I got worried at first, but upon further inspection this is a return2ozma post.
Nothing here is truthful or holds any merit.
Good day
A dead heat in polling is not an even race. We know Democrats need a significant lead to be break even on election day.
The Electoral College gives Republicans a significant advantage.
Its not just the EC. That exists, yes, but its not the biggest stumbling block for team D’, this is:
Trump historically outperforms his polling. In 2020, even though he lost, he over performed his polling by 8 points. As in, he lost 2020, but he should have lost way worse based on what polling indicates. This is most-likely an issue with “likely voter” demographics models, in that Trump voters are regularly under surveyed as the don’t look like likely voters on paper.
Don’t you think the pollsters have compensated for that by now? This has been known for years and years.
Yeah thats a great question. Short answer, no, I don’t. Long answer, is that its complicated and too hard to know. Safe answer is, just assume the above as the best guess for what biases will look like on election day.
The problem with being able to compensate for what the above data show is that you have to have extremely good demographic models, specifically for demographics you didn’t capture in your original sample. I think part of the reason why stochastic modeling misses these things is that its not really a forwards-in-time facing type of analysis. You can’t compensate for a future state if that state is unknown, you can only go backwards to account for your prior (but even that is still facing backwards).
However, I don’t agree that stochastic models are where we should stop with trying to understand these kinds of things. There are plenty of phenomena where we engage with a range of classes of models to try to get an idea of where things should be. Some examples of these are things like process based models, which are a kind of simulation to estimate based on some parameterization, how things came to be. You’ll often do a kind of bayesian filtering on these kinds of models to get down to results that match your data, then use the priors to hopefully understand something about the system. So in the context of electoral politics, it would be trying to understand why someone gets off the couch to vote, or join a movement, or whatever.
So I think that the data in these stochastic samples are good, but the problem is that voting really isn’t a random effect. I think the results are likely good, but they are only going to be as good as the last time the voter demographics were sampled (if they were even updated for that), and then as relevant as those demographics are to the actually electorate who shows up when November 5th rolls around.
A great example of this phenomena in play was the Bernie/ Hillary primary race in 2016. Hillary had the support of basically every mainstream media outlet on the left, all of the DNC, all of Washington. Yet, she was on-track to lose until the DNC stepped in and put their thumbs on the scales. Why? How was that possible? How was Bernie out-performing all of his polls?
Bernie was outperforming his polls because he wasn’t drawing on the same distribution of voters for whom polls are focused. He was turning disengaged, non-voters, into engaged participants in a process. And you can’t measure that with your last demographic sample, because according to your best most recent measurement: those people don’t vote.
Trump does something very similar. He is gathering disenfranchised, disengaged, non-voters and turning them into voters. And you’ll never capture that with a polling model based on last elections voter demographics, when the strategy is to fundamentally shift the demographics.
If pollsters were to massively weight their numbers as I’m describing, Democrats would be getting thunked right now. Its why having a >5% polling advantage going into election day is so important for Democrats.
Thank you for a good write-up. Much appreciated.
I still think Trump is such a well-known commodity now and all of this is nothing new. We’ve been talking about his “hidden voters” so much for so long that I actually think polls may be overcompensating a bit for that. Or at least they could be pretty well calibrated for it at this point. Guess we’ll see in less than a month.
I still think Trump is such a well-known commodity now and all of this is nothing new. We’ve been talking about his “hidden voters” so much for so long that I actually think polls may be overcompensating a bit for that.
I would be ecstatic for that to be the case. Unfortunately, both the 2016, and 2020 polling disagree. But right now, the data we have at our disposal do not support that case.
I’m curious what you think pollsters are doing when you say:
Or at least they could be pretty well calibrated for it at this point.
Like, in stochastic modeling, you have to do things like having a truly random sample to develop your statistics on. Pollsters hands are kind-of tied in this regards and the data is mostly available for download. I’m curious if you think there is some kind of demographic weighting that you think pollsters are doing on the back end?
