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

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HintonJamesHeel said:
Which aggregator has compiled correctly according to you?
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What's the goal? If aggregation itself is the goal, I mean sure. But if truth is the goal, then at a minimum you will want to:

1. Rate pollsters based on some sort of evaluative methodology -- for instance, ensuring that they are in fact taking polls.
2. Attempt to assess the partisan lean of a pollster when evaluating the poll
3. Have some mechanism to prevent your poll aggregation from being overrun by junk
4. Use weights of some sort to give more emphasis to more important polls.

RCP is akin to judging basketball teams by their W/L record alone, without any adjustments for margin of victory or strength of schedule. If that's your cup of tea, go for it.
 
rodoheel said:
I understand the perception issue, but Dems are still the ones pushing for policies that benefit the "everyman" and Republicans are still the ones whose policies disproportionately benefit the "upper classes." The shift in voter allegiance has me frustrated too, but it's not because Trump or Republicans are actually doing anything to benefit the working class. They've won working-class voters over with culture war BS, not by actually doing anything to help those people. Unless you count horrible policy ideas that will likely never be implemented like "no taxes on tips!" that Trump cynically throws out.

Kamala's tax plan cuts taxes for the lower and middle classes; Trump's will raise their burden and make everything they buy more expensive through idiotic tariff policy. Dems are pro-union; Republicans have spent the last several decades weakening them with "right to work" laws and busting them. Dems want to make health care cheap and affordable; Trump and Reps want to repeal or weaken Obamacare and throw more people back in the "free market" where they have to pay more for health care or choose not to get it due to expense.
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Perception drives voting. Politics is a game of perception.
 
superrific said:
What's the goal? If aggregation itself is the goal, I mean sure. But if truth is the goal, then at a minimum you will want to:

1. Rate pollsters based on some sort of evaluative methodology -- for instance, ensuring that they are in fact taking polls.
2. Attempt to assess the partisan lean of a pollster when evaluating the poll
3. Have some mechanism to prevent your poll aggregation from being overrun by junk
4. Use weights of some sort to give more emphasis to more important polls.

RCP is akin to judging basketball teams by their W/L record alone, without any adjustments for margin of victory or strength of schedule. If that's your cup of tea, go for it.
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Fair enough. I know nothing about how they weight and value each polls so I learned something.
 
Zoo_View said:
RCP has no Blue Dot in Nebraska? Minnesota and New Hampshire as toss-ups?

That’s a realistic take.
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I used to look at RCP all the time, but once I learned about the background of the site (it was founded by two Republicans, I believe) and that it did have a partisan bias I didn't look at it as much. I finally quit for good after it was obvious that they had moved even more to the right than they were previously. Maybe they're right in their prediction of this year's electoral vote, but if so I definitely think it's still more due to partisan bias than an objective reading of the polls, imo.
 
I think HJH is hitting on a real phenomenon but coming to some weird conclusions about why it’s happening.

A lot of it is just optics, IMO. As y’all have correctly pointed out, the Democratic Party is still the party that proposes policies that will help middle and working class people compared to the Republican Party. Culture war issues are a big part of the appeal of the GOP for working men, of course.

If it is optics, then I think Dems need to lean into it and run more candidates who are from a working class background (or can at least portray themselves as working class in the way Fetterman does) See: Tim Walz, Dan Osborn, John Fetterman.

All three of these guys have different politics, but they capture the essence of a common working man. I think Harris does a good job of this as well, honestly. Just with a completely different segment of working people than what the legacy media usually means when they say “working class.” That is, white men in blue collar jobs.

I think the other piece of this is messaging. Democratic policy solutions tend to be more technocratic and complex. That’s fine because these are complex problems that require complex solutions, but the messaging to fix these problems should be simplified. I think Harris does a good job there too, to the extent that she can. I think she’s somewhat boxed in at the moment.
 
HintonJamesHeel said:
Perception drives voting. Politics is a game of perception.
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So be upset about the culture war lies that have caused the shift in perception, not at Dems. We're dealing with a constant fire hose of misinformation that has led people to vote against their economic interest. I'm not disputing that Dems can do better on messaging but no one has yet figured out how you're supposed to reach people who believe that Dems are baby-murdering communist demons who want to replace "real" Americans with illegal immigrants.
 
rodoheel said:
So be upset about the culture war lies that have caused the shift in perception, not at Dems. We're dealing with a constant fire hose of misinformation that has led people to vote against their economic interest. I'm not disputing that Dems can do better on messaging but no one has yet figured out how you're supposed to reach people who believe that Dems are baby-murdering communist demons who want to replace "real" Americans with illegal immigrants.
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Not to mention, and I know this sounds harsh, the less educated a person is, the more susceptible he is to that misinformation. So it becomes a feedback cycle.
 
HintonJamesHeel said:
This is part of what has me frustrated with the current Democratic Party. Trumps legacy will be transitioning the Republican Party from a party viewed as out of touch elitists to the party of working class people. I used to love the fact that Democrats were for the “every man” and supported those who were focused on trades and less educated. The frustration hit a high for me during the college loan forgiveness thing. While not really opposed to it, that extremely expensive policy didn’t help the every man. They don’t really go to college and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I hope Harris takes the party back to its roots and less focus on the upper class and more of a movement toward those less fortunate. I do think she likely be that way more than Biden.
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You do get that you are repeating the bullshit that the Republican Party has been feeding the people voting for him. You're not looking at the reality of who does what for whom. The only thing the Republicans have done better is to lie to people and prey on their hates, fears and superstitions. I don't know what you're seeing or who you're listening to but you need to broaden your sources of information by some.
 
CFordUNC said:
It’s become really impressive how you have become someone who can be counted upon to have the absolute dumbest takes on every topic. You think that a billionaire who inherited a multi-hundred-million dollar fortune from his father, squandered it several times, lived in a gold-plated penthouse in Manhattan, and shits on literal golden toilets, and whose sole legislative success was cutting taxes for billionaires and corporations, represents the “working man” and the party led by Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris, both from middle income families who have spent their lives and careers in public service, do not represent the “working man.” You are either militantly ignorant or a yet another one of our recreational contrarians who have a humiliation fetish.
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Stubborn and stupid is no way to go through life...
 
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