Harris and Sanders staff are arguing with each other on twitter. Jesus wept. I honestly think one of Biden’s strengths is he’s not playing up to a social media gallery.
Bernie leads in Colorado \o/
HarrisX did an interesting thing where they broke the Democratic field into a series of one-on-one matchups:
Biden beats Sanders
Sanders beats Harris
Harris beats Warren
Warren beats Biden
I guess we could say that the situation is unsettled. It’s reassuring for us Biden-skeptical voters that his margins in all these individual races are much smaller than his double-digit lead over the field as a whole.
Scrolling down a bit, Warren leads new polls of Iowa and Wisconsin, with Sanders in second in both States (tied with Biden in Iowa).
Inslee is out.
I’d rather see him as part of the cabinet anyway–maybe as head of the EPA.
It’s a travesty that a qualified and charismatic guy like Inslee couldn’t get traction.
Meanwhile, Harris had been the only one in the top tier that I thought was pretty electable. But then I heard about this, a few days after it happened. I guess it didn’t make a huge amount of news (I don’t see it discussed here anywhere) but it could come back to haunt her, and perhaps more importantly, tells me that her political instincts and judgments are not as good as I thought:
Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris’s controversial Michael Brown tweets, explained - Vox
This is such an unforced error by Harris (and of course by Warren, but no surprise from her). When you are getting corrected from the center by Vox and Ta Nehisi Coates, you know you are way out on a limb.
They also got four Pinocchios from the Washington Post for this:
And although apparently this didn’t get a huge amount of coverage if I didn’t hear about it until a week later, it’s the kind of thing that could really be grist for a general election campaign attack ad, a la Willie Horton.
If you want to be provocative and say a black kid was “murdered” by white cops, pick Tamir Rice! Not Mike Brown, FFS. :smack:
I’m definitely a supporter of BLM’s larger goals and most of the time they’re in the right. And I realize that what happened in Ferguson was in the context of a greater pattern of tension and mistreatment with the local law enforcement. But I do think they picked a bad poster child when it came to Michael Brown.
Brown did not come off looking very sympathetic in the final analysis. Everyone who’s ever worked a shitty job behind a counter in a sketchy area late at night - which is a hell of a lot of people in this country - has dreaded a visit from guys like Brown. Tangentially, but still related, it’s my impression that Trump has a substantial following with Indian-Americans and Sikhs, and there’s significant overlap between that demographic and the aforementioned late-night sketchy-place business-employees. (And surgeons and engineers, but still.) Do we want that voting bloc in our corner or not?
It’s pure stubbornness. The movement ignited there, so instead of being politically deft and pivoting to all the other better poster children like Rice, they just ignore the facts and double down on Mike Brown — much to the horror of anyone not already in the “choir”. To signal to swing voters that voting Democratic will mean that menacing guys like him are given free rein is a terrible mistake.
3 way tie!
I saw that! Just a single poll, but I’m glad to see this. For those who don’t want to click, it has Sanders and Warren at 20, and Biden at 19. It’s Monmouth, so it’s a good polling outfit.
But it’s not an especially accurate poll, regardless it being from Monmouth. It has a margin of error of almost +/-6%.
A single poll this early means almost nothing. Still nice to see for those of us who don’t want Biden to win the nomination.
It was a sample size of under 300, which lead to the big margin of error. It’s big enough that it could encompass Biden sitting at 25% and Sanders/Warren still at around 15%.
And vice versa. And it’s just a single poll, which means that we shouldn’t pay it much attention.
Sigh. You probably will think I’m being pedantic or something but what you’re saying could be said about any of the polls coming out. This particular poll is less accurate than the other polls you are comparing it too.
We don’t know if it’s more or less accurate – that it’s Monmouth makes me think “more”, that it has a small sample size makes me think “less”. But this is a silly disagreement. This poll barely merits discussion – it’s a single poll, very early. But there’s not much else to talk about WRT the primary season aside from the latest polls right now.
Ok, so you don’t get it. Most of the polls listed on realclear and 538 have a margin of error of about +/- 1-3%. This one is +/- 5.7%. That makes it less accurate, not the trustworthiness of the pollsters.
“Margin of error” is a different concept than “accuracy”, especially in polling. Garbage polls sometimes have small margins of error, and good polls sometimes have large margins of error. If the sampling was bad, then a small margin of error doesn’t mean it’s an “accurate” poll. If the sampling is good, then a poll can still be relatively accurate, even with a large margin of error. Sampling, here, refers to the quality of the method used to select respondents, not necessarily just the sample size. That’s why I go by 538’s ratings, which take all these sorts of things into account (yes, I’m relying on Nate Silver’s judgment). Monmouth has a good track record of solid sampling (as well as other factors), and thus they are rated highly.
Read more here: Opinion poll - Wikipedia
There are many, many factors that can affect accuracy/inaccuracy aside from margin of error based on sample size.
Whatever you want to call it, the numbers are less trustworthy with a larger margin of error. That’s what it means.
Agreed! Smaller MoE is better than larger, all else being equal, and nothing I’ve said disputes this.