this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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They sure showed her. So who’d they elect instead? Must’ve been someone against the genocide, bigly.

[–] LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world 19 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (4 children)

Another article that uses the same poll that says 19 million people who voted for Biden didn't vote despite not having any sources for that number. The Harris and Biden vote difference was under 6 million. 19 million is multiplying that times around 3.

Edit: I also find it interesting that so many of the polls we have had about the reasons people didn't vote for Harris have different reasons. Some say Inflation, this one says Gaza. Just interesting how different polls can be conducted. This one was also backed by the Institute for Middle East Understanding so, while I don't think they necessarily rigged it, I am not surprised that a poll backed by a Middle East organization showed support for Gaza was a deciding reason for a lot of voters. Regardless, Gaza had some impact that can't be disregarded.

Second edit: to be clear, I'm not saying the poll says 19 million, I'm saying the article does with no evidence. I'm keeping the original wording and correcting it in this edit for clarities sake.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (4 children)

The biggest reason is that voter turnout wasn't repressed, the 2020 turnout was artificially inflated by emergency vote by mail rules due to the pandemic.

2012 - Obama 65,915,795 Romney 60,933,504
Total - 126,849,299

2016 - Trump 62,984,828 Clinton 65,853,514
Total - 128,838,342

2020 - Biden 81,283,501 Trump 74,223,975
Total - 155,507,476

2024 - Trump 77,303,573 Harris 75,019,257
Total - 152,322,830

[–] baronvonj@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I would say those numbers mean every election where voters are not able to vote by mail is an election with repressed voter turnout. Because now we know what turnout can be if vote by mail is an option.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Oh, definitely, the participation in vote by mail states is roughly double states where voting in person is the only option.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Did you look at your own numbers? Trump did better than he did in 2020, while Harris did substantially worse than Biden.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Substantially worse, but not 19 million worse.

Trump was +3 million, Harris was -6.

[–] LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

No, I know that, but that still doesn't provide evidence for what the article states, that 19 million people who voted for Biden stayed home. That's my problem because there is no evidence for that figure.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

I agree! At most this shows 6 million stayed home, not 19. You could increase it to 9 million if you assume the Trump +3 million was a flip instead of staying home.

[–] teodor_from_achewood@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Millions of people have voted by mail for decades, that doesn't explain why more people voted for Biden in 2020 than anyone in 2024.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Millions more had the option available to them with no restriction due to Covid.

[–] jeffw@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

To piggyback on this, left-leaning echo chambers tend to underestimate the impact of turning on Israel amongst older voters, who tend to be more religious.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

From the other article covering the poll, Biden-Harris respondents were also asked how a change in policy would have affected their enthusiasm. 5% said it would make them less enthusiastic, 35% said more.

[–] jeffw@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Skimmed the article and I’m still confused. Why can’t people just link to the actual data?

[–] LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

I definitely agree with that. We can argue about whether Harris would have benefited from saying she'd stop arms being sent to Israel, but to say it wouldn't have hurt her as well is ignoring how much of the public supports Israel. There's also a lot of people on the left who would have simultaneously said they're glad she supports stopping arms sales to Israel and yet still find some other reason not to vote for her. The decision on which way for the campaign to go on the Palestinian genocide isn't as easy or clear cut as many seem to think.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

The 19M could add up if there were 13M voters who either voted for the first time or voted for Trump in the last election. Say if Harris's total was 56M Biden voters, 8M first time voters, and 5M Trump 2020 voters.

That still seems like a stretch, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. Someone would need to do some work to show that though, not just say it and be expected to be trusted.

[–] LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

That's a massive stretch with 0 evidence to support it so is just speculation. Not literally impossible, but multiple new orgs saying 19 million without that evidence is fucking weird.

[–] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

The poll doesn't say 19 million anywhere

It also addresses issues raised in your edit (e.g. "Across the six battleground states that flipped from Biden to Trump, 20% of these voters said “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza” was their top issue in deciding not to vote for Harris, the second-most cited reason behind only the economy (33%)." - to your point about how they didn't discuss the economy).

[–] LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

That's what I'm saying about the 19 million figure. But the articles second paragraph is this

A YouGov poll backed by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project and released on Wednesday showed that among the 19 million people who voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 but did not vote in 2024, nearly a third named Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza as a top reason for staying home.

My point is that that 19 million figure makes no sense/has no evidence to support it and isn't mentioned anywhere in the poll.

Yes an edit: Also that's a good point about the battleground state stats, thanks for pointing it out. I know Gaza had an impact, its just interesting seeing how much of an impact it actually had, which other polls show as much lower. Again, different polls, different methodologies, and different ways of getting the poll participants with Yougov doing purely online polls.

[–] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I don't see how an error in a news article reporting on a poll done by a separate organization invalidates the results of that poll

[–] LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Fair. But I also never said anything about it invalidating the poll.

