2018 Midterms

[washing machine]

He's showing the fuck up!

[B]

He's showing the fuck up!

Did Ted Cruz just pay for an ad endoursing Beto?

[McParadigm]

This may be an outlier, but holy shit. Coming on the heels of a 4 point downturn in the president’s popularity, confirmed across several weeks by multiple polls, makes it seem more plausible....as does recent news that republicans are secretly starting to suspect they might lose the Senate.

[McParadigm]

Two things:

1. A lot of speculation is going around about what caused this...the book, the oped, Kavanaugh’s unpopularity, etc. But I think it’s pretty telling that these polls starting to shift after Facebook, which is the leading news source among low information voters, started making efforts to reduce misinformation on its site.

2. My biggest concern is that even a semi-competent handling of the hurricane response will feel like such a massive relief that it will temper some of this.

[tragabigzanda]

FUCK ICE

[McParadigm]

I don’t think that’s an accurate summary at all. Polls in 2016 never had Clinton at much more than a 9 point lead, and the final week of calling showed her at around a +3. She ended up coming out 2.1% ahead. That seems pretty predictive.

Polling is raw data, and doesn’t account for how those votes might be handicapped by gerrymandering or the electoral college...which is why Nate Silver previously said he wouldn’t consider a Democrat takeover of the Senate plausible unless they could manage a 12 point national advantage.

[4/5]

I don’t think that’s an accurate summary at all. Polls in 2016 never had Clinton at much more than a 9 point lead, and the final week of calling showed her at around a +3. She ended up coming out 2.1% ahead. That seems pretty predictive.

Yeah, this.

I also wouldn't underestimate the effect of the exact timing of the polls and the election. That cycle featured some pretty major polling swings following the news cycle and of course the last news that affected voters was that Comey bit which sent Clinton's numbers into a nosedive. I think it's very possible that Hillary would have won if the election were the day before Comey's attention grab (or barring new news maybe a week or so after the election once that proclamation became old news), and I think it's also likely that polls didn't have adequate time to fully include the full adjustment caused by that news.

Another major mistake a lot of people made in their prediction models based on the polls was that they viewed the result in individual states as uncorrelated events. Therefore if they gave Hillary a 75% chance of winning in each of, let's say Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota they viewed Trump as having a 0.39% chance of winning all four. Silver's model wisely viewed the results in similar states as being correlated, suggesting that if Hillary had a 75% chance of winning in each of them, an upset in one could be predictive of an upset in the others, so his model gave Trump a better chance than most, e.g. the NYT one that had her with an absurd 99% chance of victory.

[Simple Torture]

I don’t think that’s an accurate summary at all. Polls in 2016 never had Clinton at much more than a 9 point lead, and the final week of calling showed her at around a +3. She ended up coming out 2.1% ahead. That seems pretty predictive.

Yeah, this.

I also wouldn't underestimate the effect of the exact timing of the polls and the election. That cycle featured some pretty major polling swings following the news cycle and of course the last news that affected voters was that Comey bit which sent Clinton's numbers into a nosedive. I think it's very possible that Hillary would have won if the election were the day before Comey's attention grab (or barring new news maybe a week or so after the election once that proclamation became old news), and I think it's also likely that polls didn't have adequate time to fully include the full adjustment caused by that news.

Another major mistake a lot of people made in their prediction models based on the polls was that they viewed the result in individual states as uncorrelated events. Therefore if they gave Hillary a 75% chance of winning in each of, let's say Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota they viewed Trump as having a 0.39% chance of winning all four. Silver's model wisely viewed the results in similar states as being correlated, suggesting that if Hillary had a 75% chance of winning in each of them, an upset in one could be predictive of an upset in the others, so his model gave Trump a better chance than most, e.g. the NYT one that had her with an absurd 99% chance of victory.

There was an article on 538 about a week before the election that laid this out pretty clearly (i.e., it described exactly what happened), and I've been trying to find it for a while now but it keeps slipping through my fingers.

[Simple Torture]

I don’t think that’s an accurate summary at all. Polls in 2016 never had Clinton at much more than a 9 point lead, and the final week of calling showed her at around a +3. She ended up coming out 2.1% ahead. That seems pretty predictive.

Yeah, this.

