Unhappy Anchovy
Well-known member
Media outlets have always called elections prior to the electors meeting. They did in 2016, they did in 2012, and they did in 1912. There is absolutely nothing nefarious about media outlets trying to project the winner of the election as early as is reasonably possible.
So let me put it this way: it is at least hypothetically possible that the reason why pretty much all global media have called the election for Biden is the same reason why they called it for Trump last time, and Obama before that, and so on. Perhaps they call it for Biden because Biden has genuinely won the election.
Sure, last minute shenanigans with electors are technically possible. Lots of people on the left were eager for some sort of hail Mary strategy with the electors to stop Trump getting in last time. Now we get to watch the bizarro re-run, with people on the right enthusiastic for a crazy stunt with the electors to try to tilt the election. For what it's worth, random_boy232 is entirely correct that the state legislatures appointing electors contrary to the will of the people of that state would be disastrous for the United States and likely to end in violence. That's not to encourage violence, but merely to point out what an incredibly bad idea it is. Undeniably conservative sources like the National Review have said the same.
You are two people on a weird right-wing internet forum. I am going to go out on a limb here and speculate that your views are not representative of the general populace in Canada or in Israel.
Unfortunately I don't have any polling data on how many Canadians believe there was electoral fraud. There is data showing what most Canadians think of Trump: unsurprisingly, they dislike him by a pretty overwhelming margin. Macleans suggests that 72% of Canadians would vote for Biden, 14% for Trump, and 14% felt undecided. Ipsos claims that 69% of Canadians think a Biden presidency would be good for Canada, and only 22% think a Trump presidency would be good for Canada. Per the YouGov poll before, 81% of American Trump voters think there was fraud. If that same ratio holds, well, let's estimate 20-25% of Canadian voters would be Trump voters, and then 80% of that is around 16-20%. Maybe all these polls significantly understate support for Trump, due to the same factors with the biased polls in the US, so what the hell, let's add 10% on to the top just for the heck of it. That still gets you... what, somewhere between a quarter and a third of Canadians potentially believing there was voter fraud.
For Israel it looks like it's the other way around, with perhaps 63% of Israelis preferring Trump, and only 18% preferring Biden. (Interestingly this would make Israelis considerably more pro-Trump than Americans.) If we apply the same 81% figure, that gets us maybe half of Israeli voters amenable to claims of fraud.
You might say all these figures are nonsense and I shouldn't trust polls at all. I acknowledge that polls are imperfect. However, I think it is definitely better to use an imperfect map than no map at all. Sure, these numbers might be off, but they're not completely nonsense, and I think it's better to try a fallible estimate like this than to just make it up or guess out of thin air. Taking a moment to try to think through the numbers is a really good habit to try to get into.
See above. I think the methodology here is important.
Polls are fallible, but they're not totally random either. There is real data there, and I think it's a good idea to try to use that data to make estimates. At the very least, I think it's better than the alternative.
After all, what's the alternative? If you're not going to use data, then... what have you got left? Gut feeling? Doesn't that make you the psephological or sociological version of this joke? Again, I think a flawed map is better than no map. If I have to navigate a course on a starless night, I'd rather have a compass that's frequently 10 degrees off than I would have nothing at all.
As a Christian, I am going to ask you only this once to cease the Christ comparisons.
I think you're assuming a united 'them'. Trump's lawsuits have gone into court, and have generally been laughed out. A few harassing, intimidating idiots are entirely irrelevant to the merits of the suits.
I believe that Donald Trump lost the election, yes, and that Joe Biden will be the legitimately elected next president of the United States. That puts me in the same company as everyone from Xi Jinping to Jacinda Ardern. I am not worried about whose company you think I keep.
But this is the point! It's the point I made in that first post. The only way for the fraud allegations to make sense is if there's a massive conspiracy!
If there was a successful Democratic attempt to rig the election, it would have to be this massive operation. It would have to be on this immense scale: working simultaneously in multiple states, influencing or deceiving people from countless different parties at all levels of government, both domestically and internationally, and so on. There's no way something like that could happen without coordination. As such I think it's entirely reasonable to point out that there is no evidence of such a large operation.
