Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/17/the-electable-mr-sanders-2.html
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Sanders has acknowledged that “polls go up and polls go down.”
Probably the first true thing she has ever said!
Oh wait, Bernie said that. ok.
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Woah, what are they going for some kind of Fair and Balanced reporting? Or is this just a one-time clapback for him shitting on them recently and trying to drag them around by the leash (it would be interesting to see Fox News’ smoky backroom policy on whether they think Trump controls their editorial stances, or whether they think they control his…)
Well, yeah, but how much did Hillary beat him by? You know when you “Poll everyone”
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With odds like that, it’s more likely Biden has a heart attack before the election than Trump wins the election with Biden on the ticket. And the odds that Biden dies before the election are only… [Checks Actuarial Life Table]… about 6%? Fuck me!
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Hillary was beating Trump in all of the polls too.
Also, at this point in the election cycle polls are mostly useless. They give the talking heads something to do their horse racing, but ultimately their predictive power is nil. It’s like trying to predict the weather 5 months in advance.
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To be fair, the polls weren’t very wrong. The fact that the media reads polls like sportsball scores rather than probabilistic models created some very bad expectations. If this were close to the election (as you point out, it’s not so there is virtually no predictive power), there would be a big difference btween the 3 points Clinton had the 9 points this poll gives Biden and Sanders.
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Bernie isn’t my first choice, but honestly I really have gotten to the point that it does not matter who is the lead on the D ticket…they have my vote by default.
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Fool me once…
Polls as you say are just fodder for talking heads. Yet when on FoxNews discouraging polls for trumpers are something else.
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I get that these polls aren’t always that accurate, but isn’t the point that there’s at very least some reason to believe Sanders would do as well as Biden? That’s what I’m getting from this. So… just a thought when thinking Biden vs Sanders
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Which she did, more or less by a lot of the margins that were predicted, which is kind of crazy. Unfortunately, the polls didn’t take into account the electoral-college-gaming shenanigans that the Trump lawyers got up to.
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But the people who treated the polls exactly like probabilistic models concluded Hillary had a 99% chance of winning. Or 93%, or 80%, depending on how much they allowed for possible polling error.
Unless the polls are translated into electoral college voting, it’s pretty meaningless.
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Why isn’t Harris leading old-white-men by double digits at this point? Trump is going to get another four years because %100 of his knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers are going to vote, but %50 (D)s will simply say “meh”.
RRRRrrrrr…
I wonder if they’re using this as a prod to his base - he’s their ‘underdog’ now, they have to get out there for him or the libtards could steal the presidency out from under him.
On a related note, I see that voter turnout expectations for 2020 have gone through the roof.
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Trumps only 3 years younger and looks to me to be in worse shape and worse diet. Sooooo… fingers crossed?
The polls that matter are the battle ground states which could swing one way or the other. States that are locked one way or another are a gimmie, more or less.
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Heh. I read the original Fox News story about this poll yesterday. They talk about some of the results being bad for Trump, like his below 50% popularity, but nowhere do they mention these one-on-one poll matchup results. You have to click through to the raw poll report to find them yourself.
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FiveThirtyEight’s aggregate model put the odds of a Clinton victory at about 71% just before the election.
If the weather report says there’s a 29% chance of tornadoes hitting your home tomorrow and you ignore it until the house is in splinters you don’t get to scream that no one told you this might happen.
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There were some very foolish 99%'s a bit before the election. When it closed to 3 points they had dropped down to that 80% range. But again, 80% is only 80%. We can evaluate their analysis by looking at how often something happens when they say it happens 80% (it ought to happen around 80%). But as a prediction of the future that’s only really useful if you have some analysis where the probability matters (e.g. betting on the outcome of the election).
Well, until they aren’t. A large number of states that are 100% locked in for blue or red were considered to be 100% locked in for the other one only decades ago. The whole reason Clinton didn’t campaign in Michigan was because it was locked in.
When those internal Trump campaign polls leaked, Trump said the one putting Biden ahead by 13 was absurd on it’s face because it showed Biden winning in Texas. Jimmy Carter won Texas. Texas is going to be red until it votes blue and that might happen as early as next year.
I know, the simple table I looked up is age only and there are many competing factors. I fully believe that Biden likely has more years left on the planet than Trump. But, like I’m saying about the polls, that’s only useful if I’m better in some kind of pool. The hand reality ends up dealing us won’t care whether it was the likely one or not.
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Yes. And? If you have 80% chance of winning (which, IIRC, is much closer to what 538 was saying), that still means 20% chance of the other guy winning.
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