Del, there are some strange things about that 2014 survey. First, the largest conservative newspaper in the country, The Washington Times, is not included. Second, the methodology is somewhat questionable.

Here's a quote from the methodology section: "Of the 10,013 adults interviewed, 9,809 were invited to take part in the panel. A total of 5,338 agreed to participate and provided either a mailing address or an email address to which a welcome packet, a monetary incentive and future survey invitations could be sent. Panelists also receive a small monetary incentive after participating in each wave of the survey."

This means that the response rate is around 54 percent. This allows for a great deal of self-selection into the sample. They recognized this and tried to compensate for it by using various weighting factors. Using weighting factors is always a compromise and is an ad hoc attempt to compensate for a less than ideal sample.

All survey research these days has problems. Researchers are looking for new methodologies but no effective research paradigms have really emerged yet. This is not the best article on the subject, and the ending is kind of cheerleading for the pollster community, but it does highlight some of the problems that are making it more and more difficult to get accurate poll results in the 21st Century: https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2015/09/2...

Also, the Washington Times has a total circulation of less than 60,000. It is surely influential in the conservative policy world, but it is hardly a source of news for average general conservative voter. Most do not even know it exists.

What I'm arguing is that I suspect that they underrepresented educated conservatives. From anecdotal observation, this is a group that for the most part tries to lie low and shies away from participating in surveys and avoids being too outspoken in public, for fear of being ostracized by their peers. They are a group that does, in general, expose themselves to multiple sources of information, including those on the left-side of the spectrum.

Now, this is just an hypothesis on my part, but the point is that without good methodology it can't be either proven or disproven.

I've also theorized that this is the group that put Trump over the top in the presidential election. They just were not included in sufficient numbers in the samples drawn by most pollsters. And, this was not the fault of the researchers, per se, because in my anecdotal observations they avoided being included in any election poll like it was the plague.

So, if my theory is correct, what this and other similar studies are sampling is a full range of liberals/progressives/radicals/socialists/left-leaning libertarians against a somewhat bifurcated sampling of conservatives/traditionalists/reactionaries/right-leaning libertarians.

quote
"I've also theorized that this is the group that put Trump over the top in the presidential election. They just were not included in sufficient numbers in the samples drawn by most pollsters."

Maybe not exactly. Polls were done on a national popular vote model.

HRC won the popular vote by 2.1% which = nearly 3 million votes

Bloomberg and Reuters both had HRC by 3%. Many said 4%.

This accidental gerrymandering known as the electoral college has to end in our lifetime. Why should a person in Wyoming have his vote count 3 times as much as a person in California?

Nah. I have no doubt it will change in my lifetime (unless Trump makes himself dictator, an outcome that we have to unfortunately consider). Eleven states and DC have already adopted the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. That means we're two-third of the way there. If states totaling 98 more EVs sign on then we will have a national popular vote in practice.

All this will do is exaggerate the influence even more of the state's that don't buy into it. And, it appears to be ripe for a legal challenge if it ever went into effect. Some legal scholars feel that a state does not have the Constitutional right to make its electoral votes subject to the votes of citizens of other states. This is an attempt to amend the Constitution without actually going through the steps necessary to amend the Constitution. My guess is that the Supreme Court would throw this out, if and when enough states actually pass the necessary legislation.

I think this is kind of like the Article 5 Convention Initiative on the right that has just a handful of state's that have approved it, with no chance I think of ever actually being successful. However, the Balanced Budget Article 5 initiative now has 28 states that have approved it, with only six more needed. This one has an outside chance. The difference here is that these folks are actually following the Constitution, which provides for this method, never actually used before, to amend the Constitution.

Del, note that I said some legal scholars, not all, thought this initiative is unconstitutional. Not knowing this, perhaps it is you who are living in a bubble. There are actually very good arguments that this effort may be unconstitutional. Here's one legal scholar who argues that it would ultimately be ruled unconstitutional if the requisite number of states voted to join the effort (not an easy thing in and of itself): https://tinyurl.com/y9csod9k

Also, please don't try to put my political philosophy into some little ticky-tacky box. (You may be too young to understand the ticky-tacky reference. Hint: It's from a protest song of the 1960s.) I'm not a real strong state's rights guy. I do believe that the pendulum has swung a little too strongly in favor of the Federal government, but it is a balance and it has changed over the years as the Constitution has some level of flexibility on this issue.

For instance, the Republican Party has probably swung the pendulum more in the favor of Federal control than the Democrats ever have, but it was for a good reason: mobilization to the fight the Rebellion of 1861. The Republican Party enacted a temporary income tax, put volunteer infantries in every northern state under federal control, issued the first national paper currency (Greenbacks) after abandoning the gold standard, issued all kinds of instruments of debit hithertofore never used, approved the first national banking system, gave birth to the Department of Agriculture to subsidize farmers, started a national cemetery system to bury the Union dead, started a Pension Bureau that later became the Veterans Administration, passed the Morrill Land Grant law that created with federal support a number of state universities, including the Evil Empiire! At any rate, you get the point, expanding the role of the Federal government is probably more the fault historically of the GOP than the Democrats. And, please don't give me a lecture saying that the Democrats are the Republicans of the 1860s. It's patently untrue, but I don't have time to disabuse you of this historical analogy that's popular among Democrats. All I'll say is do some reading about Lincoln's political philosophy, his reverence for the original meaning of the Constitution, and his thorough grounding in Biblical principles. Then read biographies of men like William Seward, Frederick Douglass, Robert Smalls, Salmon P. Chase, and women like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman and Louisa May Alcott -- just to name a few.

Love the type of back-and-forth (usually civil) discussions on BA exemplified in this thread. However, I hate the unnecessary use of quote boxes.

I have read biographies of Lincoln, Douglass, Chase, Stowe, and Tubman. I feel that I have a firm understanding of their political and moral philosophies. But in 2018 I ask you: What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? The GOP is no longer the party of Lincoln and the Democrats are not the party of Breckenridge. If you're trying to argue otherwise I don't think this conversation will go far, because it means you're willing to forget over 100 years of history.

quote:
"I mean, who does the KKK vote for these days?"

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Let's see, shall we...

In at least five state and national races across the country, the Republican Party is dealing with an uncomfortable problem. Their party’s candidates are either a card-carrying Nazi, a Holocaust denier, a proud white supremacist, or all of the above.

https://www.vox.com/2018/7/9/17525860/nazis-russell-walke...

Before these nice guys pack their bags to Russia, they might want to google 'alcoholism rates in Russia'. Not the most fun place in the world I have read.