Political Betting Thread

I can bring up again that there are a huge number of factors that can cause these differences and cause Sweden's lower numbers, and the fact that Sweden performed much worse than other places that had lockdowns, the fact that Sweden was far from "open", the fact that NY showed a massive sharp decline that wouldn't just happen naturally, the fact that that percentage is nowhere near a proper herd immunity, and the fact that natural herd immunity is not an actual strategy against a pandemic. But I'm not really interested in this discussion for the purpose of this thread.



I wouldn't call a poll like that fake, I don't see a reason to. You just have to compare all the polls together. More data = more accuracy. If 1 poll shows Biden +2 and 5 polls show Trump +3, it doesn't mean the first one was fake, it just means there happened to be more Biden supporters in that particular sample, and Trump would have a lead but it might be a tight race. Those things happen.

In 2016, there were numerous polls showing Trump winning in Nevada and New Hampshire. A CNN poll had Trump + 6 in Nevada a week before the election! But he lost both states. I wouldn't call that poll fake either, I would just say it happened to catch a more pro-Trump sample.

I think it's stupid when people flip out over single polling results, both when it shows Biden leading states that he averages behind in, and when Trump shows closer numbers than he's gotten previously. I consider the pro-Trump numbers, but amalgamations are more important. 4 reputable pollsters put out national results in the past two days. 2 showed Biden +10. One showed Biden +9. One showed Biden +4. I doubt any of them are fake or manipulated, even with different numbers. But the reality is still probably closer to the +10 when you take them together.

Covid wise, lets just leave it. I only brought it up as you did, i have no interest in beating this dead horse.

Polling wise i think you make good points, but as i said, if trump does make up this deficit to make the race competitive, then it does point to some degree of manipulation.
 
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Not really, it could be well debated, but its pointless. I just find the whole orange man bad thing hokey. Another poster listed a lengthy string of his accomplishments, while you can find ways to criticise them, you cant ignore them, so the way you characterised trump makes you look dumb.

I guess to give a very short summary of my thoughts there then: I think under a more competent president, more could be done and the good things Trump has done could've been better. I think he rode a lot of positive waves leftover from the Obama days when he came into office, took credit for everything good that happened while ignoring the bad, and now doesn't know how to handle things when those positives disappear under a crisis. And a lot of those "accomplishments" I don't see as "accomplishments", like with his deregulation and energy policies that I find to be incredibly harmful, not only to public health, but with our country's progression and global positioning in developing sectors.

So I'm not ignoring it, I just can't look at that list and call Trump a good president, especially with the truckload of negatives left off that list. And I think it's naive to think people dislike him because they're just ignoring his accomplishments and being manipulated by the MSM etc.
 
I guess to give a very short summary of my thoughts there then: I think under a more competent president, more could be done and the good things Trump has done could've been better. I think he rode a lot of positive waves leftover from the Obama days when he came into office, took credit for everything good that happened while ignoring the bad, and now doesn't know how to handle things when those positives disappear under a crisis. And a lot of those "accomplishments" I don't see as "accomplishments", like with his deregulation and energy policies that I find to be incredibly harmful, not only to public health, but with our country's progression and global positioning in developing sectors.

So I'm not ignoring it, I just can't look at that list and call Trump a good president, especially with the truckload of negatives left off that list. And I think it's naive to think people dislike him because they're just ignoring his accomplishments and being manipulated by the MSM etc.

This is different from what you said before. I don't agree, but this is not a dumb take as you had previously.
 
I can't tell you how much fake/manipulated polls would be a terrible political strategy. Which is why it isn't a real thing, at least not among established pollsters. Purposefully misrepresenting where your candidate stands would screw with your campaign's strategy (example: Hillary not campaigning in Michigan due to a polling lead), and I haven't seen any evidence that showing a false lead would improve election results. Actual manipulation would be a massive scandal and the pollsters involved would be immediately blacklisted from doing any work in that field, and it would be a pointless endeavor. There are pollsters who have different sampling methodologies, but this is simply based on different theories of political representation, and pollsters are constantly working to improve their accuracy on that.

Trump has stated multiple times that he has internal numbers that put him ahead. But none of this data is ever released, probably because it either A. doesn't exist, or B. has laughable methodology issues. Even the less-credible pollsters that oversample republicans can't manage to show Trump winning.

