Alabama Special Election 2017

UKMikey
I don't have a hidden agenda and would resent it if someone tried to pin one on me. I figured that was clear enough in my previous post. Who do you think is "daring" to gleam a generalisation? I can't generalise if I haven't drawn a conclusion so all I did was ask you to clarify your statement and didn't even mention racism.
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I didn't think you had an agenda, but considering the deleted post and then the fact you felt compelled to reply after you deleted a post about betraying one and so on... Perhaps now I can see where you may have one and are kind of overextending in commentary when you never needed to, since again didn't think or imply you did have an agenda.

If I wanted to actually say you have an agenda, I'd have come out from the get go and asked why you specifically used black vote stats from the table rather than all the prevalent ones.

Also I'm confused, once again, this wasn't every a stream of post about you but an entire point based around what another user said. Clearly I'm talking about Biggles, not you, because my point of even posting recently in this thread stemmed from his idea that such a low pool of voters can idealize the states overall. Which is far from the truth and somewhat silly, and probably equally stems from his political forethought to begin with as to why he'd see it that way. Which makes it even more wrong to do so.

Why you thought it somehow shifted to being a point about what he said to what you said...is strange
 
LMSCorvetteGT2
Conflicting data to what? My response was that no this is not a clear cut case of "this is an indication of how people think in deep red states" or how race is a probable factor. Once again the numbers don't tell that deep of a story, rather tell a more likely one that seen in State elections compared to national elections there are typically larger turn outs of party voters.

Also how is it not significant to claim them party voters potentially?



Simple you seemed to hinge off a single number, when there are a few of them before you get to that single one. For example as Famine said he saw reports of a 38% voter turn out, then there is the second number seen and printed which is 29% were black. Finally you get to the 96% who voted for Jones over Moore. My point is that in that small sample of the entire voting population, it is hard to see how racism is an easy conclusion to come to. Also white voter turn outs were actual quite down and thus it's hard to see even more so how racism played a factor and if it did it was on yet again a small scale.
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Really? Well I'll say it: RACE IS A FACTOR.

Let's all be clear: you can't extrapolate anything with 100% certainty, but when 96% of a demographic votes one way in an election it's about as clear as anything is likely to be. If 96% of votes cast by women in the US went to one candidate, would that not indicate a gender as a factor?

We all like to cite polls as an indication of public opinion. The polls are often based on a few thousand responses out of a population of hundreds of millions. They are generally considered accurate within a few percentage points. At 96% you can afford to lose a few percentage points one way or another without it altering in any way the OVERWHELMING evidence. And whereas the opinions of those who bothered to vote may be slightly different from the population as a whole, I suspect (other than in the primaries) it is not a significant difference.

PARTY VOTING? The irony of your statement is that what the two main parties stood for in the South, actually shifted 180 degrees in the last few decades. I would give blacks in Alabama the benefit of the doubt for voting in the way they see advances their own political beliefs. After all, they suffered DECADES of of violence, intimidation & discrimination leaving them well suited to judge which side best favours their interests.

Were the WHITES who voted overwhelmingly for Roy Moore "racists"? Not necessarily. People vote for & against all kinds of different positions - gun control, public security vs freedom, gay rights, legalisation of marijuana etc. A big one, especially in Alabama, continues to be abortion. However, I would suspect that the position of the black population in Alabama on most of these issues would not be that different from the position of the white population.

So yes ... I would say "race" was a defining factor in the 2017 Alabama special election.
 
Biggles
Really? Well I'll say it: RACE IS A FACTOR.

Let's all be clear: you can't extrapolate anything with 100% certainty, but when 96% of a demographic votes one way in an election it's about as clear as anything is likely to be. If 96% of votes cast by women in the US went to one candidate, would that not indicate a gender as a factor?

We all like to cite polls as an indication of public opinion. The polls are often based on a few thousand responses out of a population of hundreds of millions. They are generally considered accurate within a few percentage points. At 96% you can afford to lose a few percentage points one way or another without it altering in any way the OVERWHELMING evidence. And whereas the opinions of those who bothered to vote may be slightly different from the population as a whole, I suspect (other than in the primaries) it is not a significant difference.

