Hee-haw, y'all. The 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary

[Heffalump_and_Roo]

@Ulf_the_Unwashed

As for being “prescient,” it’s been explained more than once that Silver was just about the only data-driven prognosticator who gave Trump much of a chance. If people didn’t take Trump seriously enough in the general election, that really cannot be blamed on Silver.

In that video, Cenk was noting how the data showed that Trump had an “excellent chance of winning”. And he went on to analyze why. That’s the part I thought was prescient.

@Ulf_the_Unwashed

Um. Did you miss the part where Silver says “every other national survey”? That’s not cherry picking, that’s all of them. Or do you know of a legitimate (see below) poll that gave a different result? If so, I hope you’ll let Mr. Silver know about it.

I’m not sure what this means. How is an online poll not a national survey? It’s the part about the poll being “legitimate” that adds the possibility of bias.

@Ulf_the_Unwashed

More to the point: Looks like you are still misunderstanding the difference between the Morning Consult poll and the types of polls in which Andrew Yang is the winner, despite the best efforts of some other posters.

So, do you think you’re more persuasive than all the others’ best efforts, or do you think their efforts boost your point?

@Ulf_the_Unwashed

Morning Consult does its thing online, yes, but they essentially “reach out” to people to make sure they have a roughly representative sample of voters, and then they work with the data to make sure any underrepresented groups are given extra weight–the process is essentially the same as a telephone survey. Could people be lying about their demographics in the Morning Consult survey? Sure–but they can lie in a telephone survey too. Anyway, there are safeguards to ensure that people get interviewed once and only once, and that each person is weighted appropriately. Perfect? No, of course not. In line with standard polling principles? Absolutely. It’s a legitimate poll with legitimate methods.

Contrast that with the standard idea of an online poll in which Andrew Yang wins (or as SlackerInc points out, Ron Paul). These are the equivalent of leaving a ballot box in the middle of the mall and telling only your friends about it. You don’t have a representative sample at all, you don’t have any way to ensure that people don’t lie about who they are, people will pass the information on to like-minded folks in tweets and emails to help stuff the box for their candidate… This is why I used the word “legitimate” above. These types of polls are not legitimate. Or are you arguing that they should be given the same weight as a poll along the lines of the Morning Consult one? Because really, that is not a position that anyone should be taking.

Since I quoted a post where Nate Silver points out what you just explained, I’m not sure why you think I’m not understanding it. The part you quoted is where I’m questioning whether Silver applied the same standard to the CNN poll.

[Heffalump_and_Roo]

@DSeid

Actually we can answer this empirically. The poll surge came first.

We have actual data on cable news coverage. Buttigieg’s bump happened after a long period with the same lack of media attention that others polling 0 to 2% were getting (see Castro, Inslee, Hickenlooper, Yang …) until the last week of March when he started to get mentioned lots more building up from there.

What happened that week to cause the media to start paying attention to him? This Emerson poll of Iowa in the field 3/21 to 3/24 suddenly having him in third at 11%.

The media chased the polling without question. If Inslee surged from 0 to 2% to 11% in the Emerson Iowa poll then Inslee would have been getting the media attention.

Yes their chasing that Iowa polling result got Buttigieg national exposure and people nationally liked what they heard and saw, so national polling increases followed. But end of March more than half still never heard of Pete Buttigieg. Still those who had were more likely to like what they heard than others with similarly low name recognition.

The media is motivated by eyeballs, earpans, and clicks. That is how they sell ads and make money. They will pay attention to who they believe will deliver that. If they feature someone and it results in less viewership/clicks and more yawns (cough Yang cough) they won’t keep the coverage up. And someone who keeps 'em watching (see Trump) they will keep featuring.

Of course polls are not the only way someone gets in the news. Buttigieg also created newsworthy news cycles for himself - for example he baited Pence into a back and forth that was able to advertise his take on Christian faith and contrast it with the RR version. He created a story that would hold the eyeballs, earpans, and get the clicks, that at the same time helped define his brand.

Interest of the audience drives the media, pure and simple. Fair or not. But Yang does not deserve a soapbox as big as Biden’s or Sanders’ just because he is running in order to be fair.