Lol it’s absolutely not a crazy strategy, in fact it’s proven to work in markets. The effect is known as “herding” in economics where people follow the majority or the confident regardless of information. It’s come out of studies in behavioral economics and fits perfectly on why things such as Enron and the banking crisis occurred. This combined with the influencer that people are more persuaded by where something is going rather than where it’s currently at is why momentum is so important in everything.
 
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The problem is a lot of this country hasn't really seen his benefits, and really hasn't seen much of anything beyond watching Trump embarrass our country on the world stage, bring us to the brink of war multiple times, screw up virtually every disaster/crisis response, and generally show a lack of competency. Stock market numbers are nice, employment numbers are nice. But we were also sitting on record-high consumer debt, wages still sitting far behind costs of living, and most of the country didn't have enough savings for a $400 emergency. This was pre-covid, and now he faces a potential housing crisis that I doubt anyone has confidence he can handle. Trump sings his own praises with whatever positive numbers he can find (whether or not he even caused them), while ignoring where people are struggling. I don't know how you can take an objective look at America's situation and be surprised people are catching onto the ideas of tuition-free college and universal healthcare, or be surprised they don't like the direction Trump's pushing us in.

So you’re stating debt is an issue with most voters but they prefer tuition free school and universal healthcare? That is irrational but people can be that. We’re definitely going to see this stuff way differently especially from an economics perspective.

I’m not familiar with any sort of housing crisis at the moment, please elaborate.
 
Lol it’s absolutely not a crazy strategy, in fact it’s proven to work in markets. The effect is known as “herding” in economics where people follow the majority or the confident regardless of information. It’s come out of studies in behavioral economics and fits perfectly on why things such as Enron and the banking crisis occurred. This combined with the influencer that people are more persuaded by where something is going rather than where it’s currently at is why momentum is so important in everything.

Herding in economic terms is a completely different situation from voting. Herding might exist in the betting line on who's gonna win, but I don't see that translating to votes.

So you’re stating debt is an issue with most voters but they prefer tuition free school and universal healthcare? That is irrational but people can be that. We’re definitely going to see this stuff way differently especially from an economics perspective.

I’m not familiar with any sort of housing crisis at the moment, please elaborate.

I think debt is a big reason why voters are turning toward universal healthcare and tuition-free school lol. (edit: let me clarify though, I'm talking about consumer debt being at all time highs, not the national, government debt. though that's an issue too)

1/3 of Americans missed their housing payments last month and eviction protections are expiring, with those debts still being owed whether or not the protections are extended. This is on top of an already-insane housing market with Americans needing to spend unhealthy percentages of their paychecks on these payments.
 
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Herding in economic terms is a completely different situation from voting. Herding might exist in the betting line on who's gonna win, but I don't see that translating to votes.



I think debt is a big reason why voters are turning toward universal healthcare and tuition-free school lol.

1/3 of Americans missed their housing payments last month and eviction protections are expiring, with those debts still being owed whether or not the protections are extended. This is on top of an already-insane housing market with Americans needing to spend unhealthy percentages of their paychecks on these payments.

You might want to consider that the dnc plan is to remove Biden after a couple of years and install Khamaleon. Then she can still potentially run for 2 terms. So you are faced with 2 years of Hiden, followed by 10 years of Embarris. Thats 12 years of neoliberalism ie war, globalisation, censorship and the decimation of the middle class all hidden behind a thin veneer of id poitics. You will not get m4a or free tuition.

Or you can get 4 more years of Trump and then put up a real progressive to replace him in 2024.
 
You might want to consider that the dnc plan is to remove Biden after a couple of years and install Khamaleon. Then she can still potentially run for 2 terms. So you are faced with 2 years of Hiden, followed by 10 years of Embarris. Thats 12 years of neoliberalism ie war, globalisation, censorship and the decimation of the middle class all hidden behind a thin veneer of id poitics. You will not get m4a or free tuition.

Or you can get 4 more years of Trump and then put up a real progressive to replace him in 2024.

I absolutely think this is the dem strategy. Some seem to think Biden will just do 1 term and step down, but I think he'll resign earlier than that and let Kamala take over.

