sulla
7mo ago
Other polls, early voting number, the cross tabs on other polls suggesting Kamala was in trouble with black and Latino men. Past polling missed suggested the aggregate underestimated Trump. Statements by polling experts like Nate Cohn who said that nothing changed in the methodology.
And then of course, vibes. Talk to a lot of Trump-curious individuals.
sulla
7mo ago
This is the exact misunderstanding of statistics that kills Silver, is confusing aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty.
Aleatoric uncertainty comes from the irreducible randomness of a process. Epistemic uncertainty comes from a lack of knowledge.
The election was not 50/50 going into Tuesday. In terms of aleatoric uncertainty it was nearly 100/0. People’s votes were essentially predetermined at that point. If you reset the timeline to Tuesday morning, you would get the same result every time.
Silver’s epidemic uncertainty was high. That’s not because the election was impossible to predict (I made a lot of money off of it), it’s because he’s an idiot and refuses to update based on past results.
sulla
7mo ago
It’s a bad look. At least say something to your supporters. “We’ll get ‘em next time” or whatever. She’s an even worse leader than I thought.
sulla
7mo ago
His whole “job” is predicting elections. He literally said “idk.” in terms of doing his job that is actually worse than being wrong. What a failure.
sulla
7mo ago
Selzer is obviously ruined. Her whole thing is she predicts 1 state and she produced one of the worst polls of all time.
Silver is similarly ruined, however. His whole grift is predicting elections and he said “idk.” He will refuse to ever admit industry polling bias, so the best he can do is make his model say 50/50 unless it’s already obvious to everyone and their grandma who will win.
sulla
7mo ago
Probably anyone who has spent more than five minutes on the Motte knows that I mistrust corporate news media a lot. I am even aware that polls are politically slanted. And yet, somehow, every time I went looking into the polls behind the media's unapologetic shilling for Harris, I came away thinking, "even if that result is wrong, surely it's not so wrong that Trump could actually pull this off." And maybe this just goes back to my difficulty with numbers. But I am such a skeptical person by nature that it feels too convenient to conclude that, no, I need to be even more skeptical.
Nara my friend. It was not that hard. Trump barely lost in 2020 in spite of terrible polls, and was tied in 2024. He was doing palpably better in both the polls and the vibes. Ergo.
The most accurate pollsters in 2020 were dead accurate in 2024. AtlasIntel wears the crown again. Their polls showed a Trump swing state sweep.
If you couldn’t see through the Selzer poll, I don’t know what to tell you. The sample was like, 50% college educated women over 65 in a state full of farmers. Your mistake was not putting enough weight on the obvious conclusion that the poll was just not a bad sample, but entirely fraudulent. In which case, it carries 0 information.
I will admit that poll kept me up at night. But it forced me to think through the obvious conclusions, and I became totally convinced Trump would win. I put money in PredictIt on Monday and bought TSLA calls on Tuesday. But it was only after I had convinced myself that the race was not even close to a toss up.
sulla
7mo ago
In what way was it 'beyond obvious'?
Because it blatantly contradicted every other piece of evidence about the state of the race in a way that was wildly implausible.
I find it funny how easily people are willing to label a called shot on a probability 'obviously wrong' as soon the result doesn't agree with the slightly higher probability assigned.
I spent the past few days on X relentlessly making fun of anyone who believed the Selzer poll. And then bet some money on PredictIt for good measure.
If anyone's right, it's those who look at the record of the pollsters they follow and decide who to believe based on how many cumulative shots they've called correctly.
As predicted, zero self-reflection. I could explain to you where this logic goes wrong, but it's better if you figure it out yourself.
sulla
7mo ago
They're depressed because they're a swing state but don't actually matter in any of the plausible scenarios.
sulla
7mo ago
Regarding the Selzer poll, I had the following exchange:
It’s hard not to view this as just the latest in a long string of people lighting their credibility on fire for a tiny chance of stopping bad orange man. It seems to run contrary to every other piece of evidence: polls, registration, early voting, “vibes.”
