Red Mosquito

wease wrote:

Bi_3 wrote:

96583UP wrote:

Do we really hate trump so much we now promote Jeffrey Epstein?

Is that really so unbelievable to you?

It does seem within the realm of possibility, but it’s the same story from Wolfe’s book like 6 years ago just in Epstein’s voice:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... -fire-fury

Trump is going to get blown out with over 300+ in the blue score by Wednesday morning and hopefully we can get back to normal news

i hope he loses and i hope it's because women came out in historic numbers to end him

and i hope taylor swift performs at the victory party with a bunch of cats and cat ladies on stage as backup dancers

and i hope all of the above is not interrupted by militia activity from the far right

Just saw this anti abortion ad from Randall Terry, presidential candidate in 12 states. Before it airs there’s a big warning that the station is required to air ads for candidates and warn it was extremely graphic images.

96583UP wrote:i hope he loses and i hope it's because women came out in historic numbers to end him

and i hope taylor swift performs at the victory party with a bunch of cats and cat ladies on stage as backup dancers

and i hope all of the above is not interrupted by militia activity from the far right

All of this.

I gave up on reading the polls a few weeks ago when Republican pollsters started flooding the averages. It just became a case of 'too much noise to be worth the listening.'

I also don't worry too much about Nate Silver....but I did read his article suggesting that pollsters were sculpting their results towards a 50-50 split. That made sense to me. If a pollster gets a result that is significantly different from the trend...like, 6 points different...then they're probably intrinsically encouraged to assume their crosstabs are weighted poorly. To adjust them, until they see something that looks more like everyone else's results. No one wants to be the one polling group that stands out as wildly wrong...not after the distrust and skepticism of the last 8 years.

Anyways, I quit paying attention to polling. I figured they'd all be very carefully couched "close race" results from here on out.

But then, that Virginia poll.

The final Roanoke poll moved the presidential race by 7 points. Harris went from +3 in the state to +10. There haven't been a lot of outlier polls this season, so that made it interesting. But what really caught my eye was: the responses to other questions stayed consistent with past Roanoke polls.

Tim Kaine was up by 11 in September, while Harris was up by 3. In October, Harris shot up by 7 points, while Kaine....stayed right at 11. Not even a 1 point shift. Normally, if this were an outlier poll, you would expect it to be just as chaotic with some of the other topics as it was with the presidential one.

So that was weird. But it was still one poll, and in a state that was going to go blue regardless.

Then the Iowa poll dropped yesterday, from one of the best pollsters in the Midwest. And it shows a....7 point change in Iowa. The same percent change that was shown in the Virginia poll.

So now, I'm very interested. Selzer gets a lot of their business from the primary season. The financial ramifications of having your name associated with a massive fuckup poll in a high stakes close-call election would be significant.

And here's the thing: even if Selzer is off by 6 points (highly unusual but not impossible), that would still be a reaaaaaaally tepid result for Donald Trump in Iowa. It would mean he lost 8 percent of the Iowa vote, compared to 2020.

So now I'm really, really curious as to what's happening. Some things I've been thinking about:

Scenario 1: The only two major outlier polls in this election season happened to pop up right at the very end. And one of the outliers happens to be from one of the best in the business. This is definitely possible, and perhaps in line with the general chaos of the moment.

Scenario 2: Pollsters have been (as Nate Silver suggested) nudging their results towards a 50-50 match to avoid looking clueless no matter the outcome. And now a handful who are secure with their reputations have decided, in the final week, to run with the data they have been seeing rather than to adjust their crosstabs until they fit the trendline.

I think this would explain why the polling shift in Virginia didn't affect down ballot races...when they were "correcting" towards the norm previously, they were only doing so at the presidential level, because that's where all the paranoia and uncertainty are.

Scenario 3: There's been an incredibly dramatic shift in presidential preference among independent voters in the last month. This also would explain the lack of movement down ballot, as they would be voting against a candidate and not a party.

Scenario 4: Republican women are quietly turning against him. This might explain how the early vote can be more Republican, while women outvote men by 10% and exit polls suggest Democratic momentum. But I dunno. I just struggle to imagine that everything from the last 8 years could be insufficient to change a party-affiliated voter's mind, but that the last four weeks finally did.

Also I think Ted Cruz is going to lose his seat, so let's all just commit to enjoying that together for a while if it happens, ok?

I don’t honestly know. That’s the entire answer, so feel free to stop reading here.

But if you think about the things it would take to make a power grab like that work….

1. The thing you said. Elections officials in various states that are either sympathetic or outright collaborators.

2. Intimidation/threat. Enough that nobody chickens out. Enough to prevent anybody from doing what Mike Pence did.

3. Plausibility. Or at least, a race that is close enough in the right places that you can fake plausibility, when you call it stolen.

4. A sympathetic Supreme Court.

…then, the thing about all of that is: regardless of whether you or I think he has all those things, it’s very apparent right now that he thinks he has all those things.