But when it comes down to it, I'd rather have a multi-term shit democrat than 4 more years of Trump, and I think a lot of people feel that way. I might even take 8 years of another republican (which imo Biden basically is anyway) before 4 more years of Trump.
 
So I was digging into the polling issue more because I was curious about it. Fivethirtyeight did a great article about this a few months back: https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...rs-might-vote-for-change-whom-youll-vote-for/

Seems like there is an extent to which polling can affect the vote, but it's a bit more complex than the face value of that. Raw polling data appears to have no effect on peoples' votes, but media interpretations and narratives can create that. And unlike economic herding, they're not necessarily changing their decision based on a perceived benefit, so the influence does not necessarily push them toward the leading candidate. Take what happened in France in 2002:

"Consider, again, the 2002 French election. Analysis after the fact suggests that polling results did make a difference in that upset — leading voters to assume a mainstream runoff was so certain that it was safe to cast a ballot for a more extremist candidate, just to send a message to the winners. If enough people do that, their assumptions about who the winners will be won’t be accurate."

You can definitely draw a parallel between that and 2016. The popular narrative was that Hillary would easily win the election, so people who might otherwise vote for her felt like they could vote for whoever they wanted because the election was already decided. Hell, I even know people who voted for Trump as a joke because they thought there was no way he'd actually win. So it appears like there could be a lot of factors in play here, and presenting a "Biden landslide" narrative could actually be detrimental to Biden's results, especially as enthusiasm for him isn't very high. Seems like people are a lot more careful this time around though, and the narrative is a cautious optimism at best.

So again, back to the possibility of fake polls - could they have an influence on the election? Possibly, but it's unclear if it would even have the benefit they want. And this would require a conspiracy between dozens of pollsters, many whom are bipartisan or nonpartisan, and hundreds of employees. Just seems extremely unlikely. Trump gets mad at Fox News (who are actually pretty reputable pollsters) when they release poll results he doesn't like, and says they should put out results that are more positive for him. He seems to be the only one pushing for fake polls. This pretty much tells you all you need to know. If Fox News could show Trump winning, I have no doubt they would, but they're just presenting the data. Other right-leaning pollsters can't manage to show Trump leading even if they're showing a tighter race. I think it's definitely fair to say that polling isn't the end-all for elections, though. No pollster is going to get an exact representative sample of what'll happen on election day, they just try to get close to it. But the data is real.
 
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Herding in economic terms is a completely different situation from voting. Herding might exist in the betting line on who's gonna win, but I don't see that translating to votes.



I think debt is a big reason why voters are turning toward universal healthcare and tuition-free school lol. (edit: let me clarify though, I'm talking about consumer debt being at all time highs, not the national, government debt. though that's an issue too)

1/3 of Americans missed their housing payments last month and eviction protections are expiring, with those debts still being owed whether or not the protections are extended. This is on top of an already-insane housing market with Americans needing to spend unhealthy percentages of their paychecks on these payments.

Lol no, herding occurs in all markets where dynamic players exist with imperfect information sets, politics is one of those markets. If you are not considering that variable then your probabilities are screwed up. It’s been pretty much proven that not accounting for these irrationalities in any analysis fucks up your conclusion (it pretty much rewrote the optimal strategies for negotiating). Lol shit, look at all the herding that goes on in this forum, I think they call them circle jerks here.

The affordable housing issue has been around since Clinton and was one reason for the 2008 financial crisis. This is a more urban issue and I agree, some independents have this viewpoint, especially in urban areas. In rural areas they have a completely opposite take though where they don’t think it’s a government issue and people need to move to affordable housing areas and leave big cities. I haven’t seen any changes in people’s viewpoints toward this on people who are usually in the middle.
 
So I was digging into the polling issue more because I was curious about it. Fivethirtyeight did a great article about this a few months back: https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...rs-might-vote-for-change-whom-youll-vote-for/

Seems like there is an extent to which polling can affect the vote, but it's a bit more complex than the face value of that. Raw polling data appears to have no effect on peoples' votes, but media interpretations and narratives can create that. And unlike economic herding, they're not necessarily changing their decision based on a perceived benefit, so the influence does not necessarily push them toward the leading candidate. Take what happened in France in 2002:

"Consider, again, the 2002 French election. Analysis after the fact suggests that polling results did make a difference in that upset — leading voters to assume a mainstream runoff was so certain that it was safe to cast a ballot for a more extremist candidate, just to send a message to the winners. If enough people do that, their assumptions about who the winners will be won’t be accurate."