PARTY VOTING? The irony of your statement is that what the two main parties stood for in the South, actually shifted 180 degrees in the last few decades. I would give blacks in Alabama the benefit of the doubt for voting in the way they see advances their own political beliefs. After all, they suffered DECADES of of violence, intimidation & discrimination leaving them well suited to judge which side best favours their interests.

Were the WHITES who voted overwhelmingly for Roy Moore "racists"? Not necessarily. People vote for & against all kinds of different positions - gun control, public security vs freedom, gay rights, legalisation of marijuana etc. A big one, especially in Alabama, continues to be abortion. However, I would suspect that the position of the black population in Alabama on most of these issues would not be that different from the position of the white population.

So yes ... I would say "race" was a defining factor in the 2017 Alabama special election.
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I wouldn't if it was Moore would have easily won, simple as that. If people in that state resonated with Moore's ass backwards ideology of pre-civil war conditions of America they'd have come out and done so. In a state which had 66% + turnout during the presidential elections with Trump winning an easy majority, the same yield wasn't seen when a Trump backed candidate came up for a State election. However, there are many reasons to not like Moore, so perhaps that wasn't the main reason people didn't come out we wont ever know.

To say he got the support he did and attribute a strong sense of racism is equally unknown and a heavy leap. And even you admit this somewhat. So how you still come to the conclusion race is a factor heavily is beyond me.

I would say just like religion, just like red vs blue, just like pro vs life. Sure there is a white vs black voter mentality as well, is it as heavy as you make it out to be? No.
 
LMSCorvetteGT2
idea that such a low pool of voters can idealize the states overall
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I think there's an inherent--and completely unfounded--assumption that the ethnic, religious and socio-economic diversity of a polled group, regardless of its percentage of the whole, is proportional to the diversity of the whole. I also think we're either hard-wired or trained from an early age to take data at face value and not believe that it can be manipulated or manipulative--and I believe polling entities take advantage of both of these beliefs.

As I said earlier (and perhaps elsewhere), I don't put much stock in polls.
 
TexRex
I think there's an inherent--and completely unfounded--assumption that the ethnic, religious and socio-economic diversity of a polled group, regardless of its percentage of the whole, is proportional to the diversity of the whole. I also think we're either hard-wired or trained from an early age to take data at face value and not believe that it can be manipulated or manipulative--and I believe polling entities take advantage of both of these beliefs.

As I said earlier (and perhaps elsewhere), I don't put much stock in polls.
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Neither do I and perhaps it's my studies that have taught me to scrutinize data so intensely that you end up going about and doing more data collecting and more stats of said new data and compare it to old data until the numbers actually make sense for the situation. Or fix the situation.
 
LMSCorvetteGT2
So how you still come to the conclusion race is a factor heavily is beyond me.
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Do you think it isn't a factor at all? I ask because in all the interviews with Alabaman voters that I've seen on the news in the last few weeks every single black interviewee (and a good proprtion of white interviewees) has mentioned Moore's comments on slavery and amendments-after-the-10th.
 
TenEightyOne
Do you think it isn't a factor at all?
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Nobody can look at Roy Moore's history and say race had nothing to do with his election loss, but poll results aren't necessarily indicative of that. Even if you take results at absolute face value, they offer no insight at all into the abysmal voter turnout. Maybe the hordes of Moore supporters that gave his campaign runners reason to believe he would win were "smart enough" to realize the sexual misconduct allegations were just part of a smear campaign but were too stupid to know the day to cast their vote. At face value, the poll results shown earlier only informed us of those who actually voted. Anything additional is mere speculation.
 
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Famine
No, thank 19% of the people of Alabama that Moore didn't win.

