The ousted Republican incumbent Lucy Ebel had previously described Ottawa County as "very conservative."

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
      89·
      7 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
        672·
        7 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
            63·
            7 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.

            • Clent@lemmy.world
              5·
              7 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
                34·
                7 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
                  4·
                  7 months ago

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

                  You do not understand the problem and willfully do so.

            • Monument@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
              3·
              7 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.

          • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            6 months ago

            As far as I’m aware, there is a website that allows you to sign up to stop receiving these calls in the US. It’s worked for me and I never get sales calls anymore.

            Sign up here

            • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              6 months ago

              Thanks for the reminder! Says I did it in 2018, but I registered again along with my 2nd number and my wife’s. We shall see…

        • mkwt@lemmy.world
          14·
          7 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
            10·
            7 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.

          • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
            7·
            6 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.

          • lobut@lemmy.ca
            4·
            7 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.

        • barsquid@lemmy.world
          11·
          7 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
          9·
          6 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.

        • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.eeEnglish
          3·
          6 months ago

          my phone will actually tell me ahead of time if it thinks the call is spam, a scam, or if it’s a business what kind of business it’s likely to be. but yeah, still don’t answer anything that isn’t in my contacts or from my local area code. text me or leave a voicemail. or don’t, I don’t really wanna talk to anybody as a rule anyway.

        • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          6 months ago

          I don’t answer any call that’s not in my phone from anywhere that’s not in my work region of like a third of the country and my own area code. Most scams for me are either my area code or come out or California for some reason.

        • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
          41·
          7 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.