Interview with two pollsters who say a Trump win is likely

Only if you keep military time…

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The polls in 2016 were accurate; the media coverage of them was not.

I agree that we shouldn’t dismiss the odds of Trump winning; it’s a distinct possibility and we need to take it seriously. (Moreover, what polls don’t tell us is what’s going to happen with various Republican efforts to get votes tossed, electors replaced, etc. The final result may not match how people actually vote.) But the narrative that the 2016 polls were wrong, that they undercounted Trump’s support, is greatly exaggerated. The polls in 2016 weren’t any less accurate than usual.

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This one again:

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Yeah. Unless we know what they publicly projected for the previous several presidential elections, this don’t mean squat. 'cuz I’m willing to bet they predicted McCain and Romney wins too.

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“shy Trump” or “shy Tory” is just a rebranding of Nixon’s “silent majority”. It’s an old trope that makes right wing bigots feel good about their beliefs because “most other people are like me, I knew it!”. It’s not true of course, but it seems to be effective at emboldening the base. The right only speaks to their base now, because that’s all they have left (and have had since at least H.W. Bush).

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Not to mention that if there was a Shy Trump voter effect:

  1. The Republicans should have won big in the 2018 mid-term elections. As it was, they gained a few seats in the Senate, and were trounced in the house.
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And maybe not even then.

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A Trump win is likely.

It’s just that a Biden win is more likely.

(And a Kanye West win is not likely)

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On 3d6, that’s an 8<. I play Hero System. :smiley:

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This was my thought. When they said of course there were no shy Biden voters I rolled my eyes and stopped giving them credence. I remember hearing a very old story (from the UK) of a labour candidate knocking on a door to be told by the man of the house that it was and would always be a Tory household and then the woman sneaks out the side door and asks the candidate how to volunteer for them.

The idea there would be shy Trump voters but not shy Biden voters is just more of the rightwing fantasy that the rightwing is shunned and oppressed. Meanwhile black people (who overwhelmingly support Biden) are getting killed by the cops. Riiiight, it’s the rightwing people who have to worry about oppression.

The fewer undecided thing has really caught my attention. Polls still aren’t to be relied on, no matter what, but there is a really big difference between being “up four points” 47-43 and being “up four points” 51-47. Because in the first case, if the poll is 100% accurate you can still lose, not so much in the second. Biden’s numbers look at a lot more like the latter (again, Biden can still lose, but the comparison isn’t really there).


Finally, a comment about "getting it right". When we're talking about statistics and polling it is senseless to give credence to people who happened to predict the winner. You might as well call a person who hits on a 17 and gets a 4 a blackjack genius.

If your model gives a large group of candidates an 80% chance to win, you have a good model if 80% of them win, not if 100% of them win. It’s a good model if it’s right and wrong the right amount. People who tell you they can see the future are full of shit. I give some credence to Alan Lichtman because I think it’s actually possible to be good at making educated guesses (and have observed history professors in particular are pretty good at making guesses).

But for all the nonsense the national pollsters and Nate Silver’s model seems to have gotten the last election dead on. And these people’s looks like it was way off.

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fivethirtyeight.com gives Trafalgar Group a C- rating:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/

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Hate to say it, and I doubt you meant to leave it out, but it’s not looking like a safe bet that crucial votes in various places will be counted (let alone the people who get polled but then basically aren’t allowed to vote).

Voter suppression on trump’s behalf seems sure to big much greater and more effective than it was in 2016.

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I looked into exactly this and found that every serious polling outfit is giving extra weight to the non-college-educated-white demographic in Trump’s favor, given the lesson from 2016 was that they were the demographic most likely to secretly vote Trump. This notion that partisan quasi-laypeople can out-think the professionals is farcical. The true professionals know that if they get this one wrong, their entire industry is doomed for a generation or more. Now forget what I just said and vote like your life depends on it.

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my secret wish is that the GOP attempts at disenfranchisement combined with their penchant for voting on election day will be their undoing this time… smart people (mostly dems) will have voted early or by mail, and the lines and hassle of getting to a polling place will leave some republicans angry enough to just not bother.

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More early votes have been cast in Texas than total votes from the 2016 election.

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my family, in-laws included, and i account for 23 votes for biden-harris deep in the heart of texas.

you’re welcome.

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I am continually amazed that this race is as close as it is in so many battleground states. Why should someone like Donald Trump have ANY chance of winning a second term in those states? It just goes to show us how much of a force the right-wing hate machine is.

I’m hoping, praying, phone banking and drinking after my shifts this weekend. Short of forcibly detaining Trump voters so they can’t vote, I don’t know what else I can do.

Let’s just hope for a good outcome in the coming days. I cannot even believe we need to fight this hard for something so obvious.

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I had that same feeling from the middle of the primaries

One hopes that this is a good sign considering that voters don’t often turn out in record numbers just to preserve the status quo.

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