Ignoring all of the abuse allegations - because an allegation isn't a conviction anywhere in the civilised world - this guy Moore may be one of the most unsuitable human beings ever to run for public office. Along with being twice removed from his post of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, he's stated that all of the Amendments after 10 cause America's problems (these include female suffrage and the abolition of slavery), supports making homosexuality illegal, rejects the separation of church and state, and doesn't accept evolutionary theory.

The fact that Literally Anyone Else only beats him in a popular vote by 1% of a 38% turnout is nothing short of an utter condemnation of the voting population of Alabama.
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Sounds like they need Vote By Mail ;)


Jerome
 
LMSCorvetteGT2
Sure there is a white vs black voter mentality as well, is it as heavy as you make it out to be? No.
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I'm not sure why you are in denial about this: when 96 (NINETY SIX!) per cent of blacks vote in favour of one candidate, then race IS a factor. I would say this is a pretty "heavy" indication of a white vs black voter mentality. How much higher a percentage would it need to be to convince you?

As I have already said, this does not mean that everyone who voted against Jones is racist. Moore lost because he was a terrible candidate, pushed forward by "right wing activists" at the primary voting stage where voter participation is very small, making it easier for an extremist candidate with a dedicated base of support to be nominated. It's reasonable to suppose that a more moderate GOP candidate would have won.

The "abysmal voter turnout" (a little over 40%) is neither here nor there - the voter participation was not untypical for a "non-presidential" election. However, given how close the election was, even a quite small suppression of the GOP turnout based on Moore's unpalatability would have been enough to tip the balance in Jones favour.
 
TenEightyOne
Do you think it isn't a factor at all? I ask because in all the interviews with Alabaman voters that I've seen on the news in the last few weeks every single black interviewee (and a good proprtion of white interviewees) has mentioned Moore's comments on slavery and amendments-after-the-10th.
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Did you just stop at that line of most post and call it time to respond? If so there is a line after that that talks about me acknowledging race but I don't as I said see how it is on such a scale that a user could say for certain that this shows a mentality of a red voting state. And then further acknowledge that he can't actually do so with as much certainty as he tried prior, but still believes. Okay well unless that portion of people you saw equals up stat wise then I don't see how that proves anything. When there are just as many people interviewed in the weeks run up black and white that had no clue a special election was about to happen in their own state. This is part of the reason people didn't see Jones winning to much black support and why early projections were a 25% voter turn out.

Once again as I said prior, race just like religion, political dogma, gender and whatever other category you can find will play a margin in any major political election. Trying to scale that to the entire population of the elected is something that is harder to do, when the numbers do indicate it. So doing so is very ambitious and hazardous.

Biggles
I'm not sure why you are in denial about this: when 96 (NINETY SIX!) per cent of blacks vote in favour of one candidate, then race IS a factor. I would say this is a pretty "heavy" indication of a white vs black voter mentality. How much higher a percentage would it need to be to convince you?

As I have already said, this does not mean that everyone who voted against Jones is racist. Moore lost because he was a terrible candidate, pushed forward by "right wing activists" at the primary voting stage where voter participation is very small, making it easier for an extremist candidate with a dedicated base of support to be nominated. It's reasonable to suppose that a more moderate GOP candidate would have won.

The "abysmal voter turnout" (a little over 40%) is neither here nor there - the voter participation was not untypical for a "non-presidential" election. However, given how close the election was, even a quite small suppression of the GOP turnout based on Moore's unpalatability would have been enough to tip the balance in Jones favour.
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Not in denial, you're actively skewing stats, which is what is irritating. 96% of a 29% from a 38% voter population. Thus 96% of an entire 7% of those voting, is vastly far off from majority of blacks in the state feeling they're under threat for one. Two the numbers of those who could have voted for Moore that were white is just as bad, showing that if race was so massive of a factor in said state then he'd have won.

As for the voter turn out, that's not the point, I only bring it up to help those reading this realize how your skewing stats in favor of your argument. Putting 96 percent in all caps doesn't change the fact that only 7% of the entire voter turn out is what we're discussing here, and then from that expanding it to a greater majority that did not voice who they wanted. That's not something you do, because it's sloppy and really can't prove a point data wise to the population you've sampled.
 
