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Seems fucking stupid to me, a god damn socialist.
Nate was, of course, a LIBERAL (spits, makes sign of the cross) and had some takes I thought were pretty dumb, but he is the guy at 538. It's just him. The whole point was that his models beat random chance and beat the average at doing something purely empirical: using poles to predict outcomes. Why bother even having the outfit at that point?
Also, why bother sending a letter at all? Pointlessly demonstrative. If I wanted to punish Rasmussen from Morris's position, I'd just make consistent noise about "Rasmussen is so biased we actually give them negative weight in out model" or some shit.
I laughed thanks.
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How the hell are you supposed to produce good results if you're deliberately cutting yourself off from data about the views, beliefs, actions and behaviour of Those People Over There? You can think they're all rich white cis het Christian old guys who want to eat the poor, burn gay trans non-binary furries at the stake, and chain women up in breeding camps to pump out babies, and still need to incorporate that data into your forecast about a national election.
What is gained by becoming Site Number 9658742 on the Innertubes that rants about the Rethuglicans?
I wonder. Maybe the message isn't for Rasmussen as such, it's to demonstrate to the people on the right side of history that no, we got with the programme, we're not even going to give the Fascists that much toleration by letting them contribute to our site. We are purging the wrongthinkers and demonstrating our purity.
Parsing polls to learn how to win elections for the team is at most a secondary goal among most people: to win a purity spiral among your peers is far more immediate and practical. And why shouldn't it, to be honest? If you somehow knew the exact outcome of an election a year in advance, you're not going to be able to do anything to change it. Even skilled politicians with top pollsters usually just flail against the tide of shifting poll numbers.
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