The American Politics Thread!

[sneaky]

58 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

 

In other words this country is totally rigged for the heartland. Not just politically but economically if you look at how much the govt subsidizes  things like dairy farming.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Jonathan said:

 

People are still listening to this person? 

[RWG]

2 hours ago, Jonathan said:

 

 

Over the years and decades, this delta is going to get wider and wider, and the system isn't going anywhere.

[mercfan3]

1 hour ago, sneaky said:

In other words this country is totally rigged for the heartland. Not just politically but economically if you look at how much the govt subsidizes  things like dairy farming.

 

NYC and CA pay for the heartland and the south, and get less political power than them. 

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, mercfan3 said:

 

NYC and CA pay for the heartland and the south, and get less political power than them. 

Wyoming gets two senators and California gets two. Isn't that kind of ridiculous to say the least?

[mercfan3]

8 minutes ago, Drew said:

Wyoming gets two senators and California gets two. Isn't that kind of ridiculous to say the least?

 

I think that's fine actually. Having a unit of government that gives small states a check and some power isn't a bad thing. That's the purpose and the compromise of the senate. 

 

But if you actually compare electoral college votes, it works out to something like every 1 vote in Wyoming is worth 9 in CA. And the House of representative scale isn't an exact population replica either. That's the problem, IMO. In the parts of government that are supposed to represent the population..they should represent the population. 

Edited September 2, 2020 by mercfan3

[ButterflyEffect]

7 hours ago, TeamAudra said:

This Twitter account posts all of the polls.
 

https://twitter.com/PpollingNumbers?s=21

 

I follow that and RCP. I honestly just started watching them over the last few days, and only briefly look at crosstabs, when they are provided.There has been many mentions on that Twitter feed about Trump’s AA support increasing post convention. Like I said, I need to see more. I personally think most of the pollsters are garbage. I mentioned the over sampling of Democrats the other day, for example. That’s why the betting odds are 50-50, while Biden has a 6 point lead on the RCP average. I start delving into it a little more when we have more “reliable” polls. 

Yo thanks, just gave the account a follow.

I tend to ignore independent Twitter posts pushing polling narratives unless I dive into the polls themselves. People are too partisan and cling to positive polls that push their narrative, no matter how poor the pollsters reputation are. Happens on both sides, of course. 

I like that 538 has a breakdown for pretty much all polling agencies in the United States, lists their average house bias in terms of percentage points, and also grades the agency based on their past accuracy.  House bias is fine if its small, you can just adjust the average to give you a more accurate picture, but agencies flat out sucking is something you can't ignore.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/
 

42 minutes ago, Drew said:

People are still listening to this person? 

Nate Silver? He's an excellent poll aggregator and political modeler. Reminder that while most political analysts were crowning Clinton the victor days before the election in 2016, Nate Solder told everyone that the election was going to be tight and that Trump could easily win.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-dont-ignore-the-polls-clinton-leads-but-its-a-close-race/

[TeamAudra]

52 minutes ago, ButterflyEffect said:

Yo thanks, just gave the account a follow.

I tend to ignore independent Twitter posts pushing polling narratives unless I dive into the polls themselves. People are too partisan and cling to positive polls that push their narrative, no matter how poor the pollsters reputation are. Happens on both sides, of course. 

I like that 538 has a breakdown for pretty much all polling agencies in the United States, lists their average house bias in terms of percentage points, and also grades the agency based on their past accuracy.  House bias is fine if its small, you can just adjust the average to give you a more accurate picture, but agencies flat out sucking is something you can't ignore.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/
 

Nate Silver? He's an excellent poll aggregator and political modeler. Reminder that while most political analysts were crowning Clinton the victor days before the election in 2016, Nate Solder told everyone that the election was going to be tight and that Trump could easily win.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-dont-ignore-the-polls-clinton-leads-but-its-a-close-race/

Honestly, I don’t know which pollsters to trust right now. There are many new ones, and they are all biased to some extent, IMO. As we get closer to the election, they will have more interest in being “right,” and things will almost certainly tighten. Trump makes polling more difficult, since

I totally believe there are a significant n umber of people who won’t admit to a pollster they will vote for him. 

[ButterflyEffect]

44 minutes ago, TeamAudra said:

Honestly, I don’t know which pollsters to trust right now. There are many new ones, and they are all biased to some extent, IMO. As we get closer to the election, they will have more interest in being “right,” and things will almost certainly tighten. Trump makes polling more difficult, since

I totally believe there are a significant n umber of people who won’t admit to a pollster they will vote for him. 

Go with A and B rated pollsters from 538 since they have proven, good track records. A small bias is unavoidable in polling. Some agencies try and correct for bias after an election cycle. Most polling agencies are currently in a slight Democratic bias at the moment, and have been in one for the past two presidential elections. They were mostly slight Republican biased in 2012, which gave a false illusion that Obama could possibly lose. Those new pollsters will be put to the test come election night.