Biggles
I'm not sure why you are in denial about this: when 96 (NINETY SIX!) per cent of blacks vote in favour of one candidate, then race IS a factor. I would say this is a pretty "heavy" indication of a white vs black voter mentality. How much higher a percentage would it need to be to convince you?

As I have already said, this does not mean that everyone who voted against Jones is racist. Moore lost because he was a terrible candidate, pushed forward by "right wing activists" at the primary voting stage where voter participation is very small, making it easier for an extremist candidate with a dedicated base of support to be nominated. It's reasonable to suppose that a more moderate GOP candidate would have won.

The "abysmal voter turnout" (a little over 40%) is neither here nor there - the voter participation was not untypical for a "non-presidential" election. However, given how close the election was, even a quite small suppression of the GOP turnout based on Moore's unpalatability would have been enough to tip the balance in Jones favour.
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If I'm reading this right, you're saying that black voters have a different "mentality" than white voters. You're also saying that race IS a factor. Can you explain what the racial/genetic differences are between blacks and whites that lead to this different mentality?
 
UKMikey
clickbait title
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Dennisch
It was a brilliant piece of interviewing though. :lol:
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I can see how it may seem that way, but it was just an absolute fool being interviewed by someone slightly more intelligent. As with all of those "So-and-so destroys So-and-so in interview" videos, there are always examples where the interviewer got their ass handed to them. Attempts at living up to clickbait titles are often worse than the titles themselves.
 
Johnnypenso
If I'm reading this right, you're saying that black voters have a different "mentality" than white voters. You're also saying that race IS a factor. Can you explain what the racial/genetic differences are between blacks and whites that lead to this different mentality?
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Yes, they definitely have a "different "mentality". The different mentality is not genetic (LOL), it's that their life experience leads them to draw the conclusion, overwhelmingly, that the GOP, in general, & Roy Moore, in particular, does not represent their best interests.

LMSCorvetteGT2
Once again as I said prior, race just like religion, political dogma, gender and whatever other category you can find will play a margin in any major political election. Trying to scale that to the entire population of the elected is something that is harder to do, when the numbers do indicate it. So doing so is very ambitious and hazardous.

Not in denial, you're actively skewing stats, which is what is irritating. 96% of a 29% from a 38% voter population. Thus 96% of an entire 7% of those voting, is vastly far off from majority of blacks in the state feeling they're under threat for one. Two the numbers of those who could have voted for Moore that were white is just as bad, showing that if race was so massive of a factor in said state then he'd have won.

As for the voter turn out, that's not the point, I only bring it up to help those reading this realize how your skewing stats in favor of your argument. Putting 96 percent in all caps doesn't change the fact that only 7% of the entire voter turn out is what we're discussing here, and then from that expanding it to a greater majority that did not voice who they wanted. That's not something you do, because it's sloppy and really can't prove a point data wise to the population you've sampled.
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I am not "skewing stats" at all. I am reporting then as they are. As the discussion is about the attitude of black voters in Alabama, what they represent in terms of the total electorate is irrelevant. Of the blacks who voted, 96% voted for the Democrat. That is an overwhelming number. If you claim that this is in some way not representative of the sentiments of blacks who did not vote - then say that & perhaps come up with some evidence for that claim.

LMSCorvetteGT2
Once again as I said prior, race just like religion, political dogma, gender and whatever other category you can find will play a margin in any major political election.
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Of course this is true: people may have multiple reasons for how they vote. Attitudes to abortion is a big one - the polls I posted show this. But when an identifiable demographic - racial, religious or whatever - votes 96% one way, a very extreme one-sided vote, it's reasonable to wonder ... why? This article from the Washington Post addresses the question:

"Black Christians in Alabama thought that “we need to show the world that we as people of color have a voice, that this is the place that birthed the dream” of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said the Rev. Marvin Lue Jr., pastor of Stewart Memorial CME Church in Mobile and chairman of the board of the organizing group Faith in Action. Lue said black Christians in Alabama were motivated to turn out by issues such as mass incarceration, a struggling state educational system and a “mentality that continues to consider us as second-class citizens.”

