Watt-Zeefuik Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 55 minutes ago, JFK-1 said: Apparently if he just declared bankruptcy that could help delay it all even further and would help in a number of ways, seems it's what pretty much anybody would be advised to do by advisors. But despite already having something like 7 bankruptcies, this time he doesn't want to do it. I'm guessing a pretend multi billionaire doesn't want the cult grunts to know hey not only am I not a billionaire, I'm effectively broke. Trumps stupidity and ego will see him hung. Bankruptcy when he was the owner of failing casinos was one thing, it just let him walk out of his epic failure with a lot of tax write-offs. Bankruptcy in the middle of his Presidential campaign would be severe damage to his brand. He won't appear with disabled veterans because he thinks it make him look weak, so bankruptcy is right out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFK-1 Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 The video below Includes a good comparison with real billionaires, none of whom ever brag about their wealth. Like for just one Mike Bloomberg, a New Yorker who truly started with nothing. Born into a humble working class family, has a net worth over $50 billion. Real dollars, not fake inflated dollars. Trump grew up in great wealth and inherited $400 million, then turned it into potentially less than nothing. That money has gone on Trumps ego, to feed his deep rooted feelings of intellectual inferiority. And his chronic need for attention. He's such a poor businessman his fathers holdings were sold off at a cut price, art of the deal or what, and the father who built this little empire is a father who might be the only other human ever that Trump appears to have respected. Had any real emotional bond with. He wanted that empire maintained, his doting son sold it off at a cut price the moment he was dead. Trump threw away a legacy his father had wanted maintained. I think it was sold off cut price because Trump had massive debts, what's new, and needed money in a hurry, what's new. In my view he could be broke as well as in jail if he doesn't win this election. The prospect of which will make him ever more like a cornered animal. Lawrence: NY fraud case will expose Trump's foundational political lie about his wealth MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell analyzes the latest developments in Donald Trump’s attempts to secure an appeal bond for New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud victory against him, including his late night rants on social media where, in an apparent contradiction to a court filing from his attorneys, he claims he has enough to pay the bond. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hansel Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 14 hours ago, JFK-1 said: Apparently if he just declared bankruptcy that could help delay it all even further and would help in a number of ways, seems it's what pretty much anybody would be advised to do by advisors. But despite already having something like 7 bankruptcies, this time he doesn't want to do it. I'm guessing a pretend multi billionaire doesn't want the cult grunts to know hey not only am I not a billionaire, I'm effectively broke. Trumps stupidity and ego will see him hung. The cultists will double down in their support for him and claim that the deep state are responsible for Trump's financial collapse. A lot of them believe all his legal issues are the result of a witch hunt designed to prevent him from winning the election. They'll support him no matter what and believe anything that paints him as some kind of persecuted saviour of America. They'll reject anything that states the simple truth that, he's not the messiah, and in actual fact, he's a very naughty boy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulysses Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 Is Trump still ahead in the opinion polls? I'm too lazy to look this weekend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwindonJambo Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 2 hours ago, Ulysses said: Is Trump still ahead in the opinion polls? I'm too lazy to look this weekend. I refresh this poll of polls page of the Economist, which is updated daily. It currently shows Biden with a 1% lead in the popular vote, which probably still leaves Trumpet in the lead due to the vagaries of the Electoral College. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maple Leaf Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 23 minutes ago, SwindonJambo said: I refresh this poll of polls page of the Economist, which is updated daily. It currently shows Biden with a 1% lead in the popular vote, which probably still leaves Trumpet in the lead due to the vagaries of the Electoral College. That's a change. Trump has been leading in most polls, iirc. But you're right about the popular vote; it doesn't mean much. For example, Hilary "won" the popular vote by millions in 2016, but Trump still handily won the election by about 80 Electoral College votes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwindonJambo Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 51 minutes ago, Maple Leaf said: That's a change. Trump has been leading in most polls, iirc. But you're right about the popular vote; it doesn't mean much. For example, Hilary "won" the popular vote by millions in 2016, but Trump still handily won the election by about 80 Electoral College votes. I said as much. The electoral college gives the Republicans an unfair inbuilt advantage, which means they can win elections with fewer votes than the Dems, which to me is ludicrous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lone Striker Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 How far down the line is Trump's masterplan of having his daughter-in-law divert RNC campaign funds to pay his legal bills ? Its an outrageous scam if it succeeds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulysses Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 7 hours ago, SwindonJambo said: I refresh this poll of polls page of the Economist, which is updated daily. It currently shows Biden with a 1% lead in the popular vote, which probably still leaves Trumpet in the lead due to the vagaries of the Electoral College. RCP poll tracking has Trump ahead. So does 538, though things have nudged a little in Biden's direction in the last few days. Biden needs to win by a couple of percentage points, given the vagaries of the Electoral College. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulysses Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 6 hours ago, SwindonJambo said: I said as much. The electoral college gives the Republicans an unfair inbuilt advantage, which means they can win elections with fewer votes than the Dems, which to me is ludicrous. The real issue is the way in which Senate seats are distributed, IMO. The knock-on effect turns both the Presidential election and the Senate into the political equivalent of Eurovision, where San Marino's votes are worth as much as Germany's. I'm jesting for effect, but you can see what I mean; a system that gives the same number of Senate seats to California and Wyoming has a bit of a proportionality problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watt-Zeefuik Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 6 hours ago, SwindonJambo said: I said as much. The electoral college gives the Republicans an unfair inbuilt advantage, which means they can win elections with fewer votes than the Dems, which to me is ludicrous. It is absurd, but it's also very hard to change because an amendment would have to be passed by states that benefit from the arrangement. I will say again though, the *average* change in percentage point lead between March polls and the final result is 7%. The polls currently are a very good barometer of which way the political wind is blowing at the moment and a pretty terrible predictor of what's going to happen in November. And the dynamics of the media cycle will be very, very different in October than they are now. Now it's just political junkie following it, after September the campaign will be omnipresent. 