Nicely put.

For those who missed my "mea culpa" at the end of last columns Comments Section,

Dear Weigantia,

Upon further review I decided to "yellow card" myself so as to practice some introspection.

While I don't think it quite violated the Geneva Convention, my "pogrom" joke was in extremely poor taste. And I clearly went over the top in my reaction to MyVoice and nypoet22. The use of terms such as "Snowflake," "Adult's table" and the like is unacceptable. I really do hate Political Correctness but that's no excuse.

I was consciously thinking of the Borat character when I threw in the "pogrom" bit. But of course I am not Sasha Baron Cohen and while you'd expect something like this out of Borat you'd not expect it out of non-Borats such as myself.

As such, I want to apologise to my "family" here in Weigantia. For the record I am not unfiltered, but in this case my filters clearly failed me. I see the lesson here and I can (and will) be better than this.

Thank you. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming

I think that you're right about Trump being something of a "wild card" for two elections now. And Trump will undoubtedly tease a 2024 run to keep himself relevant and as always, the center of attention. There was no reason to believe that Trump thought that he'd win in 2016 so IMO it was always about a "branding exercise."

Trump's post election shenanigans will further incentivize our beloved "deep state" to prosecute him to the full extent of the law, just to get Trump's Twitter machine out of his hands as a result of incarceration.

Biden is confused

Well, Fat Donny did warn us.

I never answer the phone for unidentified numbers. I would answer for pollsters if I knew that was who was calling. I don't understand why they hide their identities.

Oh, and the Presidential Election is decided by electoral votes, not ballot box votes. We all know this and then we promptly go on to act like we don't know this. Five Thirty Eight predicted Biden would most likely get 348 electoral votes. Biden got 306. The major TV networks did about as well. The British prognosticators closely agreed with their American counterparts.

The Prediction Markets (aka betting shops) seem to have accurately called the race earlier than the conventional prognosticators. This does not surprise me.

All things factored in, CW.com did pretty well this season.

Of course, there are always exceptions. In fact, we may be talking primarily about exceptions, it's just a matter of whether those exceptions tend to occur more frequently among certain groups of people than others. Ugh, statistics are a such a pain. When I had to take that class in college, I needed to get at least a C, so I was so happy to find out I earned a 69.7%, which would round up to a C.

I get that you're saying it tongue on cheek, but it's a valid question.

My reasoning is that, at least from my experience, conservatives tend to be a bit more insular and private, at least regarding their personal lives. Liberals, from my experience, tend to be a bit more open and up front about their beliefs. From my experience, conservatives also seem to have a slightly lower tolerance for being bothered by random people, such as spam calls or door-to-door salespeople, while liberals seem at least a bit more willing to humor such people.

Of course, my personal experience is hardly a scientific study, so I could be way off base.

Yeah, I thought about that, too! But, I'm not sure why one might presume that it would be the liberals who answered their phone not knowing who was calling. Oh, wait ... :)

For many people this is their final Thanksgiving, believe it or not.

These Socialist Security blood-suckers have got to go. This 47% taker class must be eliminated one way or another.

BTW - When is Biden going to get this virus under control?

What went wrong? The suppression wasn't very effective in Maine and North Carolina.

Frankly, I think this election was well-enough augured that the outcome was in little doubt, Trump may be a random element, but his ability to divide outweighs his ability to unite, therefore his appeal is predictably easy to understand. It won't ever be more than the sum of his base, plus a few points for people who feel plugging their noses is a small price to pay for whatever return Trump accidentally woos them with.

Aside...

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Em-TvEGXMAY1txV.jpg&imgrefurl=https://www.twigzu.com/hashtag/lmfao&h=600&w=1200&tbnid=nbXRFNFSRo3afM&tbnh=159&tbnw=318&usg=AI4_-kSo0m-CBqNK4jLeN2MTfR21tbNW-Q&vet=1&docid=CDAl3bpTqgM8vM

Only the Trump Campaign can fuck up so staggeringly...

Georiga...

I ask you.

LL&P

And here I thought it was "Our Chinese Allies were more effective at tipping the scales for Comrade Joe than Putin was for Trump." Heh.
/end sarcasm

One I've seen several times now is the idea that Trump voters have been trained to distrust mainstream media, and they identify poll-takers as part of that group. So they refuse to answer polls on principle, in contrast to Democrats who believe they are serving the public good by civically answering a pollster's inquiries.

The larger question you bring up at the end, of how polling can be conducted in a polity that is completely atomized, is the right one, I think. It connects all the analyses I've seen. People don't answer their phones for strange numbers, and don't talk to anyone they don't know personally. Group social activities, where crowds assemble in actual places, are declining over time as more and more interaction takes place virtually, allowing people to pick and choose who they want to be part of a crowd with. In a society like that, polling based on random sampling of the whole by talking to a representative part is increasingly inaccurate, because there is no whole to find a part of.

Looking forward to more thinking like this as you continue to do the scut work for us of actually reading these things! Thanks for this piece.

When a voter has the impression that there isn't a qualified major-party candidate, his options are 1) vote for the least unqualified major party guy, or 2), go third party.

In 2016, I voted ANTI Trump third party, and this time I voted ANTI Trump for Biden. That type of thing probably represents a pollsters nightmare.