The August Presidential Poll

[Edward64]

Originally Posted by Galaril

Edward I think you fall to the right of center and me to the left of center and though sometimes your request for sourcing drives me crazy I agree with your points here quite a bit.

Hey, thanks. I agree I am overall center/right and appreciate the acknowledgement.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

I'd like to explore that idea more if you are willing to. I think you're a reasonable and intelligent person based on what you've posted on the boards here. Let's take a common, everyday example - and feel free to jettison this and use a different analogy if you prefer.

If someone loses their keys, who if anyone is responsible for that and why?

Sorry for the delay but I did want to give myself some time to better articulate it than just a quick response.

I think the keys might be a bad example because some interactions are very atomic and not part of a larger system. I mean, I could come up with some weird corner cases like "if my wife moved them while cleaning". Or, say, if I lost my keys on my walk, it would be nice if someone who found them posted on the neighborhood Facebook page as I would do the same.

I think assigning blame is probably not an ideal way to look at it. For instance, it's not like you can say "a vote for a third party was 35% responsible for Donald Trump while the people that didn't vote were 65%". But, similarly, we all can't be willfully ignorant to the system that we're a part of either - that's just intellectually dishonest.

I think the way I would look at it (and try to build incentives) would be around the idea of the best outcome for the system - sorry, I'm a systems analyst so it's how I see things. I'm also a pretty strong utilitarian - most good for the most number of people. Not all outcomes will be fair for all people (though to be fair, when people argue that "X isn't fair" it typically is shorthand for "it's not fair to me" not that it's not fair across the board) but, in the aggregate, they will be for the best. Yes, we all have some varying degree of selfishness but we all live in a society that requires us to work together at some level so acting wholly selfish should have some serious repercussions within the society as well.

So let's take something adjacent to it: driving. If I'm not paying attention and hanging out in the blind spot of a truck and get hit, the driver is at fault legally, but ethically I bear some of the responsibility for that action. The law will somewhat distinguish if I was texting on my phone (since there are mostly concrete laws around that) versus if I was yelling at my kids (distracted driving is a lot harder to prove) but, realistically, the truck driver gets a ticket and I don't have any legal troubles. Should the driver have done a better job to make sure no one was in their blind spot? Absolutely. Are they actively responsible for what happened? Yes. But, really, if I had been doing a better job at what I did, it never would have happened, either.

In my lifetime, I have seen this rise of a (false) Randian ethic of "if we all act in our best interests, then it's very democratic because the most people would always vote for what's best for them". But, in the end, it's just moralized selfishness. And, yes, as individuals, we are going to act in our best interest but there area number of things that may not be in our own best interest that are best for the public interest.

How about this for a simple, dumb voting example of that at work? A new park in a city of 1M is probably only going to be used by a group of 50K people, at most. So the vote would be something like 50K to 950K for every new park using strictly selfish interests. "I'm not going to use that park so screw my property tax money to pay for it" so there would never be any parks. But I think we can all agree that a city, as a whole, is better when there are parks in it. So there's some degree to which we have to vote for common interests over purely selfish ones.

To bring this back around to the voting example of voting for a third party candidate - what is the end goal? Let's see if we can numerically quantify it (sort of, as these are still basically SWAGs).

• If it's because you truly believe in a candidate (I think some of the 2000 Ralph Nader folks fall into this category), that seems laudable. Though, at most, you're going to like, what, 75% of a candidate versus, say, 25% from the other chuckleheads running so like "half a vote" (0.5 multiplier - we'll get to this below).

• If it's to try and get a third party on the ballot - that's got to be worth more, right? Because that could have structural changes for a long time. I'm not even sure how to put a multiplier on this. I dunno: 5x positive but then like a 0.01x chance it actually does this and that's being generous. So attach your preferred number to this one.

• Protest vote? What does that show? Just nihilism to show that everyone sucks? That's basically a 0 multiplier, saying "my vote means nothing". I would argue that you're also playing right into the hands of those trying to depress turnout so their small handpicked number of unsuppressed voters get to choose your government. Not my choice, but, hey, you do you - just don't pretend you're also not responsible.