Another major mistake a lot of people made in their prediction models based on the polls was that they viewed the result in individual states as uncorrelated events. Therefore if they gave Hillary a 75% chance of winning in each of, let's say Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota they viewed Trump as having a 0.39% chance of winning all four. Silver's model wisely viewed the results in similar states as being correlated, suggesting that if Hillary had a 75% chance of winning in each of them, an upset in one could be predictive of an upset in the others, so his model gave Trump a better chance than most, e.g. the NYT one that had her with an absurd 99% chance of victory.

There was an article on 538 about a week before the election that laid this out pretty clearly (i.e., it described exactly what happened), and I've been trying to find it for a while now but it keeps slipping through my fingers.

Right, I think I've got it, and it's actually pulling from two different articles (I read them religiously). One was titled "Why Our Model Is More Bullish Than Others On Trump" (from 10/24/16) and lays out exactly what 4/5 is talking about:

In 2012, Obama beat his polling by 2 or 3 percentage points in almost every swing state. The same was true in 1980 when Ronald Reagan won in a landslide — instead of the modest lead that polls showed a few days before the election — and claimed 489 electoral votes by winning almost every competitive state. You also frequently see this in midterms — Republicans beat their polling in almost every key Senate and gubernatorial race in 2014, for example.

Basically, this means that you shouldn’t count on states to behave independently of one another, especially if they’re demographically similar. If Clinton loses Pennsylvania despite having a big lead in the polls there, for instance, she might also have problems in Michigan, North Carolina and other swing states. What seems like an impregnable firewall in the Electoral College may begin to collapse.

And then from 11/1, an article titled "Yes, Donald Trump Has A Path To Victory":

It’s true that Trump would have to make a breakthrough somewhere, by winning at least one state in Clinton’s firewall. But that’s why it’s not only reasonable but 100 percent strategically correct for Trump to be campaigning in states such as Michigan and Wisconsin. (I’ll grant that New Mexico is more of a stretch.) Sure, Trump’s behind in these states, but he has to win somewhere where he’s behind — or he’s consigning himself to four more years in Trump Tower instead of the White House. Michigan and Wisconsin are as reasonable as any other targets: Trump isn’t any further behind in them than he is in higher-profile battleground states such as Pennsylvania, and the demographics are potentially more favorable for him.

If you want to debate a campaign’s geographic planning, Hillary Clinton spending time in Arizona is a much worse decision than Trump hanging out in Michigan or Wisconsin. Sure, she could win the state — but probably only if she’s having a strong night nationally. If the results are tight next Tuesday instead, Michigan and Wisconsin are much more likely to swing the election.

[4/5]

Yup. I remember telling my classes that in the days right before the election. I also recall that about a week out 538 had Clinton with a 75% chance of victory so I reminded students what that actual means: Trump had the same chance of winning the presidency as you have of flipping heads twice in a row. I decided to demonstrate and promptly flipped heads twice in a row to the great delight of a depressingly large contingent of my p.2 class.

[Monkey_Driven]

Yup. I remember telling my classes that in the days right before the election. I also recall that about a week out 538 had Clinton with a 75% chance of victory so I reminded students what that actual means: Trump had the same chance of winning the presidency as you have of flipping heads twice in a row. I decided to demonstrate and promptly flipped heads twice in a row to the great delight of a depressingly large contingent of my p.2 class.

Haha

[McParadigm]

Like the world’s worst Two Face performance

[McParadigm]

[96583UP]

he then proceeded to civilly hump a 12-year old

Wexner had a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, who managed Wexner's money. Wexner and Epstein parted when Epstein went to prison.[25]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Wexner

omg this quote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein

Trump said of Epstein in 2002: "I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."[61]

[McParadigm]

This poll predates the events of the last 4 days.

[McParadigm]

[bune]

I wonder if they go home at night and laugh at the shit they sell to the people at their rally's.

[4/5]

Has Beto O' Rouke already scheduled some BBQ/cookout rallies yet? If not he needs a new campaign manager.

[washing machine]

His campaign logo looks exactly like Whataburger's spicy ketchup packaging, so I'd say he's safe from any food-related smears.

[BurtReynolds]

Optics! OPTICS! We're trying to establish a narrative here!