I'm fine with people having different values. I'm not fine with people being too lazy, too gullible, or too blinkered by overpowering emotions to actually utilize their usual intelligence. I am against stupidity when it affects me. Aren't you?

On a different issue, with the right buttons pushed, I could and no doubt will be just as stupid, because we are all governed by our nature. Evolution has given us powerful instincts as a shortcut to get us through life and pass on our genes, but our instincts are not always right. That is why our brain evolved to sometimes be able to counter that and thousands of years of great minds have built on one another to arrive at a better method for decision making where the issue is not life or death and need not be made in an instant.

Critical thinking isn't easy, it's a skill. We all have it, but sometimes we don't use it. You didn't on Brexit and neither did 17.4 million others. Not one of you. You need to have the humility to be prepared to ask yourself why on earth you thought it was a good idea to ignore experts - I'm sure you don't usually - and believe that Nigel Farage and the most appalling wing of the Conservative Party had your best interests and the best interests of the NHS at heart. You'd have thought the last 4 years of the people who led you into this mess not actually having any competence, or German car manufacturers riding to the rescue, would have given you pause, but it seems not. We are going to have to experience the full sh1tshow it seems. Even then you'll probably struggle to deal with the cognitive dissonance and avoid it.

Don't go whingeing at me for pointing out your shocking stupidity and ignorance, I'm not being nasty believe it or not. I want us all to learn from it because otherwise we can't correct our mistakes and avoid bigger ones in the future. Eff me, you spun a coin in the voting booth and shafted my son's generations future. I'm pretty restrained considering that.
The shocking stupid people you describe in my family alone, include; a PhD, 4 Masters, 3 BA's, three nurses, a teacher, all voted to leave. You lost your argument when you needed to insult.

There was a reply on a different thread where at least the bloke was honest, basically suggesting votes should be weighted, Berwick Hills 1 vote, a BA 1.5.... you know it makes sense.
 
does it though? It appears to mean rural votes count more than city votes.

A vote in Wyoming appears to be worth more than 3 votes in California.

It would surely be fairer if each vote just counted one? That way, in a tight election, everyone's vote would count, not just those living in marginal states?

The electoral college ensures that - to be elected - a candidate has to have support right across the country AND within the population. That's the whole point. 60% of the American population live east of the Mississippi. If it was just done on a popular vote, states like Wyoming wouldn't matter at all.
 
The electoral college ensures that - to be elected - a candidate has to have support right across the country AND within the population. That's the whole point. 60% of the American population live east of the Mississippi. If it was just done on a popular vote, states like Wyoming wouldn't matter at all.

I see the sticking point here being the attachment to the concept of States. Let's not pretend a candidate has no support in any state, even if it is safely held by his opponent.

I know Americans may see this differently, but it necessary for states to vote as blocks?

If it's just a straight count of votes across the country, the half million votes or so in Wyoming can be very important.

Furthermore, the votes of both sides in what are currently safe states would also be important.
 
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I see the sticking point here being the attachment to the concept of States.

I know Americans may see this differently, but it necessary for states to vote as blocks?

If it's just a straight count of votes across the country, the half million votes or so in Wyoming can be very important.

Furthermore, the votes of both sides in what are currently safe states would also be important.
Very difficult to see why it takes 3 people in NY to be worth 1 in WY.
 
I want Biden, but I do not believe he will win with a 17% difference more like 7 or 8% - there are not alot of floating voters in the USA and Trump will get almost all the people he got before. The Democrats need the previous none voters to vote.
 
The electoral college ensures that - to be elected - a candidate has to have support right across the country AND within the population. That's the whole point. 60% of the American population live east of the Mississippi. If it was just done on a popular vote, states like Wyoming wouldn't matter at all.

That’s already accounted for in Congress (particularly the Senate) which is designed to act as a check and balance to presidential power. The electoral college essentially bakes in the over-representation of minority interests into 2 of the 3 branches of government (all 3 if you look at what’s happened to the Supreme Court recently).
 
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