You can definitely draw a parallel between that and 2016. The popular narrative was that Hillary would easily win the election, so people who might otherwise vote for her felt like they could vote for whoever they wanted because the election was already decided. Hell, I even know people who voted for Trump as a joke because they thought there was no way he'd actually win. So it appears like there could be a lot of factors in play here, and presenting a "Biden landslide" narrative could actually be detrimental to Biden's results, especially as enthusiasm for him isn't very high. Seems like people are a lot more careful this time around though, and the narrative is a cautious optimism at best.

So again, back to the possibility of fake polls - could they have an influence on the election? Possibly, but it's unclear if it would even have the benefit they want. And this would require a conspiracy between dozens of pollsters, many whom are bipartisan or nonpartisan, and hundreds of employees. Just seems extremely unlikely. Trump gets mad at Fox News (who are actually pretty reputable pollsters) when they release poll results he doesn't like, and says they should put out results that are more positive for him. He seems to be the only one pushing for fake polls. This pretty much tells you all you need to know. If Fox News could show Trump winning, I have no doubt they would, but they're just presenting the data. Other right-leaning pollsters can't manage to show Trump leading even if they're showing a tighter race. I think it's definitely fair to say that polling isn't the end-all for elections, though. No pollster is going to get an exact representative sample of what'll happen on election day, they just try to get close to it. But the data is real.

Good article and it absolutely occurs. I recommend you read the book Influence by Robert Cialdini if you to understand how people move and shift. It completely changes people’s perspectives on how the world works and how these things shift people. In your first article, the difference in groups likely come down to how strong someone’s mental anchor is on their reference point. Lawyers, hypnotists, some economists and salesman are trained professionals on how to shift the thinking especially when they observe weaknesses in the anchor.

I also agree that fake polls can help you or hurt you, it honestly depends. They help you if they create a strong initial anchor and you don’t lose momentum. Once you lose momentum though, it’s a big problem though because people are much more strongly influenced by where things are going not where they are. You see it a lot when people overvalue hyped prospects and place an extremely high value then when they lose, people think they’re dogshit and need to retire (the value direction instead of present value which is irrational). So it can go either way based on how you believe the next few months will go. I’m predicting Biden losing massive amounts of momentum when that debate hits as I think Trump’s gonna embarrass him due to Biden’s cognitive ability at this stage of his life.
 
Yeah, I mean Trump has pretty much done everything he said he was going to do In his administration within his first term. Before COVID hit, I was talking to people and we weren’t sure who had a better first term in the history of the United States. There’s no wars, the economy as a whole improved from a state of an already strong economy (2008 recession recovered by 2015), and there wasn’t any new policies that really messed things up.

The problem is like you said, the two sides are just so far apart on how the United States should be run. The left want a more socialized economy with “free” education and medical that will come at the tax payers expense. The right want a more capitalistic approach with more free markets on everything but abortion. The politics are very similar to the Civil War times we’re viewpoints of the world were this split and this far apart.

he really hasn't, i have no clue what you mean here.

He hasn't built the wall. he's added a bit to the existing wall that liberals conveniently forget existed before trump,
He hasn't repealed obamacare,
He hasn't drained the swamp,
He hasn't rebuilt the crumbling american infrastructure that is massively hindering economic growth and america's image,
He hasn't put hillary in jail,
He hasn't released his tax returns,
And he most certainly hasn't balanced the federal debt haha.

Sure he's kept some promises but "pretty much everything" is a humongous exaggeration.
And it seems pretty likely that this will be a growing issue for him among parts of his voter base that will surely be put in the spotlight at some point by democrats.
 
on a positive note for trump (or at least not a negative), the corona death rate seems to be going down again, but it is still around 1k deaths per day, 200k is fast approaching so that will be a milestone for lots of anti trump sentiment.
Florida/texas still have high death rates which is not good for him too.
 
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The dnc nominee for potus or a slightly addled old man not really sure whats going on.

Its a trick question, the answer is both of course.

The poor guy nearly had a heart attack.



