US Politics XXVIII: But His Laptop From Hell

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I definitely think that is possible. One possibility is that polls aren't accurately depicting how Independents will vote and therefore any conclusions based on the # of ballots received so far from independents/non-affiliated could be materially off. The other is that I haven't seen anything concrete regarding how many of the early votes are comprised of individuals who were going to vote on Nov 3 but for COVID or other reasons vs how many of them are voters who typically do not vote.

Tuesday is going to be wild either way.
Agreed on both sides, and I would caution people who assume that just because people who declare themselves as independents in polls are breaking in big numbers for Biden means that all of those undeclared voters in the actual voting data are breaking for Biden.

Trump has a lot of apolitical supporters who likely didn't register for either party.
 
This is brilliant

CNN’s Brianna Keilar Delivers 7-Minute Takedown Of Donald Trump’s 1950s Worldview


“It’s 2020. Lassie is not coming to save us and June Cleaver is not waiting at home with meatloaf.”


https://youtu.be/DVPLPpnBbFs
 
Monmoth has Biden 50-45 (low turnout) or 51-45 (high turnout) in Florida, while NYT/Siena has Biden Biden 48-45 in NC. Two of the best pollsters out there.
 
As reported by Fox News. He also said he would move to Ireland. Since Ancestry says we are cousins, maybe Bruce could spare a room for me in Ireland.




Bruce Springsteen said the White House is in need of an “exorcism” in the latest installment of his radio show, “From My Home to Yours,” that was focused both on Halloween and the upcoming 2020 election.

The singer, who is a very outspoken critic of President Donald Trump’s and even recently said he would move to Australia if he were reelected, shared clips from his E Street Radio program on SiriusXM in which he criticized the president and first family for their apparent lack of culture and values while in the White House.

“It is time for an exorcism in our nation’s capital,” he begins. “Welcome to our Halloween/Election Day monster mash. This is Vol. 14 of ‘From My Home to Yours’ titled ‘Farewell to the Thief.’ In just a few days, we’ll be throwing the bums out. I thought it was a f---ing nightmare but it was so true.”


In a separate clip, Springsteen gave a lengthy monologue that insulted the first family for not demonstrating any moments of levity, comparing them to past presidents' families like Obama, Bush, Reagan and Kennedy.



“There’s no art in this White House. There’s no literature, no poetry, no music. There are no pets in this White House, no loyal man’s best friend, no Socks the family cat, no kid’s science fairs, no time when the president takes off his blue suit, red tie uniform and becomes human. Except when he puts on his white shirt and khaki pants uniform and hides from the American people to play golf,” he says. “There are no images of the first family enjoying themselves together in a moment of relaxation. No Obamas on the beach in Hawaii moments, or Bushes fishing in Kennebunkport, no Reagans on horseback, no Kennedys playing touch football on the Cape.”


Springsteen added: “Where did that country go? Where did all the fun, the joy and the expression of love and happiness go?

He concludes the audio clips from the episode by lamenting the loss of what he believed made “American great” before telling his listeners to vote Trump out of office on Nov. 3.



“We are rudderless and joyless. We have lost the cultural aspects of society that make America great. We have lost our mojo, our fun, our happiness, our cheering on of others,” he said. “The shared experience of humanity that makes it all worth it. The challenges and the triumph that we shared and celebrated. The unique can-do spirit that America has always been known for. We are lost. We’ve lost so much in so short a time. On Nov. 3, vote them out.”
 
General polling question. Obviously we know pollsters have adjusted based on how 2016 turned out. I'm wondering if perhaps they have OVER adjusted, thereby inflating how Trump is doing in certain areas. Thoughts?

Combined with unprecedented turnout thus far, this could be a bloodbath if the case.

There is that possibility. People don't ever mention that polls were off in 2012 as well. But in 2012 it as a very close race, Obama outperformed the polls and so it wasn't a shocking moment. So we hope that the fix in education weighting has helped them to be more accurate, but there is always a question as to how effective that will be. Some have said that those changes have resulted in Biden looking worse with Hispanics but a bit better with white voters. I dunno.