6 hours ago, Lone Striker said: How far down the line is Trump's masterplan of having his daughter-in-law divert RNC campaign funds to pay his legal bills ? Its an outrageous scam if it succeeds. It only makes much of a difference if the RNC actually starts raising decent amounts of money, which they haven't been. The Trumpies have already sacked a huge amount of the main office staff at the RNC to save money, presumably to divert it to Trump's campaign. I don't want to be too rosy-eyed about this but if that were happening at the DNC, I would be both panicked and furious. Biden has a titanic lead over Trump in cash on hand and is fundraising more every quarter, even without the spiraling legal penalties, and the DNC is way ahead of the RNC in funds. Money doesn't buy everything in politics (Hilary Clinton was one of the most prolific fundraisers ever) but it certainly doesn't hurt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cade Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 "Presidents should have full and total legal immunity from everything or they can't do the job!" "Biden is using lawsuits as a weapon against me this should be illegal!" Make yer mind up Donald Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFK-1 Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 He's stealing from the right people for once. Trump’s RNC arrangement could suck the life out of state GOP chapters https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/trump-legal-bills-republican-national-committee-rcna144731 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFK-1 Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 Incidentally I don't buy this crap about Trump getting billions for his dumb troof soshul thing. He has 15 million users on it and all they're in it for is Trump's dumb rambling. For something like that to be worth billions it would need some source of income, it has none. And it would have to be ripe for growth while Trump has topped at 15 million. Taylor Swift alone has over 200 million followers, Trump and his no profit side show are nothing. Worth nothing. Who says it's worth billions? Trump? 🤣 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maple Leaf Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 42 minutes ago, JFK-1 said: Incidentally I don't buy this crap about Trump getting billions for his dumb troof soshul thing. He has 15 million users on it and all they're in it for is Trump's dumb rambling. For something like that to be worth billions it would need some source of income, it has none. And it would have to be ripe for growth while Trump has topped at 15 million. Taylor Swift alone has over 200 million followers, Trump and his no profit side show are nothing. Worth nothing. Who says it's worth billions? Trump? 🤣 It's all a bit of smoke and mirrors. Trump's Truth Social (imagine anything associated with Trump called truth !!!) is merging with another Company. Their stock is worth about $40 per share, and Trump holds a whack of shares. On paper, his stock holdings are worth north of $3 billion. However ... and it's a big however ... the merger deal includes clauses that prevent Trump from selling the stock in the short term, or getting a loan using the stock as collateral. So it can't help him with his current cash crisis, according to the experts on such matters. Also, stock market analysts believe that the $40 per share is a ridiculous over-evaluation and expect the price to tumble. We'll see. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watt-Zeefuik Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 1 hour ago, JFK-1 said: He's stealing from the right people for once. Trump’s RNC arrangement could suck the life out of state GOP chapters https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/trump-legal-bills-republican-national-committee-rcna144731 Damn shame isn’t it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwindonJambo Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 24 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said: Damn shame isn’t it He's obviously getting desperate and will resort to anything. Hopefully his self proclaimed wealth is shown up to be grotesquely overinflated nonsense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maple Leaf Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 15 minutes ago, SwindonJambo said: He's obviously getting desperate and will resort to anything. Hopefully his self proclaimed wealth is shown up to be grotesquely overinflated nonsense. Sorta like his arse, judging by the pictures I've seen of him in his golf shorts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwindonJambo Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 1 hour ago, Maple Leaf said: Sorta like his arse, judging by the pictures I've seen of him in his golf shorts. 🤢🤮 In fairness I shouldn't be shocked really. I don't think he does much walking on the course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Footballfirst Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 (edited) A US appellate court has reduced the amount that Trump must post pending his appeal in the NY Fraud case to $175m. He now has a further 10 days to come up with the cash or bond. https://www.nycourts.gov/courts/ad1/calendar/Motions_Word/2024/03_Mar/25/PDF/People of State NY v Trump (M-1025).pdf Edited March 25 by Footballfirst Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mysterion Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 6 minutes ago, Footballfirst said: A US appellate court has reduced the amount that Trump must post pending his appeal in the NY Fraud case to $175m. He now has a further 10 days to come up with the cash or bond. https://www.nycourts.gov/courts/ad1/calendar/Motions_Word/2024/03_Mar/25/PDF/People of State NY v Trump (M-1025).pdf Just need E.Jean to kick off a 3rd set of proceedings now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Footballfirst Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 (edited) 9 minutes ago, Mysterion said: Just need E.Jean to kick off a 3rd set of proceedings now. He's attending a hearing today in his hush money criminal case. The judge may confirm the trial date. Trump's lawyers are looking for a 90 day delay. Edited March 25 by Footballfirst Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Footballfirst Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 Trial date for the hush money case set for 15 April. The trial will start with jury selection. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watt-Zeefuik Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 He got a very short delay but not nearly the delay he was wanting in the hush money trial. The bond reduction, despite my wanting to see him squirm and have his properties taken from him, is probably the just decision. Unreasonable bonds are a big problem in this country and $175m is still a ton of money. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watt-Zeefuik Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 Respect the hustle here: Man changes name to Literally Anybody Else and announces US presidential run https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/25/texas-name-change-election-candidate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulysses Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Footballfirst Posted March 26 Share Posted March 26 (edited) The judge in Trump's upcoming criminal trial has issued a gag order on Trump. This follows Trump having a go at the judge and his daughter earlier today. I think this judge has lost all patience with Trump and his lawyers, certainly going by yesterday's hearing. Edited March 26 by Footballfirst Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XB52 Posted March 26 Share Posted March 26 Now he's flogging bibles. It's hilarious that there are millions of Americans dumb enough to vote for him and even dumb enough to buy his bibles Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFK-1 Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 (edited) On 24/03/2024 at 18:09, Maple Leaf said: It's all a bit of smoke and mirrors It would appear so, I think somebody is making these numbers up, probably Trump. They're valuing this Trump thing at around 6 billion dollars, and we have a recent comparison to look at. Reddit, which is an already massively successful media platform valued around 6 billion dollars. Thing is, Trumps nothing lost almost 50 million dollars in the first three quarters of last year alone, had an income around 3 million, sounds very Trumpy. Reddit on the other hand had an income of 800 million last year and has vast scope to grow. So Trump loses money, has little scope to grow aside from MAGA nuts who are probably already on board, and that's worth the same as an in profit Reddit? Smoke and mirrors right enough. All while Trump gets around to adding bibles to his list of scams, you can get a Trump bible, his favourite book as he says in his spiel for it which can be seen in this clip. But everybody knows it's Trumps favourite book that he's never read. There's also a Trump cologne for about $100, cover up the reek when you fill the diaper. 'Trump Bibles': Former president is selling 'God Bless the USA' Bibles in latest cash grab "We must make America pray again,” Donald Trump said in an ad for his latest branded merchandise, a Trump-endorsed Bible. {He meant to say we must make America pay again} Edited March 27 by JFK-1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikey1874 Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 I know there are lots of doubts about the court cases including pro Trump jury members. But it's starting to close in on him. The massive Biden campaign fund advantage included. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maple Leaf Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 2 hours ago, Mikey1874 said: I know there are lots of doubts about the court cases including pro Trump jury members. But it's starting to close in on him. The massive Biden campaign fund advantage included. Perhaps. But if he wins the election, all the federal cases against him will be closed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulysses Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 13 minutes ago, Maple Leaf said: Perhaps. But if he wins the election, all the federal cases against him will be closed. 47% Trump, 48% Biden, 5% others including RFK. Electoral College win for Trump. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watt-Zeefuik Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 1 hour ago, Ulysses said: 47% Trump, 48% Biden, 5% others including RFK. Electoral College win for Trump. Still projecting November results from March polls? Thought we'd been over this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watt-Zeefuik Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 (edited) https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/democrat-marilyn-lands-wins-alabama-special-election-ivf-abortion-righ-rcna145210 Special elections, on the other hand, tend to be moderately good predictors of general elections. State house seat that had been held by Republicans for decades became available when the incumbent committed fraud. The district was won by Trump in 2020 and had been carried by Republicans by a 7% margin in 2022. The Democrat just won by 25 points by campaigning against the no-exceptions abortion and IVF ban the Alabama legislature passed in the wake of the Dobbs decision. It was admittedly a low turnout election but it's yet another special election the Democrats have won in reliably Republican territory. Edited March 27 by Watt-Zeefuik Better news link Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulysses Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 9 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said: Still projecting November results from March polls? Thought we'd been over this. I remember. I felt I learned a fair bit from the exchange, though perhaps not in the way you might think or I might have expected to. I also seem to recall that some of your approach to data analysis seemed a bit unorthodox to me, but each to their own. You said on this thread that Trump can't score more than 47-48. I'm agreeing with you. In fact, I'm estimating that he won't make 48. You said a third candidate could be trouble for Biden, because they'd give people options to vote against him without voting for Trump. I'm also agreeing with that. Leaving aside the data for a moment, there's something you should take into account. I'm on the same side as you are. In other words, I want Trump to lose, I would prefer if the Democrats had a better candidate, and you are in agreement with both of those positions. It's said that the left seeks traitors while the right seeks converts. I'd ask you to keep that in mind if you're replying - though I acknowledge how difficult it may be to do that in the increasingly polarised, febrile and confrontational atmosphere of American partisan politics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulysses Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 52 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said: The Democrat just won by 25 points by campaigning against the no-exceptions abortion and IVF ban the Alabama legislature passed in the wake of the Dobbs decision. Related but unrelated point (IYSWIM). Has any pro-choice measure put to a ballot of voters been defeated? The public seems to be a little bit ahead of the politicians on this issue (he said, at a distance of several thousand km). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watt-Zeefuik Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 2 hours ago, Ulysses said: Related but unrelated point (IYSWIM). Has any pro-choice measure put to a ballot of voters been defeated? The public seems to be a little bit ahead of the politicians on this issue (he said, at a distance of several thousand km). Not to my recollection, and yes, the public are way ahead of the politicians on this. The kind of abortion bans that are going into place generally get polled at like 70–30 against in most places, and even in red states are at best even. Once again, it’s the hard core of the GOP that forces its party that way, and then the national political conversation focuses on “both sides“ and we end up where we are today. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watt-Zeefuik Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 2 hours ago, Ulysses said: I remember. I felt I learned a fair bit from the exchange, though perhaps not in the way you might think or I might have expected to. I also seem to recall that some of your approach to data analysis seemed a bit unorthodox to me, but each to their own. You said on this thread that Trump can't score more than 47-48. I'm agreeing with you. In fact, I'm estimating that he won't make 48. You said a third candidate could be trouble for Biden, because they'd give people options to vote against him without voting for Trump. I'm also agreeing with that. Leaving aside the data for a moment, there's something you should take into account. I'm on the same side as you are. In other words, I want Trump to lose, I would prefer if the Democrats had a better candidate, and you are in agreement with both of those positions. It's said that the left seeks traitors while the right seeks converts. I'd ask you to keep that in mind if you're replying - though I acknowledge how difficult it may be to do that in the increasingly polarised, febrile and confrontational atmosphere of American partisan politics. I’ve never really questioned whether we were largely on the same side, using broad strokes. My frustration with that exchange was largely down to the fact that you kept responding to points that I wasn’t making and ignoring the points that I was making. As I said above earlier this week, I think, polls in March are perfectly fine as a barometer of the way the wind is blowing at the moment. Fortunately since the state of the union address, Biden appears to have picked up between 2 to 4 percentage points on Trump, and improved his favorability rating moderately. That’s not enough and it could easily be reversed, but it’s a good sign for now. In terms of what they say about November, again as I mentioned, the average change from March to November 7 points, which means that the confidence intervals are out at like 12 to 15 points. So based on polls alone, each candidate winning in a landslide is still fully possible. and while any predictive measure is drowning in uncertainty in terms of making predictions about who will win, there’s a lot of other metrics to go on for now. For one, it’s not unheard of but it is still unusual for independent and third-party candidates to pull anywhere close to 5%. Yes, it happens, but one can usually expect third-party vote shares to decrease significantly between now and the election. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulysses Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 37 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said: I’ve never really questioned whether we were largely on the same side, using broad strokes. My frustration with that exchange was largely down to the fact that you kept responding to points that I wasn’t making and ignoring the points that I was making. I'll confine myself to remarking that your assessment of the degree of frustration in the exchange might be a bit one-sided. 37 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said: As I said above earlier this week, I think, polls in March are perfectly fine as a barometer of the way the wind is blowing at the moment. Fortunately since the state of the union address, Biden appears to have picked up between 2 to 4 percentage points on Trump, and improved his favorability rating moderately. That’s not enough and it could easily be reversed, but it’s a good sign for now. Agreed. However, recent history shows that in the last two Presidential elections and three mid-terms, the overall shift between March polls and November results was negligible at a national level. That's not me expressing my opinion; it's what poll tracking shows. 37 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said: In terms of what they say about November, again as I mentioned, the average change from March to November 7 points, which means that the confidence intervals are out at like 12 to 15 points. So based on polls alone, each candidate winning in a landslide is still fully possible. You posted something about this before, by some fella with a good reputation for letting the numbers do the work. I read it, and please don't take this the wrong way but it was a disappointing read. I thought he was going to explain why the point I've just made above was erroneous - the one about not seeing big changes between March polls and November outcomes. But just as I thought he was about to get there, he said something, almost glossing over it, that undermined his argument. He said that races that tended to lean towards a party in springtime polling also tended to lean that way come the election. I didn't go through every contest going back to 2014 (I'm not THAT stupid or crazy), but I had a random look at about a dozen. They ALL stayed the same. Even if the margin of victory changed, the party in front in the polls in springtime was the winner in November. I'm not going to spend hours going through every race, but it would be an interesting exercise for a researcher to undertake. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the overwhelming majority of contests followed the same pattern. 56 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said: and while any predictive measure is drowning in uncertainty in terms of making predictions about who will win, there’s a lot of other metrics to go on for now. For one, it’s not unheard of but it is still unusual for independent and third-party candidates to pull anywhere close to 5%. Yes, it happens, but one can usually expect third-party vote shares to decrease significantly between now and the election. Agreed, but it's worth keeping two points in mind. First, and again please don't take this the wrong way, it was you rather than I who raised the spectre of a third party candidate shaving off a small fraction of Biden's vote, but enough to swing the Electoral College to Trump. You must have done so with good reason. The other one relates to customer experience surveys. You know those ones where they ask you lots of questions about your experience of a service, including one near the end where they ask how likely it is that you'd recommend them to a friend? I worked with a couple of businesses who did those surveys. They only cared about the recommendation question. If that metric went arseways, they looked at the other questions to see what was going wrong. The voting preference question is the equivalent of the recommendation question, and right now the Biden score isn't good enough - just as Trump's wasn't good enough in 2020 and Clinton's wasn't good enough in 2016. In and of itself that's not disastrous, but the fact is that over the last 10 years campaigns have made very little difference to the overall outcome of elections. Obama beat Romney comfortably in 2012 when polling data for the entire campaign suggested it would be neck-and-neck. Since then, if you'd looked at national poll trackers in March and taken a bet on the November results, you'd have been close each time. Trump beating Clinton so badly in the Electoral College was a surprise, but the popular vote margin in November wasn't far off what the polls were saying in March. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikey1874 Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 Previous polls and subsequent election results didn't have the criminal conviction of one of the candidates. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulysses Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 6 minutes ago, Mikey1874 said: Previous polls and subsequent election results didn't have the criminal conviction of one of the candidates. This election doesn't either. It might yet, but that remains to be seen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watt-Zeefuik Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 (edited) TL;DR: This got way longer than I intended. It all basically boils down to the last paragraph which I'll also put in bold because who has the time to read all this, but anyway . . . 53 minutes ago, Ulysses said: I'll confine myself to remarking that your assessment of the degree of frustration in the exchange might be a bit one-sided. Naturally, I only know my side of the exchange. You have your own assessment of it, surely, in that I only meant to clarify I never thought I was arguing with a Trump supporter. I will say you continuing to insist that there was no evidence of polling bias (and I mean statistical bias, as in error in one direction, not malice or incompetence on the part of the pollsters), after I'd posted a link to a very comprehensive study showing exactly that from Vanderbilt University, was probably the most frustrating bit. I realize you're doing your own glances at polling averages and aren't seeing it but surely you must see that's not the same as a comprehensive survey of polls. I don't want to relitigate dead posts but the same point is coming around here in looking at 2016 and 2020 . . . 53 minutes ago, Ulysses said: Agreed. However, recent history shows that in the last two Presidential elections and three mid-terms, the overall shift between March polls and November results was negligible at a national level. That's not me expressing my opinion; it's what poll tracking shows. This is a lot of where the open question is. Basically, is there something different about Donald Trump which defies the trends involving every other candidate? Because there very well might be. He's never run for political office except President, he won once and narrowly lost once both losing the popular vote rather badly, which is unheard of, and the GOP is being slowly but steadily turned into a MAGA personality cult. Those are not normal circumstances. So when looking for precedent, do we go with what's happened with "normal" elections, or with Trump elections? And how do we deal with one being the first with a female major party nominee and one being in the middle of a pandemic? One hypothesis is that the two Trump campaigns were statistical outliers skewed by the crazy shit like the Comey email in 2016 and the pandemic in 2020, and what we should be operating off of is taking those as just two data points among the lot. And there's some support for this: in some ways the Biden message in 2020 was, "calm the **** down, Democrats, this is just a normal election and I'm good at those, I'm going to run it in a normal way and not a hair-on-fire (or "super data-driven" like HRC did) way" and he basically methodically put a highly abnormal President out of office. The other is that this election is a referendum on Donald Trump who is such an outsized personality that he changes the rules for any election he's in, and Biden being behind in March polls is a serious problem and unless something changes he's headed for defeat. Here's that article about March polls and November results. Basically two results being roughly correct doesn't show continual narrowing (because n=2 is pretty damn meaningless in any statistical analysis, and midterm elections are always different than presidentials) https://wapo.st/42PgMak I will say that I lean towards the first view because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but Trump has been somewhat extraordinary. But I think the preponderance of evidence still points in terms of assuming that the polls can and will move significantly before November. Effectively to assume otherwise, you have to insist on a "Trump trumps everything else" effect. There's definitely an argument to make there, but I think it requires a lot more than just looking at 2016 and 2020 poll averages. 53 minutes ago, Ulysses said: You posted something about this before, by some fella with a good reputation for letting the numbers do the work. I read it, and please don't take this the wrong way but it was a disappointing read. I thought he was going to explain why the point I've just made above was erroneous - the one about not seeing big changes between March polls and November outcomes. But just as I thought he was about to get there, he said something, almost glossing over it, that undermined his argument. He said that races that tended to lean towards a party in springtime polling also tended to lean that way come the election. I didn't go through every contest going back to 2014 (I'm not THAT stupid or crazy), but I had a random look at about a dozen. They ALL stayed the same. Even if the margin of victory changed, the party in front in the polls in springtime was the winner in November. I'm not going to spend hours going through every race, but it would be an interesting exercise for a researcher to undertake. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the overwhelming majority of contests followed the same pattern. I'm not sure who it was (and couldn't find it in 2 minutes of looking) but someone else shared the video of one of the guys who does the economics-based models of results (I forget if it was Ray Fair or someone else). Basically they've developed models which pick the winner with absurd levels of accuracy for every Presidential campaign going back to the Civil War. The modeling is complicated but the premise is simple: all Presidential elections are referenda on the incumbent party. If the country is doing well on a composite of measures, voters tend to pick the incumbent party. If it's not doing well, they tend to pick the challenger. This tends to overwhelm points of personality, campaign competence, and all these other things. Basically these folks say they can ignore all the to-do and pick the winner (and to a lesser extent the margin) just based on fundamentals. And those guys, while waiting to make a formal pick, are hinting that the fundamentals look good for Biden right now. What is extra-weird about this election is that voters are choosing between a current President and his predecessor. That's happened a couple times before but not in 100 years. 