 
Good article and it absolutely occurs. I recommend you read the book Influence by Robert Cialdini if you to understand how people move and shift. It completely changes people’s perspectives on how the world works and how these things shift people. In your first article, the difference in groups likely come down to how strong someone’s mental anchor is on their reference point. Lawyers, hypnotists, some economists and salesman are trained professionals on how to shift the thinking especially when they observe weaknesses in the anchor.

I also agree that fake polls can help you or hurt you, it honestly depends. They help you if they create a strong initial anchor and you don’t lose momentum. Once you lose momentum though, it’s a big problem though because people are much more strongly influenced by where things are going not where they are. You see it a lot when people overvalue hyped prospects and place an extremely high value then when they lose, people think they’re dogshit and need to retire (the value direction instead of present value which is irrational). So it can go either way based on how you believe the next few months will go. I’m predicting Biden losing massive amounts of momentum when that debate hits as I think Trump’s gonna embarrass him due to Biden’s cognitive ability at this stage of his life.

I get what you're saying but you have to recognize the difference between influence in economics (or betting) and in politics. The former is something that can give you a direct, monetary benefit, and the latter is a personal opinion. So there could be a level of influence in both, but not necessarily at the same levels or with the same effect. If I'm betting on a fight and see the guy I think will win at dog odds, yeah I might reconsider my analysis because clearly the majority thinks differently. But if I see my candidate/party behind in the polls, it's not gonna change my personal values that that candidate aligns with, and I won't change my vote unless it's for strategic reasons (like voting for a more viable candidate to defeat a viable candidate I dislike).
 
he really hasn't, i have no clue what you mean here.

He hasn't built the wall. he's added a bit to the existing wall that liberals conveniently forget existed before trump,
He hasn't repealed obamacare,
He hasn't drained the swamp,
He hasn't rebuilt the crumbling american infrastructure that is massively hindering economic growth and america's image,
He hasn't put hillary in jail,
He hasn't released his tax returns,
And he most certainly hasn't balanced the federal debt haha.

Sure he's kept some promises but "pretty much everything" is a humongous exaggeration.
And it seems pretty likely that this will be a growing issue for him among parts of his voter base that will surely be put in the spotlight at some point by democrats.

Not even sure how you can argue he hasn’t been building the wall, there’s plenty of pictures and information on online about that.

Obamacare only works to lower premiums if it gets a massive pool of money from healthy people to lower people with problems premiums down by subsidizing their costs. Obama did this in a clever way by forcing people to pay penalties if they didn’t get the insurance required which somehow made it through the Supreme Court. Once Trump removed the penalties on that giant bill, Obamacare was done as the pooling mechanism no longer works.

I don’t know what drain the swamp means. It was a catchy slogan that was never finitely defined. People make visions in their mind on what he was trying to do.

The economy has been extremely good prior to COVID-19 and he revitalized some industries by reducing restrictions. Not sure how people can even argue this.

The president doesn’t have the power of frontier justice in the executive branch. Lol I guess if people took him serious here, no president can put someone in jail based on what they believe.

Why on Earth would he release his tax returns? His opposition gets so spun up about them it forces focus on those stupid things instead of other things that can hurt him. It would be moronic for him to release them if not being forced to legally.

Don’t ever remember him saying he’d balance the National Debt. If he said this then nope, he won’t accomplish this. Think Andrew Jackson and maybe Clinton did this. Jackson pretty much dissolved the Federal Bank and Clinton got to ride the tech bubble.

Regarding how important it will be, it prolly won’t shift many voters even if they see all that stuff as you see it. The people that don’t like Trump but still vote for him is because they believe he is a better choice than the other options (Biden here and Hillary in 2016). The president is decided not by which president people love the most but by what president the voting public hates the least.
 
I get what you're saying but you have to recognize the difference between influence in economics (or betting) and in politics. The former is something that can give you a direct, monetary benefit, and the latter is a personal opinion. So there could be a level of influence in both, but not necessarily at the same levels or with the same effect. If I'm betting on a fight and see the guy I think will win at dog odds, yeah I might reconsider my analysis because clearly the majority thinks differently. But if I see my candidate/party behind in the polls, it's not gonna change my personal values that that candidate aligns with, and I won't change my vote unless it's for strategic reasons (like voting for a more viable candidate to defeat a viable candidate I dislike).

