The 2024 US Presidential election

[WyattEarp]

Iowa Poll: Kamala Harris leapfrogs Donald Trump to take lead near Election Day. Here's how

The new Iowa Poll shows Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by 3 points. Pollster J. Ann Selzer: “It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming.”

eu.desmoinesregister.com

Ann Selzer has called every presidential and senate race correctly in Iowa since 2008.
Now MAGA is crying foul because her last pre-election poll shows Harris up by 3.

Because it's essentially been easy to predict Iowa's Presidential and Senate votes.

We will see if Seltzer's right, but it's unusual for one pollster to pick up things that others do not. If she's wrong, it could be one of two things in my opinion. Seltzer's poll picked up a lot of the "shy" Trump voters as they say. Or she deliberately put her thumb on the scale. We'll never know the latter as she would likely claim to be thrown off by the "shy" Trump voters.

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

That Selzer poll was bought and paid for by the Democrat party

 

[WyattEarp]

Nate Silver recently called them all out.

I'm sincerely curious. Do you know where I can find Silver discussing polls that kind of jigger with their results?

There are subtle ways to skew a poll ever so slightly. You simply change the composition of the voter pool. You want to move the needle a bit for Harris you start your polling selection with a few percentage more women. The pollster then states that they think the female turnout will be higher. Inversely, you do the opposite to skew towards Trump.

The consistently tight poll results one after another from a large body of pollsters has been called out as very unlikely by some. One wonders if many of the pollsters are deliberately trying to stay with the herd.

We will have the answer to the question of the accuracy of the polls tomorrow.

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

I'm sincerely curious. Do you know where I can find Silver discussing polls that kind of jigger with their results?

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author

 

[WyattEarp]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author

So essentially Nate Silver thinks there can be "herding" on the part of pollsters.

 

[Valcazar]

I'm sincerely curious. Do you know where I can find Silver discussing polls that kind of jigger with their results?

https://www.reddit.com/r/fivethirtyeight/comments/1ggpqqi
Silver's become a bit of a crank, but his overall point that we appear to be seeing herding seems sound.
There just isn't enough variance in the polls we are seeing released.

There are subtle ways to skew a poll ever so slightly. You simply change the composition of the voter pool. You want to move the needle a bit for Harris you start your polling selection with a few percentage more women. The pollster then states that they think the female turnout will be higher. Inversely, you do the opposite to skew towards Trump.

Or you fuck with the weighting in ways that aren't justified. (You don't adjust the selection pool itself.)
Amounts to the same thing.

Or you just don't release polls you don't want to release.

As I posted in one thread or another, Trump is quite convinced the polls he pays for just tell him what he wants to hear (according to his interview with Rogan) and that polls showing that he isn't winning are illegal and the people who make them should be arrested. (According to his stump speeches.)

The consistently tight poll results one after another from a large body of pollsters has been called out as very unlikely by some. One wonders if many of the pollsters are deliberately trying to stay with the herd.

This was Silver's argument (and not his alone).
If your polls aren't outliers, people won't be mad if you miss things by the same amount as everyone else.

 

[WyattEarp]

As I posted in one thread or another, Trump is quite convinced the polls he pays for just tell him what he wants to hear (according to his interview with Rogan) and that polls showing that he isn't winning are illegal and the people who make them should be arrested. (According to his stump speeches.)

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projects.fivethirtyeight.com

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

So essentially Nate Silver thinks there can be "herding" on the part of pollsters

Yup.

The last 2 elections overestimated Democrat vote, and it looks like it might be happening again

 

[WyattEarp]

Dems are getting worried

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1853185607733756320

I tend to side with election analysts that believe you can't make out much from early voting patterns. For the most part, I think the people who voted early were very motivated voters that otherwise would have simply voted for their preferred candidate on election day.

Enthusiastic voters certainly are a good thing, but as has been said before they only count as one vote like everyone else's vote. The votes placed five minutes before the polls close counts as much as the votes from October.

Anecdotally, my friends and family that voted a few weeks ago have very clear party preferences. Some are liberal. Some are conservative. But generally, they knew who they would vote for before the two nominees were decided.

