TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
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User ID: 373
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I was talking about polls here, not modelers like Nate Silver. Polls don't estimate win chances, they estimate win margins. They had a lot of egg on their face for stuff like Wisconsin in 2016.. Polls underestimated his support in most swing states in both 2016 and 2020.
I agree that Nate Silver didn't get it "wrong" in 2016 as popularly perceived, as they're doing something different.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Polls are always off to some degree, and it's often explainable to their weighting factors, e.g. in 2016 they didn't take educational polarization into account sufficiently. It's also pretty clear that many polls are herding this year, and the fact they're weighting on previous elections (which AFAIK wasn't standard practice before 2024) is another potential avenue for a bigger-than-average miss. Much of the industry is just really, really worried about underestimating Trump for a third time in a row, and as such they might be overcorrecting.
The initiatives against voter fraud won't amount to much because there's never been much evidence for widespread voter fraud despite countless fishing expeditions trying to find some. It does exist in isolated cases, e.g. an old black women voting once for herself, and once for her dead father whose house she's now living in. But beyond individual incidents like these, there's not much else.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
It just means the left took stuff like J6 seriously, while the right tries to memoryhole it as nothing more than a few folks strolling through a building.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
The media exists to make money, with the partisan slant being a secondary consideration, caused by the leanings of the reporters themselves. If the media was as coordinated and hated Trump as much as some would claim, it wouldn't have given him so much free air time for his entire political career.
I agree journalism could use improvement, but I haven't heard of any reasonable propositions to do so. Most people who want to change it can only think of replacing it with something like Catturd, i.e. the same problems as before, amplified significantly, but it agrees with their sectarian ideology so they claim it's "better".
"Disbanding" the media would be a terrible idea.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
If new regulations are coming down the pipe, they can make certain products or even entire sectors less desirable. The issue is that this can be priced-in by competitors long before the regulations actually hit, which can hurt the ability of slow-movers to reposition. If you think e.g. oil companies were going to get hit by a bunch of new environmental regulations, institutions might want to offload their stakes before their competitors to get the best price. A good real-world example of this is what happened to ESG funds. They used to be a hot thing during peak woke, but the industry really started backing off once Republicans started making a stink. I'm not sure how much actual regulation happened, as just the threat of it was enough to strangle the baby in the cradle.
Knowing if there's a 50% chance or a 90% chance that these things will happen absolutely makes a big difference. I was at a gathering of many of the chief risk officers of big financial institutions, and the election was easily the most-discussed topic in terms of worrying potential outcomes.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Polls have long weighted their results, but there's ways to do it well, and ways to do it poorly. The goal is to calibrate demographic metrics based on likely voter data to create a facsimile of a perfectly representative sample. Getting it correct makes for more accurate polls. Getting it wrong in an innocent way can lead to mixups like 2016, where there was insufficient weighting by education especially in swing states.
But with degrees of freedom comes the ability to misuse it, where pollsters can coax their models to produce results they think are "better". Or they can just not release results that show something they think is strange. No matter what happens, polls should still show something resembling a normal distribution. They should create their model first, then enter in their results and see what pops out. The fact they're not getting a normal distribution is evidence that they're looking at results, then tweaking the model and rerunning afterwards, effectively mangling the results into whatever they desire. The fact that this is very prominent around a few polling houses and not others should be an indication that something is wrong.
Selzer isn't a coward by releasing a Harris+3 for Iowa, but whatever the reason for it and I have my speculations, she'll get a double digit miss as a result.
I'd gladly take an even-money bet that Selzer is off by less than 10 points.
it's just the fact that they, be it big media, three letter agencies, George Soros, etc, were able to brainwash the country
If that succeeds, it's over, we're no longer a democracy. If people will rubber stamp whoever the CIA tells them to
This post is beyond goofy. It's like a perfect personification of the Dale Gribble voters Hanania rails against.
Do you have any evidence the CIA or George Soros is "brainwashing" people to vote for Harris?