I would agree with the second statement if this proved to be true in 2016. While media liked to push the story that there were quiet "shy-Trump" supporters who wouldn't admit it, the polling in 2016 was pretty dang good. State level polling in Michigan was off by quite a bit, but the states which Trump flipped on his way to victory were within the margins of error. No one should have been looking at 1-2% Clinton leads on the state level and been claiming an easy Democrat victory. Yet a lot of people did it anyway.

[mercfan3]

On 9/2/2020 at 8:50 PM, ButterflyEffect said:

Go with A and B rated pollsters from 538 since they have proven, good track records. A small bias is unavoidable in polling. Some agencies try and correct for bias after an election cycle. Most polling agencies are currently in a slight Democratic bias at the moment, and have been in one for the past two presidential elections. They were mostly slight Republican biased in 2012, which gave a false illusion that Obama could possibly lose. Those new pollsters will be put to the test come election night.

I would agree with the second statement if this proved to be true in 2016. While media liked to push the story that there were quiet "shy-Trump" supporters who wouldn't admit it, the polling in 2016 was pretty dang good. State level polling in Michigan was off by quite a bit, but the states which Trump flipped on his way to victory were within the margins of error. No one should have been looking at 1-2% Clinton leads on the state level and been claiming an easy Democrat victory. Yet a lot of people did it anyway.

 

Also, those polls took in likely voters based on previous elections. 

 

The 2013 SC decision that effectively changed the Voting Rights Act shifted the demos of who the voters are. 

 

One thing that is so interesting to me about American politics is how Demo driven it is. You have to ask about three questions about someone before knowing how they vote. I haven't really looked at other elections in different countries, but I wonder if this is the case elsewhere. 

Edited September 4, 2020 by mercfan3

[Guest]

12 hours ago, ButterflyEffect said:

Nate Silver? He's an excellent poll aggregator and political modeler. Reminder that while most political analysts were crowning Clinton the victor days before the election in 2016, Nate Solder told everyone that the election was going to be tight and that Trump could easily win.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-dont-ignore-the-polls-clinton-leads-but-its-a-close-race/

I think many people focused on the percentages over everything else, which pretty much looked like her win was a foregone conclusion. I agree that it's not as if polling is dead because some got it wrong. She did win the popular vote, so it wasn't off by a ton. Trump does tend to over perform what the polling says though. 

[ButterflyEffect]

2 hours ago, Drew said:

I think many people focused on the percentages over everything else, which pretty much looked like her win was a foregone conclusion. I agree that it's not as if polling is dead because some got it wrong. She did win the popular vote, so it wasn't off by a ton. Trump does tend to over perform what the polling says though. 

Yeah, that's the problem with popular vote in any election where popular vote doesn't win you the election. Samples are random, but a few extra calls to California or New York skew democrat. Since California and NY are a large percentage of the countries population it's likely you'll have a large number of responses from there anyway, but at the end of the day it really doesn't matter. State level polling paints a much clearer picture during the presidential election, however since sample sizes are smaller for these polls there is a higher margin of error.

Same thing happened in Canada in the last election. Polling showed the Conservatives winning the popular vote, and come election night they did. But they lost the election pretty badly. Turns out having a bunch of extra voters in Alberta and Saskatchewan doesn't matter if your support isn't evenly distributed throughout the country. When you only need 40% of the vote to win a district and you capture 80% those extra 40% of the votes are just like shooting a corpse, absolutely pointless in the grand scheme of the election.

[Jonathan]

Hes such a piece of trash.

 

[psterina]

  

 

https://special-ops.org/the-betrayal-of-navy-seal-team-6/

[Jonathan]

 

[Jonathan]

 

[TeamAudra]

5 hours ago, Jonathan said:

Hes such a piece of trash.

 

He was just on TV talking about this. I don’t believe it’s true. The media does tend to be loose with facts when reporting on Trump. He’s also made lot of enemies and has fired a lot of people, so there may be “sources” with  axes to grind. Politics is a blood sport. 

Edited September 4, 2020 by TeamAudra

[Jonathan]

All I'm hearing is "The furor Hitler has many enemies in Germany. He didn't say or do that and if he did he didn't mean it." Then later the same people said "but I didn't know."  It's so ironic how history repeats itself by the flock supporting an immoral leader based on repetition things that leader has beaten in their brains to fool them.  History is taught to keep people from making the same mistakes again, not as a guide to how to repeat it in their own generation. 

[TeamAudra]

13 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

All I'm hearing is "The furor Hitler has many enemies in Germany. He didn't say or do that and if he did he didn't mean it." Then later the same people said "but I didn't know."  It's so ironic how history repeats itself by the flock supporting an immoral leader based on repetition things that leader has beaten in their brains to fool them.  History is taught to keep people from making the same mistakes again, not as a guide to how to repeat it in their own generation. 

He said he will provide documentation from the Secret Service to prove why he didn’t attend the first ceremony. There was supposedly a storm, they couldn’t fly the helicopter, and the SS wouldn’t allow him to make the 50 mile drive. The SS calls the shots in these instances. He attended the 2nd day. That’s why he went over there in the first place. I’m not a Trump supporter, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to swallow every bunk story hook, line and sinker. Put this in the same category as the “heart attack” and “mini-stroke” stories. Total garbage. 