A Trump blowout still seems like the most likely scenario to me. There is just too much going in Trump’s favor relative to the very close 2020 election.
We've only got a few days to wait so we'll see. But how willing are you to consider that rather than your ideological opponents willfully blinding themselves, it is perhaps you?
It looks like once again my judgment was infallible and the left was completely and utterly deluded. The entire online left was collectively deluded by the Selzer poll. "She's the gold standard!" It was beyond obvious the poll was rigged.
I ask myself constantly if it is I with the willful blinders. But no, when reality gets a vote in the past 8 years it's always the left who was deluded. The great Selzer debate is just a microcosm. They worship "muh experts" who are bought and paid for, or who are simply lying to support their ideology, and then refused to be moved by facts or logic. I guarantee this will trigger no self-reflection. They will insist they were right to trust the "gold standard" Selzer against all logic.
sulla
7mo ago
Except they messed up the Census in a way that undercounts Florida by 2 and NY and CA by 1, and refused to fix it after it was discovered. If Trump sweeps the Sun Belt while Kamala wins the Rust Belt, which is not at all implausible, this error will decide the president.
sulla
7mo ago
True, but this idea is fading hard, especially among the younger generation. Women are so strongly protected by the Daddy State that many men feel no obligation.
sulla
7mo ago
I don’t think it will move the needle much, but I think his interviews with Trump/Vance/Musk did by a few fractions of a percent at least.
I do think one thing that has been lost is that Kamala will probably struggle with men more than Trump struggles with women. The Kamala campaign has aggressively refused to appeal to men, with their weak attempts doing more harm than good.
On top of that, Biden was the “reasonable” choice that “reasonable” men could get behind. Now that the Biden admin is viewed as a bit of a failed hysterical clown show, the “reasonable” masculine thing to do is vote for Trump. Centrist men in my experience feel Dems had their chance and they botched it. “Go to your room and think about what you’ve done, and maybe next time we’ll vote for you” energy. They did the same to Trump last time
sulla
7mo ago
There are rumors, stemming from the boss himself, that Republicans found some “secret” to help improve turnout. I’m skeptical, but you never know.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/28/us/politics/trump-secret-house-republicans-panic.html
sulla
7mo ago
I don’t know why after the insanity of the past 8 years, your initial reaction to something absurd like this wouldn’t be blanket denial.
This pollster also shared the results with Kamala surrogates well in advance. People tweeted rumors about it yesterday. Apparently a surrogate let it slip by accident, not realizing the poll wasn’t released yet. So a pollster colluded with Democrats and released an absurd “momentum shifting” poll 3 days before the election, but your default response is to take it at face value? I have a bridge to sell you, man.
sulla
7mo ago
It’s hard not to view this as just the latest in a long string of people lighting their credibility on fire for a tiny chance of stopping bad orange man. It seems to run contrary to every other piece of evidence: polls, registration, early voting, “vibes.”
A Trump blowout still seems like the most likely scenario to me. There is just too much going in Trump’s favor relative to the very close 2020 election.
The idea that abortion is going to cause a massive polling error in favor of Harris is just a blatant wish fulfillment fantasy. There is no evidence for it. It’s completely made up. Even in 2022 the polls underestimated Republicans slightly, they just didn’t miss as badly as they did with Trump so people misremember them as overestimating Republicans.
Odds are the polls will underestimate Trump like they always do, meaning it will be a Trump blowout. The “right leaning” pollsters haven’t changed anything about what they do, and the gap between them and the polling average is the same as ever. This strongly suggests nobody has changed anything, meaning they will be wrong in exactly the same way.
sulla
7mo ago
I noticed the odds fluctuating slightly, but had no idea that this was why. This is a very lame attempt. They’ve already been calling Trump Hitler for 8 years. Why would it finally stick?
