If she used the same process she used before than that "snap shot"
in time just reflected peoples opinions at that time. How can that be
wrong ? I hope we get to see it play out in court.

How she does her polling you would see why she's accurate. Check it out.

with all possible speed!
I'm at the point that the courts are too slow. We need, along with the courts, the whole cabal to be arrested before they tank our economy and destroy our democracy.

Wouldn’t that be something?

What if there really should have been recounts.

I was posting my concern for the lack of recounts after the election, as were others on this forum.

I dont know how close it has to be in other states; but in GA & PA the margin has to be less than .5%. It wasnt.
We LOST. I'm not going to sound like trump in 2020 just because I'm disgusted by it.

Last edited Wed Dec 18, 2024, 11:53 PM - Edit history (1)

At any level of loss.

Paying for self-funded recount might be a tall order.

But maybe there would have been donations if they announced recounts. Jill Stein managed it in 2020 so it can be done.

to wage a recount that she knew served no purpose.

Some good some very bad rules. Some states have good rules some states make the requirements for a recount impossible to meet so that recounts can hardly ever happen. But why should the closeness of an election alone be the deciding indicator? How about evidence of fraud and manipulation? How about real exit polling like they did in Venezuela that everyone claims clearly show miscounts or fraud?

Our haphazard collections of voting systems in the US are designed to breed doubt, distrust and invalid results.

My reference to recounts was directed at the country in general, not specifically Iowa. There were several places in the country where the numbers did not necessarily "match up." After the election, I was vocal (on this forum) about my hope for recounts.

However, perhaps the numbers in Iowa did indeed seem suspect, in a way that will reveal itself through discovery.

The disparity between the margins is certainly "suspicious", to a professional pollster. Selzer had Harris winning by 3 points, but the grifter won by 13 points. That is well beyond the margin of error, and might cause some to furrow their brow in disbelief.

On the other hand, automatic recounts are one thing and recounts requested by a candidate are another. Here is the recount law for Iowa: "Any candidate may request a recount. If the margin of victory separating candidates is 50 votes or 1% of the total number of votes cast, whichever is greater, the state covers the cost of the recount. In all other instances, the candidate is responsible for costs associated with the recount. Costs paid by the candidate are refunded if the recount changes the election outcome."

Implying that anyone in this discussion sounds like [the grifter] may be a tangent you want to stay away from.

Iowa was never going to go to Harris; nothing on the ground showed it
If you wanted to look for ANYTHING odd I'd suggest Wisconsin, where the numbers actually WERE close.
Did anyone from the DNC suggest an investigation anywhere? The Harris campaign? Dems in Congress? Did any pollsters suggest it?
If any of them thought it WAS fraudulent we wouldve heard about it

as many court cases as were legitimate. But, then, he should have accepted the result.

Now, people on DU are twisting the rules. Kamala Harris isn't even allowed to question the results. When did that become our standard? I guarantee you we didn't apply such a strict standard to trump.

Simply because there is no evidence of anything but her losing legitimately.

Harris certainly could have waged Trump-style frivolous lawsuits and pointless recounts, but she appeared to have no desire to scam her supporters out of millions of dollars because some folks on the internet are having a hard time accepting reality.

recounts is because she accepted the result as valid and wouldn't want to "scam" her supporters. You've talked to her and you know what she's thinking and why she's chosen to not keep fighting? .

I believe that were there an appetite for questioning the results, she might very well ask for recounts. So many people on DU shut down any one who even questioned it. It's hard for Harris to see us when people like you are so hostile to anyone even asking for the process to play out. I wouldn't feel scammed. I would support looking for the truth however it turns out.

And do I need to tell you that recounts in areas where there was known issues could provide the evidence you insist we don't have.

You won't find evidence if you don't look.

And yet he or they do not entertain these conspiracy theories in any way.

It’s pretty silly to argue that people here helpfully pointing out that some folks are embracing literal Trump-style baseless conspiracy theories is the only thing stopping Harris from announcing she also supports those goofy conspiracy theories herself.

If Harris believed there was any chance the election was stolen from her, she would absolutely have a duty to fight.

Yet Harris has accepted the results are legitimate, because they are.

Harris could have requested recounts if she wanted, but she didn't pursue it.

I believe if you wanted to go ahead & push for a recount based on no evidence a judge would likely toss your request.

and a full recount if discrepancies are found.

That's what we do in WA and NM -- and in both those states, the voters chose Harris with about the same margins as Biden had.

So all you have to do is rig the count so it doesn’t meet the standard for a recount and you’re home free. Sounds like a no-win situation for the victim of rigging.

Why are so many people sounding just like 2020 from the other side.
All this effort needs to be out toward figuring out WHY fewer people turned out to vote in some states.