I mean, in the end, it's statistically extraordinarily unlikely that your one vote decides any election. And if it does, it's probably not the Presidency but something like local city council member so we're talking in academic terms anyways. I mean, your professed beliefs may also influence people above and beyond your vote so there's a responsibility there, but it's still not going to be a huge number. If if we were going to go back and assign responsibility (which I argued wasn't a good idea but we'll roll with it for now): it's like 1 in 250M and it doesn't even take into account the outsized role of money in politics. Also, not everything a candidate does is 100% good or 100% bad, though we're getting into really low territory with Trump so we're going to count him at -0.7 in the aggregate because pandemic, economy, race riots, etc - others will view this differently but my SWAGs for now so you can back of the napkin sketch your own.

I think most people want to see it as:
Ownership = VoteImpact(x)*CandidateImpact(x)
Vote Impact = the impact of your vote
Candidate Impact = the impact of the candidate you voted for

You're only responsible for who you voted for and the impact they had. If you vote 3rd party, that CandidateImpact number is going to be close to 0. Not 0 but close to 0. Anyone hear from Jill Stein since 2016? Gary Johnson? I think it's safe to say they weren't going to win and so their impact during and after the election was going to be 0.

0 looks really appealing right now when flush up against (1/250M)*(-0.8).

Hillary Clinton is a lot harder to put a multiplier to. She had a legit chance of winning but you have to speculate on how she would have done. Even the most optimistic Democrat wasn't very enthused with her so let's put them at +0.5 for her. And the Fox News crowd still hates her so she'd be like an -0.9 (to Trump's +0.4). So let's throw out her aggregate as -0.3 for the 3rd party crowd. She's still have a pandemic and economic fallout but probably better contained and would look more like Europe (though we wouldn't have this poopshow to compare it favorably to, so it'd look bad).

Hey, that 0 looks pretty appealing right about now.

However, I would argue:
Ownership = VoteImpactD*CandidateImpactD + VoteImpactR*CandidateImpactR + VoteImpact3*CandidateImpact3

Now things get more fuzzy. You get positive points for not voting for Clinton because you think her job would have also been objectively bad, but you also are really weighed down by not voting for her against Trump, another option you also had.

I always used to give Bucc (RIP - good dude, even though we disagreed on a lot of stuff) tons of crap for being a "cheap seats liberatarian". I feel it's the electoral equivalent of liking that hipster band while taking pot shots at all the popular ones - easy to criticize, much harder to change. But I fully recognize that also breezes past my tacit acceptance of the two party system, with my belief that it's better to work within that system than to try and break it. So until a third party reaches up and actually becomes viable (which seems extremely unlikely in a "first past the post" system - at most, you'll have a 3rd party supplant another party and cause a new 2-party realignment), you kindof are throwing your vote away. But I'll also argue, you're not really a 0 vote but a vote for whatever side won because you didn't "help" the side that lost.

Spoiler

...Then again, our single individual votes are mostly meaningless anyway so this is pretty pedantic (but I'm going to do it anyway). Try Arby's.

SI

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

Sorry for the delay but I did want to give myself some time to better articulate it than just a quick response.

Twas an excellent post for the most part, thanks for taking the time.

Originally Posted by sterlingice

I think assigning blame is probably not an ideal way to look at it

This confuses me. From my perspective it ends up in a situation where we aren't even addressing the original point; what I said that you strongly disagreed with was specifically about blame. So we can talk about utilitarianism etc. but I think that leaves us at a point where you aren't really objecting to what I said in the first place.

I will be courteous enough to engage with what you did say though - basically I'm not nearly as much of a utilitarian as you are. One of the reasons is that expressed by Kasich in the 16 campaign - basically that if you have to become like Trump to win, what have you actually won? Focusing overly on the outcome changes you, it's not a cost-free exercise. I think a number of things are just fundamentally wrong without regard to outcome; it's wrong to do them period. So in voting, I consider whether or not candidates meet the basic minimum threshold at which I wouldn't be compromising fundamentals by voting for them. This is bar far short of perfection or even excellence, it's more 'this is a candidate I would not in general be mortified to be associated with'. If both candidates don't meet that bar, the outcome doesn't even get considered. We haven't even gotten that far yet, nobody passed the entrance exam. Viability etc are complete non-issues.