Hitler is rapidly becoming irrelevant anyway. You might as well say Attila the Hun did some good things.
sulla
8mo ago
The defense is still playing at an elite level, and the offense still has a very good line. But the WR situation is a disaster.
sulla
8mo ago
I can't shake the feeling that the Cowboys under Dak have always been and will always be a clown car. They put up big stats in random regular season games but always fold like a lawn chair under the slightest pressure.
As for the Eagles, I just can't shake the sense that they're not good. They look like the same team from the late-season collapse last year, but with better RNG.
The Redskins look actually good, surprisingly. Tough loss against a good Eagles team. I think they have a legit chance to win the right to lose to the Chiefs in the Super Bowl.
The Giants... lol.
sulla
8mo ago
They don't have to agree. They just need to come away with minimal emotional valance. If Vance said "No, because the election was fake and gay and Biden is a fake Mickey Mouse president" it might affect normie's views. Instead he just said "no" to a question that normie doesn't really understand, then complained about Big Tech, who everyone hates. It's not a "gotcha" and it's not a "blunder."
Honestly, it was a fine answer and nobody cares. If you are smart enough to realize the flaw in the argument the you are smart to realize that he has no choice but to say he wouldn’t have certified the election. Most people just zone out and don’t really remember what he is talking about, and vaguely agree that Big Tech censorship is bad. This is not going to move the needle at all.
sulla
8mo ago
but what did it for me was the way everyone bent over for masks and vaccines during covid.
Not even a big deal compared to lockdowns.
sulla
8mo ago
I would claim that at minimum the Democrats are tilting the playing field through illegal or quasi-illegal mechanisms. For example, letting illegals vote illegally tilts the playing field in their favor, but there are still a finite number of illegals, they might not all vote for Harris, etc. Same with ballot harvesting. Therefore, Trump can still win, he just needs a larger margin.
I also share the same basic sentiment as many of the other posters. If you don’t want people to make unfalsifiable voter fraud claims, don’t make them illegal to falsify them. They can only be falsified by election integrity laws like voter ID, strict chain-of-custody, etc. If you outlaw election integrity, then all elections are by-default suspect.
The question isn’t whether you can prove that the ballots are illegitimate or not. The question is why can’t you? Any answer you can come up with is uncomfortable.
sulla
9mo ago
I disagree entirely with the premise that political polarization has anything to do with social media or big tech. It is an absurd claim on its face, because human history is littered with countless examples of extreme political polarization long before smartphones or the Internet. It's a waste to even name them, because basically every historical event learned in school would qualify. Relatively speaking, the current period isn't even particularly highly polarized.
The only semi-charitable way to interpret these articles is to interpret them as apologia for why the current regime's systems of control have failed. Before the latest technology wave, the regime had everyone's opinion under control because they could make sure that all three news channels were broadcasting the correct messages. They cannot control social media as a whole, therefore, it must be social media's fault because people are able to exchange information and ideas without their consent.
The article itself is self-contradictory. In one paragraph, it's attacking Fox News for "cherry-picking" quotes from Democrats, and in the next says the only solution is to "stop big tech" from using their current algorithms. I guess it's left as an exercise for the reader how "big tech algorithms" caused Fox News's programming. Yet Fox News's current state could not possibly have been "caused" by social media, because as I recall, Democrats hated and mocked Fox News more in the 2000's than they do now.
The fundamental mistake the article is making is to mistake correlation for causation. While a relative increase in polarization has coincided with the rise of social media, this does not mean that one caused the other. In fact, there is not even a common cause. They are completely unrelated. All civilizations oscillate between periods of division and periods of cohesion. America was in a period of relative cohesion, but it could not last forever.
You’re not trying to convince me, and you’re not trying to convince the non-existent readers of this thread, so the sad conclusion is that you are only trying to convince yourself that you weren’t made to look like a fool by some old lady in Iowa who Nate Bronze said was “the gold standard” because she predicted Obama 100 years ago.
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