US Politics- Mute-iny on the bounty

[Mindwalker]

Good speech by Obama on a rally in PA atm:

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Gauntlet thrown down. 

[Mindwalker]

I forgot to say: Nice thread title!

Although muting just for 2 minutes is a freaking joke.

ETA: I caught the first 2 minutes of Trump's rally (and 10 minutes before that, when his staffers and Secret Service ran around without masks, some of them finally pt one on). In his first or second sentence, he blabbed about the Deep State. He's not even trying to thinly conceal that he's going for the conspiracy crowd anymore.

[IheartIheartTesla]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/21/florida-voting-changes-felony-convictions-drop-boxes

Quote

Alarm bells went off last week after the office of Florida’s secretary of state, Laurel Lee, abruptly notified election officials the state was beginning to flag voters for potential removal from the voter rolls if they owed money related to a felony conviction. In a second letter, the state offered an extremely restrictive view on how localities needed to operate ballot drop boxes, which voters are increasingly turning to this year amid United States Postal Service delays.

Did we already talk about this? Anyway, this is why we shouldnt count on Florida for anything.

I wont bore everyone with constant poll updates, but Fox News came out with some new ones, and its what you would expect (Trump is ahead in Ohio, but Biden up in MI, WI and PA)

[Maithanet]

Tons of new polls today, including a lot of state data from the better pollsters that has been lacking for a couple of weeks.  Overall, the race is where we thought it was, Trump is in the same place (13%) on 538 that he was this morning.  Here's a summary of the different pollsters with at least a B rating on 538:

PA: Biden +5, +6, +8, +10

FL:  +4, +5, +5

AZ: +4

MI: +12, +5

WI: +5, +5

 

That's a lot of state polls, and overall it paints a fairly clear picture that Biden is ahead in all 6 big swing states.  In PA, MI and WI, he's ahead by more than 5 points. 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

I wont bore everyone with constant poll updates, but Fox News came out with some new ones, and its what you would expect (Trump is ahead in Ohio, but Biden up in MI, WI and PA)

Yeah you ninja'd me.  Funny Maith was talking about Fox not coming out with something mere hours ago.  They listened!  Up 5 in PA and Wi, 12 in MI.

[Varysblackfyre321]

3 hours ago, DMC said:

No, he doesn't.  His model gives Biden a 78% chance of winning the Nebraska 2nd and a 86% chance of winning PA.

That was a mistake on my part.

I did mean the model gives Biden a worse chance at winning Nebraska 2nd than Pennsylvania.

It seems backwards.

Biden’s lead averages 7.1 in Nebraska 2nd and it’s over 50%.

3 hours ago, DMC said:

I don't know what that image is taken from - be nice if you provided an actual link - but on September 30, when 538 had Biden's national lead at 7.6, Silver said this:

The link you provided where I took the image from.

3 hours ago, DMC said:

So, seems pretty clear to me Silver anticipates the model will narrow to Trump having about a 5-10 percent chance if Biden maintains a 7-10 point national lead on election day - NOT less than one percent.

That is a fair point.

3 hours ago, DMC said:

Anyway, on this "if Biden loses PA" scenario you keep harping on, Silver's new interactive tool today actually lets us look at this.  If all you do is say Trump wins PA and nothing else, then yes obviously Biden's chances of winning drop dramatically.  However, he still would have a 25% chance of winning the EC. 

That's pretty bad, yeah, but it also means independent of any other information/results, Biden would still have a 1 in 4 chance of winning. 

Biden could win even if he loses Pennsylvania.
I concede that.
Trump could still win if he lost texas and won every other battle ground state.
Its possible, but not very likely, and I don't you’d argue losing Texas doesn't heavily forbode him losing the election.

3 hours ago, DMC said:

That's still twice Trump's current chances of winning in 538's model, and it's about the same chances 538's model gave Trump in their final forecast before election day in 2016. 

Trump did squirm out a victory. 

