US Politics - Primary Numbers

[A True Kaniggit]

9 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Taco Bell is still open, so...no.

Welcome to hell. 

 

And to bring back an oldie about how terrible a human being Trump is, ya'll remember when he made fun of that reporter? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX9reO3QnUA

 

[mormont]

With Sanders looking like the leader at this point, I think there are some lessons Sanders supporters need to learn from the UK general election. One of those is that older white men who appear too serious can come over as crotchety and unlikable, but I think Sanders has a better chance than Corbyn did of overcoming that.

Another is that the strategy of expanding the electorate, particularly the youth vote, by getting them excited, has not shown the returns expected. I'll be interested to see turnout figures for more primaries, particularly open primaries, as we go on: I strongly suspect Sanders will do well there, but the key question is whether he does well enough. It's not good enough to win over more 18-35 year olds than the other Dem candidates or to increase their turnout by a few percentage points in a primary. He has to show he can turn out enough of those voters to make a difference, and that is a lot of them. Corbyn did fine at turning out engaged younger members within the Labour party, but this last time in particular failed to get them out in the general election in sufficient numbers to matter. 

Another, more important point is that if you can't unify your party behind you, that's a serious handicap. Corbyn never could, and it mattered. It doesn't do any good to blame the other wing, and demand that they fall in line, either. If you're the leader, and the Presidential nominee is in effect the leader, it's your job to get the party behind you, not their job to fall into line. If Sanders wins this he needs to build bridges. 

Possibly the most dangerous trap, though, and one that really sank Corbyn in my opinion, is this: just because voters like your policies, doesn't mean they will vote for them. Corbyn's policies were stuff that voters should have liked and if you polled them individually, they were pretty popular. And he got obliterated. 

I've said it before: voting for most people is an emotional choice. Sanders supporters themselves are a really good demonstrator of that. I think Sanders can beat Trump because so many voters have such a strong negative emotional response to how Trump conducts himself. But the Trump camp will work to make the negative emotional response to Sanders stronger than that to Trump. This election won't be about policy, and don't mistake the fact that the Republicans will use policies like M4A as an emotional sledgehammer for this being a policy debate. It isn't and it won't be. It comes down to which of the two candidates people feel most comfortable with. 

[Jace, Extat]

4 hours ago, Liffguard said:

 

Both of these strike me as pretty unfair. It's possible to be a socialist in the sense of ultimately wanting to see see a system other than capitalism, whilst also believing that the process of achieving that is going to be the work of generations, one policy or institution at a time. He's an incrementalist, not a revolutionist, but I don't see any reason to doubt that his desire for a different system is sincere.

Just google Bernie Sanders and revolution. It's one of his main selling points. That he's the leader of a revolution. That there's no time for achievable progress.

[Rippounet]

So Trump just posted this:

Quote

FBI Director Christopher Wray just admitted that the FISA Warrants and Survailence of my campaign were illegal. So was the Fake Dossier. THEREFORE, THE WHOLE SCAM INVESTIGATION, THE MUELLER REPORT AND EVERYTHING ELSE FOR THREE YEARS, WAS A FIXED HOAX. WHO PAYS THE PRICE? This is the biggest political crime in American History, by far. SIMPLY PUT, THE PARTY IN POWER ILLEGALLY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN, BOTH BEFORE AND AFTER THE ELECTION, IN ORDER TO CHANGE OR NULLIFY THE RESULTS OF THE ELECTION. IT CONTINUED ON WITH THE IMPEACHMENT HOAX. Terrible!

Seen from afar, this kind of shit in an election year is scary.

[Paladin of Ice]

38 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Just google Bernie Sanders and revolution. It's one of his main selling points. That he's the leader of a revolution. That there's no time for achievable progress.

Liffguard's line does feel it requires the Bender "Oh wait, you're serious? Let me laugh even harder" response.

For those who don't know the reference:

 

[Liffguard]

45 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Just google Bernie Sanders and revolution. It's one of his main selling points. That he's the leader of a revolution. That there's no time for achievable progress.

I mean, election rhetoric and actual planned action aren't the same thing. He's not, to my understanding, planning a total dismantling of American capitalism in 2021. His stated aims are to work within the system as it currently exists, reforming it from the inside using its own legal mechanisms, with a preferred medium term result resembling something similar to Scandinavian social democracy. He can say "revolution" as much as he likes, but that isn't revolution.

[maarsen]

11 hours ago, mcbigski said:

Yes, that's precisely what Pence meant.  Soon there is going to be no Congress for unspecified but very long time, until there's a Congress again.  No one is really sure about how it's going to go down, but clearly it's now going to happen.  That he might have misspoke just isn't possible as your interpretation makes total absolute sense. 