53 minutes ago, Ulysses said: Agreed, but it's worth keeping two points in mind. First, and again please don't take this the wrong way, it was you rather than I who raised the spectre of a third party candidate shaving off a small fraction of Biden's vote, but enough to swing the Electoral College to Trump. You must have done so with good reason. The other one relates to customer experience surveys. You know those ones where they ask you lots of questions about your experience of a service, including one near the end where they ask how likely it is that you'd recommend them to a friend? I worked with a couple of businesses who did those surveys. They only cared about the recommendation question. If that metric went arseways, they looked at the other questions to see what was going wrong. The voting preference question is the equivalent of the recommendation question, and right now the Biden score isn't good enough - just as Trump's wasn't good enough in 2020 and Clinton's wasn't good enough in 2016. In and of itself that's not disastrous, but the fact is that over the last 10 years campaigns have made very little difference to the overall outcome of elections. Obama beat Romney comfortably in 2012 when polling data for the entire campaign suggested it would be neck-and-neck. Since then, if you'd looked at national poll trackers in March and taken a bet on the November results, you'd have been close each time. Trump beating Clinton so badly in the Electoral College was a surprise, but the popular vote margin in November wasn't far off what the polls were saying in March. If it sounds like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth here, I'll try to be clear: I don't think the election is in the bag for Biden at all, and there are a lot of reasons to be extremely worried. But March polls are just not one of them IMO, and it's silly to look at them at this point. I'd be saying that if Biden were up 10 or down 5. Their relevance, and the big reasons to worry, are directly related to the issue I mentioned just above: that US Presidential elections are referenda on the incumbent party. People being unconvinced by Biden is the big issue. But they're going to go by their impressions in October not in March, and those can (and very often do) change, and if they don't change, there's usually a pretty obvious reason. My best assessment of the state of the race right now is that the US (me included) is largely exhausted by the last 8 years and isn't really enthusiastic about anything, including the President. (This shows up in nearly every quantitative measure, not just election polls: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/living-in-the-everything-sucks-era-at-least-for-now/sharetoken/G7i0344uh8rY) As usual, a lot of the country still isn't paying close attention to the election yet, and as much as they are, there's still frustration about inflation that isn't happening now but did recently. That and the war in Gaza that has infuriated a lot of his base are causing Biden problems now, and despite Trump's ongoing nonsense, it's still very possible to largely ignore him at the moment. The thing is, there's one big unknown (the nexus of economy, jobs, and inflation) that could go either way, but pretty much every other thing that could influence the election seems likely to shift for Biden. * He's raising way more money. * The DNC is raising way more money than the RNC * Trump just fired 2/3 of the most competent people at the RNC * He's not scrambling to pay 9-figure fines. * He's not going to spend the next year in and out of criminal court. * The economy continues to grow and inflation continues to ease. * He's run more campaigns and has more experienced staff. * He's got the mother of all wedge issues to use against him (abortion bans, which Trump basically caused with his SCOTUS picks and are the reason a decent chunk of his base likes him but are enormously unpopular with the general public). * His biggest negative issue (the perception that he's senile) is pretty easy to fight just by showing up and doing what he did in the SOTU address. * His second biggest negative (Gaza) is hopefully going to fade from view a bit in a few months. So based on all that, it's hard for me not to say, "yeah, something could always upset the apple cart, but right now I think Biden's going to win." The reason to worry isn't an insufficient gap in the polls, it's that the less likely but still very possible chance that Trump wins is so utterly catastrophic. And while I think it's more likely this behaves like a normal election, there's decent reasons why it might not be. Edited March 27 by Watt-Zeefuik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulysses Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 ^^^^ I don't know if I used the expression "monologues in parallel" before, but I'll use it now. There's a lot in the post, both to agree and argue with. But it actually doesn't address what I said, or why I said it. Someone posted to say that opinion polls are unreliable. I explained that they aren't, and why they aren't. I also set out what the numbers said, when they said them, and why that demonstrates that - with the exception of the 2012 Presidential election - polls and poll trackers in the days before elections gave a solid indication of what the results were going to be. Moreover, I also explained that there's been a reasonably consistent trend since 2014 where the polls 6-8 months ahead of elections were very similar to the outcomes on polling day. I didn't pull those out of thin air. For all I know the methodology could have been hopelessly crap, but the numbers matched up to the actual results as well as anyone could expect opinion polls to do. And ultimately that is the only test that really matters. If the weather bureau predicts it'll be cool and wet tomorrow, and it's cool and wet tomorrow, that's a good forecast. Likewise, if a poll says you'll beat me in tomorrow's election and you do, that's a good forecast - even if we could spend hours afterwards arguing about whether the pollster's methodology was good enough. The numbers are there, they're not fake, and I can't help what they say. If they said something different I'd be making a different argument, because that's what I should do. Telling me to look elsewhere doesn't change that data. As for the rest? That's politics, not psephology. The candidates have to have their campaigns, and we have to believe they can make a difference. But the numbers show that in the 2016 and 2020 elections the overall national preferences in early November were very close to what they were in March. That doesn't mean that the situation can't change in the 2024 campaign; it simply means that it didn't the last two times out. It also doesn't mean that you can use a poll today to say how an election will go in several months from now. I've never claimed that, and if you're arguing against it then your argument is with someone else. But it is a comment on how little the dial was moved by the campaigns in 2020 and 2016. Finally, there's one poll tracker I tend to look at more than others. It may well be that the others were more wide of the mark than the one I know best, though I don't recall noticing that. If they are, it should be a simple matter to show that they got the numbers wrong in November 2020 and November 2016. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maple Leaf Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watt-Zeefuik Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 3 hours ago, Ulysses said: ^^^^ I don't know if I used the expression "monologues in parallel" before, but I'll use it now. There's a lot in the post, both to agree and argue with. But it actually doesn't address what I said, or why I said it. Someone posted to say that opinion polls are unreliable. I explained that they aren't, and why they aren't. I also set out what the numbers said, when they said them, and why that demonstrates that - with the exception of the 2012 Presidential election - polls and poll trackers in the days before elections gave a solid indication of what the results were going to be. Moreover, I also explained that there's been a reasonably consistent trend since 2014 where the polls 6-8 months ahead of elections were very similar to the outcomes on polling day. I didn't pull those out of thin air. For all I know the methodology could have been hopelessly crap, but the numbers matched up to the actual results as well as anyone could expect opinion polls to do. And ultimately that is the only test that really matters. If the weather bureau predicts it'll be cool and wet tomorrow, and it's cool and wet tomorrow, that's a good forecast. Likewise, if a poll says you'll beat me in tomorrow's election and you do, that's a good forecast - even if we could spend hours afterwards arguing about whether the pollster's methodology was good enough. The numbers are there, they're not fake, and I can't help what they say. If they said something different I'd be making a different argument, because that's what