…the only way Selzer’s poll could have been wrong would be if the vote was rigged. We can’t find out if the vote was rigged unless there’s a recount. That’s what’s on the table. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence but no proof. Do you have an explanation for how the pollster admired for her history of accuracy should be off by so much? Try to think up such reason and you’ll likely catch on.

And its not like the Selzer polls have NEVER been wrong before.
Its IOWA; its not a surprise.
What's the circumstantial evidence other than that poll? Did exit polls in Iowa show Harris winning?

Really? Not the slightest glimmer of skepticism?
Let’s not argue. We believe what we believe.

It doesn't matter.

Pollsters are judged on their accuracy. If a pollster appears accurate, they will likely get further work. If not...well.....

A good pollster is also transparent about their methodology.

A) tRump says he's got all the votes he needs before the election

B) Kamala was leading in 5 of the 7 swing States according to the more reliable polls

C) What are the odds she'd lose every swing State?

D) We know republiCONs have no qualms putting their finger on the scales, they love to cheat.
In fact they have to cheat to win!

I think what we really need to examine is why someone would vote against Trump in 2020 and then just not vote in 2024. Ten million people, give or take a percentage point or two.

Part of it is voter suppression, of course, but there's more to it than that, including what appears to be actual voter amnesia. They just forgot the chaos in 2020.

Yes, there would be a few polls here and there. But the average was not very impressive and it looked like the thing was tied. She also was losing ground in MI and WI the last few days of polling. Michigan and Wisconsin were the only swing states where she was "ahead" and it was by .5 and .4. But polls conducted in the last few days showed Trump slightly ahead. But everyone on DU wrote them off, "It's Traflagar", "It's Insider Advantage, "It's Emerson", "Those polls are GOP polls".

All the rest of the swing states showed Trump to be significantly ahead.


Final Averages
Pennsylvania Trump +0.4
Michigan Harris +0.5
Ohio Trump +9.3
Wisconsin Harris +0.4
Arizona Trump +2.8
Nevada Trump +0.6
North Carolina Trump +1.2
Georgia Trump +1.3
Florida Trump +8.0

Nancy Pelosi, who didn't want Harris, said she tried to get Biden to step aside sooner so that there could be another Democratic primary. Biden kept resisting. When he finally agreed, he immediately endorsed Harris, which prevented the primary Pelosi wanted. Everyone quickly coalesced around Harris, which seemed like a good idea at the time.

But had it gone the way Pelosi intended, we likely would have gotten a more electable Democratic ticket that might have defeated Trump and we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. Sometimes I wonder how it would have gone if we'd ended up with a Gavin Newsom-Josh Shapiro ticket. They might have gotten us the voter turnout we needed. Then again, we might have still lost. No way to know for sure.

And didn’t select our strongest or most popular candidate and that’s why we lost. Of course if we had a primary, the media etc might have preselected a candidate for us that seemed strong inside their little bubble and we lose anyway!

David Plouffe talked about it in late November.

People saw the polls they wanted to see and dismissed anything that worked against it.

The final polls from AtlasIntel (probably the polling outfit I trust most) showed the same story. When a friend sent me their final state predictions the morning of the election, that was my first "Uh oh" moment, because they were showing the swing state sweep that we ultimately saw.

I think some of the "something stinks" feeling comes from the fact that reality arrived for a narrative that was dismissive of it. When narrative and facts collide, there's going to be some dissonance whose severity depends on how far apart those two things were.

Rarely ever had them up - except they did see movement the final week of the campaign. They really thought maybe that movement would be enough to win the race.

But I can tell you the Harris campaign, maybe even more than the Biden campaign, went through this whole election season knowing they very well could lose. It wasn't until that final week that I think they thought, "wait...we might actually win..."

Before then? It didn't exist in the polls outside a very early bump when she announced. There's a reason she said OVER AND OVER on the campaign trail they were the underdogs. Harris' team knew they were, especially with the electoral college. They always felt winning all three of the Blue Wall states was going to be difficult and if they didn't win all three, they probably wouldn't win anyway.

In fact, the prevailing thought within the campaign was that if they lost one - they'd lose 'em all. And if they won one, they'd likely win 'em all. It's why the campaign rarely deviated from those three states. It wasn't like Biden in 2020, who built out multiple pathways to victory. Harris' team knew they were underdogs in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina (and they'd need to win at least Georgia or North Carolina to make up for a loss in PA/MI/WI). The math was very precarious for the campaign.

It was always going to be that way.

A week before the election, I said Pennsylvania was going to Trump (and got excoriated for it).

But that last week I started changing my mind. I dunno. It was a mixture of that MSG rally and a palpable sense of circus fatigue that seemed to be permeated after that. I wishcast rather than forecast out of a desire to believe that things were shifting in the final days.

But at the end of the day, the data are always the data. Data don't care much about optimism.