A defense that Pence is too stupid to be evil is missing the point that one can be stupid and evil. His boss fits the bill. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

13 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Did those kids ever get out of the cages? 

Just here to express my appreciation for your attempts to replace the old

"why did the chicken cross the road" jokes with something more contemporary.

I just assume that was the intention of that post.

[Jace, Extat]

29 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

I mean, election rhetoric and actual planned action aren't the same thing. He's not, to my understanding, planning a total dismantling of American capitalism in 2021. His stated aims are to work within the system as it currently exists, reforming it from the inside using its own legal mechanisms, with a preferred medium term result resembling something similar to Scandinavian social democracy. He can say "revolution" as much as he likes, but that isn't revolution.

But his supporters believe it's a revolution because he says it is. I know because my neighbor's boyfriend is an ardent Bernard supporter who loves condescending to Centrist Jacelyn about how all of his programmer friends also believe that if Bernard doesn't dissolve classism and fix the environment within the next 5 years (Don't ask them how he'll fix the environment just take it on faith) then it's pointless and they all might as well vote Trump.

These are people who say that incremental change at this point is literally worse than Trump because reasons. 

These people are very real. They are living among us. I had a batch of them in my apartment to fill out the Allies last week. And there were more left over to play a fun game called House on the Hill. The right does not have a monopoly on loudmouthed assholes who believe SO HARD that compromise between disparate coalitions is fucking anathema.

 

[IheartIheartTesla]

I am going through some of the polling for super Tuesday and before, and I have to say I am more than a bit annoyed at 538's model. For instance, it assumes Sanders will win the SC primary, but this appears to be based entirely on the national polls with the assumption that the state polls are a lagging indicator. The latest poll out of SC did show Biden with a comfortable lead (albeit in the past and not an A+ pollster). I guess we need more high quality polls out of there.

Same for Texas, again it claims Sanders will win, but state polls do not provide this evidence (yet). California on the other hand appears to be in the Sanders column. What someone with time should do is look at the current state polls and simply assign those numbers to the candidates, and see where their final delegate counts end up.

[Ormond]

11 hours ago, Triskele said:

Some hopeful signs from Georgia (Washington Monthly, unlimited clicks).

 

If you turn Georgia blue, just for a hypothetical, and you take back Pennsylvania, you then only need to go 1/2 in Wisconsin and Michigan to win.  Get all three notorious Midwestern states back and take Georgia and there's some cushion to take down the pain of Iowa, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, etc...

 

 

Thanks for posting that -- not necessarily for the optimism about Georgia, but for the quote from Paul Waldman that starts off the article:

Quote

People in politics suffer from a kind of myopia, in which what’s right in front of them, being in sharp focus, seems like the most important thing that has ever happened or will ever happen. This Changes Everything, we say over and over, despite the fact that the last 10 or 15 events that were supposed to Change Everything turned out to be so inconsequential that we’ve already forgotten what they were.

That so seems like something everyone should remember when listening to the talking heads on the TV (or reading political columns on the Web.)

[Maithanet]

I too am finding 538's model to be showing some strange results.  Look at Buttigieg's numbers - he was at like a 5% chance of winning the majority of pledged delegates right before Iowa.  Then, he essentially tied for first in both Iowa and NH and as of today has the pledged delegate lead.  The result?  4% chance of winning the majority of pledged delegates.  The first two states went almost as well as Buttigieg could have hoped, with Biden collapsing and him having the strongest argument at the moment for the non-Sanders vote.  Yet his chances went down?  

[Freshwater Spartan]

If I remember correctly Nate Silver has said that national polls don't mean much until States begin voting. So right now we have states voting and national polls showing some candidates in the lead. There are not a lot of quality state polls out there. I believe Nevada has not published one since december. No national polls have been released that show data after NH. I think these factors are messing with 538's model. More polls should straighten things out.

[DMC]

39 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

I have to say I am more than a bit annoyed at 538's model.

 

26 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I too am finding 538's model to be showing some strange results.

Who woulda thought Silver trying to make up a model when dealing with such basic, inherent uncertainty would lead to confusion?  Particularly when he gets to not be transparent about what he's doing.  If he showed his work, I suspect it'd just confirm his model has a lot of built-in mechanisms that do not reflect reality but rather are used to stabilize the results.  Essentially arbitrarily putting in constants on all the volatile variables.

[Tywin et al.]

