Elections in the USA

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Yasna
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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby Yasna » 2020-11-04, 20:08

linguoboy wrote:Something which is apparent from the county-level breakdown is that there were huge swings in several Latinx-heavy counties representing an upswing in support for Trump from Latino men.

The running joke in Trump circles is that Trump won the Latino vote while Biden won the Latinx vote.
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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby TheStrayCat » 2020-11-04, 21:18

Trump is running ahead of the polls in all competitive states except Georgia. Did the Russian hackers mistranslate the instruction and break into the country of Georgia instead?

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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby linguoboy » 2020-11-04, 21:21

Yasna wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Something which is apparent from the county-level breakdown is that there were huge swings in several Latinx-heavy counties representing an upswing in support for Trump from Latino men.

The running joke in Trump circles is that Trump won the Latino vote while Biden won the Latinx vote.

In all seriousness, I'm expecting to see a big split along gender lines.

Someone I know from the Rio Grande Valley attributed the huge swings there to the fact that Building The Wall brought jobs to depressed area. That would certainly go a long way to winning non-college-educated men of any ethnic/racial background.
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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby vijayjohn » 2020-11-04, 21:26

Car wrote:I mean that problem isn't new when it comes to the far-right, but I thought it had diminished

Have problems with the far right diminished anywhere in the world lately?

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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby eskandar » 2020-11-05, 2:38

By Ignoring Latino Voters, Biden Has Made the Election Too Close

“If Trump is doing better with people of color, it’s for the same reason he has improved the Republican Party’s edge among non-college-educated white voters: class. Trump talks the language of bread-and-butter economics, promising jobs. Democrats, with the exception of the progressive wing of the party, have abandoned class language and instead focus on national unity. The problem with Trump, to hear Biden tell it, is that he’s a divisive figure. Biden, to be sure, bluntly criticizes Trump’s bigotry. But Biden, like Clinton, is also eager to pursue erstwhile Republicans, many of whom are suburban whites. In tailoring their message to these voters, Biden and Clinton have softened the economic populism Democrats need to win working-class voters.”
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby Car » 2020-11-05, 8:42

vijayjohn wrote:
Car wrote:I mean that problem isn't new when it comes to the far-right, but I thought it had diminished

Have problems with the far right diminished anywhere in the world lately?

The AfD suffered a lot lately in the East due to infighting and the corona virus, actually (a more detailed article can be found here).
What I meant, though, was that the problem of "shy" voters of the far-right having a negative effect on polls had diminished because they're less likely to be "shy" about it.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the FPÖ vote collapsed due to the scandal that led to the end of their federal coalition with the ÖVP. That was the case in Vienna this year as well as at the federal level last year.
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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby awrui » 2020-11-05, 9:27

One thing I never understood- why do they collect money from the common people? That Biden-guy and the clown are rich AF?? And there are so many rich people in their parties? Why do they need other people's money?

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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby md0 » 2020-11-05, 9:34

awrui wrote:One thing I never understood- why do they collect money from the common people? That Biden-guy and the clown are rich AF?? And there are so many rich people in their parties? Why do they need other people's money?


That's a problem in many other countries too. Is any country mandating that all electoral campaigns are financed by public money allocated by a neutral election financing committee? (Because if we swing the other way and say that all electoral campaigns have to financed by personal funds, only millionaires will afford to run for office)
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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby Aurinĭa » 2020-11-05, 10:46

md0 wrote:Is any country mandating that all electoral campaigns are financed by public money allocated by a neutral election financing committee?

Not solely, but parties here do get financed by public money on the basis of the votes they got during the last elections, and there is a cap on how much any given party or politician is allowed to spend on campaigning in a given election cycle. They also can't just spend it in whichever way they want, there are rules around campaigning they have to obey.

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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby awrui » 2020-11-05, 11:26

md0 wrote:
awrui wrote:One thing I never understood- why do they collect money from the common people? That Biden-guy and the clown are rich AF?? And there are so many rich people in their parties? Why do they need other people's money?

(Because if we swing the other way and say that all electoral campaigns have to financed by personal funds, only millionaires will afford to run for office)


Yeah, that's already the thing, I feel. For me as an outsider, it seems like the elections are all about which millionaire will get to play president next...

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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby linguoboy » 2020-11-05, 12:25

awrui wrote:One thing I never understood- why do they collect money from the common people? That Biden-guy and the clown are rich AF?? And there are so many rich people in their parties? Why do they need other people's money?

Voters here take a very dim view of candidates who are financed only by millionaires. An ability to get lots of small donations is seen as an indicator of broad public support.