I should do. Telling me to look elsewhere doesn't change that data. As for the rest? That's politics, not psephology. The candidates have to have their campaigns, and we have to believe they can make a difference. But the numbers show that in the 2016 and 2020 elections the overall national preferences in early November were very close to what they were in March. That doesn't mean that the situation can't change in the 2024 campaign; it simply means that it didn't the last two times out. It also doesn't mean that you can use a poll today to say how an election will go in several months from now. I've never claimed that, and if you're arguing against it then your argument is with someone else. But it is a comment on how little the dial was moved by the campaigns in 2020 and 2016. Finally, there's one poll tracker I tend to look at more than others. It may well be that the others were more wide of the mark than the one I know best, though I don't recall noticing that. If they are, it should be a simple matter to show that they got the numbers wrong in November 2020 and November 2016. Yeah, admittedly a lot of what I was writing was trying to show what I think is actually predictive. I'm doing that to put down a marker for where I am, not just pick at where I think you're mistaken. And the "fundamentals" models aren't just politics, they're quantitative predictions based on numerical metrics. It's a different set of numbers, and it has a significantly stronger record in being predictive. But to return to your specific points, there's just a few things to unpack. First, let's talk about pre-election polling in 2016 and 2020. There were big polling errors in 2020. I mean, there just were, and if you don't see them in some poll aggregator you found, you've by some chance just hit on the ones that didn't miss. Saying otherwise is up-is-down stuff. I just have to keep pointing to this particular study. It says exactly what you keep asking for. https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2021/07/19/pre-election-polls-in-2020-had-the-largest-errors-in-40-years/ But that's hardly the only place saying it. It was literally every major political outlet and poll analysis outfit in the country all saying the same thing. https://theconversation.com/survey-experts-have-yet-to-figure-out-what-caused-the-most-significant-polling-error-in-40-years-in-trump-biden-race-160967 https://theconversation.com/an-embarrassing-failure-for-election-pollsters-149499 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/18/pollsters-2020-polls-all-wrong-500050 Even pieces arguing for the value in polls acknowledge it. https://www.vanderbilt.edu/unity/2021/01/11/polling-problems-and-why-we-should-still-trust-some-polls/ Quote Another election, another apparent miss by too many of the pre-election polls that drove election coverage throughout the 2020 cycle. Official post-mortems are actively underway, but pre-election polls clearly understated support for Republicans across the country. So, what does this mean for polling? . . . After the 2016 election, it was clear that there were problems with pre-election polls. Putting aside whether pre-election polls should be used to make such projections, the 2016 election outcome caused great soul-searching among pollsters and several reasons for the relatively poor performance of state-level polls were identified: late-deciding voters in the critical swing states unexpectedly choose President Trump by large margins, many state-level polls failed to account for the relationship between education and vote choice, and the polls in several close states failed to correctly predict the electorate's size and composition. And that's polling IMMEDIATELY BEFORE the election having those problems. So setting aside those polling problems, let's talk about the change from March. Here's a cool animation from that WaPo article that shows that even in 2016 and 2020, the average difference from March to results polls was 4 points, and those March polls were unusually accurate. Why am I bringing this back up? Because you keep posting things like this. 13 hours ago, Ulysses said: 47% Trump, 48% Biden, 5% others including RFK. Electoral College win for Trump. As you say, the numbers are the numbers. But I still say the proper response to a poll average like this is, "who the **** cares?" Unless there's a 10 point lead either way, the only thing this says is that the race is still up for grabs. Movements of a point or two in any direction, in terms of what it predicts for November, are, let me stress, utterly meaningless. This is not a diss on polls. It's what any decent pollster will happily tell you. Are the polls in and of themselves utterly meaningless? No, for one thing we've seen a 2-4 point swing to Biden since the SOTU. That's interesting in terms of what's moved it. But it doesn't even say much about "if the election were tomorrow" because if the election were tomorrow, I'd have canvassers knocking on my door and every video on the web would start with two political ads. It's like saying, "if Hearts played our Conference Groups tomorrow, we'd be in trouble because Kent and Halkett are still not 100%, so we need an emergency loan now to stay in Europe." If I said that on the Terraces side, I'd get two pages of WTF responses. Beyond that, the far, far more important numbers to look at in terms of predicting November are the Federal Reserve's interest rates, the overall core inflation rate, the price of gas, unemployment, household savings, and the overall homelessness rate. It's unlikely to happen quite this clearly, but if you told me now that every single one of those move in strongly positive directions (like let's pretend gas drops below $3/gallon, core inflation is 2.5% or lower, and the federal funds rate drops below 4%), I would buy 10:1 odds on a Biden win, even if he somehow drools on stage at a debate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulysses Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 25 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said: Yeah, admittedly a lot of what I was writing was trying to show what I think is actually predictive. I'm doing that to put down a marker for where I am, not just pick at where I think you're mistaken. And the "fundamentals" models aren't just politics, they're quantitative predictions based on numerical metrics. It's a different set of numbers, and it has a significantly stronger record in being predictive. But to return to your specific points, there's just a few things to unpack. First, let's talk about pre-election polling in 2016 and 2020. There were big polling errors in 2020. I mean, there just were, and if you don't see them in some poll aggregator you found, you've by some chance just hit on the ones that didn't miss. Saying otherwise is up-is-down stuff. I just have to keep pointing to this particular study. It says exactly what you keep asking for. https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2021/07/19/pre-election-polls-in-2020-had-the-largest-errors-in-40-years/ But that's hardly the only place saying it. It was literally every major political outlet and poll analysis outfit in the country all saying the same thing. https://theconversation.com/survey-experts-have-yet-to-figure-out-what-caused-the-most-significant-polling-error-in-40-years-in-trump-biden-race-160967 https://theconversation.com/an-embarrassing-failure-for-election-pollsters-149499 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/18/pollsters-2020-polls-all-wrong-500050 Even pieces arguing for the value in polls acknowledge it. https://www.vanderbilt.edu/unity/2021/01/11/polling-problems-and-why-we-should-still-trust-some-polls/ And that's polling IMMEDIATELY BEFORE the election having those problems. So setting aside those polling problems, let's talk about the change from March. Here's a cool animation from that WaPo article that shows that even in 2016 and 2020, the average difference from March to results polls was 4 points, and those March polls were unusually accurate. Why am I bringing this back up? Because you keep posting things like this. As you say, the numbers are the numbers. But I still say the proper response to a poll average like this is, "who the **** cares?" Unless there's a 10 point lead either way, the only thing this says is that the race is still up for grabs. Movements of a point or two in any direction, in terms of what it predicts for November, are, let me stress, utterly meaningless. This is not a diss on polls. It's what any decent pollster will happily tell you. Are the polls in and of themselves utterly meaningless? No, for one thing we've seen a 2-4 point swing to Biden since the SOTU. That's interesting in terms of what's moved it. But it doesn't even say much about "if the election were tomorrow" because if the election were tomorrow, I'd have canvassers knocking on my door and every video on the web would start with two political ads. It's like saying, "if Hearts played our Conference Groups tomorrow, we'd be in trouble because Kent and Halkett are still not 100%, so we need an emergency loan now to stay in Europe." If I