3 hours ago, DMC said:

Hell, it's 11 points more than Trump's chances to win PA right now.  This is why your constant posts foreboding doom and gloom are not only preposterous and tiring, but entirely detached from both reality and anyone attempting to objectively describe empirical polling analysis on the current state of the race.

I find this insistence to try downplay winning or losing Pennsylvania to either campaign odd.

To the point where you’d chiefly provide Arizona and OH as substitutes.

 I see no benefit in not looking Pennsylvania as likely being decided by razor thin margins.

It's not 2016. I get that. I've noted there have been plenty pollsters, by no means poor ones traditionally, who didn't adjust their methodology after it was discovered whites without college degrees were underweighted.

 If I'm wrong I’ll be happy, and if I'm right I'll be miserable.

I'm genuinely hoping in a week and a half I could look back at these posts and cringe at panicking and overestimating Trump’s chances.

 I hope genuinely that you’re laughing and scoffing at Democrats’ at  ”bedwetting” is totally justified.

If not it will just read like the complaints of ”bed wetting” in 2016 right before Trump won.

1 minute ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/21/florida-voting-changes-felony-convictions-drop-boxes

Did we already talk about this? Anyway, this is why we shouldnt count on Florida for anything.

I wont bore everyone with constant poll updates, but Fox News came out with some new ones, and its what you would expect (Trump is ahead in Ohio, but Biden up in MI, WI and PA)

Florida is a fickle bitch.

Though the debt rule has been known for year's now. So I don't think it'll affect anything.

[Guy Kilmore]

So the Pope shared in a documentary that he is for civil unions for same sex couples because they have a right to a family.  

[Castellan]

That FBI press conference just now seems like a stunt that will work for Trump. Mentions disinformation targeting Trump, and the idiot % of the population will just see it implies nefarious things associated with voting, even though they actually said disinformation is being spread about vote fraud.

Now on my TV is immediately followed by nasty Trump rally in NC.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 minute ago, Castellan said:

That FBI press conference just now seems like a stunt that will work for Trump. Mentions disinformation targeting Trump, and the idiot % of the population will just see it implies nefarious things associated with voting, even though they actually said disinformation is being spread about vote fraud.

Now on my TV is immediately followed by nasty Trump rally in NC.

Remember, Iran bad first, Russia, eh....

[Mindwalker]

Pod Save America about debate prep, the latest polls, the Hunter Biden story and more:

"The best way to manage your anxiety is not to find a poll that makes you feel better about yourself, it's to do something that gives you agency over the outcome."

[Varysblackfyre321]

23 minutes ago, Guy Kilmore said:

So the Pope shared in a documentary that he is for civil unions for same sex couples because they have a right to a family.  

I think this story would be more appropriate for the Lgbtq thread.

[Maithanet]

8 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

Pod Save America about debate prep, the latest polls, the Hunter Biden story and more:

"The best way to manage your anxiety is not to find a poll that makes you feel better about yourself, it's to do something that gives you agency over the outcome."

Logically, yes.  But I find calling strangers to support GOTV extremely stressful.  I am looking forward to this election being over in more ways than one. 

[Mindwalker]

6 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Logically, yes.  But I find calling strangers to support GOTV extremely stressful.  I am looking forward to this election being over in more ways than one. 

I get that. I'm more of an introvert and would feel uncomfortable. In fact, I personally find the dea that parties are allowed to collect all these ata (phone numbers) disturbing. (Wouldn't happen here without consent.) It's probably rather a long-term thing than very helpful for this election(but you never know), there's an initiative who finds and neutralizes Russian bots on social media, that can be done from one's own computer (and even by us international folk).

[DMC]

24 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Biden’s lead averages 7.1 in Nebraska 2nd and it’s over 50%.

That's because the model also accounts/controls for more stable factors like partisan lean and demographics.  It's not all based on polling, if so it'd be a pretty boring model.

26 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Trump could still win if he lost texas and won every other battle ground state.