[NobodyHere]

FWIW these are my isidewith.com presidential results:

74% Jo Jorgenson (Libertarian)
74% Brian Carroll (Never heard of him)
65% Donald Trump (Asshole)
58% Howie Hawkins (Green)
50% Joe Biden (I'll get back to you)

I'm curious how much these will change over the next few months.

[BYU 14]

I took the Isidewith quiz and got

Howie Hawkins 73%
Brian Carroll 72%
Joe Biden 58%
Trump 28%
Jo Jorgensen 21%

[Atocep]

Howie Hawkins 90
Biden 88
Brian Carroll 59
Jo Joegensen 13
Trump 9

[spleen1015]

Trump 60
Jorgenson 59
Biden 58
Carroll 47
Hawkins 45

I'm not surprised, but no way I vote for Trump.

[BYU 14]

I think if nothing else these results from Isidewith show how poorly the only two 'real' choices we have represent what the American public believes in.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

I will be courteous enough to engage with what you did say though - basically I'm not nearly as much of a utilitarian as you are. One of the reasons is that expressed by Kasich in the 16 campaign - basically that if you have to become like Trump to win, what have you actually won? Focusing overly on the outcome changes you, it's not a cost-free exercise. I think a number of things are just fundamentally wrong without regard to outcome; it's wrong to do them period. So in voting, I consider whether or not candidates meet the basic minimum threshold at which I wouldn't be compromising fundamentals by voting for them. This is bar far short of perfection or even excellence, it's more 'this is a candidate I would not in general be mortified to be associated with'. If both candidates don't meet that bar, the outcome doesn't even get considered. We haven't even gotten that far yet, nobody passed the entrance exam. Viability etc are complete non-issues.

I can absolutely respect this, up to a point. If you think the options are so ghastly that it's, I dunno, Hitler vs Stalin - yeah, there's not much point picking your "favorite".

But I also think, in a lot of cases, it's a way to be somewhat intellectually dishonest. "Well, I don't agree with either of them perfectly so I can use this to just take pot shots on those who have taken a more 'difficult' position".

SI

[tarcone]

Oh boy. My Issidewithyou results

Hawkins 72
Carroll 64
Biden 57
Jergenson 50
Trump 42

Jeez, all you guys who thought I was a conservative realize just how crazy I am.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by BYU 14

I think if nothing else these results from Isidewith show how poorly the only two 'real' choices we have represent what the American public believes in.

A few things. 1) you are putting a lot of weight on one ranking site; 2) the lack of a center-right candidate skews things quite a bit; 3) People value more things than just policy: such as experience or a perceived ability to get policy goals done.

[kingfc22]

I got:
Biden 91
Hawkins 84
Carroll 67
Jergenson 30
Trump 9

[BYU 14]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

A few things. 1) you are putting a lot of weight on one ranking site; 2) the lack of a center-right candidate skews things quite a bit; 3) People value more things than just policy: such as experience or a perceived ability to get policy goals done.

No, I get all that and the site doesn't take that into account, but i was just going strictly by policy.

Like I support the 2nd amendment and own guns, but know we need some major reforms. I support decriminalizing marijuana to allow more research opportunities and divert funds from it's sales to healthcare and schools, etc. My hope for police reform is channeling money into better training, not cutting budgets, etc. I think many Americans hold beliefs that similarly cross party lines, hence my comment.

[JPhillips]

No offense, BYU, but all of those match Biden.

[BYU 14]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

No offense, BYU, but all of those match Biden.

LOL, I know and none taken, and they should, we are both moderate

[Hammer]

Originally Posted by Edward64

It is true he has much support from the lesser educated but I work for a global professional services firm. Most of them pretty highly educated and when we talked about it, there were a fair number of Trump supporters.