said that on the Terraces side, I'd get two pages of WTF responses. Beyond that, the far, far more important numbers to look at in terms of predicting November are the Federal Reserve's interest rates, the overall core inflation rate, the price of gas, unemployment, household savings, and the overall homelessness rate. It's unlikely to happen quite this clearly, but if you told me now that every single one of those move in strongly positive directions (like let's pretend gas drops below $3/gallon, core inflation is 2.5% or lower, and the federal funds rate drops below 4%), I would buy 10:1 odds on a Biden win, even if he somehow drools on stage at a debate. I'll try a different angle. I looked up a rake of state polling averages from RCP's trackers for 2016 and 2020. I found that most predicted who would win the "battleground states" accurately. But not always, especially in 2016 when the margins in many of the opinion polls were very fine, so any deviation in the election results could easily tip a 50-50 one way or the other. Let's face it, the extent of Clinton's Electoral College loss was statistically remarkable given her lead in the popular vote. In other words, I did indeed find many cases where polls didn't reflect the final popular vote percentages accurately, but in most cases they picked up the winner. When they didn't, every error except two involved Trump outperforming expectations - Georgia in 2020 and Nevada in 2016. That's as far as I can see (it's late here), so feel free to add anything else you find to the list. So if we accept that polling is tricky and errors/biases possible, we also have to accept that time and time again in 2020 and 2016 the errors and biases understated Trump's position and overstated the Democratic nominees. If we in turn accept those, we have to ask ourselves what reason do either of us have for believing that the pollsters have fixed their errors and biases so that Trump's position is accurately reflected? Because if they haven't, not only is Trump ahead of Biden in popular support, but he may well be even more ahead than those polls are telling us. Why does that matter? Because, notwithstanding your point about what might happen in the campaign, the numbers suggest that the campaigns in 2016 and 2020 didn't really move the dial at all. I refer you back to RCP's trackers. In both 2016 and 2020, there were marginal changes nationally between early March and the election itself. Things zigzagged up and down a bit throughout the months, but in the end they more or less ended up where they'd been in early March. Such shifts as there were by early November were all in the same direction, favouring Trump. Of course it might be different this time, but it also might not. I also don't know why you have to say "utterly meaningless" slowly and in a loud voice as if I were a pensioner. I keep telling you I know what the polls mean. The reason I posted those percentages is because right now that's something I can really see happening. You said yourself you see Trump maxing at 47-48%, and because of the support of committed Republicans you know he won't score much less than that. The latest 5-way polls show Kennedy running at 10-ish percent, taking support from both main parties, but more from Biden. Even allowing for that to fade as campaigning gets under way, it's not that crazy to suggest 5% for the various "other" candidates. If Trump scores 47% in that scenario, there's only 48% left for Biden, and a 1% lead in the popular vote isn't enough for Biden to win the College. So it's an imagined scenario, and an unpleasant one, but it's not at all outlandish. As for Biden in the polls, I've said before that there's often a lag between when economic good stuff happens and that being reflected in support for the incumbent. For that reason, I said I'd like to see what the polls are saying in or about the middle of May, at which point I'll see where to wager my $1,000. But I repeat, he'd want to shift his arse and get into the lead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikey1874 Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 The problem here for Biden and the good news for Trump is inflation which more than wiped this out. Inflation coming down though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watt-Zeefuik Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 10 hours ago, Ulysses said: I'll try a different angle. I looked up a rake of state polling averages from RCP's trackers for 2016 and 2020. I found that most predicted who would win the "battleground states" accurately. But not always, especially in 2016 when the margins in many of the opinion polls were very fine, so any deviation in the election results could easily tip a 50-50 one way or the other. Let's face it, the extent of Clinton's Electoral College loss was statistically remarkable given her lead in the popular vote. In other words, I did indeed find many cases where polls didn't reflect the final popular vote percentages accurately, but in most cases they picked up the winner. When they didn't, every error except two involved Trump outperforming expectations - Georgia in 2020 and Nevada in 2016. That's as far as I can see (it's late here), so feel free to add anything else you find to the list. So if we accept that polling is tricky and errors/biases possible, we also have to accept that time and time again in 2020 and 2016 the errors and biases understated Trump's position and overstated the Democratic nominees. If we in turn accept those, we have to ask ourselves what reason do either of us have for believing that the pollsters have fixed their errors and biases so that Trump's position is accurately reflected? Because if they haven't, not only is Trump ahead of Biden in popular support, but he may well be even more ahead than those polls are telling us. Why does that matter? Because, notwithstanding your point about what might happen in the campaign, the numbers suggest that the campaigns in 2016 and 2020 didn't really move the dial at all. I refer you back to RCP's trackers. In both 2016 and 2020, there were marginal changes nationally between early March and the election itself. Things zigzagged up and down a bit throughout the months, but in the end they more or less ended up where they'd been in early March. Such shifts as there were by early November were all in the same direction, favouring Trump. Of course it might be different this time, but it also might not. I also don't know why you have to say "utterly meaningless" slowly and in a loud voice as if I were a pensioner. I keep telling you I know what the polls mean. The reason I posted those percentages is because right now that's something I can really see happening. You said yourself you see Trump maxing at 47-48%, and because of the support of committed Republicans you know he won't score much less than that. The latest 5-way polls show Kennedy running at 10-ish percent, taking support from both main parties, but more from Biden. Even allowing for that to fade as campaigning gets under way, it's not that crazy to suggest 5% for the various "other" candidates. If Trump scores 47% in that scenario, there's only 48% left for Biden, and a 1% lead in the popular vote isn't enough for Biden to win the College. So it's an imagined scenario, and an unpleasant one, but it's not at all outlandish. As for Biden in the polls, I've said before that there's often a lag between when economic good stuff happens and that being reflected in support for the incumbent. For that reason, I said I'd like to see what the polls are saying in or about the middle of May, at which point I'll see where to wager my $1,000. But I repeat, he'd want to shift his arse and get into the lead. I bold stuff not to yell, but because I've been in the bad habit of writing way too damn much, and want to pull out the key point. Sorry if it sounded obnoxious, not the intent. I keep posting the studies because it's basically a) a bunch of folks who do this for a living looking at the comprehensive survey of polls, all agreeing that there were misses, versus b) you who've looked at two instances of the RCP tracker and said it looked fine. Beyond that, n=2 of March polls matching finishes has a pretty high probability of just being chance, right? I'm just not seeing a very good argument that because it happened twice most recently, we should ignore everything that happened before. Finally, going from Trump maxing out at 47-48% means there's only 48% left for Biden is kind of misunderstanding what "max" means. It doesn't mean he'll get it. I'd say there's a total of maybe 5-6% of people who are maybe leaning towards Trump right now because they'r not paying attention and they're annoyed about inflation who are "gettable" for Biden. I'd say the reasonable bounds for the the election are between a 3-4% popular vote win for Trump (because of an economic decline or some catastrophe that happens between now and then) all the way to a 12-15% popular vote win for Biden (this likely involves a felony conviction for Trump). Trying to squeeze more precise answer out of the polls right now is just finding pictures in the clouds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulysses Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 51 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said: I bold stuff not to yell, but because I've been in the bad habit of writing way too damn much, and want to pull out the key point. Sorry if it sounded obnoxious, not the intent. Like I said, I'm not a pensioner. Actually, I am, but not in the sense you think when you're "pulling out the key point". 