I was on a call with the DNC and Harris campaign on October 28th and we went over the state of the race. It was not doom but it was very blunt: this is going to be a tough race.

By the next Monday, the mood definitely had shifted. I don't think they thought they had it in the bag but I think it was the first time in a minute they felt good about their standing. But October was brutal for the Harris campaign. A lot of people dismissed the realities here but they could not gain any level of momentum in October. For whatever reason, it just felt like everything fell flat.

Which was surprising because not only did they enter October with decent footing ... nothing really happened in October that should have knocked her down (this wasn't a Comey Letter situation). It's just that the closer we got to the election, the more Trump's support solidified and their support kinda stagnated. For all the faults about his campaign, Trump was able to rally in the end and Harris could never articulate an argument that seemed to stick.

But in retrospect, it became clear after the debate that the campaign was kind of spinning its wheels. When she failed to get any noticeable debate bump, that was evidence the campaign just wasn't getting the traction needed to win.

People forget how dire the race was in July. Harris upended what was likely turning into a Trump blowout. It's just she only upended it enough to make it a race ... not actually win it. And she wasn't ever going to win it because Trump's support essentially locked in during the summer and no amount of campaigning or attacks was able to shake it.

Which is why every time I saw a post about how Trump's support was collapsing or that Trump knows he's losing ... I had to roll my eyes. Trump's campaign was convinced since spring they'd win. I don't think there was one point where they ever seriously thought they'd lose this race. And why? Because their internals probably mirrored Harris'.

except they left the vote for President blank.

They could have voted for Trump or voted 3rd party. Not every ballot is straight ticket.

Republicans turned out and voted for the top of the ticket and left the down-ballot races blank. That's why they didn't eke out wins in Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona.

Just look at the senate races:

In Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin won 1,672,777 votes to 1,643,996 for Eric Hovde.

Harris? 1,668,229 and Trump won 1,697,626.

That's only a 4,548 vote difference between Harris and Baldwin. That's hardly significant.

But the difference between Hovde and Trump? Trump did 53,630 votes better than Hovde. That's more than the margin between Baldwin and Hovde.

In Michigan, Slotkin won 2,712,686 votes. Harris won 2,736,533. So, in Michigan, Harris actually out-performed Slotkin by 24,000 votes.

So, how did Trump win and Mike Rogers lose? Trump won 2,816,636 votes and Rogers 2,693,680. That means 123,000 voters voted Trump and did not vote for Rogers.

Republicans underperformed Trump way more than Harris underperformed Democrats.

Michigan:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/michigan-senate-results

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/michigan-president-results

Wisconsin:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/wisconsin-senate-results

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/wisconsin-president-results

that the R voters and D voters had the opposite pattern:

The patterns were like that in Texas too. I work elections. Our machines were not hacked!! All sorts of tests go into them before they go out to the sites. All sorts of test ballots are run through them. Voters that voted for Biden last time, switched to Trump. Many of Biden's voters where I live were Republican women who were fed up with Trump. This time, they weren't fed up with Trump and wanted change. It is what it is. I talked to voters myself and some of my strong Democrats said: "Yeah I changed"

Also Trump got alot of voters out at the last minute. On election night a bunch of Latino males showed up at polling site. The judge said thank you for voting. They said, "You're not gonna like the result".

__________

I worked hard to get that data from those two states and suddenly you say, "It wasn't that. It was this". Well, now I gotta explain how downballots work. But I'm not gonna because I gotta life. It's 2:36 am.
That's why I get frustrated here.

That smartelections site is even "making up their own terms". What on the earth is a drop-off vote?? The correct election term is "undervote". https://ballotpedia.org/Undervote

that hackers had access to the machines. And it would have been possible to program them to ONLY switch votes on the day of the election.

And you know where there wasn't any "drop off" in votes for Kamala? In WA and in NM, two states that only use paper ballots, and do a partial audit of the hand count -- and if necessary, a full audit. In these two states Harris led Trump by almost the same margin that Biden led Trump four years earlier.

There is no such thing as a "drop off" vote. It's a made up term. Much less "drop off" in votes for Kamala. You can't prove that. You can't prove that someone voted for Kamala and the machine changed the result due to hacking. All the recounts in the world cannot prove it.

Show me where hackers had access to machines.

We had 3,158 undervotes for president this election. But that is not unusual. We had 3,144 in 2020. If Biden hadn't won in 2020, I guess we would be the team that accused that machines were hacked. Because that is what the GOP claimed after 2020. Just because Harris's results were the same as Biden's in two states doesn't prove hacking.

So…

Everything he accuses others of are things he has done. Since 2015 he has been accusing Democrats of cheating on elections, fixing voting machines and software, etc. I hate to sound paranoid but it does make you wonder.

and the topic of much discussion after the election.

Wouldn't it be great if discovery from some of the grifter's bogus lawsuits uncovered some much needed data.

