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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6107 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026

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The Senate in particular seems like it will be hard for Democrats to capture. They need to flip 4 seats.

The easiest to flip are North Carolina, Maine, Texas and Ohio. After that, Iowa, Alaska, Kansas. With the exception of Maine these are all red states! Trump won Texas by 14, Iowa by 13, Ohio by 11!

They also need to avoid being flipped in Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Georgia.

Michigan in particular is a tough race for them with a DSA Muslim vs a turbo normie. Wouldn't be surprised to see Rogers win that one by 8 points.

North Carolina

That's a gimme. Pretty much no one would have a chance at beating Cooper.

I have been amused by the "Criminals for Coop" signs. Interesting that both sides have run almost entirely negative campaigns afaict.

I never bet against Susan Collins or John Sununu. It's a personal rule of mine. I do believe Talarico probably has a slight edge in Texas, and if the race isn't called before midnight local time he almost certainly won(the worst administered elections in the state are in a blue county, albeit not the bluest- and Harris county is just generally dysfunctional, this is not ipso facto evidence of fraud). Willing to believe Alaska and Ohio are well within reach for democrats as well.

Michigan in particular is a tough race for them with a DSA Muslim vs a turbo normie. Wouldn't be surprised to see Rogers win that one by 8 points.

How much you wanna bet? I'll take even odds that Rogers loses.

Why would I ever bet you with those odds when I can get much better odds on Kalshi? What a strange offer. Counterparty risk means I wouldn't bet you at any odds, no offense.

Why would I ever bet you with those odds when I can get much better odds on Kalshi?

Kalshi is only offering those odds because nobody will bet at even odds; the purpose of the site is for bettors to make money, not to prove their points. It's like insisting that your team is going to win a football game and then insisting the other party give you points; it doesn't exactly demonstrate confidence in your position. If anything, you should be giving him odds.

Yeah but it's also kinda bad faith to walk into a conversation where a guy is saying 'I think X should happen more than 10% of the time' and say 'OH. YOU THINK X HAPPENS. GIVE ME A 50% BET' which is what happens in a lot of these public peer-to-peer bet situations where somebody/both party tries to tip the scales to be ludicrously favorable and then meanders around saying 'He didn't want to bet with me he must not have true conviction'

This is just not how anything works. I might think my air fryer is worth $300 in terms of the value it provides to me, but it doesn’t mean I’d buy it for $300 from some guy off the street when Amazon is selling it for $100.

We’re also allowed to think prediction markets are wrong without betting on them. They are bad for all sorts of reasons. They are going to have to clear a large hurdle for me to even consider it.

Finally I am not predicting a Rogers 8 point victory. I only said I wouldn’t be surprised. Gun to my head he wins by 2.

Again, you're missing the point. Being theoretically willing to buy an air fryer for $300 and finding one for $100 is a great deal if the goal is to buy an air fryer. If the goal, however, to convince my that an air fryer is worth $300, telling me that you paid $100 for one doesn't do much to accomplish it.

We’re also allowed to think prediction markets are wrong without betting on them. They are bad for all sorts of reasons. They are going to have to clear a large hurdle for me to even consider it.

I am not a betting man myself, but if I'm going to make specific predictions with confidence and meet resistance, I am willing to put my money where my mouth is. I never actually bet, though. The trick is that when someone insists on betting, offer an amount of money that would cause them real (though not catastrophic) pain if they lost. Talk is cheap, and so is a bet that will only cost you $20 if you lose. People who want to bet are a lot less confident when you insist on $500 or $1000. At that point the tables have turned and they admit that they are only confident enough to involve a "fun" amount of money.

Finally I am not predicting a Rogers 8 point victory. I only said I wouldn’t be surprised. Gun to my head he wins by 2.

Not exactly a hot take.

I mean in this case Porkpiehat is saying 'I bought an air fryer at $300' and Vim is saying 'I'll sell you another one at $500, never mind the fact that that's well above market price'

Talk is cheap. I don't believe you.

Here you go.

You can get much better odds on Kalshi. All you're "offering" is an opportunity for you to dutch-book and make free money (ignoring counterparty risks and work, of course).

