I keep seeing these “I don’t care how ahead Joe is in the polls, I’m voting like he’s down” posts & can’t help but wonder how many Americans actually vote/don’t vote based on polls. Since when were polls ever supposed to be a substitute for showing up to VOTE on Election Day? 🧐
I mean, I understand the risk of complacency/apathy post-2016 election but I was taught how to vote by chronically disenfranchised Black Boomers who didn’t even have the full right to vote until 1965 so I just struggle to understand how polls became a deterrent for other folk...
It just seems like a tacit admission of privilege & bad civic decision making from folk who literally just fly by the seat of their pants in our elections because they haven’t ever perceived their basic survival as linked to their whimsical voting habits. This is Trump’s catnip.
Yeah, that’s the part that doesn’t add up for me. How could they be certain he couldn’t win if they didn’t vote? A public *opinion* poll isn’t an officially counted vote and never has been. It’s laziness, comfort and an expectation that other folk would do the work of democracy.
On my end I haven’t seen anyone doing premature victory dances and am starting to wonder if it’s impossible for any journalist or Democrat to post public polling data without a gaggle of folk showing up to accuse them of celebrating, becoming complacent and/or victory dancing.
As a blue vote in a different “red” state I’m gonna strongly beg to differ on the “no chance” part. TX & the other majority-minority states in the South/West are largely staying red because the eligible blue voting population is too demoralized and apathetic to vote the GOP out.
Also if we’re gonna indict pre-election polling for indirectly suppressing votes before Election Day, can we also indict the Electoral College for *directly* nullifying the popular vote after Election Day?! 🤷🏾♀️ It ain’t like the polls didn’t predict Hillary’s popular vote victory.
You wanna know what suppresses votes in the South and “red” states all over America, more than polls? The reality that no matter how many millions of votes the D candidate receives, the winner take all Electoral College format still grants them ZILCH towards the 270 tally.
In fact it’s a wonder and marvel of the spirit of democracy that Southern Ds (mostly Black) even keep playing this ‘house always wins’ game of Russian/GOP roulette with the White American majority since it’s been obvious from 1865 that they never intended for us to gain power.
Y’all wanna simultaneously get demoralized/apathetic but become the complacency/premature celebration police with us in response to polls as if marginalized voters didn’t know the stakes/struggle in ‘16, or we didn’t repeatedly warn *all of y’all* that fascism was on the march.
The issue isn’t just complacency/apathy & polls, it’s the privilege of civic disengagement/not giving a FUCK about the people the system is set up to legislatively oppress. NO election in this country has been low stakes enough to sit home “because the polls said it was safe”.
Just say you didn’t think your life or the lives of millions of Americans (who do and don’t look/think like you) were on the line in 2016 and it literally took a fascist apocalypse, treason, a gestapo occupation, concentration camps & a Rona genocide for you to wake the fuck up.
Just say you didn’t know that the White American voting majority hasn’t voted D since LBJ signed the CRA/VRA or that Black voters have been *reliably* voting D by 90+% (and growing) ever since for equal/opposite reasons. Just say you didn’t know your ALLYSHIP was required in ‘16.
Just say you didn’t know that Jim Crow is still alive and well all over America or that your state isn’t immune to GOP voter suppression targeted at POC. Just say your purity led you to cast a futile 3rd party vote because you thought you’d still be safe with the Klan in the WH.
Stop blaming the polls for your unexamined privilege, myopia, willful ignorance and selfish voting/not voting habits. Most non-politics junkies don’t even keep up with polls or policy proposals and at the end of the day if they vote at all it’s based on identity and gut feelings.
Stop using the polls as an excuse for the way you underestimated the bigotry of America’s White community. They were the ONLY demographic to give Trump a majority and they didn’t do it because of polls, they did it because of racism, misogyny, homophobia, greed & science denial.
Stop declaring the poll/electoral college/popular vote discrepancy as the reason why now all of a sudden (😒) you realize the dangers of complacency/apathy as if that solves the problem of people who hate us voting to kill us or magically refurbishes the VRA before 11/3/20.
Bottom line is I’m calling bullshit on this whole concept because NO ONE EVER TOLD Y’ALL the polls were a substitute for casting a fucking vote on Election Day. It didn’t happen and you just made the shit up in your own mind to feel better about royally fucking up on 11/8/16.
