Lock Him Up? A New Poll Has Some Bad News for Trump

BagOfHammers@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 310 points –
Lock Him Up? A New Poll Has Some Bad News for Trump
politico.com
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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.

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

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.

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

But that's what MAGA doesn't get. If our political leaders break the law, then they should be punished according to it.

They don't believe that we really believe this. They just think we're saying to appear superior to them. It's easy to say that we believe in the rule of law but, for them, there's no evidence that we will submit to the consequences of law enforcement when it doesn't favor us. Except the evidence that Democrats live up to our ideals to some extent is that Al Franken stepped down in the midst of the #MeToo era after being accused of sexual assault. And also Obama wasn't a seditious cry baby ass bitch like 45.

In other words, MAGA beliefs only make sense in a decontexutalized vacuum where history doesn't exist and evidence is superfluous to political expediency.

In other words, MAGA beliefs only make sense in a decontexutalized vacuum where history doesn't exist and evidence is superfluous to political expediency.

Goddamn this reads beautifully. Eloquently put!

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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.

Yep, that's what they would say if it were a dem.

I feel that if an average citizen gets 1 month, then a someone entrusted with state powers like police and politicians should get 2 months. They were given special powers then abused them. Jail, straight to jail!

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.

I think they're suggesting that Conservatives would want Obama thrown into an oubliette for life over just one of the crimes Trump has been indicted for, but believe Trump should get to walk. The hypocrisy is insane.

Ah yes, that I absolutely agree on.

The outrage for having mustard on a sandwich and wearing a tan suit was insane, the corrupt republicans will do anything, ANYTHING!

This isn't "no stupid questions".

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

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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

And then the big companies came in and wrecked 538.

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...

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

Populous is an adjective

Populace is a noun

Thus why I'm not a writer, but at least the intent was there 🙂

I'm doing good if it doesn't look like a drunken baboon wrote it sometimes due to fat finger typing.

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...

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.

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.

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

I'm not super trusting of polls anymore

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

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.

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

I like that, it's a pretty good breakdown of controlled variables. And it looks like they're factoring in socioeconomic factors too, which is always a good thing.

After the last however long of bad polling, especially in the last 8 years, it's refreshing to see some better methodology but it's still going to take a while to get that general trust back.

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

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

Trump won within the margin of error in 2016.

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.

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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.

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

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

That is why I said most, not all.

About the Study

This Ipsos poll was conducted August 18-21, 2023 on behalf of Politico Magazine, using the probability based KnowledgePanel®. This poll is based on a representative sample of 1,032 U.S. residents, age 18 or older, including 272 Republican respondents, 321 Democratic respondents, and 319 independent respondents.

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. The weighting categories were as follows:

Gender (Male, Female) by Age (18–29, 30–44, 45-59 and 60+) Race/Hispanic Ethnicity (White Non-Hispanic, Black Non-Hispanic, Other, Non-Hispanic, Hispanic, 2+ Races, Non-Hispanic) Education (Less than High School, High School, Some College, Bachelor or higher) Census Region (Northeast, Midwest, South, West) Metropolitan status (Metro, non-Metro) Household Income (Under $25,000, $25,000-$49,999, $50,000-$74,999, $75,000-$99,999, $100,000-$149,999, $150,000+) Party ID (Democrat, Republican, Independent, Something else)

The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, for results based on the entire sample of adults. The margin of error takes into account the design effect, which was 1.08 for all adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 6.2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, for results based on the sample of Republicans. The margin of error takes into account the design effect, which was 1.08 for Republicans. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 5.8 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, for results based on the sample of Democrats. The margin of error takes into account the design effect, which was 1.11 for Democrats. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 5.7 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, for results based on the sample of independents. The margin of error takes into account the design effect, which was 1.09 for independents. In our reporting of the findings, percentage points are rounded off to the nearest whole number. As a result, percentages in a given table column may total slightly higher or lower than 100%. In questions that permit multiple responses, columns may total substantially more than 100%, depending on the number of different responses offered by each respondent.

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...

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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.

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

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.

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.

It shouldn't be the case but it's not unlikely that I'd he was already president, he would not be imprisoned while serving.

Impeachment is meant to be the way to remove him of that were the case but we've already seen that impeachment is now only a political tool for bashing your opponent when one party will exonerate trump from repurcuasions when clearly found guilty.

If he is president, he'd likely stay out of prison until he serves his term. At his age and health, he'd likely be dead by the end. When you're facing prison at his age, postponing it for 6 years is as good as getting off.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

looks exactly like every other poll about him since like 2015

I don't care what anyone thinks, including myself. I want the legal system to do its job correctly. Nothing more, nothing less.