But I have stated many times that I think Biden will outperform the polls. I hope that's the case, but then have to temper that with voting complications. So many mail ballots will result in more votes being rejected, which will have an effect. Half a percent? more? Again, no one knows. thrown in other shenanigans and court rulings and I just hope Biden outperforms enough to counter them.

anitram makes a good point about independent voters. You get a lot of different numbers here. Some states Biden is winning them by 20, some by 5. You could guess that northern state ind. voters swing a bit harder to Biden than the southern ones. Either way, they are not split down the middle. I think Biden is winning them in every state by varying degrees.
I keep bringing up Ind. voters cause I think it's really important. They make up about a third of the electorate and when people are looking at ballot returns by party, they often forget about the ind's.
I do think the polls have been pretty good about having representative samples of ind. voters, so not sure it throws polling off much.

I still think we need to trust the averages. And I also think we have to be careful about what polling aggregators we give credence to.

This is why when looking at the big 3, I would rate them like this.

The Economist
538
RCP

Unfortunately most media outlets use the RCP average to do their reporting. And they are just a place that takes a limited amount of polls, with no reasoning on what polls are included and which aren't, and average them. No real analysis or figuring in "house effect" for different polling houses. They also use polls sponsored by SuperPacs, which The Economist does not allow.

For example the "house effect" for a left-leaning pollster like PPP is about .5 to 1point, Qunnipiac about 1-2. While for the right leaning Trafalgar has about a 5-6 point one. And the problem is that there a LOT more right leaning ones. I think THIS is probably the biggest issue right now in looking at the averages, even more so than if the polling this year is more accurate.

Lets look at PA for example.

The Economist - Biden +6.8
538 - Biden +5.2
RCP - 3.9

So I look at 538 more because I feel it's a bit of a balance between the other two, but I think Economist is probably more accurate

To more directly answer your question, There has been chatter amongst the likes of Nate Silver and Nate Cohn about state pollsters possibly shaving a little bit off their numbers to avoid any big mistakes like 2016. Again, conjecture, but I think we can be somewhat comfortable that the state polling averages we are seeing is fair, accurate and hopefully a little bit low. :D
 
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Aaaaaaand again

https://twitter.com/KSoltisAnderson/status/1321838871387262980

Pennsylvania averages right now are +3.5 Biden (in RCP)? Like I noted, Biden's ahead there, but I don't think I'd classify that as comfortable.

Dave Wasserman's responses:

Let's see...what are the last five polling outfits in the RCP Pennsylvania average the past week? InsiderAdvantage, Trafalgar, Reuters/Ipsos, Fox, Rasmussen.
With the exception of Fox (Biden +5), not exactly the A team.

Would I rather trust those five polls? Or the 20+ October district-level polls I've seen, conducted by both Dem/GOP groups making major $$ decisions, showing Trump running 7-12 points behind his '16 margins in nearly all corners of PA?

Think I'll go with the latter.
 
God help me, I'm starting to believe in Florida. The polling and turnout is good right now, very good, and we can seal this up on election night if they pull through.

But...it's Florida.
 
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God help me, I'm starting to believe in Florida. The polling and turnout is good right now, very good, and we can seal this up on election night if they pull through.

But...it's Florida.

It's like the perennial abusive relationship. Run and save yourself!
 
Over under on the number of ransomware / outages on election night ?

Russia hitting the hospital systems this week causing chaos, could it be a dry run for voting systems ?
 
God help me, I'm starting to believe in Florida. The polling and turnout is good right now, very good, and we can seal this up on election night if they pull through.

But...it's Florida.



I’m just saying... I was literally up and down the whole state the last week in the places that are supposed to be blue. If it goes blue, it’s a silent majority for sure.
 
Just saw a Trump ad on tv. The audio is Biden saying he is going to raise taxes, then it just cuts off. Obviously editing out on people making over 400 K a year.

