Hopium? This blog is suggesting an incredible margin of victory for Harris.
VDH is the website. They are outright calling respected meta-polls FiveThirtyEight and RCP completely wrong. Their overall argument is that the Senate-race is incredibly favored in the Democrat’s favor.
I don’t know if I necessarily believe that argument. But its still interesting to think about. Discuss?
Is it wrong that I find this us election more important to my future than the one in my own country?
Doesn’t matter. If you’re in the us and are eligible and registered to vote, go and vote like your and livelihood life depends on it. Because it probably does.
I wouldn’t call those margins a blowout, even if they are more favourable than the other meta-polls. There’s still room for a polling error in favour of the Republicans (although there also could be a polling error in favour of the Democrats).
Remember, even in a blue sweep Trump and friends are poised to declare the election rigged and that they actually won. The next year will be a rough one.
This is true, but the larger the margin the more difficult it makes it for them to contest.
Vote. Bring your friends and family to vote. Call up your friends in other states and make sure they have a voting plan.
Voting won’t magically fix our broken political machine but it will help us from sliding deeper in the hole. Vote like you’re taking a stupid little walk outside for your mental health during lockdown- not the only way you should be taking care of things but important maintenance nonetheless.
Large margin for Harris: “this is absurd, we should have won, look how much they cheated”
Small margin for Harris: “They cheated, we need to send electoral votes for Trump anyway. Stop the steal!”
Small margin victory for Trump: “we won even though they cheated! Big changes coming to prevent their cheating in future”
Huge victory for Trump: “we have a mandate to eradicate the wetbacks”
Yes, vote. See how big of a gap we can make, but remember that just that things won’t settle down after the election. January 6th proved that, and in retrospect we as a country got lucky in the outcome. It could have been far worse. They’ll contest any results even if there is no legal reason to, so just be ready.
I am just accepting the fact that the entire period between election day and inauguration is going to suck very, very badly if Harris wins.
It will suck if trump wins too. Except it will keep on sucking long after inauguration. Perhaps forever.
That’s literally what I told my wife lol.
She goes “Its going to suck even if she wins because of his supporters.”
Me “I’d rather deal with 2 months of suckage over a lifetime of him. Because if he wins, our country is over.”
Yeah you can just remove the outer boundary of suckage in that case.
One difference: Biden is president. He’s not going to put up with any of the bullshit Trump and his cronies got up to in 2020.
Its better to be the incumbent party for sure but there are still manifold threat modes.
2016 taught us to never take anything for granted, and to always run as if we’re 2 points behind. There are secret “deplorables” out there just waiting to use their secret ballot to vote ruin upon their trusting neighbors’ heads.
What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area. Checkpoints go up at fifteen miles. Your fugitive’s name is
Dr. Richard KimbleUndecided Voter. Go get them.Personally, I don’t think there’s real undecided voters at this point… at least, not the ones who say they are. The real undecided voters are the ones that will say what their friends and family want them to say out loud, but are silently considering voting differently.
Better to target the “I’m not voting because…” crowd.
Yeah most of the discussion I’ve heard about persuading voters is not that people sympathetic to Democratic policies are split between Harris and Trump but that they’re split between voting and couch.
Like I get if some Californians or New Yorkers know that their state is going for Harris. But in 2020 some US House districts in CA and NY went to Republicans even though the states went to Biden.
It’s not going to be sufficient for Harris to be President. We need her to have a strong majority in the House and Senate as well so that a future President Harris, Leader Schumer, and Speaker Jeffries can work together to make Americans’ lives better.
If any part of Congress is controlled by the Republican Party, we’ll be stuck in purgatory for another 2 to 4 years. That’s avoidable if we win the fight against the couch.
I think there is a sizeable number of undecided voters that don’t like Trump but are long time republican voters and so don’t want to vote for a democrat at all. Which is why things like the interview Harris did with Fox is so important.
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Well it should be, because anyone who votes for Trump is voting to regress the country into an eventually authoritarian, fascist regime. It shouldn’t be a close race. It should be the majority voting to prevent that.