I also think you’re underestimating just how ridiculously expensive it is to run for President of the United States and overestimating how much wealth Donald Trump has. He has over $200 million in loans coming due soon and there’s no indication where he’s going to get the money to pay them.
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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby Yasna » 2020-11-05, 16:26

California Voters Reject Racial Quotas

"Predictably, elites are charging those voters with racism. A writer for the FiveThirtyEight blog, Matt Grossman, calls the defeat of Proposition 16 a “sign of the limits to Americans’ liberalizing attitudes on racial discrimination.” This idea—that to oppose racial discrimination is in fact to favor racial discrimination—has always been the cheekiest claim on the part of the identitarian Left. During the last five months, the airwaves were dominated by the message that white supremacy is the very DNA of America, to be extirpated by any means necessary, including riots. For now, at least, that message has failed to carry the day. Americans still understand that the best way to fulfill the promise of this nation is to treat one another as individuals, not as fungible members of warring tribes."
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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby Hoogstwaarschijnlijk » 2020-11-07, 19:28

Joe Biden has won! Congratulations for the ones who voted for him :)
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Corrections appreciated.

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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby md0 » 2020-11-08, 9:36

With this long week now behind us, I went to check when was the last time a third-party received at least one EC vote not through a faithless elector, and that was in 1968, when the far-right won in five southern states. The last time it happened in a northern state was in 1924, when Wisconsin went for a Progressive candidate. Finally, 1912 appears to be the last year that Presidential elections legitimately appeared to be a multi-party affair.

My question for the American ULs is what's the outlet for political representation for the ~1.735.372 voters of the Libertarian party candidate and ~737.459 voters for the other third-party candidates? Are they winning state and local elections, or are they as minor as they are in congressional and presidential elections?
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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby TheStrayCat » 2020-11-08, 13:52

md0 wrote:My question for the American ULs is what's the outlet for political representation for the ~1.735.372 voters of the Libertarian party candidate and ~737.459 voters for the other third-party candidates?

Virtually none, and that's one thing that can explain the rising polarization of the country. Even most of the editors of the leading libertarian magazine admitted they were voting for Biden - so as to get rid of Trump faster.

md0 wrote:Are they winning state and local elections, or are they as minor as they are in congressional and presidential elections?

Sometimes they do, but I cannot really think of an election of any level where a third-party nominee would win against two non-technical candidates from the major parties. The Senate has two independents who align with Democrats on most issues (one of them last time beat a technical Democratic challenger), and the current House has a representative who won as a Republican and then switched party to Libertarian.

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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby Aurinĭa » 2020-11-08, 18:09

What do you mean with technical and non-technical candidates?

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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby linguoboy » 2020-11-08, 18:37

md0 wrote:My question for the American ULs is what's the outlet for political representation for the ~1.735.372 voters of the Libertarian party candidate and ~737.459 voters for the other third-party candidates? Are they winning state and local elections, or are they as minor as they are in congressional and presidential elections?

They seem to be competitive only in areas which are very solidly in the hands of one of the two major parties. For instance, I live in Cook County, which is dominated by the Democratic Party. I can't think of a single county-level office held by a Republican in the last twenty years. There may be a municipality or two in the suburbs which has elected a Republican to office recently but I don't think this has happened in Chicago itself for years. Our current City Council has 50 members: 46 Democrats and 4 Independents--all of whom won their seats by challenging the Democratic candidate from the left. This year the local Republican Party decided not to even contest seats for the Board of Commissioners of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (which is actually a pretty important body given the astounding water usage of Greater Chicago), but the Green Party ran three candidates. None won, though I think they have had commissioners on the Board in the past.

The Greens do have a smattering of officerholders elsewhere in the state, mostly serving on library and school boards. However, two are members of municipal councils, one in the city of Galesburg (pop. 32,195), a progressive enclave near Peoria, and one in Carbondale (pop. 25,376), another smaller city which is dominated by Southern Illinois University (11,366 students). (Davis, an even larger college town in California, elected a Green Party candidate mayor, though his term ended two years ago.) It's a similar story elsewhere in the country for the Libertarians: commissioners, board members, city councilors, and a couple of mayors. (Officially, the largest town with a Libertarian mayor is Lago Vista, Texas [pop. 7,117], but the mayor of Crystal, Minnesota [pop. 22,151], although officially nonpartisan, is apparently a Libertarian in all but name.)
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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby TheStrayCat » 2020-11-08, 19:13

Aurinĭa wrote:What do you mean with technical and non-technical candidates?

Well, I meant something like those who actively campaign and get support from high-ranking state and federal representatives, versus less known figures who just run with a (D) or (R) after their name. But then I checked that apparently in 2012 Maine elected an independent senator with both major-party contenders getting at least 13% of the vote, so I guess it might be a bit more complex than that.

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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby md0 » 2020-11-09, 14:27

So it really seems that the only outlet for political representation is through factions inside the two main parties. I did notice on the House election maps that in some constituencies multiple Democrats or Republicans were running.

By the way, what's the reason for the run-off elections in Georgia in January? No candidate winning over 50%?
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Re: Elections in the USA

Postby TheStrayCat » 2020-11-09, 16:19

md0 wrote:By the way, what's the reason for the run-off elections in Georgia in January? No candidate winning over 50%?

Correct. In most states, each party nominates one candidate chosen through a primary election, and the one who gets the most votes in the general election (not necessarily more than 50%) wins. In some states, however, the election system is more similar to that of European countries - first multiple candidates run together and if no one gets 50%, the first two proceed to the run-off. Georgia is one of these states; there are also Louisiana, California and possibly some others (not sure).


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