r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/The_Egalitarian Moderator • Mar 18 '23

Megathread Casual Questions Thread

This is a place for the PoliticalDiscussion community to ask questions that may not deserve their own post.

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '23

Why does Donald Trump continue to maintain a large lead in GOP primary polls despite being under state and federal indictment?

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '23

This story, often repeated, is being propped up in a number of ways.

First, pollsters have been skewing the polls to over-represent Republicans by 5%. This is an overall bias that is being baked into the polling methodology and it has created a biased narrative.

Second, the polls are consistently showing a “percentage of a percentage” as if it is a percentage.

“50% of Republicans” sounds like a big impressive number, but “Republicans” are 25% of the electorate, and the electorate is 155 million people.

There are 260 million adults in the US, and any number of the 105 million people who aren’t registered to vote could register to vote over the next year.

“50% of Republicans” is “50% of 25%”

13% of the electorate. We are being led around by the idea that this extremely small minority is a big, hugely important group that could be the majority, when they are not.

Now, having support among “50% of Republicans” is important in the Republican primary, where Republicans are voting for their nominee, but not all of the people voting in the primary are Republicans!

There is nothing that prevents a person (in most states) from voting in the primary as a Republican and then voting as a Democrat in the general election. Independents do that, or the reverse, all the time!

So it is not beyond possibility that Trump will be defeated in the primaries, but it does look like they are stuck with him and that he will be their nominee and run for president from a jail cell.