2020 Election Thread (Part 2)

[DukeTrout]

Hmmm. I didn’t see that post. I saw the one that just straight up dissed exit polling, done. No disclaimers, no hedging. And it was post-election. Maybe there’s two Nate Silvers? Does Nate #2 have a website called “fivethirtysomething?”

[alahmnat]

@DukeTrout

Does Nate #2 have a website called “fivethirtysomething?”

And is their mascot a bargain basement fox costume from Spirit Halloween?

[gatto]

@DukeTrout

I saw the one that just straight up dissed exit polling

Exit Polls Can Be Misleading — Especially This Year

here’s one. not technically by nate silver, granted. + @prooftheory it’s talking mainly about using exit polls on the day of the election to gauge the way the results are going… but seems to have the general point that exit polls suck. especially this year.

Edison Research… has changed its methodology so that the “exit polls” you see on Nov. 3 will actually be a combination of traditional exit polls of Election Day voters and phone polls of mail voters…

The phone poll essentially puts pollsters back in the uncomfortable territory of having to guess whether respondents who claim to have voted actually did…

What this boils down to is that, this year, there’s no reason to believe that exit polls will be any more accurate than traditional pre-election polls.

[DukeTrout]

The post I was referring to was on their live blog. I’d love to dig it up, but I’m sure it was on Wednesday, so several thousand posts from the top by now…

[prooftheory]

@DukeTrout

Maybe there’s two Nate Silvers?

I don’t know. The one I read tweets things like this:

Nate Silver

[prooftheory]

@DukeTrout

The post I was referring to was on their live blog. I’d love to dig it up, but I’m sure it was on Wednesday, so several thousand posts from the top by now…

The FiveThirtyEight Live Blog that I read (as opposed to the “fiverthirtysomething” live blog that you apparently read?) Nate Silver posted this:

Even though we’ve already told you to basically ignore exit polls … I’d say the results I’ve seen so far would make me even less confident that they’re going to tell us much of predictive value tonight. Based on what’s been publicly reported, there’s some stuff that would seem pretty good for Biden and some that would seem pretty good for Trump, but not in a way that tells an especially coherent story. That’s not meant as a criticism — the people who run the exit polls are smart, but exit polling is really hard this year. I just think we need to wait for actual votes.

[Wally]

Once we have these certifications, it’s going to be a lot harder for the denialists:

• The certification deadline in six states is within one week of the election.
• In 26 states and the District of Columbia, the certification deadline is between November 10 and November 30.
• In 14 states, the certification deadline is in December.
• Four states (Hawaii, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Tennessee) do not have statutory deadlines for results certification.

https://ballotpedia.org/How_and_when_are_election_results_finalized%3F_(2020)

[anon15383236]

Maybe that’s why the attempted coup is already in motion.

[emo_pinata]

Not to mention that one of the most common themes in the Trump coalition is to participate but lie to pollsters even without the skewing of polling people leaving the election booth.

[KathyPartdeux]

Gavin Sheridan (gavinsblog)

[anon15383236]

Shambolic bumbling, surely. I mean, I sometimes worry in the middle of the night that it was instead a bit of crafty, diversionary rope a dope. But surely it’s just laughable buffoonery. Right?

I mean, with all the high-level lackey installations and the refusal of most Republican politicians to straight up tell Donnie to shut up and go away, I’m laughing less hardily this week. High time for Dems to start shouting “treason!”, methinks.

[Wally]

@anon15383236

High time for Dems to start shouting “treason!”, methinks.

More than shouting is needed… lots of blocking maneuvers. Republican secretaries of state and other officers are so far resisting the onslaught of garbage coming out of the Trump administration & campaign. But if we detect cracks in the dam starting to form… that’s when to start feeling uneasy. I don’t see it yet.

[DukeTrout]

That’s the one. How are you getting anything positive about exit polls (vs exit pollsters) from that post?!?

[prooftheory]

Here’s what I said, which pretty much agrees with the article posted by @gatto:

@prooftheory

He said they would be useless for predicting the outcome of the election. He repeatedly mentioned that the purpose of exit polls was for after-the-fact analysis and would have to include sampling of the mail-in voters. He didn’t outright discount their utility in doing after-the-fact analysis.

Here’s what you said which seems to directly contradict what I bolded in my quote of Silver:

@DukeTrout

I saw the one that just straight up dissed exit polling, done. No disclaimers, no hedging.

I really don’t want to have to try to watch through all of the videos posted in the days before and during the election but he said similar things there, i.e. “Exit polls are for analysis after-the-fact and not good for predicting race-day results.”

[navarro]

this is extremely bad news-- https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/10/daily-202-lame-duck-trump-burrows-loyalists-inside-government-starting-with-nsa/

[navarro]

[DukeTrout]

@prooftheory

Here’s what you said which seems to directly contradict what I bolded in my quote of Silver:

That doesn’t contradict it at all. His comment was about the people who do the polling, not the polls themselves. It is possible for very smart people to do a great job and still only eke out a tiny bit of useful analysis from a shitty dataset.

[prooftheory]

@DukeTrout

tiny bit of useful analysis

Even this bit of your own words contradicts your original quote.

[alahmnat]

Cooper Boyar (cooperboyar)

Maybe if a centrist says it, somebody will listen.

I continue to maintain that Jones was light years better than Manchin ever has been.

[navarro]

who is emily murphy?

here’s a good summary–

Got Paranoia? General Services Administration