US Poll-itics

[Kalbear]

32 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

I'd suggest they aren't decided by posts here either.

Sure! But trying to min max the polls like it is some kind of stupid political mmorpg is just going to get you into Sam Wang territory, and no one should be forced to eat a bug if they don't want to. 

[Gaston de Foix]

In War for the Senate news, some delightful Civiqs polls (albeit B/C rated) that show Ossoff at 51% and Warnock at 48%.  If that happens, Ossoff would win outright and Warnock would have to make up 2-3% in a January run-off.  

For the big 4 (CO, ME, AZ, NC), Dems are holding a steady (if narrowing) lead across the board. 

Iowa is neck and neck, although I think Ernst is ahead right now by a whisker.  Narrow leads for the Republicans in all the remaining states.  It'll break my heart if great candidates like Bollier, Harrison and Bullock lose.  

 

[Gaston de Foix]

Also, I've seen a lot of pollsters say that extremely high turnout in places like FLA etc. cannot be interpreted as a favorable sign for the Dems.  I'm not questioning their psephological expertise. But logically are there so many more people voting for Trump now who didn't in 2016?  I sort of struggle with that notion.   

[Tywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Fez said:

None of this is necessarily relevant for a high-stakes election case; I'm just talking about Roberts relationship with the conservatives in general in the future.

I know, and the examples you cited are certainly valid. And he's not going to be frozen out all the time, or even most of the time, but he's not the leader of this marching band anymore unless he purposely sides with the conservatives to as you said before, limit the scope of their rulings. 

2 hours ago, DMC said:

Obviously, Barrett's confirmation likely meant Dems' approval of SCOTUS took at least decent hit.  Be nice if there coulda been polling on that, but they're kinda busy right now.  However, I don't see any reason why that hit should be much more pronounced than the hit it took when McConnell refused to take up Garland's nomination.  Plus, gotta figure there'll be a boost from GOP respondents that are happy with the Barrett confirmation.  Regardless, I'm not interested in the future - or at least anything beyond deciding this election.  And really the only thing that matters in terms of the court's legitimacy in the context of this conversation is that Roberts currently thinks the court holds legitimacy and wants to maintain that.  I'm very (very) confident both of those are the case.

The immediate polling hit will probably not be very large, especially if Biden wins next week. But even assuming he does, the cases you can project the court hearing over the next few years are going to be significantly consequential, and if the courts strip well established rights, make terrible rulings on the environment, attack voting rights, etc., I think there's a good chance the court is viewed as increasingly illegitimate. And likewise, if Democrats pack the courts, Republicans will likely lose faith in the courts, at least until they have power again.

[Mindwalker]

8 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

In War for the Senate news, some delightful Civiqs polls (albeit B/C rated) that show Ossoff at 51% and Warnock at 48%.  If that happens, Ossoff would win outright and Warnock would have to make up 2-3% in a January run-off. 

 

Would be lovely if Mr "Kamala-lala-lala" was defeated... Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

[Maithanet]

8 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Also, I've seen a lot of pollsters say that extremely high turnout in places like FLA etc. cannot be interpreted as a favorable sign for the Dems.  I'm not questioning their psephological expertise. But logically are there so many more people voting for Trump now who didn't in 2016?  I sort of struggle with that notion.   

The conventional wisdom is that Democrats benefit from high turnout, because Republicans have more "turnout every election" voters and Democrats have more "turnout sometimes" voters.  That said, this varies state by state.  Florida and Texas both seem like states where high turnout is almost assuredly a good thing for Dems.  Pennsylvania and North Carolina I'm less sure who it benefits. 

[Kalbear]

9 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Also, I've seen a lot of pollsters say that extremely high turnout in places like FLA etc. cannot be interpreted as a favorable sign for the Dems.  I'm not questioning their psephological expertise. But logically are there so many more people voting for Trump now who didn't in 2016?  I sort of struggle with that notion.   

Why? High turnout in a place that routinely votes for Republicans logically implies more republican voters. Logically you wouldn't expect more democratic voters to miraculously pop up in a place like Alabama, right?

In general studies have shown that things like mandatory voting or high turnout in general do not boost any one side. What you want is high turnout for demographics that support you. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

10 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Also, I've seen a lot of pollsters say that extremely high turnout in places like FLA etc. cannot be interpreted as a favorable sign for the Dems.  I'm not questioning their psephological expertise. But logically are there so many more people voting for Trump now who didn't in 2016?  I sort of struggle with that notion.   

Florida has 422k newly registered voters and 174k sporadic voters (already registered but did not vote in 2016/18) who have already cast their vote, of which Trump is running modestly behind in both. He could potentially have more in person of those two groups on election day.

[Ser Reptitious]

8 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Also, I've seen a lot of pollsters say that extremely high turnout in places like FLA etc. cannot be interpreted as a favorable sign for the Dems.  I'm not questioning their psephological expertise. But logically are there so many more people voting for Trump now who didn't in 2016?  I sort of struggle with that notion.   

