Republican county commissioner has been unseated in Michigan after losing to her Democratic challenger by 20 percentage points.

Chris Kleinjans won an Ottawa County election on Tuesday with 60 percent of the vote share, while the Republican incumbent Lucy Ebel lost, having received 40 percent.

Michigan is a battleground state that will be key to November’s presidential election. Donald Trump won the county with 61 percent of the vote in 2020.

    • kescusay@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      You can definitely expect more. Democrats are consistently over-performing versus the polls.

      Polling is kinda broken right now.

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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        2 months ago

        I blame phone companies for that. They’ve had the ability to block scam calls for a while but haven’t because it makes them money. Now people don’t even bother answering their phones anymore, especially if it’s an unknown number, so the only people who respond to polls aren’t representative of the population.

          • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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            2 months ago

            I think I’ll blame the people who actually have the capability of doing something about it. They could have done this years ago.

            • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
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              2 months ago

              There’s just no incentive. The market is going to dictate that carriers allow this to happen.

              It has to be regulated. But “the market” also has its hand in congress’s underpants - the same congress that passes laws, and approves assignments, so only “approved“ people make their way to regulatory positions.

            • Clent@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              I don’t think the phone companies have the power you imagine them to have.

              If the entire global was controlled by a single entity they could stop this but that’s not the reality. There are tons of gateway providers that you have never heard of.

              This is literally the job of the FCC and they are already working on it but it takes time to herd this many cats. The big ones have already done their part.

              • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                2 months ago

                Phone companies could easily prevent call spoofing which would make it easy for them to block known scam numbers. They have chosen not to.

                • Clent@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  You didn’t read anything I said or anything in the link.

                  You do not understand the problem and willfully do so.

        • mkwt@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          And really people are not making phone calls nearly as much as they used to. The pollsters need to find a reasonably unbiased method to sample people on other communication methods.

          • MrPoopbutt@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I get texts about polls but I would rather jump on a live grenade than answer an unsolicited communication, be that a text or anything else, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

          • lobut@lemmy.ca
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            2 months ago

            I don’t see myself as too much of a loner or anything but I had a friend call me out of the blue during lunch and I just kept thinking.

            Why oh why are you not texting me?

            I’m horrible.

          • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            I did a weekly email survey in 2016 for $5 gift cards each time. That definitely worked but I can’t imagine it’s sustainable. Paying people also probably comes with an entirely different sort of bias.

        • barsquid@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I would like a federal law that allows me to receive $1 from any caller if I decide I didn’t like the call. If at any point there is a failure to trace the call back to the caller, that point of failure pays the dollar on behalf of the true culprit.

        • Dr. Zoidberg@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          It’s been over a decade since I answered a call from a number that wasn’t programmed into my phone. I won’t return the call unless a voicemail is left.

      • bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 months ago

        What polls showed a different result for this election? I would be surprised if there was even a poll to assess. This is a pretty obscure, small election. Like 5000 voters total.

        Most (quality) polls and election forecasting show a pretty neck to neck race for Biden. That seems pretty fair at this stage.

        • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Even if Dems are outperforming polls, I don’t want anyone feeling comfortable that Biden is going to win. Literally everyone needs to feel panic and dread about the upcoming election, and vote in downticket races as well.

  • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Holy shit. I’m not sure people understand how big a deal this is for Ottawa County.

    Ottawa County contains the town that voted to close its library over LGBT books. Ottawa County is where Betsy DeVos lives. Ottawa County had their commission taken over by a far right group called Ottawa Impact that tried to oust the county health officer and replace her with someone completely unqualified because of mask requirements.

    Ottawa County is home to a congressional district that hasn’t gone Democrat since the civil rights movement.

    This is kind of huge.

      • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Is this Holland michigan? With the windmills and shit?

        Yes. I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted. Specifically this commissioner represents parts of Holland Township and Park Township, apparently.

  • athos77@kbin.social
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    2 months ago

    A. It was a recall election (though still good).

    B. Was this district affected by redistricting?

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      2 months ago

      It’s a county office, which usually means the “district” is the whole county. Unless it happens to work differently in this specific case.

      • SandbagTiara2816@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Nope, Ottawa County is still just a county. However, in the last election, the county commission got taken over by Ottawa Impact, a group of extremely far right activists that have proven very popular to a smaller segment of the population, and wildly unpopular with the majority of people in and around the county. It appears that there’s starting to be a backlash to their idiocy and hatred from the folks with any sense, it’s good to see

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Michigan is a battleground state that will be key to November’s presidential election.

    Friendly reminder that, thanks to the US-backed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, we saw fully 13% of Democrats refuse to support Joe Biden in the Michigan primary

    This, in a state where Democrat primary turnout was 768,158 relative to Republican primary turnout of 1,113,719.

    This war is going to Jimmy Carter the Democrats in November, if they don’t change course in a hurry.

    • rbesfe@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      13% of democrats submitted a protest vote. That is not the same as refusing to vote for Biden in November. I hope that anyone who supports the Palestinian cause can recognize just how much worse it will get under a Trump administration.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        That is not the same as refusing to vote for Biden in November.

        That’s a clear signal by registered Democrats of their abstention of support for Biden.

        House Reps aren’t seeing these huge protest votes.

        I hope that anyone who supports the Palestinian cause can recognize just how much worse it will get under a Trump

        I hope that Biden realizes he can’t wait until 2025 to change course in Palestine. Not when 1.4M lives are on the line.