this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2024
65 points (100.0% liked)
Politics
10180 readers
64 users here now
In-depth political discussion from around the world; if it's a political happening, you can post it here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
News orgs call states based on a combination of polls and vote counts. States that poll significantly in one direction or the other are typically called early in that direction because the outcome is not in doubt
Polls are not Votes. Polls are not subject to the same scrutiny as Votes. Even in regions that have a traditional bias towards one party of the other, there can still (theoretically) be significant statistical differences.
For instance, what if the Mormon women also decided to vote along gender lines; they may informally poll Republican in front of their peers, but may vote Democrat in the privacy of the voting booth.
What if a landslide number of people who have never voted before all vote against the status quo. If they had never voted before, they wouldn’t have been included in any polling.
Whether this is a realistic scenario or not is irrelevant to whether it can be called until at least half the possible votes have been counted in favour of one candidate or the other.
You can ask "what if?" all you want, but that doesn't make your imagined alternative real. The news media calls states when they're confident in the outcome. Show me somewhere they got it wrong