But what these black voters knew was that Moore had adopted Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan — and for residents of a state that has deep-rooted racial tensions running through its veins, some moments of America’s past are not among the state’s finest moments.

Race generally trumps religion in Alabama overall as a dividing line among voters — and that is certainly true among African American voters."


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ters-and-white-evangelical-voters-in-alabama/
 
Race is a factor in nearly every election, I don't see why the Alabama election would be any different.

Blacks overwhelmingly vote Democrat in most elections and most identify with the party as well (source). This isn't to say there aren't blacks voting Republican, Libertarian, etc. but looking at history blacks tend to lean towards the Democratic candidate over the Republican one...at least in modern times.

I have no doubts that black voters helped Jones win the election. And I assume the comments about not respecting anything past the 10th Amendment helped spur them to get out and vote as well.

Although I'm not sure how anyone with an ounce of sense, morality, or understanding of the Constitution could've voted for Moore in the first place. Even if the allegations of pedophilia are wrong, he's on record of stating that he thinks everything past the 10th Amendment is what's wrong with this country. Clearly, he doesn't understand the Amendment process or why many of those Amendments exist in the first place.
 
Biggles
I am not "skewing stats" at all. I am reporting then as they are. As the discussion is about the attitude of black voters in Alabama, what they represent in terms of the total electorate is irrelevant. Of the blacks who voted, 96% voted for the Democrat. That is an overwhelming number. If you claim that this is in some way not representative of the sentiments of blacks who did not vote - then say that & perhaps come up with some evidence for that claim.
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You are though 96% of a much smaller percentage that when calculated and told over the entire population is a drop in the bucket. As I said earlier and as @Joey D pointed out and showed, Blacks voting dems more so than any other political party. As for it not being a sentiment for those blacks who didn't vote yes, I do believe it is not a way of correlating a small percentage to an entire population. You can not and should not, I don't know what experience you have with sampling and data collecting, but if you took 9 to 10% of what you had and tried to expand that to even 50% of the population, you'd have a massive potential for a margin of error. So why you've decided to do that here, and then claim that evidence must be provide is silly, because the evidence is there, you do the math.

96% is of those blacks who did turn out to vote, it is not representative of all blacks who could vote, it is only representative of those that did. Once again it could be placed down to race, religion factors and political dogma as I said. You trying to make it one over all others from the onset, and actively seeking race as an instant explanation is my issue. And this is coming from someone that is also black.

Of course this is true: people may have multiple reasons for how they vote. Attitudes to abortion is a big one - the polls I posted show this. But when an identifiable demographic - racial, religious or whatever - votes 96% one way, a very extreme one-sided vote, it's reasonable to wonder ... why? This article from the Washington Post addresses the question:

"Black Christians in Alabama thought that “we need to show the world that we as people of color have a voice, that this is the place that birthed the dream” of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said the Rev. Marvin Lue Jr., pastor of Stewart Memorial CME Church in Mobile and chairman of the board of the organizing group Faith in Action. Lue said black Christians in Alabama were motivated to turn out by issues such as mass incarceration, a struggling state educational system and a “mentality that continues to consider us as second-class citizens.”

But what these black voters knew was that Moore had adopted Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan — and for residents of a state that has deep-rooted racial tensions running through its veins, some moments of America’s past are not among the state’s finest moments.

Race generally trumps religion in Alabama overall as a dividing line among voters — and that is certainly true among African American voters."


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ters-and-white-evangelical-voters-in-alabama/
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They address it, it doesn't make it so. A nicely written monologue doesn't actually explain the why, nor does it explain why more voters of black decent didn't turn out. In 2008 the state had a 62% voter turn out and the same percentage of blacks voting as this Senate race with a 2% increase in (98%) of those voting for the democratic nominee. So was race a factor there too, since Obama is identified more black than mixed by voters? I'd argue no, that it was again a factor but not the key factor.
 