In a sane world, it would be 90%+ Harris. It is absolutely catastrophic that half the country is in thrall to a fascist cult.
God I hope you are right.
Volunteer! https://go.kamalaharris.com/
I mean 538 and RCP seem to be being poisoned right now with some incredibly partisan polling firms that popped up out of nowhere so VDH might have a point
This article is 100% grade A uncut hopium and I’m here for it.
Directly into my veins please.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FiveThirtyEight#2023_cost-cutting_and_2024_elections
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Why is 538 still respect when it’s a shell of what it used to be?
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Nate Silver is a degenerate gambler who was gambling up to $10k a day while running 538, and has been completely taken in by gambling bros chicanery.
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That’s why suddenly everyone cares about what gamblers say about who is going to win, despite the fact that gambles are heavily gamed by the richest. Of course it looks like Trump is favored to win if you look at gambling polls, because all the rich twats who are for him and dropping the bets to make it look like he’ll win. These are the type of scumfucks that have sucked in Silver.
In May 2023, ABC News hired G. Elliott Morris, a data journalist for The Economist who has often been described as a rival of Silver, to head the site as editorial director of data analytics. At 538, Morris developed a new election forecasting model of the 2024 election. In the leadup to Biden’s withdrawal, 538 was the only professional election forecaster to give Biden majority odds of winning the 2024 election. Silver criticized Morris’s model, describing it as at best ignoring the polls and giving Biden positive odds merely due to his incumbency, and at worst as being “buggy”. The election forecast remained suspended for a month after Biden withdrew, before being replaced by a new model for Kamala Harris versus Trump that put more emphasis on polling.
Who cares about Silver’s opinion, but it’s super clear Morris was fucking up from the get-go.
Maybe Silver was never good at the polling game to begin with. He got 2008 right, and then just coasted after the upset.
Correlation of a large amount of data isn’t like some quantifiable thing. The larger the data set, the more knobs get turned, and the outcome can be almost whatever you want it to be for however you process that. The reason NS never wanted to open source his stuff is because it was largely just tweaked here and there, and didn’t offer much in NEW insights. It was nothing, and largely inaccurate, because the polling data is inaccurate, or not a representative of the actual populace going to vote.
Maybe Silver was never good at the polling game to begin with.
I think it’s way more than just a maybe.
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If you didn’t take the time to read the entire article you should. Even if you don’t have statistical training, you don’t have to agree with all parts or any of it, but it’s at least an effort to put together a backed up thesis on what’s happening. It’s a good article and we’ll written, but it has some major blindspots that need addressing.
First:
This points to three possible explanations: 1) we’re wrong, and an unprecedented level of split-ticket voting will occur in the swing states, 2) a significant portion of Trump voters remain undecided in Senate races, or 3) these averages are reflecting a significant amount of noise.
There are more than 3 possible explanations, and anytime you see some one trying to box in what you are allowed or not allowed to consider as possible, your hackles should raise.
Second:
The article makes little mention or discussion of the candidates, their policies, their approach to campaigning. Which is fine, the article isn’t necessarily trying to say why things are in such a way, but so much as saying, things maybe aren’t in the way they appear. And that’s a totally fair approach to take, but it assumes naivety or moreso, a kind of uniformity around the candidates and the campaigns themselves as if these people running are random effects. This is also baked into much of the statistical approaches they use in the article, which are all effectively coming out of the parameteric/ traditional stochastic world view of how to do these things. And that’s fine, but it’s an important assumption to key in on.
Third:
The point about flooding the zone has been thoroughly debunked. Sure there are more polls being released but even Times Sienna, Quinipiac, etc are showing largely the same things. Harris isn’t winning in the polls. That just is what it is. So when they say “we should listen to the data”, then they don’t, well, that’s at least a yellow card.