This is an official Trump ad, not a pac ad. They are desperate.

I've seen that one, too. I also keep seeing GOP ads here where they keep tying the Democratic candidates to Nancy Pelosi and talk about how they're "too liberal" for Iowa and whatnot. There's even a Joni Ernst ad where there's some older guy in a diner who's talking about how he's been a Democrat his entire life, but feels Theresa Greenfield is too liberal for his tastes, and so he's voting for Trump, which, LOL.

(That ad also coincidentally came out after a Greenfield ad a few months back with a farmer who was a Republican talking about how he was voting for Biden. Doesn't exactly speak to Ernst's ability to create great ads if she's just going to copy someone else's.)

Also, speaking of numbers, saw this yesterday regarding Iowa:

https://twitter.com/IAStartingLine/status/1321148941841375238
 
As for FL. There are some positive signs in the polling. But because FL is FL, you can sort of take 2 points off the top towards Reps.

So the polling. I think we have some good things to look at. For the last month (when polls there started to come off of the midsummer high) Biden has had only ONE A or B rated pollster where he was behind.
Also - Right now, Trump is at his highest ever vote share in FL. That vote share is 46.5%. That isn't great. Biden had hit 50 during mid summer. I think this means that Biden some room to grow, and that might be what we are seeing in the polling out today.

A+Mounmouth at +6
A+ Marist at +4
B+ Quinnipiac at +3
and not rated Citizen Data at +5

All but Qunnipiac has Biden's vote share at 50-51. All have Trump between 42-47.

And last, we have a couple other things to consider. Youth turnout is up. They are more likely to be registered independent. And Biden is winning seniors there by 7. A group that Trump won by 17 last time. And they make up almost 25% of the electorate. And probably going to be the biggest crossover in the state of Registered Reps voting for Biden. No Cuban vote is going to make up for that.
Also, Biden is ahead with Hispanics overall in the state by 5-7 points, and they are 27% of the population.

So while FL is very unpredictable, there are some very unpredictable things happening in FL this year that are benefiting Biden to a larger extent than they are Trump. Trump won by only 1.2% over Clinton. So looking at just the senior numbers, it isn't at all crazy to see Biden up 3-5 points. Now take off those couple points I mentioned earlier, and you got yourself a 1-2 point race.
 
To more directly answer your question, There has been chatter amongst the likes of Nate Silver and Nate Cohn about state pollsters possibly shaving a little bit off their numbers to avoid any big mistakes like 2016. Again, conjecture, but I think we can be somewhat comfortable that the state polling averages we are seeing is fair, accurate and hopefully a little bit low. :D

Yeah, this was the essence of my thoughts. Like, when they poll, are they automatically adjusting their REAL numbers because of 2016? Or using a different example, if they encounter someone who isn't responsive to their polling questions, are they assuming that such person is more likely to be a Trump supporter and factoring that into their numbers?

I don't know enough about all of the polling mechanisms used, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's been happening in some capacity.
 
You guys, UPS apparently found Tucker Carlson's documents.

This will sure sink Biden.
 
Yeah, this was the essence of my thoughts. Like, when they poll, are they automatically adjusting their REAL numbers because of 2016? Or using a different example, if they encounter someone who isn't responsive to their polling questions, are they assuming that such person is more likely to be a Trump supporter and factoring that into their numbers?

I don't know enough about all of the polling mechanisms used, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's been happening in some capacity.

IF they were to do that, which is a big if. They would probably just weight their sample a little differently. Maybe make the sample R+4 instead of R+2 for party ID. Not skipping people or manipulating the numbers after the fact, but picking a sample of voters that might give them a slight conservative outcome.
 
You guys, UPS apparently found Tucker Carlson's documents.

This will sure sink Biden.

I loathe Tucker Carlson. Take him, Trump, Miller, Don Jr, Jared, Hannity and throw them on a covid infected cruise ship to nowhere. Throw in Q and Alex Jones too. And Lindsay Graham and Mitch too.
 
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