The Blowout No One Sees Coming
app.vantagedatahouse.com
app.vantagedatahouse.com
The way polls actually work is that they build up the "typical voter" (a graph of race, ethnicity, age, past behaviors, etc. etc.), and then sample those groups, and then add up the numbers at the end. This is the dirty truth about polling, its impossible to get clean data so these "cleanup" steps have substantial room for errors.
Worse: pollsters talk to each other, meaning a lot of them share methodologies. So we're likely to see every pollster make the same mistake in the same direction. Its just the nature of how communication works.
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This blogpost has numerous claims:
1. Senate Race predicts the Presidential race -- It looks like everyone's senate race numbers match up. But the typical media have
2. Independent voters -- I dunno about this one. I can believe its true, but I'm not seeing how they picked out (or the methodology) behind independent voters. I've also witnessed a lot of behavior where my friends tell me they're independent but then suddenly spout off extreme political viewpoints. I don't understand why people like to pretend they're independent, but... if they do that kind of make-believe or pretend to a pollster, the independent vote number will be wrong.
So the argument almost entirely lies on the Senate vs Presidential race numbers. So there-in lies the question. Are we about to see unprescedented levels of split ticket votes, and are they all going to be for Trump for President / Democrat for Senate?
That.... seems unlikely to me. The Senate Race correlation with the Presidential race is a very strong argument to me. At least within my social circle, I cannot imagine anyone voting for a Democrat in the Senate but Trump for President.
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So the blogpost's argument is that we use this new metric (ie: Senate polls) and try to calculate out the correlation to the Presidential race. Its... a new theory but one that I can largely get behind.
I have to imagine that the people are reasonably consistent between Senate Races and Presidential Races with regards to party affiliation.
Who are these people who predict an electoral landslide for the dems? It feels like they’re trying to set themselves up to be the fivethirtyeight of 2026 and 2028 if they happen to be proven right.
Also, FYI, 538 is no longer using Silver's model. He took it with him when he left.
To the point of the article, nobody is polling and reporting on polls out of the goodness of their hearts.
"Everybody loves a horse race" is the maxim which news sites adhere to - news sites are never going to predict a blowout or landslide, because people will feel secure in the outcome and stop reading the news. Every single news site has an incentive to skew more towards calling the race as evenly matched, because that drives page views.
It's a similar talking point to the one about Democratic pollsters not wanting to release their more accurate numbers, because they could lose voter momentum. (Democratic voters love being able to stay home, it seems)
I find that very unlikely, not least because from their perspective that will probably actually reduce their page views.
"But I don’t think you should put any value whatsoever on anyone’s gut — including mine. Instead, you should resign yourself to the fact that a 50-50 forecast really does mean 50-50. And you should be open to the possibility that those forecasts are wrong, and that could be the case equally in the direction of Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris." - Nate Silver, NYT, last week
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/opinion/election-polls-re...
There are 7 swing states, and Nate Silver says that the odds of all 7 states going to the same candidate is 40%. 25% chance Trump takes all 7, and a 15% chance Harris takes all 7.
Essentially, a broad 2% polling error in either direction means a blowout. What are the chances of a 2% polling erorr? Pretty darn high.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-state-of-play-in-the-7-stat...
Basically any company that tries to do market research or any organization measuring public opinion is wrong in systematic ways.
there will be some very exciting opportunities for whomever can come up with a polling methods that works with modern communication.
I don't know that anyone who is actually paying attention to the data will be surprised by any outcome that isn't more extreme than that.
Are there free elections anywhere that are easy to predict?
In a world where $1.00 in Instagram ads yields $1.02 in donations, does it matter?
It’s pretty much a dead heat with maybe slight advantage for Trump.
I'll save this topic at least. In just a few short weeks we will see which theories were correct. But its important to see these predictions _BEFORE_ the election results are announced.
There will be a lot of people after the election pretending to be correct and on the "I Told You So" despite their poll numbers being bullshit. So now is the time to collect arguments and theories.
This is certainly true. the response I see nowadays if an NYT sponsored poll shows Trump is ahead is… not pretty. People are treating it like a sports game nowadays, wish they would stick to football.
Anyway, the polls haven't actually been swinging much this year, I don't know where you're getting that from. The only significant movement was when Biden withdrew from the race, which you would expect to make a big difference.
Who didn't have much of an answer when I asked him who it was that enacted Medicaid, which paid for the major surgery his son needed when he was born that the parents could not possibly have paid for. He also didn't have much of an answer when I asked him who constantly wants to nibble away at Medicaid, as a testimony to their fundamental opposition to such a "safety net".
The Democrats have lots and lots of problems, including deference to the rich and corporations. But for all their failings, they have consistently attempted to make the lives of regular people a little bit better and sometimes even succeeded.
If you have nowhere to turn, start a new party, instead of imagining that the role of the existing parties is to cater to your particular political outlook. And yes, that won't work, so first work to change the electoral system.
That doesn't imply that both parties are fucked, nor that even if they are both fucked, that they are both fucked in the same way.
If you want a different electoral system (great idea!), argue for that rather than this silly both-sides nonsense.
i would take the other side of that bet - ie. i believe that we will still be in a democracy 4 years from now.