Edited September 4, 2020 by TeamAudra

[Jonathan]

He said he'd provide his taxes too. I wouldn't hold my breath.

[Smoochy]

10 hours ago, TeamAudra said:

He was just on TV talking about this. I don’t believe it’s true. The media does tend to be loose with facts when reporting on Trump. He’s also made lot of enemies and has fired a lot of people, so there may be “sources” with  axes to grind. Politics is a blood sport. 

While this story does seem a bit out there, it isn't exactly something I would put past Trump to actually say. He called John McCain a loser (though I believe this was in response to him losing in 2008) and when someone asked about McCain's status as a prisoner of war, he said "I like people who weren't captured".

 

Again, the story could be fabricated for sure as Trump has made a lot of enemies in his time as President, but with some of the shit he has said in the past, I wouldn't be that shocked if it turned out to be true.

Edited September 4, 2020 by Smoochy

[ButterflyEffect]

Even if it's not fabricated, it doesn't matter. If Trump hates dead and/or injured war veterans, then his brain dead, retarded supporters hate them too. Not really much to gain or lose here.

[ButterflyEffect]

Quote

RealClearPolitics Needs To Fix Their Averages

Amongst many, two polls came out on Friday that elicited big reactions on Twitter – the USC panel poll that in 2016 always had Trump winning showing a double digit Biden lead, and a Trafalgar poll of Michigan with Trump and GOP Senate candidate Jon James winning. Both of them are outlier polls, although the Trafalgar poll is a much bigger one, and therefore, both should receive the same value (whether or not it is high value or low) in how people think of them. 538, for what it is worth, put both in their respective averages, which is at least consistent (if stupid to include such a partisan pollster at all). RealClearPolitics missed the memo, though, because they included the Trafalgar poll while not including the USC poll.

Now, if that sounds like it could just be a fairly inefficient problem of their poll inclusion standards, that was this corner’s original theory. They just don’t include the USC/Dornslife poll, so it is just a matter of (bad) policy, not of bias. Until… they included it in 2016, when it showed the now-President up a ton everytime they were in the field. And now that it is an outlier for the Democrats, and not the Republicans, it’s out. When a Democratic internal was released today as well, that’s excluded, as is the stable Redfield and Wilton Strategies National polling out Friday. But don’t worry, Rasmussen is out, and that gets into the average, as does Trafalgar at the state level.

These are the same hacks who have Tossup Missouri, Lean D Connecticut, and Lean R Montana, so they could just be really, really bad at this, and they are. But they’re also hilariously partisan with their poll inclusion policies, because if you think that Trafalgar is an acceptable poll but Global Strategies Group isn’t you’re not making some statement about standards and practices, you’re just putting in the good Republican polls and excluding the good Democratic ones because you want to suggest the race is closer than it is. The problem for RCP is that this time it is clear and incontrovertible that they’re skewing the average by excluding a poll they had previously included when it said different things!
 

This could just be a failure on their part, I guess, and if they acknowledge the failure and fix it then we will have to accept that (I guess), but at some point the fact that the most well known poll aggregator who does this from beginning to end of each cycle is just cherry picking polls now – as opposed to missing some – in a way that skews averages needs to be called out. It is damaging if the averages can be manipulated, as money and effort and energy can be moved because of things like this. It is a failure of an institution that is in theory about informing the public to actually do so, because they are, through deliberate malice or plain incompetence, showing their audience a skewed version of reality.

If the USC poll was good enough to be included in 2016, it is good enough now. If it isn’t good enough now, explain yourself. But based on what we’ve seen, this is RCP picking favourites and freaking up their averages. It is a sad state of affairs, and if they don’t get their shit together they should be ignored forever.

https://leantossup.ca/realclearpolitics-needs-to-fix-their-averages/

Commentary on some shady stuff happening at RCP since we were speaking about them just a few days ago. I don't particularly like the guys from Lean Tossup, I think they're brash and arrogant, but this commentary is spot on. You can't exclude polls if they're not showing what you want. This is the kind of stuff that comes back to bite you in the butt when your model ends up being wrong come election night.

[psterina]

12 hours ago, TeamAudra said:

He said he will provide documentation from the Secret Service to prove why he didn’t attend the first ceremony. There was supposedly a storm, they couldn’t fly the helicopter, and the SS wouldn’t allow him to make the 50 mile drive. The SS calls the shots in these instances. He attended the 2nd day. That’s why he went over there in the first place. I’m not a Trump supporter, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to swallow every bunk story hook, line and sinker. Put this in the same category as the “heart attack” and “mini-stroke” stories. Total garbage. 

 

Same here. And, it doesn't begin to compare with the FACT, that Biden, is responsible for the deaths of the Navy Seals. Doesn't even begin to compare.

 

 

 

[TeamAudra]

It’s usually obvious when attacks originated from unnamed sources are baseless, and this is one of them. I know a lot of people want to believe it. I’ve been there. Trump does it too, BTW. That’s one reason I didn’t vote for him in 2016.