My extremely amateur take on it would be that pollsters (just like the media) prefer tighter numbers in order to create a horse race. That way people pay much closer attention (akin to “click-bait”). But hey, if that has the (unintended?) benefit of ensuring every last person wanting to get rid of Trump goes out and votes, instead of being complacent and thinking (based on polls) that it’s a done deal, then I’m perfectly fine with it.

But of course I defer to the opinions of professionals such as @DMC and @Fez, who may have a far better explanation.

[Ser Reptitious]

5 minutes ago, Killjoybear said:

Why? High turnout in a place that routinely votes for Republicans logically implies more republican voters. Logically you wouldn't expect more democratic voters to miraculously pop up in a place like Alabama, right?

Well, depends... how many black and white dem-leaning Alabamans usually just don’t bother, in the normal course of events, knowing that they will lose anyway?

But this year, given that Jones is up for (an extremely tough) re-election, would you really interpret an unusually large surge of voters as a bad sign? (I mean, I agree that it’s not an automatic sign of good news, but when you look at what might be the root cause of the surge there would at least be a hopeful possibility.)

[JGP]

39 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Also, I've seen a lot of pollsters say that extremely high turnout in places like FLA etc. cannot be interpreted as a favorable sign for the Dems.  I'm not questioning their psephological expertise. But logically are there so many more people voting for Trump now who didn't in 2016?  I sort of struggle with that notion.   

This is kind of interesting, as apparently the Trump machine has pulled their add money out of FLA. Money better spent elsewhere, or... iono

[Zorral]

53 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Wow - in Cobb County, it’s no more than 15 minutes in two polling places, 20-30 minutes in another six, and 45 minutes to an hour in four others.

You’ll likely hear a fuss about Georgia wait times again on 10/30, the last day of early voting (as the first and last day both tend to be the busiest).

The Board of Elections for NYC and NY state are the last remnant of the one-rule of Tammany Hall.  Ya!  Really!  Not making this up.

We've never done mail-in or early voting before.  The octogenarian run BOE here in NYC particularly, mostly nepo appointments by generation octogenarian politicos of both parties, is not up to the job.  It's all a disaster here in every way.

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

44 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The Board of Elections for NYC and NY state are the last remnant of the one-rule of Tammany Hall.  Ya!  Really!  Not making this up.

We've never done mail-in or early voting before.  The octogenarian run BOE here in NYC particularly, mostly nepo appointments by generation octogenarian politicos of both parties, is not up to the job.  It's all a disaster here in every way.

 

Early voting lines in my county (Columbia) were over an hour first thing Saturday.  Haven't checked on how it's been during the week.  That was by far the longest I've ever waited.  

It's also crazy the number of people I know who have requested mail in voting and never received a ballot (same thing happened to me during the primary.).

NY needs to get its shit together, if we were a swing state we'd be a laughing stock.

[Ran]

Interesting:

 

Apparently they've also stopped tracking polls in Florida. Hmm... Have they calculated that at worst it'll be close enough that the FL GOP and state courts will move the needle in their direction, and at best that it's in the bag? 

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

Interesting:

 

Apparently they've also stopped tracking polls in Florida. Hmm... Have they calculated that at worst it'll be close enough that the FL GOP and state courts will move the needle in their direction, and at best that it's in the bag? 

Its almost as if they think that the polls don't matter

[Maithanet]

12 minutes ago, Ran said:

Apparently they've also stopped tracking polls in Florida. Hmm... Have they calculated that at worst it'll be close enough that the FL GOP and state courts will move the needle in their direction, and at best that it's in the bag? 

There are three possible explanations:

1.  Republicans in Florida know that the fix is in somehow and thus no further resources are needed. 

2.  The campaign is making irrational decisions that cannot be parsed.

3.  Some complex algorithm says that MN dollars are more valuable than FL spending at this point.  Hard to believe, but possible I guess.

 

Given what I know about Trump and Florida Republicans, it is hard not to lean towards #1, but #2 remains a strong contender.  What I do know is there's no way you can look at Florida polling and Florida early voting and conclude that this is in the bag for Trump. 

[Ran]

Also, someone did this looking at the correlations between 538's model and The Economist's. Kind of neat to get a sense of it. It seems fairly clear that Silver's model is a bit more sophisticated but also seems to take extremely unlikely scenarios as a bit more likely to happen (he cites Trump winning CA) than The Economist's model.

BTW, The Economist presently believes Biden is at a 95% chance to win.

[Freshwater Spartan]

Probably out of money. Though Minnesota always looms large as a potential prize for Republicans. Weird state. Lots of white democrats. 

[Maithanet]

3 minutes ago, Freshwater Spartan said:

Probably out of money. Though Minnesota always looms large as a potential prize for Republicans. Weird state. Lots of white democrats. 

If it was just cancelling some FL ads, I could understand that they just grifted a little too hard.  But "out of money" cannot possibly be the explanation for why they're moving money from FL to MN. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

The Trump campaign is saying the Bloomberg article is false, and they have a 7 figure layout in Florida.

That's probably the easiest explanation. Pretty sure they pay some attention to polls to allocate their funds.