The difference is if Biden wins Texas, according to Silver's model & interactive, Biden's chances of winning jump to >99%, whereas if Trump wins PA Biden still has a 25% shot.  Plainly, the comparison between the two is not even close to on equal footing.

29 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

To the point where you’d chiefly provide Arizona and OH as substitutes.

 I see no benefit in not looking Pennsylvania as likely being decided by razor thin margins.

It's not 2016. I get that. I've noted there have been plenty pollsters, by no means poor ones traditionally, who didn't adjust their methodology after it was discovered whites without college degrees were underweighted.

I've never mentioned OH as a chief substitute, this is another time you're mistaken.

The "benefit" of not viewing it as likely Pennsylvania is going to be decided by razor thin margins is because it's not likely, at least in any reasonable operationalized definition of the term.  Is it possible it comes down to that?  Of course.  But the likelihood is probably about 10-15% max.  It's much more likely - 5 to 6 times as much - it does not come down to razor thin margins.

As for pollsters not weighting education, most do now, a few don't yes.  That's not necessarily a bad thing at all.  I've discussed this a few times before, but the objective for any pollster is to build the most parsimonious model to derive a random sample.  If there's significant multicollinearity between education and income or race or whatever, it quite possibly would be methodologically prudent to omit such weighting in order to avoid the potential of overfitting.  Anyway, this is where even if that was a mistake, it's mitigated to the point of being virtually entirely statistically accounted for simply by looking at aggregate polling.

[Maithanet]

35 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

 I see no benefit in not looking Pennsylvania as likely being decided by razor thin margins

I guess it sort of depends on what you mean by "benefit".  I think the Biden campaign, and all Biden voters, volunteers, etc would do best thinking of the race as tied, and they need to scrap for every vote.  However, PA has been polled very extensively and the polling average is currently Biden +6.  Thus a result somewhere between Biden +2 and Biden +10 is a lot more likely than a result between Trump +2 and Biden +2.  I find that there's a benefit in accepting reality as it is, rather than what we fear/wish it to be. 

Quote

 

If not it will just read like the complaints of ”bed wetting” in 2016 right before Trump won.

 

There were a few people on this board who immediately after the Comey announcement said they felt for the first time that Trump had a real chance at victory.  I definitely felt less confident in Clinton then than I do about Biden now.  Or at least, I would, if I weren't worried about the election being stolen through illegal actions by the President's team.  Something that I wasn't worried about in 2016. 

[kairparavel]

So last night's Biden ad during the middle of the first inning featured Sam Elliott. Pretty sure tonight's was Jeffrey Wright. Wonder who Friday's will be! (World Series off-day tomorrow. )

[DanteGabriel]

9 minutes ago, kairparavel said:

So last night's Biden ad during the middle of the first inning featured Sam Elliott. Pretty sure tonight's was Jeffrey Wright. Wonder who Friday's will be! (World Series off-day tomorrow. )

Learning that Sam Elliott was on The Good Side was a delight, and then seeing butthurt from right wing snowflakes about it was even better.

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, Guy Kilmore said:

So the Pope shared in a documentary that he is for civil unions for same sex couples because they have a right to a family.  

I'm still a long way from being a fan of the guy, as he's far from being a fan of people like me, but he's still well and truly bounds ahead of prior Popes along with most of the high ranking clergy. I'll take what we can get.

37 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

I think this story would be more appropriate for the Lgbtq thread.

I think there's at least a thread relevant angle to consider here. he's pontificated (yes I'm proud of it) on Trump before so we know he pays at least some attention to US politics. He's made this statement while the Republicans are trying to push through a woman who everyone (that isn't civility trolling) knows is profoundly homophobic onto SCOTUS and using her supposed Catholicism as a shield against any and all criticism of her views. I'm far from certain that this timing is intention, but its at least possible - I'd be very surprised if he's not deeply uncomfortable with her cults "Catholic" views.

[Fragile Bird]

So was that hastily called, surprise FBI press conference meant to distract from Obama’s speech tonight? That guy Ratcliffe is a Trump hack, isn’t he?

Or am I just too cynical?