• partial_accumen
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    27 days ago

    I thought this was common knowledge months ago. Didn’t Fox news even discover this shorty after they started pushing RFK Jr? I never understood why conservative media kept the RKF Jr train going after that was known.

    Edit to add:

    This also seems like a giant misunderstanding from the conservative side. They worship a name instead of ideology. The liberal side worships the ideology, irrespective of the name. Conservatives thought liberals would tie themselves to RFK Jr because thats what conservatives would do in the place of liberals. Whoops!

    • @ZeroCoolOP
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      27 days ago

      I thought this was common knowledge months ago.

      It was, at least among people who don’t get all their information from Fox News, Breitbart or random neo-nazis on Twitter lol, but we don’t stop election polling just because one poll was already conducted months ago.

    • @Fisk400@feddit.nu
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      1627 days ago

      I think the right is trying to push him back into the left as a Biden alternative now that Biden is a lot more unpopular than the last time they tried.

      • partial_accumen
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        27 days ago

        You’re supporting my point about conservatives loving a name (and thinking liberals do too), instead of an ideology. Putting his batshit craziness aside for a moment, when I look at RFK Jrs policy positions, he’s not a liberal. Why do conservatives think liberals would vote for a conservative?

        His policies appear to be:

        • anti climate change initiatives
        • anti vaccination (even for things like measles!)
        • believes abortion is a tragedy, but said he’d allow it
        • thinks US support of Ukraine is a mistake, and thinks diplomacy would solve it instead (Has he not read the Budapest Memorandum?)
        • backs Texas’s actions at the southern border
        • wants to make government backed 3% mortgages, but doesn’t talk about where the money would come from or where all the new housing would either

        source

        Its crazy to think that comparing to RFK Jr, George W Bush is more liberal.

    • Ghostalmedia
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      327 days ago

      Because other polls show him eating into Biden more. That’s why they were pushing him.

        • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          26 days ago

          No. But they’re hardly the only people in America worth grifting.

          Lots of smug Radical Centrists who can get suckered in with a No Labels party.

          • partial_accumen
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            26 days ago

            I had to look up what a “Radical Centrist” was.

            According to Wikipedia:

            “The radical in the term refers to a willingness on the part of most radical centrists to call for fundamental reform of institutions.[1] The centrism refers to a belief that genuine solutions require realism and pragmatism, not just idealism and emotion.[2]”

            I guess I would fit that definition, but nothing about RFK Jr is realistic or pragmatic. C’mon, him being anti-vax, and anti climate change fixes? What about that is realistic or pragmatic?

  • leadore
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    5927 days ago

    Even without a poll, it’s common sense that he would appeal to Trump voters more. He’s an anti-vax conspiracy theorist. And don’t forget that for some reason, they love the Kennedy name. Remember how they were waiting around in Dallas for JFK Jr (and Sr, even!) to show up?

    • @Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world
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      626 days ago

      It was actually the anti-vax thing that has me a little worried about his ability to pull some lefties, too. We’ve got that kinda crazy on our side of the aisle, too. It’s just flavored a little differently. Instead of being worried about mind-control chips or fetal tissue, the left is still hung up on unfounded worries about autism or GMOs.

      • has me a little worried about his ability to pull some lefties, too

        Perhaps the “Joe Rogan” style of Lefty. But I wouldn’t worry about RFK Jr signs showing up outside the newly unionized Tennessee VW auto plant.

      • @Shaggy1050@lemmy.world
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        226 days ago

        Sadly I I think you’re right. I too know quite a few people who lean left that get caught up in the whole ‘GMOs and vaccines are bad’ camp.

    • @Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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      1327 days ago

      Republicans love it because it’s why they win. Democrats love it because they never have to be better as long as they can threaten us with Republicans.

  • @Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
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    2827 days ago

    The fact that the conventional wisdom portrays Kennedy as a bigger threat to Biden than to Trump is nearly as insane as Kennedy himself. Literally the only thing about him that appeals to Democrats is his last name, whereas on virtually all policy issues he’s aligned with the loony fringe right.

    (Mind you, I ultimately think he’s going to be largely irrelevant to both sides - I think the conventional wisdom also wants to make him a big deal period because the media’s obsessed with having third-party candidates matter.)