I'd say it's pretty close to even, certainly the closest (polls-wise) that we've seen in decades. Nate Silver has an almost perfect 50-50, while betting markets have 55-45 in favor of Trump. I trust Silver a bit more than the betting markets, which have a record of being slightly R leaning. There was a Romney whale in 2012, and a 35% chance for a Trump win in 2020 was a bit too high IMO given the polls. Silver might have a slight D bias, but it doesn't matter much in any case since they both pretty much agree with each other (the betting markets have mostly converged with Silver over the past few days after being too pro-Trump for a bit).
Anyone who has a high degree of certainty on this election outcome is either a fool, a charlatan, or a grifter. You should knock them down a peg or two in your mental map of who to trust.
Relatedly, do you think there will be issues certifying the election results? Which side do you think will struggle more if they lose?
Republicans will absolutely, 100% throw a fit if they lose. That's practically guaranteed. Trump has been laying the groundwork for it for a while now, as have pro-Trump accounts like Catturd (who's a good barometer of the online right). Trump said the vote was rigged when he lost the Iowa primary in 2016 (with little evidence), he said it was rigged in 2020 (with little evidence), and so of course he'll say it was rigged now if he loses. Republicans will squint, say something like "the media is biased, so yeah, I guess the election was stolen" while ignoring all of Trump's actual claims.
I'm not sure if the Dems would go the same way. I'm sure there will be some who want to escalate given what Republicans have done, while others will be more along the lines of "we cannot become that which we hope to destroy". The jury's out on which side will win.
As to whether either side could actually steal the election, I'm doubtful. Trump is more committed, but also highly incompetent and he doesn't have the levers of government at his disposal like he did in 2020. The Dems are more competent and control the presidency, but are less committed and so I don't there will be enough of a consensus to take drastic action.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
The point of estimating the election winner is that the election can be quite impactful (for regulator policies, culture war stuff, gambling like you mentioned, etc). If e.g. you work in a financial institution and you prefer one candidate over the other, knowing whether they have a 90% chance of winning or a 50-50 chance can make a huge difference. It's also a good chance to test Bayesian reasoning capabilities, as there's a correct answer at the end that you can check your work against (and the work of those you follow).
You're correct that most prognosticating won't have a material impact on the result, but that's a non-sequitur since that's not what people are trying to do when they're predicting who will win.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
She also does midterms and a bunch of other stuff, and I'm pretty sure she started in the 90s sometime and only became well-known in 2008 after a few runs having relatively robust results. You can cherrypick anything she's gotten wrong, but she has one of the best track records of any pollster bar none. It's clear that some around here are only questioning her because they don't like the result she's getting, rather than for any relative inaccuracy.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Alright, yeah I've reread it and you're correct.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Like I said to the other guy, that chart does not include all pollsters, it just includes the ones that show the worst signs of herding. AtlasIntel is borderline, and only looks ok next to egregious examples like Redfield and Wilton.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Her track record looks impressive until you pull back the curtain a bit. She got many primaries wrong. Her final polls differed from polls a month prior in strong ways.
Please provide links.
Also there is a bit of survival bias here. Stock pickers that survive may not be that much better; could just be a random walk.
She's been high-profile since at least 2008. 16 years of bucking conventional wisdom is a lot of record to just dismiss as "random walk".
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
The list in that article isn't a list of all pollers, it's just the ones that he's accusing of herding. Atlasintel is borderline. It only looks OK relative to Emerson, where the evidence is more incontrovertible.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
It's a pretty mediocre argument for Trump. Polls already try to correct for propensity for voting (read up on "registered voters" vs "likely voters"), and if anyone is doing this correctly, Selzer would. Certainly fewer campaign events on both sides have been held in Iowa, but Trump has always had a relatively poor get-out-the-vote operation, and races have become so nationalized that it's unlikely for local conditions to be particularly anomalous relative to their demographics. It's banking a lot on Trump's rallies having large local effects, when there's not a lot of evidence for that.