This is not a candidate who is acting like he is neck and neck in a close race. This campaign is behaving as if the difference between Trump +2 and Harris +2 is absolute zero. It is behaving as though there is no ultimate difference between a slight electoral victory and a slight electoral loss. And I think we must suspect, on some level, that they believe a slight electoral loss will ultimately be turned into a win….or we wouldn’t be talking about it, right?

If they believe it….they'll act on it. In the event of a small loss, they have no impetus not to. It would take a resounding defeat to fully avoid that journey.

Like, say, a polling shift in the American electorate so big that even Iowa is close.

I know what you mean.

McParadigm wrote:I gave up on reading the polls a few weeks ago when Republican pollsters started flooding the averages. It just became a case of 'too much noise to be worth the listening.'

I also don't worry too much about Nate Silver....but I did read his article suggesting that pollsters were sculpting their results towards a 50-50 split. That made sense to me. If a pollster gets a result that is significantly different from the trend...like, 6 points different...then they're probably intrinsically encouraged to assume their crosstabs are weighted poorly. To adjust them, until they see something that looks more like everyone else's results. No one wants to be the one polling group that stands out as wildly wrong...not after the distrust and skepticism of the last 8 years.

Anyways, I quit paying attention to polling. I figured they'd all be very carefully couched "close race" results from here on out.

But then, that Virginia poll.

The final Roanoke poll moved the presidential race by 7 points. Harris went from +3 in the state to +10. There haven't been a lot of outlier polls this season, so that made it interesting. But what really caught my eye was: the responses to other questions stayed consistent with past Roanoke polls.

Tim Kaine was up by 11 in September, while Harris was up by 3. In October, Harris shot up by 7 points, while Kaine....stayed right at 11. Not even a 1 point shift. Normally, if this were an outlier poll, you would expect it to be just as chaotic with some of the other topics as it was with the presidential one.

So that was weird. But it was still one poll, and in a state that was going to go blue regardless.

Then the Iowa poll dropped yesterday, from one of the best pollsters in the Midwest. And it shows a....7 point change in Iowa. The same percent change that was shown in the Virginia poll.

So now, I'm very interested. Selzer gets a lot of their business from the primary season. The financial ramifications of having your name associated with a massive fuckup poll in a high stakes close-call election would be significant.

And here's the thing: even if Selzer is off by 6 points (highly unusual but not impossible), that would still be a reaaaaaaally tepid result for Donald Trump in Iowa. It would mean he lost 8 percent of the Iowa vote, compared to 2020.

So now I'm really, really curious as to what's happening. Some things I've been thinking about:

Scenario 1: The only two major outlier polls in this election season happened to pop up right at the very end. And one of the outliers happens to be from one of the best in the business. This is definitely possible, and perhaps in line with the general chaos of the moment.

Scenario 2: Pollsters have been (as Nate Silver suggested) nudging their results towards a 50-50 match to avoid looking clueless no matter the outcome. And now a handful who are secure with their reputations have decided, in the final week, to run with the data they have been seeing rather than to adjust their crosstabs until they fit the trendline.

I think this would explain why the polling shift in Virginia didn't affect down ballot races...when they were "correcting" towards the norm previously, they were only doing so at the presidential level, because that's where all the paranoia and uncertainty are.

Scenario 3: There's been an incredibly dramatic shift in presidential preference among independent voters in the last month. This also would explain the lack of movement down ballot, as they would be voting against a candidate and not a party.

Scenario 4: Republican women are quietly turning against him. This might explain how the early vote can be more Republican, while women outvote men by 10% and exit polls suggest Democratic momentum. But I dunno. I just struggle to imagine that everything from the last 8 years could be insufficient to change a party-affiliated voter's mind, but that the last four weeks finally did.

Very well said. I didn’t pay attention to polling much until that Iowa poll. With that reputation, I’m inclined to take it seriously, at least. Harris winning Iowa implies a much better night for her than what it looks like in the numbers we get. I’ll believe that if/when I see it, but they cited women as the main driver, I think. It’s always been the women who could defeat Trump, let’s see if they will.

Rob wrote:I didn’t pay attention to polling much until that Iowa poll. With that reputation, I’m inclined to take it seriously, at least.

I actually think I would have had a much more muted response, except:

1. The striking similarities to the Virginia poll. The odds of an identical fluke discrepancy happening in two different places at the same time is…not zero, but much lower than if it was all by itself.

2. Selzer’s biggest advantage over other pollsters in Iowa is their ability to get Iowans to answer their cell phones.

This one feels right:

Fortunately the GOP are trying to engineer the "Dems cheat!" storyline without having Trump as the incumbent. They'll have to work much much harder to make it stick this time.

Would love to see Florida or Texas flip one day...

zeb wrote:Fortunately the GOP are trying to engineer the "Dems cheat!" storyline without having Trump as the incumbent. They'll have to work much much harder to make it stick this time.

Except this time they have a secret weapon on the inside which could make it way easier.

Who will be the first person to announce they're running 2028 and when will that be?