Something that needs to always be addressed is the possibility that Trump “is a different kind of candidate”, which touches on points 1,2. I wish I had all the data worked up and on mobile it’s just not worth my time to do so, but we need to talk about something specific about Trump, Trumpism, and polling. Look at Trump’s performance on the ground in elections relative to polling in 16, and 20, and compare that to candidates he endorsed and campaigned for in 18 and 22. Trump has a unique property where they singularly defy their polling, and this property is not transferable. Trump massively outperformed his polling in 2016, and also in 2020. 2020 should not have been close, yet it was. Likewise, Trump seems to only be able to influence down ballot races with their presence. People are not showing up for Trump endorsements the way they show up for Trump. It’s not about the party it’s about Trump. He is able to drive out demographics that don’t /aren’t represented in extant sampling approaches to polling. His campaign strategy is to find blocks of voters that arent voting and to get them to show up (which was also the Bernie strategy). He’ll always defy polling using this approach because his strategy is to literally grow the electorate.
The same kinds of issues need to be addressed on the Kamala side of the house too. These candidates don’t sit in vacuum tubes insulated from the world. Biden was dead in the water literally a year before the primary got started: the insistence on running a clearly failing President significantly damaged the Democrats chances this cycle. Democrats didn’t get to have Primary debates, which are literally billions in free marketing and an opportunity for a party to present their vision of how to proceed. It allows you to control and steer the narrative before getting going on the campaign proper, as well as to test messaging and get a better read on the electorate. Not primarying Biden will go down as one of the dumbest political malpractices of all time. Meanwhile, Biden has shown to be uniquely feckless in the face of its vassal state effectively defying orders, and committing to a policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing. The US is absolutely on the wrong side of history right now, and the Harris campaign owns that because they are the party in power. Not only that, but the Harris campaign has effectively doubled and tripled, down on thus strategy by aligning so closely with the neoconservative movement (not even popular with Republicans) that also advocates for a first strike, settler colonialism approach to global politics. The reason I bring this up, is because there are explanations for why polling looks the way that it is that don’t require massive leaps in logic or a fundamental understanding of politics, but maybe do require you to adopt a more process based or non-parametric approach to analyzing election data.
It’s a good analysis and maybe it’s right. But what I can tell you right now, is that analyses that only rely on prior conditions have a hard enough time modeling the past, let alone the future. There is a reason why our climate models are missing the massive heating that seems to defy explanations in our current approach. There is a reason why insurance businesses globally have been caught completely off guard by the scale, severity, and frequency of natural catastrophes . It’s because the past isn’t a reliable indicator of the future, and if that’s all you are relying upon, you’ll only ever be able to make predictions in typical elections for the data set you are basing them on.
Watching early vote exit polls is kind of a tough game to play prognosticator on, but it begins to give us a sense of what the polls mean, because the info is a lot more concrete than polls. Basically, polls have a segment of responses that are undecided, meanwhile exit polls don’t. The idea as I understand it is that you can contrast exit polls with polls in order to discern what that undecided vote really seems to be breaking for.
In 2016, that undecided segment broke hard for Trump. It hasn’t in any election since.
Here’s what exit polls so far say about Trump (vs 2020) and Harris (vs Biden & Obama):
- Trump’s support isn’t showing any major improvements on exit polls at this time except with non-college educated white folks, specifically ages 50-64. His support in that same demographic actually has lessened in a bunch of other age groups, with a small boost in 18-39. This is, however, only with men.
- Harris has met or beat both Biden and Obama 2012 numbers in most every demographic, with the exception of hispanic women / younger age groups, which have gone down a little bit. Most notably her support with white folks is strong, and her support with white women is at historic levels. She’s overperforming dramatically with independents.
Obviously, again, exit polls are subject to swings and changes over time and so it’s all contingent on this continuing, but right now the early votes exit polls are at severe contrast with the aggregators. Like, embarrassingly severe.
One remaining thing from the exit polls worth mentioning - the last minute surge of support for Trump in 2020 was largely because the Republican leadership was stalwart in telling everyone to vote only on election day. That isn’t happening this year, though, which means that Republicans aren’t going to be able to expect the same kind of last-minute surge this year. Meanwhile, the opposite seems true for Harris: a lot of early votes for Harris are first time voters or infrequent voters, and not from the pool of 2020 early voters.