51 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said: I keep posting the studies because it's basically a) a bunch of folks who do this for a living looking at the comprehensive survey of polls, all agreeing that there were misses, versus b) you who've looked at two instances of the RCP tracker and said it looked fine. Beyond that, n=2 of March polls matching finishes has a pretty high probability of just being chance, right? I'm just not seeing a very good argument that because it happened twice most recently, we should ignore everything that happened before. Finally, going from Trump maxing out at 47-48% means there's only 48% left for Biden is kind of misunderstanding what "max" means. It doesn't mean he'll get it. I'd say there's a total of maybe 5-6% of people who are maybe leaning towards Trump right now because they'r not paying attention and they're annoyed about inflation who are "gettable" for Biden. I'd say the reasonable bounds for the the election are between a 3-4% popular vote win for Trump (because of an economic decline or some catastrophe that happens between now and then) all the way to a 12-15% popular vote win for Biden (this likely involves a felony conviction for Trump). Trying to squeeze more precise answer out of the polls right now is just finding pictures in the clouds. Either the polls were a reasonably accurate indication of how things stand, or there was a problem. The evidence is that if there was any problem, it's that polls under-reported the level of support for Trump. I've said where I found figures to support that view, and the figures are easy to verify or counter. So if you want to counter, just point to the places other than Georgia (2020) and Nevada (2016) where Trump lost a state that the late polls suggested he'd win. I pulled out the figures late, so I may well have missed something. Rather than telling me it's wrong, show me. If there isn't a consistent degree of under-reporting of Trump's performance, that's fine. But I'm also saying that we can't have it both ways; the opinion polls can't simultaneously have had errors and been fine. Trump has twice scored almost identical vote percentages (46 and some decimals) in two elections, so it's fair to say that his vote has been stable. If you check my post again you'll see that I didn't say Trump would score his "max". Nor did I say that Biden would be left with 48% because of Trump, so you may be misinterpreting my understanding of "max". Trump as good as killed a load of Americans in the run-up to the 2020 election, and he still scored the highest number of votes ever garnered by a Republican candidate. The core of his base are fanatics, and the rest of the Republican voting bloc are - to say the least - highly unlikely to vote for any of the other candidates, and highly unlikely to stay at home and hand the Democrats a win by default. I'd love to think a felony conviction would torpedo his campaign, but the more I see of American politics the more I doubt that would actually happen. So I'd say the reasonable bounds are between a 2-ish% popular vote win for Trump and a 4-ish% win for Biden, mainly because I don't think any of the "catastrophe" events you refer to will happen for either candidate. I've said already that I'm waiting to see how Biden's polling is in May, but I am certain he is running behind Trump at the moment and he needs to turn that around. You mention who's paying attention and who's not, but for the reasons I've already mentioned I think 90 percent or more of voters have already made their minds up. They might start to rethink if third-party candidates gain any traction in this campaign. But if that happens, particularly in the case of Kennedy, it will do more harm to Biden than Trump. In that regard today's confirmation that Christie won't mount a run also benefits Trump. That's why the bookies are favouring Trump at the moment, and those feckers are usually a good indicator. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watt-Zeefuik Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 2 hours ago, Ulysses said: Like I said, I'm not a pensioner. Actually, I am, but not in the sense you think when you're "pulling out the key point". Either the polls were a reasonably accurate indication of how things stand, or there was a problem. The evidence is that if there was any problem, it's that polls under-reported the level of support for Trump. I've said where I found figures to support that view, and the figures are easy to verify or counter. So if you want to counter, just point to the places other than Georgia (2020) and Nevada (2016) where Trump lost a state that the late polls suggested he'd win. I pulled out the figures late, so I may well have missed something. Rather than telling me it's wrong, show me. If there isn't a consistent degree of under-reporting of Trump's performance, that's fine. But I'm also saying that we can't have it both ways; the opinion polls can't simultaneously have had errors and been fine. I don't know how I can "show you" more than posting links to academic studies that do exactly that. I mean, what do you want, me to do a book report on each of them? Yes, the errors in 2016 and 2020 were underestimating Trump's support. In 2022 it was underestimating Democratic support. It's why those links are all about pollsters re-examining their methods (as they do after every election but particularly after these). Since then, special elections are notoriously hard to poll, but Democrats keep doing better than polling and better than expected. 2 hours ago, Ulysses said: Trump as good as killed a load of Americans in the run-up to the 2020 election, and he still scored the highest number of votes ever garnered by a Republican candidate. The core of his base are fanatics, and the rest of the Republican voting bloc are - to say the least - highly unlikely to vote for any of the other candidates, and highly unlikely to stay at home and hand the Democrats a win by default. I'd love to think a felony conviction would torpedo his campaign, but the more I see of American politics the more I doubt that would actually happen. So I'd say the reasonable bounds are between a 2-ish% popular vote win for Trump and a 4-ish% win for Biden, mainly because I don't think any of the "catastrophe" events you refer to will happen for either candidate. I've said already that I'm waiting to see how Biden's polling is in May, but I am certain he is running behind Trump at the moment and he needs to turn that around. You mention who's paying attention and who's not, but for the reasons I've already mentioned I think 90 percent or more of voters have already made their minds up. They might start to rethink if third-party candidates gain any traction in this campaign. But if that happens, particularly in the case of Kennedy, it will do more harm to Biden than Trump. In that regard today's confirmation that Christie won't mount a run also benefits Trump. That's why the bookies are favouring Trump at the moment, and those feckers are usually a good indicator. I disagree on three accounts. Trump's favorability rating in polling average is 42.6%. That's his coalition of reactionary evangelical Christians, white nationalists, QAnons, and so forth, plus a small handful that don't GAF but just like his shitehousery. I'd say that's his floor, although I guess it could go a little lower if he gets a felony conviction. I also don't think the polls show 90% have made up their minds. The pollsters push hard on "leaners" to get a preference but you don't give the candidate you're totally 100% set on a 42% popularity rating. The political chatter continues to be around "double-dislikers," those who don't like either Trump or Biden. Their opinions are largely split and prone to change. There again, the reasons people don't like Biden are well known and addressable, to a degree. Finally, I think the bookies aren't particularly good at prediction, nor are they trying to be. Their job is to split the action and get people putting money on both sides so they get paid no matter who wins. This is why, apologies to Masonic, the Michelle Obama stuff moved in the odds. It became popular among a particular set of paranoid right wingers. It was never, ever a serious possibility to anyone who'd ever heard her talk about how she felt about electoral politics and her time in the White House, or followed anything she's done since they moved out, but in the absence of serious contenders there were dingbats showing up to drop money and they're going to find a way to collect it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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