LMSCorvetteGT2
You are though 96% of a much smaller percentage that when calculated and told over the entire population is a drop in the bucket.
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Back-of-a-fag-packet reckoning gives the number of black female voters as C-200,000. That's hardly a "drop in the bucket", surely?
 
TenEightyOne
Back-of-a-fag-packet reckoning gives the number of black female voters as C-200,000. That's hardly a "drop in the bucket", surely?
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That's interesting cause I've seen WP articles saying that though dems won they failed to garner the black woman vote. Also considering what I said again if we pan to the entire voter turn out, you're suggesting 18% of that was black woman, out of the 29% overall black voting members. What I'm saying is a drop in the bucket is the entire voting population that could vote, don't mince my wording.
 
Biggles
Yes, they definitely have a "different "mentality". The different mentality is not genetic (LOL), it's that their life experience leads them to draw the conclusion, overwhelmingly, that the GOP, in general, & Roy Moore, in particular, does not represent their best interests.way, a very extreme one-sided vote, it's reasonable to wonder ... why? This article from the Washington Post addresses the question:
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"Life experiences" are not racial in nature and not unique to African Americans, so I would suggest that the "different mentality" as you call it, is also not racial in nature.
 
LMSCorvetteGT2
That's interesting cause I've seen WP articles saying that though dems won they failed to garner the black woman vote. Also considering what I said again if we pan to the entire voter turn out, you're suggesting 18% of that was black woman, out of the 29% overall black voting members. What I'm saying is a drop in the bucket is the entire voting population that could vote, don't mince my wording.
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I'm not mincing your words, I'm asking if that many black female voters are really "a drop in the bucket". 98% of those 200,000 voted Democrat.
 
UKMikey
Maybe the reason the DNC sees it as a significant factor is that at 1.5% of voters the winning margin was sufficiently slim that even a drop in the bucket made a difference.
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That can be said with any election. All it takes is a small margin, that doesn't change the perspective of what was originally being argued.
TenEightyOne
I'm not mincing your words, I'm asking if that many black female voters are really "a drop in the bucket". 98% of those 200,000 voted Democrat.
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196,000 voters is a drop in the bucket compared to the remaining 3.3 million who can vote within the entire state. It's also still not a conformation on voicing their decisions because of race or any other factor. Nor should it be used to project on the larger number that didn't vote.

I'm confused at your question because it seems to be one of trying to conceive or make a point, so what is that point? Do you actually think that from a small margin one can say that this is absolutely about race? Because that is the premise of my argument and what you took my original quote form.
 
Roy Moore said, "america was great during the times black people were slaves and torn away from their familes" who in the hell would think blacks should vote for that $#&%/. It doesn't matter if GOP or Democratic party. Blacks are typically conservative but the conservative party is currently controlled by racist interest groups against blacks. So high numbers of blacks vote for democrats. It has nothing to do with white or black but hate groups kkk, nazis siding with republicans vs blacks and others who are not white. There are good Republicans out there but the party in general is being tainted by right wing nuts and racist hate groups
 
Racelow
Roy Moore said, "america was great during the times black people were slaves and torn away from their familes" who in the hell would think blacks should vote for that $#&%/. It doesn't matter if GOP or Democratic party. Blacks are typically conservative but the conservative party is currently controlled by racist interest groups against blacks. So high numbers of blacks vote for democrats. It has nothing to do with white or black but hate groups kkk, nazis siding with republicans vs blacks and others who are not white. There are good Republicans out there but the party in general is being tainted by right wing nuts and racist hate groups
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These are some pretty serious claims. Do you have some links to positively establish the "conservative party" is being controlled by proven racist interest groups specifically against blacks? You also put that Roy Moore statement in quotes, meaning those are his words, yet I can't find any link in a Google search that ties him to that statement. Do you have a link to that also?
 

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