this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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[–] reddig33 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Polls are meaningless. VOTE!

[–] laverabe 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I agree 100%. I'd go one step further and argue it's excitement that wins elections. Regardless of each candidates' politics; it seems apparent now that Kamala is the agent of change, and her opponent is the status quo.

The funny thing is 3 months ago I would have said the exact opposite (Biden/Trump). Political winds change fast...

[–] morphballganon 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

National polls don't tell us much due to the electoral college.

Whether AL is +2 Trump or +20 Trump has no impact on who wins.

[–] laverabe 1 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

That's a good point. Are there any models out there that "compensate" for that? I know Nate Silver's one has been popular but I don't know if that factors in the electoral weighing.

[–] krelvar 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] laverabe 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

ah yeah, I had forgot about that. He was dead wrong in 2016 ;) I think he had Clinton at like 80% chance of winning, but I believe whatever errors they made back then were mostly corrected since.

[–] krelvar 2 points 2 weeks ago

Silver isn't with 538 anymore, I think his model and the 538 model have the same basis though, probably diverging a bit since he left?

In any case, the point that an 80% chance of X is no guarantee of X got pounded home, don't you think? :)

[–] laverabe 1 points 2 weeks ago

his model shows Harris 48.9% / Trump 44.8% right now.

[–] kescusay 2 points 2 weeks ago

Very hard to say. Polling has been basically broken for around six years now.

Looking back, 2016 was a harbinger of things to come. The national polls were still solid (Clinton won the national popular vote, after all), but the state-level polls were pretty bad. They retooled in 2017 and 2018, and did better, but at the same time, land lines were starting to vanish fast, making polling harder and harder.

Since 2018, my sense has been that pollsters don't really have a solution. The population that will answer unknown calls on their cell phones skews older, but young people have been showing up to vote. There's only so much you can do with weighting and assumptions to massage a non-representative sample into something useful, and I wonder if we've hit the point where the polls are simply going to remain as many as ten points off from reality because of it.

[–] TropicalDingdong -2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

+8.

People who dismiss or disregard polling are idiots, which is like, most of the people who respond to posts related to polling.

50/50 nationally for "Democratic candidate" versus Trump is +5.

+10 is "clearly winning, but still a chance" for the D.

+15 is blowout, blue wave.

Harris has that potential but her missteps are going to cost her with the only donors that matter, the people who donate their vote. However, she's been like, uncannily savvy with regards to most of her maneuvers. I think she sees her'self boxed in on Gaza so her answer is "steady as she goes". Problem there is that Israel is specifically stoking a regional war to put D's into this position. So while it is a damned if you do/ damned if you don't when it comes to pulling Netanyahu's leash, she's doubly damned is the US "don't" in this case. Regardless, she's been incredibly strong otherwise.

I have her at 65% to win right now if you are playing the odds. I expect her to be at 85% the day of. If she can get to +10 to +15 range, she bumps into the 90%-97% to win range. This is of course for the stochastic models. Process based models tell a different story, which comes almost entirely down to Israel/ Gaza. Basically she can't win with out MI/ MN/ WI, and enough uncommitted put their number up to prevent a D from winning those states. The DNC not allowing a Gazan to at least speak seems like SUCH an unforced error, it seems almost unlikely to have come out of the Harris camp. Its not clear to me why or how you would make such a stupid error when you NEEED to lock those states up. Anyways, process based models are closer to 50/50 for MI/ WI because of this issue. This also assumes if she doesn't take MI/ WI she also hasn't taken GA/ NC.

Anyways. +8 nationally is where I have her being on election day, which is a 85% chance to win.