The abortion point could be relevant, though, I'll grant you that.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Both Emerson and Atlasintel are on watch as some of the worst herders this year. Emerson is especially bad. I'd trust Selzer over these guys just based on reputation beforehand, but especially after learning they're cooking the statistical books.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Somebody's definitely going to have egg on their face after this. Selzer has a long track record of proving her critics wrong over and over, and most of the rest of the polling industry has been herding more than at a sheep farm in the Scottish highlands.. There's a good chance polling firms have been cooking the results in favor of Trump, in a desperate attempt not to underestimate him for a third time in a row. Even if the result in Iowa is at the extreme end of Selzer's MoE and Trump wins the state by a point or two, that likely bodes ill for his chances elsewhere. Trump's best hope in this case would be that Iowa just really, really likes black people (it voted for Obama twice).
On the other hand, if Trump wins Iowa by 5-10 points as previously expected, then it will be a rare black-eye for Selzer. I really wouldn't want to bet against Selzer given her track record, but 1 in 20 polls will go outside the MoE even if everything is calibrated correctly.
It'll be interesting to watch no matter what happens.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Just use Polymarket. It's way more intuitively expressed as percents instead of bookie returns.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
These discussions aren't "essentially outlawed" anywhere, the people making the claims just need to bring their receipts, which they consistently fail to do. You had Giuliani saying these things on national television, and getting dunked on because he had little evidence.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
This strains credulity when the party controlling the presidency has shifted back-and-forth across US history with a nearly metronomic frequency. Also, if Dems only need to take an L "once in a while", why don't they win, say, 2/3rds of House + Senate seats?
It's like a YEC claiming God specifically buried dinosaur skeletons in the ground to mislead scientists.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I strongly agree with your first suggestion of requiring IDs + making IDs easy to get for lawful citizens.
Third, I’d take reports of anomalies seriously. I don’t care what people think they’re seeing, but if it’s possible fraud, it deserves a full investigation. And prosecution for fraud should be a part of that.
I disagree here. How would this be different from the status quo? Giuliani and smaller Trump-aligned groups filed tons of lawsuits with next to no evidence... and they mostly just got thrown out of court due to having no evidence. People like Raffensperger were investigating claims people were making, but they consistently came up empty.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
It feels like you're playing motte for the bailey above you. Nobody really denies that gerrymandering happens; we can all see it on the map. So yes, if you define gerrymandering as "rigging" (a word I personally wouldn't use to describe it) then technically US elections can be rigged to some extent. But that's very different from the claims Trump and friends are making, and indeed what many in this thread are making. Such claims involve fabricating votes wholesale up to tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, or even tens of millions. In such scenarios, why not just fabricate X number of votes (whatever is needed) to win every even vaguely competitive election?
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
They did not. When Hillary Clinton says Trump is an "illegitimate President," I just don't understand how you conclude that this is "superficially similar" language with a "real and very important difference."
Because of other actions surrounding what they said? While I really don't like that Hillary said the election was "stolen" and that Trump was "illegitimate", I still think there's a big difference between her comments and what Trump did. Hillary conceded almost immediately after the 2016 results were in. To my knowledge, Trump still hasn't conceded for 2020. Hillary never made phone calls demanding governors and secretaries of state "find" enough votes for them to win. Trump did. Hillary never egged on her followers to go to the capitol to protest or disrupt the electoral count. Trump, obviously, did.
To the contrary, I would say that it translated to the political class very well, in a variety of ways.
You linked an article where the Dems put forward abolishing the EC in favor of a direct popular vote (or some other system), but this doesn't seem germane to the argument that EverythingIsFine is making. There wasn't a broad rejection of election results by D leaders. The closest was probably Stacey Abrams refusing to concede in Georgia, but 1) she got a ton of pushback from this from her own party, and 2) even in this most extreme example, she didn't try to interfere directly like Trump did.
No: you are treating Democratic attempts to ensure their own permanent victory as "fix" while treating parallel Republican attempted to ensure their own permanent victory as "change."
What Trump did was fundamentally different from normal election reform, and thus his actions deserve to be seen differently. Dems saying we should abolish the EC (in future elections) or Rs saying we should require IDs to vote (in future elections) are very different proposals from Trump's "we need to overturn the votes from certain states (in an election that just happened).
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
You put it much more eloquently than I could, and I might be yoinking your answer to reply to some others downthread.
Fantastic set of posts, reported for AAQC.
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