I think this story got lost in the holiday because it was dropped the day before Thanksgiving. But David Plouffe went on Pod Save America and said their internal polls were never great and didn't reflect what some of the public polls said.

Internal polls are usually more accurate than the public polls, because they're more thorough and granular.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/27/kamala-harris-advisers-internal-polling/76626278007/

news or even someone's tweet it could change tomorrow. I dont know how he could win other than just forcing them to spend millions to defend themselves.

He's applied this tactic to anyone who's dared cross him through his entire life.

And with his dipshit donors filling his campaign funds to overflowing, he can pay for infinite legal fees.

and use the bankruptcy laws.

Other peoples' money, as always.

This is what it's all about.

It's basically a SLAPP suit meant to intimidate people from publishing anything negative or critical of Shitler.

It doesn't matter if the lawsuit wins or even has merit. Shitler wins just by forcing his critics to pay for lawyers. That discourages others from speaking out.

ABC (aka Disney) caved and was a traitor to the First Amendment and the rest of the media.

But I like the idea of this suit, or going after anyone in J6, as cause for releasing information we have not yet heard.

I am going to start another discussion about it. Perfect timing.

Thank you very much

The wrong turn out. Indeed, Trump himself was predicting 85 plus million votes for Harris. Quotes by him that were made before election day that would look bad in court.

Once again, a lot of people didn’t like Trump but liked Trumperism. And a lot of people couldn't find it in themselves to vote for a black woman. Things not polled by her.

What about the Russian hacking? Something does smell rotten in Moscow.

As I understand it, some of those polling sites never reopened for voting. Talk about election interference!?

She's said so herself. And trying to 'revisit' this through any other sort of lens ... Just makes us look stupid.

Harris lost - by any sort of reasonable yardstick or reckoning. And Iowa wasn't even CLOSE !

I did find an interview where she said she analyzed the poll from every possible direction and couldn't find a flaw. She even published her tabulating formulas. I attached the article.

Here is a quote from the article: “If you’re hoping that I had landed on exactly why things went wrong, I have not,” she said. “It does sort of awaken me in the middle of the night, and I think, ‘Well, maybe I should check this. This is something that would be very odd if it were to happen.’ But we’ve explored everything.”
Here is a link to the full article. https://www.thegazette.com/campaigns-elections/ann-selzer-still-searching-for-answers-after-final-iowa-poll-badly-missed-its-mark/

Can you please cite the source where she said that her poll was (desperately and embarassingly) wrong? Thank you

to characterize or pretend that as anything less than embarrassing - is, well - embarrassing.

Here are her words on Nov 7th

or thoughts in my head. I have not come to any conclusions. I, like many, have some questions.

BUT! My post was about the possible benefits of discovery if the grifter sues Ann Selzer. And maybe (just maybe) her poll wasn't wrong.

FYI, your quote was two days after the election. The quote and article I shared was from a month later, when she said, we/she looked and looked and can't find a flaw in the poll.

The part I most object to is the "Maybe the poll wasn't really wrong .. " bit.

No. The poll was really really WRONG !

that Alf Landon would beat FDR in a landslide; my very first reaction when I heard Selzer's poll was "Well, Ann Selzer just ended her career tonight" - and indeed, that turned out to be the case.

and a great deal of respect within and without the field.

None of which has the slightest effect on the fact that the last poll - missed by the proverbial country mile! It was an embarrassment! And any attempt to come back on this dumpster fire and say, "well maybe ... " ("she was really right ..".) Makes us look stupid. (or stupid-er)

I don’t think she’s going to cave like those other coward did.

1. Uncounted provisional ballots where people did not return to prove their citizenship
2. Rejected ballots because the signatures did not match the original signatures
3. How many turned away because they were not registered by having been unregistered.
3. a. How many of those did not return to prove their right to vote.

Thousands were unregistered by individuals each sending in thousands of names to unregister.

The projections expressed voter counts. Not voter counts minus rejected ballots.

It was the only poll that showed she was up. It was horrendous.

about this case. What are his damages? You can sue people until the cows come home, but if you can't state a claim for relief, you're just blowing hot air.

pick up the phone and talk to different people, you’ll get a different result at that moment, plus or minus.

This is another in a long line of his stupidest things ever. I’m sure the lawyers have trumped up the wording, but this is just an ego problem.

Cheaters

It was obviously wrong. What discovery do you imagine would say otherwise?

This is not to say Trump’s law suit is anything but moronic.

The election has already been certified by the state. The Electors have voted.

It’s the sample the poll is based on. It wasn’t a poll of the entire population of Iowa.

He has powerful entities backing him such as Musk rat.

I believe she actually won by one to three points over him.

The methodology she used is designed to be more accurate - not a cookie cutter poll.

And as you observe, there are other entities out there with other agendas. How many precincts and counties and states used Starlink for tabulations?