2020 Presidential Election
- Thread starter Skeptic Ginger
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Indeed, as one might surmise from "2 weeks ago" and "4 weeks ago" mentions.
P.s. I was a data warehousing / analytics consultant for a couple decades.
To be clear, there are national approve/disapprove polls. And national Trump v Biden polls. I don't think 538 includes the former in their aggregated margin.
At the moment, my (casual) interest is in understanding the 538 algorithm.
For sure.
Sherkeu
Illuminator
Maybe try baseball??
It's only the players that reach home plate that count. The number of hits or runners on base isn't important. Because those are the rules.
If the rules were changed to 'runners reaching the bases'....then the entire strategy of the game would shift- radically.
Totally and completely different game.
The USA plays the EC game, not the PV game. To know how a PV election would turn out, you'll have to actually change the rules and have one to see.
Segnosaur
Penultimate Amazing
Bad analogy.
The argument made is that the electoral college favors one party over another. A baseball analogy would be if one team (but not the other) automatically got a player on first base every inning.
Even if parties change their strategies under a popular-vote rule, that doesn't mean its not a system worth using. The issue is "what's fair". If the EC is changed by the PV and the republicans change their strategies and still manage to win an election, at least they'd be winning under fair rules (and perhaps their party would be more responsive to the needs of the average voter).
Elagabalus
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theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Good analogy. If American League teams were better at getting runners on base, and National League teams were better at getting runners home, then the current rules would favor the National League.
And actually it's my understanding that some pro sports leagues have funding rules that tend to favor some teams over others. But I'm not sure if that's true or if it's a good analogy.
Delvo
Дэлво Δε&#
"Not always" is an interesting way to phrase "exactly 0% of the time", which is the frequency with which being moderate has helped a Democrat or failing to be moderate has harmed a Democrat in the last few decades. Why is the factor with the least effect on the outcome (none detectable) being treated as the biggest & most important?
If you're looking at a poll that somehow came up with a swamp-draining, opponent-jailing, treaty-breaking, federal-agency-sabotaging, wall-building "moderate", you're looking at a poll that found a way to mangle the word's usage beyond recognition. Perhaps that has something to do with left-&-right being the wrong spectrum on which to analyze Trump (and a lot of other American politics) in the first place.
But in any case, since that's on the Republican side, all that any explanation for that would do is highlight that the dynamics aren't the same for the two parties. Republican voters are more reliable so they don't need as much convincing, and a moderate Republican is one who wants to go the same way as the extremists but just slower or not as far. Democrats have trouble getting their voters to vote, and a moderate Democrat is not one who does the same stuff as an extreme Democrat in milder form, but one who does Republican stuff (which is part of why they have the turnout problem). Also, while the Democrat version of moderate is most of those who are in elected offices, the Republican version is pretty uncommon in elected offices. So none of the same moderate-or-not analysis works for both parties.
(And even if applying the same principles to both parties were a good way to look at this, that 0% success rate on the Democrat side would still be a pretty big hill for the added stuff from the Republican side to climb. The predictions one would make based on the Republicans' moderateness or lack thereof would need a 100% success rate just to break even overall... which would mean that, even then, all you would have done is prove that it works when applied to one party but not the other, so we would need to consider moderateness only for the Republican candidate. And yet, somehow, that's the side from which we never hear anybody say "we need a moderate or we'll lose".)
Then even if the principle were sound for prior elections, it would still be irrelevant for this one because the Republican base couldn't be more energized than they are right now. (They're the side with a candidate who's actually saying what they want to hear.)
Policy statements on a website nobody will read, which were probably written by somebody else instead of him for the purpose of trying to bring back an eroded base, and which don't match his record or his live observable behavior right now, mean nothing. A politician's real political message is not what gets hidden away in some obscure essay but what (s)he takes an active role in pushing out for everyone to see & hear as much as possible, so it's what we're reminded of whenever we see his/her face or hear his/her voice or read a short snippet of text from him/her, over & over again, without needing to go investigating & hunting for it. What message has Biden pushed like that? To the limited extent that there even is one at all, it's just "Trump is bad" and positive fluff equivalent to "America needs to be America again". And those are electorally useless. They inform nobody and motivate nobody.
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I think I know why. I suspect they recalculated the margin based on new polls, but those polls weren't yet displaying on the site.
They weight the polls based on historical accuracy of the pollster. This afternoon they added a poll from a highly rated source, Emerson College, which has Biden +3. (And another Emerson poll showing Trump's popularity +2.) The aggregate is now Biden +7.
