• crab@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      That will be believable if he doesn’t win. The fact that it’s cloee is absolutely nuts to an outsider.

      • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        It’s only close because of our broken electoral process that gives land more influence than citizens. He didn’t even win the popular vote for his first term.

        • tootoughtoremember@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          National polling has Kamala up by +6 at best. Seems like 44%+ of Americans those polled seem comfortable and supportive of Trump. The fact it is that close at a national level, with all Haitians eating cats rhetoric, still seems insane to an outsider.

          Edit: Updated to appease those saying 44%+ of those polled who say they support Trump is not an accurate reflection of Americans at-large. For reference, Trump won 46.1% of the popular vote in 2016 and 46.8% of the popular vote in 2020.

          • GrindingGears@lemmy.ca
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            1 month ago

            Hilary was polling at roughly the same numbers as close as two weeks before that election he won back in 2016, if I remember correctly. It was looking like a clean sweep for her, and it was anything but. So don’t get comfortable yet.

          • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 month ago

            It’s not 44 percent of Americans. It’s 44 percent of the people poled. I can guarantee that number is skewed because a ton of left leaning people wouldn’t bother wasting their time not getting paid to answer some pole. I know my friends and I are in that boat.

            • Optional@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              It’s 44% of all those people polled who are registered voters.

              It seems insane to us “insiders” too.

            • grue@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              The point is, anything more than negligible is fucking nuts!

              Even if it’s 44% of just idiot luddite conservatives, that’s still 44% of idiot luddite conservatives too many!

              • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                Wait until you find out that 30-40% of Americans believe god magicked the universe into being as is less than 10k years ago and fossils are from noahs flood in which he saved 2 of every animal in a boat the size of texas.

            • TheTetrapod@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              Don’t pollsters account for this? There’s a reason why polling still exists and is talked about, the final results do reflect reality to some degree.

          • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Most polls are performed by calling landlines. The majority of people with landlines are elderly or own businesses.

            • KenLin@lemmy.one
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              1 month ago

              There is no way the pollsters don’t know this and account for it

        • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
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          1 month ago

          He’s got 47% of the popular vote last election. Over 74 million Americans voted for him. That’s 74 million too much.

      • Orbituary@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        The fact that it’s close shows that there is a problem with our voting populace.

        Rarely do more than 40% of eligible voters turn out for an election. On top of that, the Electoral College - our representative voting body - can cause the popular vote to be overturned in favor of the representative vote - Al Gore in 2000, Trump in 2016 are examples. Relative to this, in order to win, Democrats have to be polling at 6 to 9% above the Republicans to be a real contender.

        The day a Republican loses via Electoral College but wins the popular vote is the day this will change. Frankly, though, it’s almost impossible for that to happen due to the way the EC distributes votes to the less populated states.

        Fuck our rigged system and fuck this orange baboon.

        • Optional@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          There’s also the cheating.

          Gerrymandering out the wazoo, purging voter rolls, closing polling stations, literally taking away a ballot box as a photo op, passing insane “election ‘integrity’ commission” laws that upend everything else - and that doesn’t account for voter intimidation and outright straight-up fraud that can happen.

          All that stuff is easy to do when you’re already in power. And wrong.

        • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Actually without the electoral college there wouldn’t have been a republican president in the last 32 years.

        • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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          1 month ago

          They wouldn’t be swing states if everyone could/did vote. Look at the typical voting percentage, it’s very sad.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Trump is a criminal, a fascist, a literal traitor twice over (Jan 6 + loyalty to Putin over America), and fucking senile. Anything less than 99% unfavorable is ridiculous!

      • MrVilliam@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        It’s absolutely nuts to a lot of insiders here too. I can’t imagine a worse candidate, yet about 1/3 of the country seems to think that the choice in this election is a no-brainer, but in the exact opposite way that you would expect. The war on education led us here.

      • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Our system has a vital flaw. The electoral college. It was a necessity at one point given the technology of the time it was adopted, but now it is a relic and needs to go away.

    • lennybird@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Yep. Never once has Trump exceeded >=50% of votes or even approval rating.

      Don’t you just love our slave era Electoral College…?

      • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        He still got 63 million votes in 2016 (46.1%) and 74 million in 2020 (46.8%). More people voted for trump even after that disaster of a presidency.

        Even though he never got over 50%, 74 million is still way too much for anyone to be comfortable with. It clearly indicates that something is wrong with many Americans.

        • lennybird@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          It clearly indicates that something is wrong with many Americans.

          Sadly I think it indicates systemic failures and Americans are the effect and much less the cause.

          What I mean is that a combination of:

          • Electoral college & Money in Politics
          • Diminishing education standards (e.g., critical-thinking skills, civics, US History)
          • “News” media-entertainment that legally spreads disinformation (combined with foreign operatives).

          … All culminates in a society that is very easily duped. I talk to Trump supporters all the time and while sure many are simply greedy psychopaths… Many are also just “nice, but kinda dumb” in that they have no capacity to parse fact from fiction and so are easily-grifted targets for lies and choir-preaching (sometimes quite literally from Sunday church).

          • Optional@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Don’t forget microplastics in the brain.

            I’m worried that’s actually going to turn out to be a thing.

            • lennybird@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              Oh for sure. No doubt does Lead exposure (firing ammunition elevates levels), boomer-era leaded gasoline (and modern aircraft), paint, etc. + Traumatic Brain Injuries (CTE) from football + Substance abuse —namely alcohol play a part. Microplastics may very well be the next thing…

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          74 million is still way too much for anyone to be comfortable with. It clearly indicates that something is wrong with many Americans.

          To put a finer point in it, even just one million is way too much! The fact that 22% of the total population is suffering some sort of mass delusion and is in cult-like thrall to a demented fascist is unfathomably catastrophic.

    • VubDapple@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      He most definitely does not speak for us, but I share your pain that he has a following as large as it is. Years of unchecked indoctrination and the dismantling of the public schools and human nature giving is the authoritarian personality (which seems to be about 30% of people everywhere)