 

[squeezer]

Yup.

The last 2 elections overestimated Democrat vote, and it looks like it might be happening again

Do you mean like in 2022 when they got the big red wave? OH wait, it never happened, hmmmm. You are hilarious.

 

[WyattEarp]

Do you mean like in 2022 when they got the big red wave? OH wait, it never happened, hmmmm. You are hilarious.

That's a good point. However, midterm Senate and House polling is not as extensive/intensive as Presidential polling.

Surely, you also realize when Trump's is actually on the ballot it is a very unique political phenomenon.

So we will know tomorrow evening if pollsters were in the ballpark.

By the way, the Republicans slightly underperformed the mean expectation in House election polling. The Red Wave prediction in 2022 was kind of the summer prognostication from so-called experts.

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

Do you mean like in 2022 when they got the big red wave? OH wait, it never happened, hmmmm. You are hilarious

No, I mean when every fricking poll under the Sun had Hillary winning in 2016

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

I think its all gonna come down to who the independents vote for.
If they go for Trump then he wins in a landslide.
If they go for Harris, then she will

 

[Valcazar]

ABC News – Breaking News, Latest News and Videos

ABC News is your trusted source on political news stories and videos. Get the latest coverage and analysis on everything from the Trump presidency, Senate, House and Supreme Court.

projects.fivethirtyeight.com

Not sure what that has to do with what I said, but yes, Biden won Wisconsin in 2020.

 

[Valcazar]

Yup.

The last 2 elections overestimated Democrat vote, and it looks like it might be happening again

We really don't know.
The "herding" he is talking about doesn't tell us anything about which way they are herding.

The pollsters have every incentive to not get it so wrong in the Democratic direction again and some people think they've tweaked their models too far in the other direction.

But I don't think anyone knows for sure and I've certainly seen no evidence of which direction the systematic error is happening.
I do agree with Silver's analysis that you simply would be seeing a wider range of results if people weren't fucking with things though, because that's what MOE and stats look like.

 

[WyattEarp]

Not sure what that has to do with what I said, but yes, Biden won Wisconsin in 2020.

Trump is within the reasonable bounds of rhetoric to point out how poorly Presidential polls performed when he was on the ballot. Case and point Wisconsin polls 2020.

Yes, holding polls to legal consequences for poor accuracy would be a very, very bad thing. It was very disturbing for him to say that.

 

[dirtydaveiii]

Even fox fake news Saud Haris is leading by 3% nationwide and in virtually all the battleground states. All the moron Trump supporters on terb will be gone for weeks until fox comes up with more conspiracy theories

 

[dirtydaveiii]

Trump is within the reasonable bounds of rhetoric to point out how poorly Presidential polls performed when he was on the ballot. Case and point Wisconsin polls 2020.

Yes, holding polls to legal consequences for poor accuracy would be a very, very bad thing. It was very disturbing for him to say that.

If there were legal consequences for lying or being wrong trunp would be sentenced to at least a trillion years in jail

 

[Valcazar]

I tend to side with election analysts that believe you can't make out much from early voting patterns. For the most part, I think the people who voted early were very motivated voters that otherwise would have simply voted for their preferred candidate on election day.

Enthusiastic voters certainly are a good thing, but as has been said before they only count as one vote like everyone else's vote. The votes placed five minutes before the polls close counts as much as the votes from October.

Anecdotally, my friends and family that voted a few weeks ago have very clear party preferences. Some are liberal. Some are conservative. But generally, they knew who they would vote for before the two nominees were decided.

I think the problem is that early voting became VERY polarized for the 2020 election.
You can't really compare numbers or patterns to that because it was COVID and there was an active campaign to make it politically polarized.

You might be able to compare to previous elections, but I'm not sure that post-2020 the baseline assumptions about who votes early have changed.

Like you, I just don't think you can read that much into it right now.

 

[WyattEarp]

If there were legal consequences for lying or being wrong trunp would be sentenced to at least a trillion years in jail

Well, if Trump was sentenced to a trillion years in jail it would likely be in a Democratic jurisdiction. So essentially he would be out in six months.