Delvo
Дэлво Δε&#
The deciding factor last time was 60 or 70 thousand votes in three states, so, if it's that close again this time and he loses, there will be an equivalent number the other way around: the number of votes in a certain few states that cost him the election instead of giving it to him, the number by which Biden barely scrapes by.
By election day, the number of people killed by the virus will be well over 200 thousand, primarily among the old, who happen to be the most reliable voters. And even some of those who aren't killed by it will be incapacitated for a period which includes that day.
So it's numerically possible for Trump to literally lose this election by getting enough of his own voters killed.
By election day, the number of people killed by the virus will be well over 200 thousand, primarily among the old, who happen to be the most reliable voters. And even some of those who aren't killed by it will be incapacitated for a period which includes that day.
So it's numerically possible for Trump to literally lose this election by getting enough of his own voters killed.
Safe-Keeper
My avatar is not a Drumpf hat
That would be some fiting poetic justice.
I think the plague keeping people home from voting and just a broader, general disruption of "the systems" (transportation, mail, childcare, etc) will be a much bigger factor across all demographics than the number its killed, which is why Trump is fighting life or death to kill remote voting methods of all kinds.
Skeptic Ginger
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Never mind. Mis-read the post I replied to.
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Stacyhs
Penultimate Amazing
WARNING: Republican Data Firm admits 'Incredible' Trump Loss Will Be Due to Fewer Idiots Voting for Him In Swing States.
(Gee...that was easy!)
Venom
Philosopher
This isn't normal behavior from a sitting president.
Skeptic Ginger
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I put this in the Biden thread but it really belongs here:
Trump's campaign strategy: flood the right-wing social media echo chamber with falsehood after falsehood. There's one after the other so as soon as one outrageous claim begins to unravel, a new one has taken its place.
Fox and lots of internet trolls and bots will make sure to amplify each falsehood.
I believe that explains Trump's rise in the polls. Let's hope Biden can stay on the offensive and not fall into the defensive trap. That's one of Trump's tricks, getting the opponent trapped in refuting every false charge.
Trump's campaign strategy: flood the right-wing social media echo chamber with falsehood after falsehood. There's one after the other so as soon as one outrageous claim begins to unravel, a new one has taken its place.
Fox and lots of internet trolls and bots will make sure to amplify each falsehood.
I believe that explains Trump's rise in the polls. Let's hope Biden can stay on the offensive and not fall into the defensive trap. That's one of Trump's tricks, getting the opponent trapped in refuting every false charge.
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Safe-Keeper
My avatar is not a Drumpf hat
The protests and riots also help explain his rise in the polls. Look at all the paranoia, conspiracy theories, and general fear mongering when Obama won the presidency. Look at Trump's statements and policies. Look at the things the trumpkins themselves say and do. They're terrified of coloured people. Blacks protesting, and even some rioting, must be their worst nightmare come true.
The echo chambers do everything they can to amplify this effect, of course, but I think there would've been an effect regardlessly.
The echo chambers do everything they can to amplify this effect, of course, but I think there would've been an effect regardlessly.
ponderingturtle
Orthogonal Vector
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It is now.
Trebuchet
Penultimate Amazing
It isn't normal behavior for anyone.
Segnosaur
Penultimate Amazing
But the thing is, Trump has been doing that his entire political life, ever since he started running in 2016. He did win the presidency back then, but lost the popular vote (and the dynamics of this election are very different than that one.)
I think somewhere along the line, the falsehoods probably quit having an impact on the undecided voter, and he's only making those claims for his own base.
I guess the question is, is Trump actually experiencing a rise in the polls?
If you look at the 538 polling average fivethirtyeight.com:
Currently, Trump sits at 42.9%. This is exactly where he was back on June 1. Since that time he has varied between around 41% and 43%. And the spread between Biden and Trump sits at 7%, which is lower than it had been a few weeks ago, but higher than it was on June 1. (Yes, you do occasionally hear about polls that show a much narrower gap, but there are also plenty of polls showing the spread between them still at 8 or 9%.)
The amazing thing about this election so far has been the consistency in the polling... Both sides have their convention, polls remain static. Another cop shooting and rioting break out... polls remain static. An increase and subsequent decrease in Covid19 cases.... polls remain static. Republican attacks on Biden... polls remain static. Biden selects Harris as VP candidate... polls remain static.
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