This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Re: the Selzer poll.
I'd like to examine the wording of this poll and the effect had on the outcome. The wording was as follows:
The September poll, by contrast, did not include language targeted at early voters:
The 2020 wording of the Selzer poll was as follows:
The 2016 wording was as follows:
I believe the "If you already voted, for whom did you vote?" wording of the October 2024 poll skewed the results for a few reasons. First, it seems slightly confusing. It's possible that respondents could have interpreted the additional wording as being about their perception of how others would have voted. Given that Democrats tend to vote early and people tend to know this because of the 2020 election coverage, this may have skewed the result. Secondly, poll questions should be as short and simple as possible. The 2020 wording of the question was much shorter, and did not include multiple parts for poll respondents to think through. The 2016 wording, while structured similarly to 2024, also did not include language about early voting. One rule of survey design is to avoid asking multiple questions at once, and this violates that.
Lastly, the inclusion of this language may bias participation towards respondents who did vote early. And while that does tend to favor Democrats, Nate Silver has written about how early voting doesn't predict results. Therefore, the accuracy of this poll result may be skewed.
Overall: The markets moving from 60/40 to 50/50 might have happened anyway and this just happened to be the outlier poll that triggered it. It's probably a good thing that the betting markets now accurately reflect where the race has been according to aggregators like Nate. But the result seems to be due to the wording of the poll, rather than an underlying change in the Iowa (read: Midwestern) electorate.
EDIT: For contrast, the Emerson poll showed a 53%/43% lead for Trump and was worded as follows:
It seems like she heavily oversampled democrats in a state that has gotten redder since 2020. Oddly she gave the poll results to Dems before releasing. I think it is a bad poll designed to discourage Republican turnout nationally.
Edit:
If you look more you see things like seniors moving allegedly almost 30 points away from Trump. Ditto non college voters. We aren’t seeing that kind of data anywhere else. Indeed Selzer showed Trump up over 18 points against Biden. Are we really to believe that Trump lost 21 points over a few months to Harris led by a surge in 65+ voters?
Yeah the cross tabs are damning. If she doesn’t get this one right and Trump wins by 10 or something, her credibility is a pollster is shot.
I'd kinda hope not. If you do 100 polls you will get roughly that is a 1% outlier, and those have wacky results. By itself it is damning, but aggregated with everything else it comes out in the wash. If people are constantly second guessing their polls to guess if its real or outlier and only releasing the "real" ones then not only is the data untrustworthy but what is the point of the statistical confidence levels in the first place?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link