They cynics will say they are voting for their pocket books but reality is they were voting for change from politics-as-usual and anti-Hillary. Whether they still support Trump now, don't know but suspect there is less of them now.

Like it or not, Trump struck a chord. And no, not the racist, white nationalist chord although that certainly played a role for a minority.

How's Boris doing nowadays?

From my perspective the U.K. and U.S. have taken a fairly similar line. The right wing leaders have "struck a chord" with a portion of the population. Boris and Trump have similarities. Boris won't come out with the drivel that Trump does, although my savings and pensions are largely invested in the U.S and not the U.K. I won't pretend I know the ins and out of how he runs your economy, but I would take him over Boris in that respect all day long. Perhaps he doesn't help the average man on the street much, but he seems to keep the markets propped up.

My problem is that I think Trump and Boris have set us back. Widened racial divides and stoked the fires when it didn't need to happen. We don't have the problems to the same extent that you guys have, but they are there and growing.

Passive aggressive rhetoric has encouraged the gammon in our society to speak up. Minorities have been pushed as trouble making spongers. The middle age and older members of our society are noticeably more racist than the younger "snowflakes". They seem to be more comfortable speaking their racist thoughts now than 10 years ago. It has become more socially acceptable. There is an ignorance in those generations largely down to not having grown up with minorities, where as the younger generation have and don't buy the stereotypes that are pushed.

For me all this just takes us backwards. Sad times. Our right wing look after the elite 1% and either hope the wealth filters down, or don't care.

[Radii]

Hawkins 94
Biden 87
Carroll 50
Jorgensen 19
Trump 3

The questions here do nothing to address the BLM movement and issues involving institutional racism in America minus some very minor/easy questions on non-violent drug offenders. If it was a bit more thorough I assure you my Biden % drops dramatically.

[GrantDawg]

92% Biden
90% Hawkins
67% Carroll
28% Jorgensen
7% Trump


No surprises.

[GrantDawg]

Just reading the stance that they give to the candidates. Can they really say that Trump wants a wall that Mexico pays for? Hasn't it been proven at this point that Mexico isn't paying for the wall, and he never had a plan for them to pay for it?

[Lathum]

91% Hawkins
90% Biden
78% Carroll
51% Jo Jorgensen
27% Trump

[Radii]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

Just reading the stance that they give to the candidates. Can they really say that Trump wants a wall that Mexico pays for? Hasn't it been proven at this point that Mexico isn't paying for the wall, and he never had a plan for them to pay for it?

Trump certainly creates problems for a site like this, that attempt to use the words that come out of the candidates mouths to describe their beliefs, views, and positions.

[molson]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

A few things. 1) you are putting a lot of weight on one ranking site; 2) the lack of a center-right candidate skews things quite a bit; 3) People value more things than just policy: such as experience or a perceived ability to get policy goals done.

And even when it comes to policy, I may have a particular policy opinion, but also think that the federal government shouldn't have a role in that thing, or should have an entirely neutral position on that policy. So those quizzes don't tend to match up very well with how I chose to vote.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by molson

And even when it comes to policy, I may have a particular policy opinion, but also think that the federal government shouldn't have a role in that thing, or should have an entirely neutral position on that policy. So those quizzes don't tend to match up very well with how I chose to vote.

That too. I mean they are good first look, but they aren't near definitive.

[molson]

I did it anyway. It does come out more accurately once we're at this stage, as opposed to when there's a big pool of Republican/Dem primary candidates.

Biden: 80%
Hawkins: 80%
Carroll 69%
Jorgensen: 49%
Trump: 46%

Disappointed no Kanye option.

[NobodyHere]

Originally Posted by molson

Disappointed no Kanye option.

Truth


I want a question asking whether our government should be modeled based on Wakanda.

[tarcone]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

Truth


I want a question asking whether our government should be modeled based on Wakanda.

Trump vs Biden? I would watch that on pay per view.

May have hot on an idea to save the postal service.