Yes, I definitely think pollsters are compensating for Trump’s hidden voters by now. Like you say, they’ve had both 2016 and 2020 to get it worked into the polling. It’s rare to get three tries to work it out. I’d be very surprised if they undercount it again.
Another 4 years of liberals crying about trump…
Kill yourself.
With what?
Please note the momentum shift that started just around the DNC convention. Ask yourself what changed in the Harris campaign at that time.
No, it started after the debate. The DNC told her to abandon her working rhetoric of “not going back.” And they told Walz to stop using the weird moniker, which was the first negative connotation that ever really stuck to Trump. It’s like they not only don’t want to support actual progressive ideas that people actually want, but they also don’t want to win.
Honestly, you can’t trust the tv news polls. They want people to watch and Trump gets them numbers.
Dementia donnie is trying to thwart efforts to help Americans in the wake of two hurricanes. He wants to end democracy as we know it, and there are still people stupid enough to think he should run the place.
SMH.
The media wants a race. That’s the only way they get viewers.
Landslide stomps get views too. They made a game of Reagan’s run in literally 1984 trying to predict if he could win all 50 states or not. (He fell one short).
Or… it really is THAT close of a race. When we shrug it off as “the media just wants a race” we get complacent.
www.vote.gov make sure you’re registered and double check even if you think you already are. Early voting is happening in some states. Get active
Who’s shrugging off anything? Did I say that? Nope. I’m just saying that we can have a close race and it still be true that Harris holds a 3-point lead nationally and small leads in the swing states. My point is that the media ALWAYS try making it even closer than what it is. Do you disagree with that?
It could also be true that Trump holds a 3 point lead. It could go both ways.
Always vote like your vote will make a difference. It might, especially local races. If we accidentally turn the election into a sweep by everyone voting, oh well.
It can be both things.
There are no definitive data points that should lead anyone to believe that either candidate has a significant advantage.
I’m not sure anyone who is well versed in election projections or polling would say anything other than it’s a toss up. As a heavy consumer of said data and reporting, I haven’t seen anything to the contrary.
You’re not wrong about media incentives, but they’re also not wrong that this is a very close race.
Thank you! That was point. It’s close. Harris holds a steady, yet small lead. The media will always make it seem closer than what it is though for ratings.
I don’t like Harris very much. But the fact that half the country is willing to choose a deranged con artist over her is just beyond any rational thought.
Everything is fear based and not rationale.
Trump voters fear immigrants; Fear their guns, religion and identity are somehow being taken away. They fear and refuse to understand the world is constantly changing and that we need to adapt along with it.
Harris voters (rightly) fear trump and all the bigotry, racism, and misogyny he has enabled and emboldened.
Most of the American people don’t have something to vote for, only something to vote against. The ruling class is further detached for the working class by stoking culture wars gaslighting on the socioeconomic disparage
Rationality has nothing to do with it.
It’s all fear based. They think the migrants coming across the border are coming to take their job, rape them, break into their home, shop at the same Walmart as them, etc.
I want to commend you for how well you did that. Absolutely beautiful ending with “shop at the same Walmart as them”
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Yeah. Well played there. 👍
I’ve lately been watching some radio shows on the BBC, and it’s wild to see the same things happening over there. I don’t know if it’s just how modern society has become or if it spread from us or them, but take away the British accents and the names and policies, and it’s the same insanity. What the hell is wrong with people?
Russia created a network of wannabe autocrats, and they are pushing each other all across the globe.
That’s it, that’s most of all of it.
No it isn’t. It’s hardly any of it. We exist in the same places they are targeting and it didn’t turn us into complete goddamn idiots, so what’s their excuse?
They have always been racist, but the populists taking advantage of them use Russian tactics and are backed by Russia.
Stuff like Trump and Brexit is not normal, and it’s not just happening spontaneously because all the racists decided to be more overt at the same time around the world.
