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2024 Pre-Election Political Polls | POLL - Trump would have had 7 point lead over Biden

  • Thread starter Thread starter nycfan
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"...To be clear, we have no idea whether the polls will be biased consistently one way or the other in 2024.

Maybe Trump will be understated again: if so, he is almost certainly going to win the election given how close the polls are now.

Maybe Harris will be understated: if so, she is in a great position to win given that she appears to already lead in enough states to win 270 electoral votes, albeit barely.

Or there might be little bias either way, or inconsistent bias depending on the state, in which case this election will be very hard to confidently predict based on the current numbers. Polling error is not necessarily consistent from year to year—while polls understated Trump in 2016 and 2020, the longer-term history of polling errors is a bit more mixed, per this helpful chart from the Pew Research Center based on American Association for Public Opinion Research data.


Our best guess is that because Trump’s polling position is better than 2016 and 2020, it’s likelier that he’s at least not being as underestimated as much as he was in previous elections, if he is being underestimated at all.

For one thing, other indicators do not really suggest that we’re in the midst of an electoral environment that is much stronger for Republicans than the past two elections (those indicators include special elections in 2023 and 2024 and the recent Washington state top-two primary).

While Democrats have now nominated three different opponents against Donald Trump, Trump himself will be on the ballot for a third straight time. It just doesn’t seem likely to us that he will do markedly better than he did in either 2016 or 2020, which is what would happen if the polls were biased against him again.

The third installment of the Trump trilogy will likely look a fair amount like the first two installments as opposed to being dramatically different; this is why we’ve long expected a close and competitive election, with only the last few weeks of Joe Biden’s candidacy really making us seriously consider the possibility of Trump doing substantially better than his previous presidential runs. The close polls suggest a close election: That seems realistic.

However, we also are on guard for subtler versions of the polling error we saw in 2016 and 2020. Again, Harris doing better in Wisconsin than she is doing in Michigan and Pennsylvania is something that raises our eyebrows, given actual recent results and the more pronounced Wisconsin polling error in 2016 and 2020. We also are suspicious of Harris’s better polling position in North Carolina than Georgia; note that the polling was generally closer to the mark in the latter than the former in both 2016 and 2020. ..."

[Lots of data in the linked article]
 
I think the “shy” Trump voter is a thing of the past. Every trump voter I know is very loud and obnoxious about it. Much more to have a shy Dem voter, particularly in areas like NC and GA imo
Turnout. The morning after we're going to be talking about which demographics turned out relative to which didn't (as strongly).

Whatever (and how much) aggregate polling error will be shown, will be based on the ability or failure of the polling models to have correctly anticipated the turnout rates of the respective demographic groups.

At least that's my uninformed opinion.
 
Turnout. The morning after we're going to be talking about which demographics turned out relative to which didn't (as strongly).

Whatever (and how much) aggregate polling error will be shown, will be based on the ability or failure of the polling models to have correctly anticipated the turnout rates of the respective demographic groups.

At least that's my uninformed opinion.
I share your opinion :cool:
 
MOD NOTE - DUE TO MY OWN ERROR, I merged the 2024 Political Ads and 2024 Political Polls threads (had intended to merge the two political ads threads). Keeping this as political polling (the ads thread was way shorter and we can keep using the other one).

Sorry, no idea how I clicked the wrong box.
 
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It's ok, you're still awesome.

You Are Awesome Lauren Lapkus GIF by Earwolf
Seriously. I know how she clicked the wrong box -- she clicked the wrong box. She made a mistake, the same type of mistake that people commonly make. I would guess that every single person on this board has clicked the wrong box before, and probably multiple times. I know I have. I don't think it requires a mea culpa.

Now, I don't want to project too much, but it's true that deal attorneys have to be hyper-focused on tiny details. The main job of a deal lawyer is to not fuck up. So if you do fuck up, it's like a big deal. I wonder if that's what's happening here.

When I was teaching, I was going through with my class a merger agreement I pulled off the web. We were going through the "Material Adverse Effect" clause, which is a type of clause that is maddeningly frustrating. They usually have like quadruple or quintuple negatives, like "X is a material adverse effect unless it is Y, except that if it is Z, unless it is also not A," etc. In a long paragraph of a laundry list of shit, a word "not" had been omitted. It was a quadruple negative instead of the required quintuple. The result was a complete and utter fuck-up. The error meant that the buyer had basically no obligation to buy, which is the single biggest fuckup a deal lawyer can make (or at least one of them), and it was buried deep in a clause. I notified the partner on the transaction (because the agreement was only days old) and told him. Fortunately for them, the buyer was cool and agreed to amend it, but it was entirely possible that people would have lost their jobs and potentially their careers because of a single missing "not."

Point is, to be a good deal lawyer (which I'm guessing nycfan is), you have to learn to be really hard on yourself over tiny things.
 
Seriously. I know how she clicked the wrong box -- she clicked the wrong box. She made a mistake, the same type of mistake that people commonly make. I would guess that every single person on this board has clicked the wrong box before, and probably multiple times. I know I have. I don't think it requires a mea culpa.

Now, I don't want to project too much, but it's true that deal attorneys have to be hyper-focused on tiny details. The main job of a deal lawyer is to not fuck up. So if you do fuck up, it's like a big deal. I wonder if that's what's happening here.

When I was teaching, I was going through with my class a merger agreement I pulled off the web. We were going through the "Material Adverse Effect" clause, which is a type of clause that is maddeningly frustrating. They usually have like quadruple or quintuple negatives, like "X is a material adverse effect unless it is Y, except that if it is Z, unless it is also not A," etc. In a long paragraph of a laundry list of shit, a word "not" had been omitted. It was a quadruple negative instead of the required quintuple. The result was a complete and utter fuck-up. The error meant that the buyer had basically no obligation to buy, which is the single biggest fuckup a deal lawyer can make (or at least one of them), and it was buried deep in a clause. I notified the partner on the transaction (because the agreement was only days old) and told him. Fortunately for them, the buyer was cool and agreed to amend it, but it was entirely possible that people would have lost their jobs and potentially their careers because of a single missing "not."

Point is, to be a good deal lawyer (which I'm guessing nycfan is), you have to learn to be really hard on yourself over tiny things.
I think the main point - or at least a very, very, very important secondary point - of most jobs is not to fuck up.

Unless, I guess, you're a product beta tester...then the point probably is to fuck up.
 
I think the main point - or at least a very, very, very important secondary point - of most jobs is not to fuck up.

Unless, I guess, you're a product beta tester...then the point probably is to fuck up.
To be fair, 75% of the participants in the last two debates for the most powerful political office in the world have totally fucked up, so we’ll have to see how important a criteria that really is.
 
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