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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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  • Politics 
Calheel said:
Obviously, the RFK endorsement is one thing.

But I think the answer is simpler. When Kamala got into the race, she got a lot of the “generic” democratic vote. Generic Democrat always does better than any specific Democrat. In other words, some of the initial polls were picking up the double hater vote who knew nothing about Harris.

Since then, Republicans have been running nonstop attack ads on Kamala in swing states. As a result, she is losing some of those Generic Democrat voters.

This was always going to happen. It is now up to Kamala to win back some of those voters over the next two months or do an even better negative campaign against Trump.
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Yeah, that makes sense, and I’m not questioning the polls that are showing Kamala going from +4 to +2, or even from +2 to tied. I’m still having a hard time, though, understanding how Silver’s model could suddenly give Trump his best odds to win at any time in this entire cycle. I get that small changes in the swing states can have a huge impact on EC projections, but even if Kamala’s lead is shrinking a bit, I’d think his model would still show her in a MUCH stronger position than Biden was right after the debate, for example.
 
Paine said:
Could it be that the 3rd party vote was higher in 2016 because there were two historically unpopular candidates running?

There was a segment of the Democratic Party in 2016 that wanted anyone but Clinton. A lot of these people didn’t even have politics that lined up with Bernie, but they voted for him anyways and then voted third-party, Trump, or didn’t vote at all in the general election.

I think we both agree about the above, right? My issue comes when people bring up Bernie Bros, which was a term invented in the heart of the primary to deflect away from the actual issues Bernie brought up. Bernie Bros are coded as young, progressive (usually white) men.

It was not the young progressives who swung the election against Clinton. There were infinitely more factors against Clinton than that, and the fact that she chooses to put Bernie Bros out there as her reason for losing (and that other people continue to parrot this) is just demonstrative of her flaws as a candidate. That’s the last I’ll say about it on this thread because we’re far off topic.
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Agree we’re getting off track and that there were more factors than just Bernie Bros for the loss, so this will be my last post on the topic as well. I just believe of all those factors, that was the one with the biggest impact on the outcome. Especially in those states (like the Blue Wall) that were decided by 1% or less.
 
Paine said:
From WaPo:
“Another useful comparison is to 2008, when the question was whether Clinton supporters would vote for Barack Obama or John McCain (R-Ariz.) Based on data from the 2008 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project, a YouGov survey that also interviewed respondents multiple times during the campaign, 24 percent of people who supported Clinton in the primary as of March 2008 then reported voting for McCain in the general election.

An analysis of a different 2008 survey by the political scientists Michael Henderson, Sunshine Hillygus and Trevor Thompson produced a similar estimate: 25 percent. (Unsurprisingly, Clinton voters who supported McCain were more likely to have negative views of African Americans, relative to those who supported Obama.)”

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Thanks.
 
lawtig02 said:
Yeah, that makes sense, and I’m not questioning the polls that are showing Kamala going from +4 to +2, or even from +2 to tied. I’m still having a hard time, though, understanding how Silver’s model could suddenly give Trump his best odds to win at any time in this entire cycle. I get that small changes in the swing states can have a huge impact on EC projections, but even if Kamala’s lead is shrinking a bit, I’d think his model would still show her in a MUCH stronger position than Biden was right after the debate, for example.
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I already answered your question a few pages back. You responded that you don't see anything in the data to justify that. Fine, but the response to that is simple: this is why you build a model! Because eyeballing data is extremely unreliable.
 
superrific said:
I already answered your question a few pages back. You responded that you don't see anything in the data to justify that. Fine, but the response to that is simple: this is why you build a model! Because eyeballing data is extremely unreliable.
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And I’m just questioning the reliability of a model that appears to be inconsistent with the observable data. Maybe his model is great. But if it is, it’s picking up on something right now that’s not showing up in the data.
 
Am I late to the party ? I did not know Nate Silver is being paid by Peter Thiel

www.rawstory.com

'Nate Silver is paid by Peter Thiel': Never Trumper scrambles to dismiss poll prediction

Polling expert and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver updated his presidential election forecast Sunday and gave GOP nominee Donald Trump a 63.8 percent chance of winning the Electoral College in November, with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris trailing with only a 36 percent chance.But...
www.rawstory.com www.rawstory.com
 
UNCBAdookJD said:
With the electoral college it is mediocre results. She needs to be winning the popular vote by 4% plus to really feel confident about the stupid EC.
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These wild swings aren’t realistic. She polls +4, then a week or two later she’s +2.

Trump is up on Biden in the polls and suddenly Biden needs to drop. Now we have Harris up on Trump, suddenly she’s doing poorly.

Trump isn’t suddenly persuading the fence-sitters to join his cause with his outlandish claims. Yea, Haitians eating our pets, I gotta vote Trump now (polls up +1 for Trump /s).