Yes it is the same but believe whatever you want in markets.

Based on your voting example you just stated you would change your vote for strategic reasons. If someone manipulates polls to make one candidate look like he has no chance that means you would strategically switch your vote to a more viable winner. This is exactly why herding works because it is a market with asymmetric information advantages for certain players in the game. This is in Game Theory.
 
Not even sure how you can argue he hasn’t been building the wall, there’s plenty of pictures and information on online about that.

Obamacare only works to lower premiums if it gets a massive pool of money from healthy people to lower people with problems premiums down by subsidizing their costs. Obama did this in a clever way by forcing people to pay penalties if they didn’t get the insurance required which somehow made it through the Supreme Court. Once Trump removed the penalties on that giant bill, Obamacare was done as the pooling mechanism no longer works.

I don’t know what drain the swamp means. It was a catchy slogan that was never finitely defined. People make visions in their mind on what he was trying to do.

The economy has been extremely good prior to COVID-19 and he revitalized some industries by reducing restrictions. Not sure how people can even argue this.

The president doesn’t have the power of frontier justice in the executive branch. Lol I guess if people took him serious here, no president can put someone in jail based on what they believe.

Why on Earth would he release his tax returns? His opposition gets so spun up about them it forces focus on those stupid things instead of other things that can hurt him. It would be moronic for him to release them if not being forced to legally.

Don’t ever remember him saying he’d balance the National Debt. If he said this then nope, he won’t accomplish this. Think Andrew Jackson and maybe Clinton did this. Jackson pretty much dissolved the Federal Bank and Clinton got to ride the tech bubble.

Regarding how important it will be, it prolly won’t shift many voters even if they see all that stuff as you see it. The people that don’t like Trump but still vote for him is because they believe he is a better choice than the other options (Biden here and Hillary in 2016). The president is decided not by which president people love the most but by what president the voting public hates the least.

I didn't argue he hasn't built a bit of a wall. I argued he hasn't kept his campaign promise to build a whole wall. which he hasn't. I don't know how you can argue he has when the extension is a lot smaller than the existing wall. iirc only a tiny amount of the wall built under trump's administration was actually new wall, and most of it replacement for the original one, could be wrong on that last part though.

obamacare hasn't been repealed as promised.

drain the swamp pretty clearly was viewed as tackling the corruption in government. = completely failed to do this.

the economy has been strong ofc. that however has nothing to do with the failure to keep his campaign promise by investing in the crumbling american infrastructure that severely reduces economic growth, which you'd think would be an incentive for him.

ofc locking Hillary up was a platitude but his failure to press her or advance investigation into her alleged activity for lack of a better word is still a broken promise for some of his base.

I don't care if he releases tax returns or not. but the fact remains he promised to do so and has failed to do so.

he didn't balance the debt but it has increased by an unprecedented amount. ofc covid played a giant part but it's going to have big consequences in the coming years. and this isn't to say democrats wouldn't of increased it by more. but it still remains an decent attack vector for dems.

I get the feeling you think I'm taking personal sides and that couldn't be further from the truth. many of his promises even the platitudes were taken seriously by a significant %'age of his base. but the fact of the matter is this could and likely will be used against trump and could potentially resonate negatively for trump. that is all, it might not have a major effect but in conjunction with other factors it is worth keeping in mind for betting purposes (why we are all((mostly)) here for).
trump still has a giant problem on his hands in terms of how he can actually win undecided/dem voters over. he seems largely to be putting most of his eggs in one basket expecting biden to completely capitulate. that's a distinct possibility ofc but it's risky, if biden doesn't and has ok performances in the debates then trump might be in real trouble, because trump has relatively few positives that he personally can put out there to win ppl over currently. I just watched (ok half watched) biden's speech at the convention that just finished and he seemed to do fine, no gaffe's or major stumbles, seemed cognizant (for his own standards). yeah yeah i know he's reading of a teleprompter, but it seems at the least that his condition might be slightly exaggerated at times despite still being very obvious.

"The people that don’t like Trump but still vote for him is because they believe he is a better choice than the other options (Biden here and Hillary in 2016). The president is decided not by which president people love the most but by what president the voting public hates the least"

your contradicting yourself here. trump is hated magnitudes of order more than biden. and by your own logic trump is fucked.
 
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