So, at this point the early vote is around 40m, or 25% of total votes in 2020. In order to get back to the “surprising Trump upswell” that we’re all worried about, this trend would have to not only stop, but AGGRESSIVELY reverse course. Either that or all the exit polls are horribly wrong.
a lot of early votes for Harris are first time voters or infrequent voters, and not from the pool of 2020 early voters.
And that’s the #1 problem with polling.
Look at 538 for PA:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/pennsylvania/
Here’s what people miss… Go down the LEFT hand column.
860LV
1,586LV
840LV
812LV
812LV
866RV
866RV
794RV
583LV
794RV
1,084LV
1,256LV
2,048LV
2,048LV
600LV
600LV“LV” - “Likely Voters”.
Of these 16 polls currently up, 12 of them are trying to determine who is “likely” to vote, and no 2 polls use the same definition.
Generally “Did you vote in the last 2 elections?”
Yeah, every time I wind up looking deeply at polls I find more questions than answers. I recognize they’re a snapshot of a segment, not representative of the whole segment but sort of a sampling of it.
For example, the 3 polls there from Franklin, and the 4 from Morning Consult: the same methodology and around the same sample size, conducted at the same time frame. Each poll with different outcomes from their sample set.
I also recognize that as long as X% are “undecided”, the poll can’t really show anything other than trend motions. And these polls are actually kind of static. Like if you plot them all out, they don’t seem to have an upper or downward trend trajectory.
It’s frustratingly ambiguous stuff.
You mention Trump as up in 18-39 and 50-64 but down in “a bunch of other age groups.” How many other age groups are there? 40-49 and 65+ seem like only way to back them up with any significance.
Oh shoot, sorry, I meant 18-29. The groups are:
- 18-29 (Harris down 10 from Biden 2020)
- 30-39 (Harris up 10 from Biden 2020)
- 40-49 (Harris up 1 from Biden 2020)
- 50-64 (Trump up 4 from 2020)
- 65+ (Harris up 10 from Biden 2020)
It’s worth mentioning that these groups are not equal! 18-29 is usually a very low representation, where 40-49 is pretty big, and 50-64 / 65+ are huge.
65+ (Harris up 10 from Biden 2020)
Boomers potentially saving us from Trump was not on my 2024 bingo card (I know that is from a higher base of existing Trump support but still).
Been saying this for months. While exit polling is the only useful polling coming into this, all of the signs from previous battleground states since 2018 says everything will skew Dems. Moreso since all the abortion and other terrible SCOTUS bullshit happened.
I’m putting these bets down:
- Everything VDH says here, but swap AZ and FL
- Ted Cruz loses to Collin Allred
- Osborn picks up the Nebraska seat
- Every Abortion Access amendment passes
- Dems take House
Florida going for Harris is a huge wtf in this blog post. It’s a bold prediction far against every other poll I’ve seen.
If Harris wins FL, then Trump is just completely fucked.
Mind you: FL is basically Trump’s home state as New Yorkers dont like him, and Mar-a-lago resort was his main base of operation in 2016. I find it very unlikely for Trump to lose FL, even with all the points brought up in this blog post.
According to some of the forecasts I’ve seen that suggest a strong chance for a Harris win (as in, 77% chance) she only has a 3% chance to turn FL blue. So, not really plausible, but there are a few scenarios that see her winning it.
Well, it makes sense, on one hand, but not in another.
Where it makes sense:
- the population centers are pro-Dem.
- DeSantis is wildly unpopular with everybody.
- FL businesses benefit from immigrant agriculture workers only second to CA.
- Abortion is on the ballot
Where it doesn’t make sense:
- Gerrymandered County distribution basically makes electing Harris basically impossible right now
- People have been moving away from the coastal cities
- An influx of MAGA people moving to FL
It’s less likely to happen. Not impossible. AZ is way more likely.
Gerrymandering has nothing to do with the presidential election.
It does when your nearest polling station is across town. This is one of the many games they play in districting.
Yeah, but that’s “easy” to do without gerrymandering as well.
I want to believe!
A brief discussion with some Berkeley folks about poll confidence:
https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/research/polling-101-how-accurate-are-election-polls/
Heads up, you’ve got your link and your text the wrong way around. They need to go
[text everyone sees](actual URL)