Yes yes i do edits: i do want to say though it's not just this one article mentioning the 19 million, each article about this poll has mentioned it.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I believe there are only two articles, which are presumably just sourcing from an IMEU press release for their poll.

[–] LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world 0 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

There were 3 that I found but apparently, when i looked them back up for this comment, two were written by the same person on different news sites so may as well be the same article so you're right, there aren't a many articles about it, although i wouldnt be surprised if more are written over the next few days.

And if they're just copying the IMEU press release then that brings into question where are they getting that 19 million figure? Moves the issue from the news organizations to the IMEU, which is probably worse than just a news org being wrong.

[–] forrgott@lemm.ee 4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (3 children)

Oh for crying out loud. They surveyed LESS THAN 500 PEOPLE.

This "damning" new poll is bullshit. They're extrapolating out from 474 people polled to try and pretend like they can accurately tell me what 19 MILLION people think?

This is just sad.

Edit: lol at the downvote. But seriously, that's not a representative sample size. By several orders of magnitude. This is stupid.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 9 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

You don't understand how sample sizes or margins of error are calculated. That's why you're being downvoted.

[–] forrgott@lemm.ee -2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Uh. 500 sample size. To estimate 19 million people's thoughts?

Ok. Sure. What's a "representative sample" then????

Edit: go read the source. The choice of wording alone gives away the fact that this is NOT a properly done analysis.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Read a damn stats book. Jesus Wept! This could literally be a question on a sophomore-level undergrad stats class, and you would fail that question.

[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

They're typically in the couple thousand neighborhood. <500 is crazy small.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 hours ago

That was for the "Biden voters in swing states" poll, so a much smaller population than most polls. Most nationwide political polls of the general public were in the 1,000-1,500 range for a 2-3 point margin of error. Polls with larger sizes were likely to also get useful crosstabs.

MOE for this poll was +/-4.9%, which is high, but not "this is meaningless trash, what even is statistics?!?", especially when the headline numbers are just general sentiment rather than a head to head. In the worst case if "Gaza" was 24 and "the economy" was 29, it's not a very large difference in the finding.

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Tell me you know nothing about statistics without telling me you know nothing about statistics.

[–] forrgott@lemm.ee 0 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Sure, buddy. A factor of to 38,000 per one response is "representative"?

Nope!! Not happening, buddy!

[–] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago

If the samples are randomly distributed a very small increase in sample size will have a big effect on the probability your sampled estimate will be close to the actual population's reading

I can't seem to find any pages that explain that simple concept simply, but if you're really interested these both get into it

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7745163/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination?wprov=sfla1

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago

Do you even know how to do an ANOVA?

[–] LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

I hadn't even noticed how small that sample size was. 474 is a tiny ass study. This kind of poll should have been conducted with far more participants if it wanted to be taken more seriously. At least 1000. It's an online pollster, so it's not like it'd be impossible to get that many.

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Kamala responded to her own voters' protestations about Palestine by dismissing them with "I'm speaking now..."

Well, in the end, it was the voters that spoke. And they sent her packing.

And the centrists who endlessly said, "Donald Trump will be even worse for Palestine!," we seem to now have a cease fire, even before Trump takes office. It looks like this particular genocide will be one that was entirely on Biden's watch.

[–] teodor_from_achewood@lemmy.world 10 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

75,000,000 people voted for Kamala.

77,000,000 people voted for a guy who wants Israel to "finish the job" in Gaza.

You only speak for yourself.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

It seems now that the genocide will be entirely on Biden's head. There's a cease fire deal that's been signed. And Trump winning probably did provide a lot of the impetus to get that deal signed.

I despise Trump for other reasons, but when he said, "finish the job," he clearly meant, "wrap this up." You can interpret it as a call for total genocide, but that's your reading of it, not an objective good-faith reading.

The truth is, in practice, Trump would have not been any worse than Biden on Gaza, even if the war had continued. Biden is already giving full US support to Israel. There's nothing that a president can give Israel that Biden isn't already giving Israel. I suppose a president could order US troops to directly participate in the fighting, but even Trump's not that stupid.

The hard truth is that both Trump and Biden are the same on Israel. There is no meaningful difference between their policies. And Harris made clear she was going to have the same stance on Israel that Trump now will - full unconditional support.

But anyway, it's most likely now that the deaths in Gaza will look something like this:

Under Biden's watch: 100,000-200,000 killed in a coordinated campaign of extermination

Under Trump's watch: a few hundred killed in random occasional spurts of violence while under a state of cease-fire.

Historically, this genocide will be entirely on Biden's head. It's his genocide. Trump won't have that stain on his record.

[–] teodor_from_achewood@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not reading all that.

Touch grass.

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

The gist is that we needed someone who would threaten the Palestinians with even more support for Israel to force them to the table.

I hear grass crying out to be touched. Trees crying out to be seen. Plants crying out to be smelled. A sun, desperate to touch skin.