3 hours ago, mormont said:

With Sanders looking like the leader at this point, I think there are some lessons Sanders supporters need to learn from the UK general election. One of those is that older white men who appear too serious can come over as crotchety and unlikable, but I think Sanders has a better chance than Corbyn did of overcoming that.

Another is that the strategy of expanding the electorate, particularly the youth vote, by getting them excited, has not shown the returns expected. I'll be interested to see turnout figures for more primaries, particularly open primaries, as we go on: I strongly suspect Sanders will do well there, but the key question is whether he does well enough. It's not good enough to win over more 18-35 year olds than the other Dem candidates or to increase their turnout by a few percentage points in a primary. He has to show he can turn out enough of those voters to make a difference, and that is a lot of them. Corbyn did fine at turning out engaged younger members within the Labour party, but this last time in particular failed to get them out in the general election in sufficient numbers to matter. 

Another, more important point is that if you can't unify your party behind you, that's a serious handicap. Corbyn never could, and it mattered. It doesn't do any good to blame the other wing, and demand that they fall in line, either. If you're the leader, and the Presidential nominee is in effect the leader, it's your job to get the party behind you, not their job to fall into line. If Sanders wins this he needs to build bridges. 

Possibly the most dangerous trap, though, and one that really sank Corbyn in my opinion, is this: just because voters like your policies, doesn't mean they will vote for them. Corbyn's policies were stuff that voters should have liked and if you polled them individually, they were pretty popular. And he got obliterated. 

I've said it before: voting for most people is an emotional choice. Sanders supporters themselves are a really good demonstrator of that. I think Sanders can beat Trump because so many voters have such a strong negative emotional response to how Trump conducts himself. But the Trump camp will work to make the negative emotional response to Sanders stronger than that to Trump. This election won't be about policy, and don't mistake the fact that the Republicans will use policies like M4A as an emotional sledgehammer for this being a policy debate. It isn't and it won't be. It comes down to which of the two candidates people feel most comfortable with. 

I get that there are obvious parallels, but wasn’t the huge problem Corbyn didn’t take a strong stand on Brexit combined with the UK public wanting the issue to be done with?

[Tywin et al.]

Idk how anyone can build a reliable predictive model with this field. The early front runner is sinking like a stone, two of the three candidates with momentum have little infrastructure in future states and a billionaire is raining money across the country in a non-traditional campaign. Anything could literally happen.

[Freshwater Spartan]

I think his model tries to aggregate polls to reduce uncertainty. If you don't have many quality polls there is nothing to aggregate. I have friend that has PHD in poly sci and teaches in Europe and despises the guy like you do. Seems to be common in the profession. I have found site to be insightful, better then a lot of media out there. But I get that others are not as impressed.

[Raja]

57 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I too am finding 538's model to be showing some strange results. 

The politics podcast that released yesterday had him saying that it hadn't updated yet or something & now isn't really the time to pay attention to the model because of all the uncertainty at the moment & the need for more information and the model not really taking into account ( at the moment) the complexities with candidates dropping out etc.

[DMC]

I think the Corbyn --> Sanders comparison can be useful at the elemental level, but once you consider all the differences - institutionally and otherwise - the whole thing breaks down to apples to hamburgers.  Pundits will be inclined to overestimate the similarities, but Jeremy Corbyn to the UK is as Bernie Sanders to the US is not a good SAT or AP exam question.

3 minutes ago, Freshwater Spartan said:

I have friend that has PHD in poly sci and teaches in Europe and despises the guy like you do. Seems to be common in the profession.

Yeah, I try my best to control my resentment, but it's very common when I read things on 538 there's almost always the voice in the back of my head being like "these guys are obviously not sufficiently trained in methodology and/or just extrapolating from very basic differences rather than going through any statistical scrutinization that I would even make undergrads do when teaching SPSS/Stata/R."  Of course, Silver has also popularized his site so much that poly sci people a whole hell of a lot more smarter and accomplished than I will ever be now are contributors.  So, that's nice.

[Fez]

I've been on vacation for a week, but I'm excited to see that Klomentum has started to become a real thing. Finally.

Also, anyone, including Nate Silver, who claims to have any idea of how this all turns out is full of shit. There's far too many completely uncharted waters-type things happening right now. Take California for instance. I could believe Sanders wins it because he's become the current frontrunner (barely). I could believe Biden wins it, because he banked enough early votes and still has sufficient minority support. I could believe Buttigeig or Klobuchar wins it as a consolidated moderate frontrunner. And I could believe Bloomberg wins it because he's spent a fortune there and has had media attention to himself.