• Makeitstop@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Every time a poll showing Harris in the lead gets posted here, there’s a conversation about how polls are there to trick you into getting complacent and staying home, and pointing to 2016 and Hillary losing due to dems not turning out. But historically, this is the far more common tactic. Skewed polls that show your side winning have a tendency to encourage your supporters, discourage your opponents, and exert a little influence on the undecided through the bandwagon effect.

    As an aside, the article points out the close coordination between Elon’s PAC and the Trump campaign. But, correct me if I’m wrong here, isn’t that illegal? Isn’t the one rule of massive limitless money being dumped into the political machine like this that you have to at least pretend like you aren’t coordinating your efforts? Not that anyone would do anything about it anyway…

    • just_another_person@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      PACs are essentially allowed to do whatever they want, thanks to the Citizens United ruling. Once they shift money from the PAC funds to the candidate is when you may have issues. As it stands now, these PACs are just volunteer organizations, which is horseshit.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      And as to 2016, we all seemed to have forgotten that James Comey announced that the FBI was reopening the investigation into Clinton, at this same time before the election. I thought, “My God. He just handed Trump the election on a silver platter.”