kescusay

I miss summers when everything wasn't on fire.

Thank you for sharing that link! More people need to see it.

Great. Glad to hear it. But don't get complacent. Remind yourself that polls can change fast, and polling itself is a troubled science right now because of the difficulties involved in getting a statistically significant and unbiased sample with the advent of universal cellphones.

The gambling markets shift enormously as elections approach and people start worrying about their money. In 2020, they were consistent for a long time that Trump would win, then shifted to match reality late in the election.

Especially this early in Kamala Harris' run, I wouldn't pay much attention to the gamblers.

Holy shit, that would be legitimately great television.

I'm old school. My irrational terror is windmill cancer.

Missed the point. I'm saying conservative "we're not a democracy, we're a republic" bullshit is inconsistent.

... Mr. Vance?

Huh. Just the other day, Trump claimed in a speech that he took a bullet for democracy. I wonder which democracy he was talking about?

You mean, trickle-down economics doesn't actually work? And when rich people get a tax cut, they don't immediately reinvest their personal income windfalls into their businesses and employees?!? Quick, someone fetch my fainting couch!

Here's what's been on my mind about polls for the last year or so...

In 2016, we all know that the national polls were basically accurate, giving Hillary Clinton the popular vote - and she did indeed win the popular vote. But the state polls were off significantly in the states that mattered for that election.

In 2017, with retooled polls, the off-year elections basically matched up with what the pollsters said.

In 2018, the polls predicted a blue wave, and it fully materialized, with Democrats even over-performing.

In 2019, the polls were still pretty accurate, but again, Democrats over-performed in special elections.

In 2020, the polls at all levels except the presidency underestimated Democratic support.

In 2021, the Democrats again over-performed versus the polls.

In 2022, Democrats not only over-performed, they completely obliterated the supposed "red wave" that was supposed to occur that year. It became a pink trickle, with Republicans taking the House by the barest thread, and Democrats unexpectedly increasing their lead in the Senate.

In 2023, Democrats over-performed again in special elections.

In this year's early special election, Democrats are still over-performing versus the polls.

Democrats have been consistently exceeding the expectations set by polls since around 2018. And I have a hypothesis about it: Pollsters are basically fucked for the time being.

Here's why:

• Phone polls are getting harder and harder to conduct. Especially with young people, who never answer calls to their cellphones from unknown numbers. So pollsters are relying more and more on the few landlines remaining, and the demographics of those respondents skew conservative. They can only do so much weighting to try to mitigate the problem of oversampling conservatives.
• Online polls and texting polls are improving, but still very hard to conduct in a scientifically rigorous manner.
• Young people are voting. This is a relatively new phenomenon, and the pollsters haven't yet figured out how to properly predict the voting proclivities - and thus weight the answers - of young people who are much more engaged politically than previous generations.

I've held for some time that the polls between Biden and Trump might have anywhere from a four point to a nine point error in Trump's favor. And that might apply to Harris and Trump as well.

So... Harris has a two-point lead in this poll. If the polling error hasn't been fixed this cycle - and I don't think it has - her real lead might be six points. And it might be eleven points.

I think there might be good reason to hope. BUT....

The pollsters might have figured their shit out. Maybe the polling error is fixed. There's no way to know until the election. And here's what we need to do: Prove that it's not fixed yet and make Harris massively over-perform versus the polls. Sweep the motherfuckers out of the House and Senate while you're at it. Show that the polls since 2017 have continued to underestimate Democratic support, and kick the fucking fascists in the fucking teeth - electorally speaking, of course.

And those same mendacious, disingenuous fuck-knuckles get pseudo-patriotism boners when Trump whips out the "I took a bullet for democracy" line, without an ounce of shame or even self-awareness.