I’m for all of that happening… to Republicans. ;)
Half the voting population, more specifically
Or I guess in this case, half of those polled
To be fair, it’s not like everyone that doesn’t vote hates him. Some do I’m sure, but there’s also going to be people that think favorably of him but don’t bother voting, just as there are and have been for his opponents
They want Trump in because he represents an amoral outsider. Someone who is disenfranchised by the moralisms of the establishment left.
This is how they see themselves.
They like him because he’s a shithead who doesn’t care to preserve this system. They want change even if it’s bad.
In this way pointing out that he’s a shithead and a risk to democracy - helps him.
Unfortunately it’s the Harris campaign’s only option, as the alternative is to say: He’s actually a highly connected establishment figure who will pull the same establishment shit we do. This would have obviously blow back for an establishment figure.
They want Trump BECAUSE he’s a train wreck.
That’s what happen when you fuck your education system for money
Polling is broken.
Margin of error above 3%. Non-story.
People who downvote are encouraged to take Statistics 101.
<3
Not to mention, NBC ran the numbers with different turnout cases. In one of those cases, a very realistic but small few percentage point changes in turnout assumptions of different demographics could make the poll swing to 49% Harris to 46% Trump
How different turnout models change the NBC News poll results
Further, two other national polls released today showed the race as Harris+3. A lot of the dooming tends to be based on single polls. Yes the polls suggest race is close, but only paying attention to anything bad/mediocre isn’t helpful either
Don’t doom, take action instead
Make sure to register to vote. Deadlines are fast approaching in many states
Find opportunities to volunteer for dems around you and online
Write letters to voters in swing states or in competitive downballot races
Maybe the neoliberals should stop trying to throw the race to suck up to corporate donors.
Again.
Money from donors/SuperPACs > winning against Neo-Mussolini
We’ll see if they still feel that way when Mango Mussolini throws them in a camp.
A liberals last thought would be “I wish this labor camp had more female prison guards, that would have made me feel better about executed.”
Hey, say what you will about 2024 Nazis, they’re proud to let white women shoot people in the back of the head.
Very true. Sorry you got downvoted for that.
Obama will spend his final days on Martha’s Vineyard, surrounded by loving grandchildren and giant piles of money.
Meanwhile, its going to be the 1.1M people barred from voting in Florida on Felony Disenfranchisement rules that end up in the camps.
And you fuckers called me crazy for saying there was a concerted propaganda effort to conflate “neoliberal” with “liberal”
Neoliberals are Republicans.
Liberals are Democrats.
Reagan was arguably a neoliberal and Bush a neocon, but current Republicans have moved even further right straight to neofascism. The way that liberal democrats serve corporations over people proves to me that there is no longer a meaningful distinction between liberalism and neoliberalism.
“Kamala Harris is as far right as Ronald Reagan” was not a take I was expecting to see today.
Although given that this is Lemmy I wish I could say I was surprised.
It’s hilarious that you think it isn’t true. Other than hating gay and black people which isn’t actually on an economic axis (necessarily…)
Reagan wasn’t arguably a neoliberal. He was neoliberalism. The governmental policies of that era define the modern Democratic and what was the Republican Party.
It’s not even entirely negative, deinstitutionalization wasn’t done intelligently but there was rampant abuse in the system, for example.
Fuckin told ya! It’s just another elaborate goddamn “bothsides”
Just vibes will win the presidency…
Just like always.
Why is the generation born because we fought the Nazis so into this shit?
They are the weak men created by good times. We are living through the hard times they created.
Who answers polls?
I did, a few weeks ago.
I’m part of that 5% thay says she aint left enough.
“If I can’t get universal healthcare, I’ll vote for the end of all social services and democracy as we know it. That’ll show em!”
Did I fucking say that?
Blame the polls if you want. The race is a coin flip. I find it hard to stomach too, but I’m not in denial about it.
Old people, mostly.
What a world…