This is all noise. It’s all BS.

Have to stop buying into this.

Massive increase in voter registration. Massive turnout for Harris/Walz. Dems leading in multiple state races, but Harris is trailing? Nah.

Low turnout at Trump rallies. Mixed messaging. Verbal vomit everyday. Incoherent to the point of senility. This a campaign being waged against the American voter, the normal ones. This is coordinated BS meant to deter voters from showing up. Flood the airwaves with as much foolishness, and pump bogus polling.
 
lawtig02 said:
And I’m just questioning the reliability of a model that appears to be inconsistent with the observable data. Maybe his model is great. But if it is, it’s picking up on something right now that’s not showing up in the data.
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With all due respect, don't you think the model knows more than you? First, it is fed way more data than you can see, at least if you have a day job (which you do, as I understand it). Second, people are bad at numerical estimates, at least compared to models. Third, the model incorporates a lot of learning from past elections that you're not privy to.

The model isn't necessarily right, but I would think the answer to that would be, "here are some other models that are just as good, and they say something similar." Not "that looks fishy to me." In fairness, the models have become black boxes. Silver explains his methodology, but he doesn't reveal all the hyper-parameters to his model so it can't be replicated. 538 does the same. So it's pretty hard to look at the models themselves and say, "this one is better."

Also, in fairness, "this looks fishy to me" is a constant temptation. I know I've done it when dissecting polls. "Unskewing the polls" is a natural tendency, but not a correct one unless the skew is obvious. For instance, if the NYT poll really did get a sample with 56% evangelicals, it would need unskewing -- but of course, it didn't.

Anyway, we're having a mini-Chevron discussion here, though perhaps we don't realize it. You're playing the judge who decides that the agency must be wrong because it is relying on, say, "sociological gobbeldygook," and I'm saying to defer to the experts. LOL.
 
CallMeTyler said:
Dems leading in multiple state races, but Harris is trailing? Nah.
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I'm not sure about your view as to what is or isn't "realistic." It's not that uncommon for presidential candidates to trail Senate candidates of their own party. In fact, it's vital to Dems' chances to ever hold the Senate, because red states in presidential elections badly outnumber blue ones. Jon Tester won his race in 2012, even though MT went red by a mile. Hopefully he will do that again, though it's not looking great.

For instance, in 2012, Pubs won MO for president but badly lost for Senate. Barack won NV but the Pub won the Senate seat there. He also won Maine, as did the Pub Senate candidate.

Even when the top line isn't different, Senate candidates commonly outperform their party's presidential nominee. A lot of that has to do with incumbency. And right now, the Senate candidates who are running ahead of Kamala are largely incumbents running against challengers, who might not be very well known. As the election nears and people start paying attention to the Senate, you might see movement in the Senate polling in some of these places. Especially MI (where there is no incumbent) and OH (which is really a red state now).
 
The reality is that the race is basically tied and it's remarkable that Harris even has a chance given where things stood a month ago.

I don't understand how half the country would vote for donald trump, but here we are.

We can't celebrate polls that show her up and decry polls that show her down without some actual, legitimate reason. Better to look at the averages over a several-week period, anyways (although we are fast running out of weeks in the campaign left).
 
Huh
Jamison2Carter said:
The reality is that the race is basically tied and it's remarkable that Harris even has a chance given where things stood a month ago.

I don't understand how half the country would vote for donald trump, but here we are.

We can't celebrate polls that show her up and decry polls that show her down without some actual, legitimate reason. Better to look at the averages over a several-week period, anyways (although we are fast running out of weeks in the campaign left).
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I wouldn’t celebrate any poll.
 
lawtig02 said:
And I’m just questioning the reliability of a model that appears to be inconsistent with the observable data. Maybe his model is great. But if it is, it’s picking up on something right now that’s not showing up in the data.
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There are a couple of factors that would explain the move.

First, as you note, very small swings in the popular vote projection can make a huge variance in the model given how close the race is and the built in Republican advantage in the electoral college.

Second, Nate is still applying a convention bounce bias against Kamala, although that will work its way out of the system in another week or so. Meaning that historically (although perhaps not this year) candidates get a polling bump after the convention, which fades after a few weeks. So the model still assumes that Kamala's true polling numbers are lower than her current numbers.

Third, the model considers time to the election. A Trump +4 over Biden in June is not as significant as a Trump +4 in September. It adjusts for the lack of time to change the numbers (although again, that adjustment may make less sense this year given Kamala's recent entry into the race).
 
Jamison2Carter said:
ok. i didn't quote/reply directly to you - not sure why you're responding as if i did.
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This is an open forum. You don’t have to directly address someone to receive a reply.

I’m just suggesting that celebrating any poll is pointless.

Not sure the reason for the hostility though.
 
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