    • @RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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      27 days ago

      Yeah they keep saying on the news that the Kennedy name has a large pull with young democratic voters and that it just flat out wrong lol. None of the young voters were even alive when the good Kennedy was president and they were too young or still not born when the others were in office so idk where they got that shit from. Just older people in charge of writing the news I guess.

  • @Bremmy@lemmy.ml
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    2327 days ago

    No shit. It was only right wingers who, for some reason, thought Democrats liked that nut bag even though he’s one of the crazies

    • @frezik@midwest.social
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      1426 days ago

      My working theory is that they assume Democrats are as attached to names as they are. The Kennedy name holds a lot of weight among Democrats, and therefore, Democrats will flock to anyone named Kennedy.

      Their whole thing is about setting up symmetries that don’t exist. They would cheat the election, and therefore, Democrats also would.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    727 days ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The latest national NBC News poll shows the third-party vote — and especially independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — cutting deeper into former President Donald Trump’s support than President Joe Biden’s, though the movement the other candidates create is within the poll’s margin of error.

    The big reason why is that the poll finds a greater share of Trump voters in the head-to-head matchup backing Kennedy in the expanded ballot.

    This finding, however, contrasts with the conventional political wisdom — as well as the results of other national polls — suggesting that a bigger third-party vote hurts Biden more.

    The NBC News poll results on Kennedy’s impact are “different than other surveys,” said McInturff, the GOP pollster.

    Most recently, Biden held an event Thursday with members of the Kennedy family who are endorsing the president over their relative.

    Overall, the party is paying much closer attention to Kennedy than it has to past third-party candidates, mobilizing new super PACs and an arm of the Democratic National Committee focused on reducing the pull of his candidacy.


    The original article contains 366 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 55%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • Given that Trump is currently leading, its not great. RFK Jr dropping out just means things get worse for Biden.

      Also looking gnarly downticket, as all those swing house and senate seats are worse on paper than even the top-line Presidential numbers would have them appear.

  • teft
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    27 days ago

    The NBC News poll was conducted April 12-16 of 1,000 registered voters nationwide — 891 contacted via cell phone. — and the poll has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.

    • Silverseren
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      1227 days ago

      Did you have a point? That’s a standard sample size for polls.

      • teft
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        1427 days ago

        1000 people with 89% contacted via cell phone isn’t going to be representative of the US voting population. How many people do you know under 45 that answer random numbers?

        • Silverseren
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          927 days ago

          I mean, it’s better than them using land lines like they used to. And, if they did it properly, then their calls should have caller ID saying it’s the polling service. Also, they should leave a message to get called back.

          I don’t know if they did any of that, but it would be the right way to do it.

        • The Fire Witch
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          527 days ago

          You can thank boomers for effectively destroying phone calls as a form of telecommunication

          • @ripcord@lemmy.world
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            327 days ago

            Man, what a weird thing to blame on a specific Boogeyman generation.

            Pretty sure there were/are other people besides boomers involved in spam calls, creating text message systems, and other things that have led to a decline in voice calls.

            Might as well blame them for literally everything that happened after the 1960s when they became adults.

        • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          -127 days ago

          1,000 registered voters nationwide — 891 contacted via cell phone.

          We’re used to that as a “low number” because it’s easy to get.

          But you know what?

          That’s a fucking giant sample size, it’s more than enough for American voters, and while you can poll more, it quickly starts to dilute the worth.

          Like, they’re calling random people, it ain’t like they’re walking down the street asking everyone and taking the first 1,000 to respond, which explained why it wasn’t 1,000 respondents…

          But this?

          How many people do you know under 45 that answer random numbers?

          https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24564257-240126-nbc-april-2024-poll-4-21-2024-release

          Bruh, it’s a legitimate poll, you don’t have to “just ask questions” when it takes to clicks from the webpage you were already on…

          • @KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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            1427 days ago

            But the other guy is right. There’s a problem with polling now because many people don’t answer the phone. It doesn’t matter how many people you have in the sample if it’s biased.

            In this case it’s clearly biased against people who don’t answer random numbers. The “not answering” cohort may be correlated with other population groups like people with higher education and higher earnings. The survey may be systematically missing this chunk of the population, making the results biased too.

            Higher educated democrats not surveyed -> the survey misses their opinions -> the survey is wrong when the results come in at election time.

            • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              27 days ago

              Mate, it used to be cold calling landlines…

              Shit is getting more accurate, not less.

              Like, do you think more and better communication makes it harder to get reliable polling? You think doctors, lawyers, and rocket scientists were answering every phone call during dinner when it was landlines?

              And the switch to cell phones was like, a decade ago?

              Why is it now a problem?

              Like, what is your version of what’s happening that polls aren’t reliable now?

              Are you saying polls have been broke? Because polls were right in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. And not a lot has changed…

              So do you think this year “the media” is somehow doing a psyop campaign and rhats why people aren’t hyped about Biden? Because, newsflash, we weren’t last election either.

              So I’m really struggling to understand why out of the goddamn blue everyone and their brother who has never even walked down a hallway in college where statistical analysis was studied in the last decade suddenly became experts.

              This is the exact same bullshit the Republicans started as. Now they’re running trump.

              • gregorum
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                827 days ago

                You’re arguing that just because it may have been worse a long time ago (which you haven’t proven, btw), that today’s problems shouldn’t matter.

                This is, obviously, absurd.

                While there may have been improvements over past methods, that’s no excuse not to solve the issues we face with current methodologies. Don’t be silly.

              • @summerof69@lemm.ee
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                627 days ago

                Like, what is your version of what’s happening that polls aren’t reliable now?

                Didn’t they explain?

                In this case it’s clearly biased against people who don’t answer random numbers. The “not answering” cohort may be correlated with other population groups like people with higher education and higher earnings. The survey may be systematically missing this chunk of the population, making the results biased too.

                Higher educated democrats not surveyed -> the survey misses their opinions -> the survey is wrong when the results come in at election time.

                • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                  -526 days ago

                  But that’s always been the case…

                  And polls are normally right

                  People think they’re bad now, because Hillary and the media said if she was projected by less then the margin of error, then she won those states and we can count on them.

                  Which is stupid, and was only done because they thought she was more popular and resulted in just enough people staying home that trump won…

                  How does that mean now when the polls are even worse, that we should ignore the polls and carry on with false confidence?

                  It doesn’t make any any logical sense.

        • MxM111
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          -427 days ago

          They are talking about couple percent lead one way or another. When there is 3.1% standard deviation. In short, it is in the noise.

            • MxM111
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              27 days ago

              It is 1/sqrt(1000), which I think is std or close to it

                • MxM111
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                  26 days ago

                  Why don’t you educate me? This is for sure not 95% confidence interval nor 3 sigma. This might be 80% but this is close enough to one sigma.

                  The reason why I said it is std, is because suppose that you have a single person instead of 1000. If we expect the actual numbers to be about 50% for Biden or Trump, then with one person you get 100% or 0%, which is +/-50% error over 50% median. Which gives std of 1. After that, std decreases as 1/sqrt(1000).

                  I understand that I might miss there small factors, but I could not be that far from correct answer. Where do I went wrong?

  • @Pronell@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    Goddamned Monkey’s Paw to Qanon.

    They wanted JFK. They might get “but we have Kennedy at home.”

  • BolexForSoup
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    227 days ago

    Because he’s an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist. They’re his target demo.

  • @randon31415@lemmy.world
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    -527 days ago

    Assume all the potential Biden voters vote by mail or early voting, and all the potential Trump voters go to the polls. If RFK drops out of the race on Nov. 1st, all of his would be Biden voters will have voted for him, while the would be Trump voters will have to vote for Trump.

    Now, it is not cut and dry like that, but just wait, he will drop out and endorse Trump right before the election and people will call him dumb, because early votes have already been sent in.

      • @randon31415@lemmy.world
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        027 days ago

        Because RFK is just in it for the attention, and if he gets to be kingmaker to a Trump dictatorship, his ego will be stroked even more.

        • @RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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          627 days ago

          No why would you assume all Biden voters will vote by mail? And why do you assume any Democrat would want to vote for RFK who is an anti vaxxer? All of the assumptions you make in your post seem very unlikely lol

          • @randon31415@lemmy.world
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            027 days ago

            I literally said that was a stretch that “all”, but MORE Biden voters will vote by mail then Trump voters, and MORE Trump voters will vote in person then Biden voters - as was the case in 2020

            • @RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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              227 days ago

              That was only the case in 2020 because there was a pandemic and trump thought it was smart to politicize voting by mail.