Basically what I'm saying. If the big national races are close, semi-coinflip outcomes should ultimately come down for the GOP in the end. You have to believe in a serious blue wave to expect a flip of the Senate, especially a flip that actually gives them 'control' vs. just a nominal majority.

Polymarket believes blue wave, Nate silver believes blue wave, polls predict blue wave, RCP believes blue wave, rumors are that GOP insiders believe blue wave, I am pro Trump also - but I think that his absolute remarkable dumb political luck has finally ran out. A nominal majority is control when it comes to appointments and passing laws.

Based on September polling. Which, last cycle in some of those important states, undershot Republican performance by 6-12%.

But who knows. Maybe this will finally be the election where the polling was accurate and not a targeted psyop to demoralize GOP voters understandably and accidentally mistaken all the time in the exact same direction.

I’m not sure how seriously I take polymarket, polls and Nate Silver. Not that they’re certainly wrong, but there’s always the issue of motivated reasoning. Elections are something that almost everyone cares about the outcome of, and this is going to come out in what people predict. A lot of people really really want a blue wave, just like a lot of people wanted Trump to lose. This shows up in polling data and predictions because they’re all made by humans.

I believe that Nate Silver wants to be right and does his best.

Now the question is not whether you take said sources seriously, but whether you do it consistently or not. Empirical evidence is that people that are under the impression they are winning are not busy unskewing the polls. When the Iowa gold standard poll came out two years ago, republicans didn't try to prove that it is wrong, they just laughed at it. With good reasons.

I have taken Nate seriously for more than a decade so far (and he has always given Trump higher chances than the rest of his cohort, so there is that), so if I have to make exception now - there has to be good reasons for it. This year may be different - but the only different thing so far is that I really dislike his prognosis.

Now if your gut tells you that Republicans are in better shape than presented, and said gut was also mostly right about the 2016-2024 elections - I will say - great - a track record is a track record.

I don’t see why I should take prognosticators seriously unless they have enough skin in the game to worry about being wrong. I don’t see that with most polling data, and thus nothing derived from that data is at least partly suspect. Especially if the pundits in question can get it wrong and face no serious consequences for failure.

I have not heard the 'GOP insiders' rumor, personally.

I also don't see Dems acting like they expect such a win.

The problem with citing PolyMarket, Nate Silver, RCP, and polls is they're all functionally drawing from the exact same data, nobody has 'insider' info here.

IF that dataset it tainted, biased, or otherwise missing something, which has happened before then they can't give you a more accurate picture just by aggregating them together.

And we already have some pretty sizeable polling misses in the primaries!

I think its fair to say the error bars are probably larger than you think. Like, after the Ur-example of a polling miss in Trump's 2016 original win, you should keep your salt grains on hand for reading political polls.

And importantly, Trump needs 50 non-cucked Republicans to make any appointments. Judges can rule like kings in many cases. We need Trump to be able to appoint them which he can't do without those 50 votes.

I am hopeful for a blue fizzle based on demonstrated poll bias. But maybe I have my head in the sand.

Do you have links towards serious analysis why polls are terribly wrong that is not fueled by binge on copium and hopium?

I mean, I can't guarantee it's not hopium and copium but...

  1. Polls have consistently overestimated Dem support by SEVERAL percentage points

  2. Polls have gotten worse since no one responds to pollsters

  3. Deranged boomer uncs, foaming at the mouth with hatred for Trump (we all know a few like this) are more likely to respond to a pollster

  4. Most importantly, early ballot requests are WAY down especially in some black areas. Dems are more likely to vote absentee. Their turnout is going to suck. Maybe Republican turnout will too though.

I think the vibe opinion is that only boomers pick up the phone. Off the top of my head I can’t even think of a way to do an unbiased survey on US politics today.

I think my phone even auto filters pollsters straight to spam and don’t even show me the call.

New tinfoil: the polls themselves aren't biased, but Verizon and AT&T discriminate in how they screen political pollsters to skew the sample

North Carolina is a Purple state, It has a democrat governor and a republican state legislature. It doesn't help that the Republican senate candidate is fairly odious, and the democratic senate candidate is a fairly popular former governor. I think it is likely Roy Cooper takes the senate seat.

I agree that North Carolina is a likely flip, made less painful by the fact that Thom Tillis was a closet Democrat.

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