Your source data doesn’t match your narrative. Nate Silver notes that Buttigieg started getting media coverage in mid March. The survey wasn’t taken until the third week in March and probably not released until March 24. If the increase in media started at the end of March or the beginning of April, that would match your narrative. But Nate Silver says:

The number of clips in which the Indiana mayor was mentioned, meanwhile, continued a steady rise that began back in mid-March:

The steady rise in media, according to Nate Silver, started in mid-March, a week before the poll was taken (March 21-24) in which he got the 11% rise.

The actual rise started on March 10 with a CNN town hall. At the time, he was a complete unknown with polling still at 1%. From the CNN article [Pete Buttigieg makes star turn in town hall spotlight] dated March 11.

Buttigieg entered Sunday’s CNN town hall as a longshot – sitting at 1% in Iowa and New Hampshire, recent polls have shown. He’s such an unknown that how to say his Maltese last name is still a common question.

It was at that town hall that he talked about Mike Pence, which became the viral clip.

The CNN town hall was given to Buttigieg when he was an unknown, as noted in their own reporting. That performance started the media coverage that led to the rise in his poll numbers 11 days later.

The media attention to Buttigieg preceded the rise in the polls. Without that media attention, it’s questionable whether he could have risen in the polls as he did.

[CarnalK]

@Heffalump_and_Roo

Imagine how your friend must feel to get to that point. I sometimes wonder if people who don’t live in this country can really understand why some people in the US are looking for political solutions to problems they experience every day. Can someone who lives in a country with universal health care know what it feels like to be one accident away from possibly losing your job and then losing everything you own?
.

Imagine how my friend feels? My friend earning a six figure income in Silicon valley? The friend who, up until 5 years ago, I lived within 5 miles of since I was 12 years old? You think you have better insight into his mindset than I do?

[Heffalump_and_Roo]

@CarnalK

Imagine how my friend feels? My friend earning a six figure income in Silicon valley? The friend who, up until 5 years ago, I lived within 5 miles of since I was 12 years old? You think you have better insight into his mindset than I do?

Shrug. I don’t know. A six-figure income is considered low-income in some parts of the Bay Area. Feds: $100,000 ‘Low Income’ In Parts Of Bay Area. That was back in 2017.

I don’t know why you mentioned it, but it’s another example of how being there changes things.

It might seem baffling to people from the outside to see the political choices people are making. But it makes perfect sense to people who are experiencing the same things.

Sorry for the not quite on topic, but I didn’t want to leave this unanswered and it does have some to do with politics and political candidates.

[CarnalK]

@Heffalump_and_Roo

Shrug. I don’t know. A six-figure income is considered low-income in some parts of the Bay Area. Feds: $100,000 ‘Low Income’ In Parts Of Bay Area. That was back in 2017.

I don’t know why you mentioned it, but it’s another example of how being there changes things.

It might seem baffling to people from the outside to see the political choices people are making. But it makes perfect sense to people who are experiencing the same things.

Sorry for the not quite on topic, but I didn’t want to leave this unanswered and it does have some to do with politics and political candidates.

I’m sorry, that’s a pile of disingenuous bullshit. My friend is doing quite well, thank you, and it’s not some victimization of his own that makes him support Sanders. It’s a general distrust of “the Establishment” that we both frankly share. He’s just kinda gone over the top.

[asahi]

@CarnalK

I’m sorry, that’s a pile of disingenuous bullshit. My friend is doing quite well, thank you, and it’s not some victimization of his own that makes him support Sanders. It’s a general distrust of “the Establishment” that we both frankly share. He’s just kinda gone over the top.

I think that underlies a lot of Bernie Sanders’ support. Some of his staunchest supporters are people who only participate in elections when they view someone as ‘authentic’.

[DSeid]

@Heffalump_and_Roo

Your source data doesn’t match your narrative. Nate Silver notes that Buttigieg started getting media coverage in mid March. The survey wasn’t taken until the third week in March and probably not released until March 24. If the increase in media started at the end of March or the beginning of April, that would match your narrative. But Nate Silver says:

The steady rise in media, according to Nate Silver, started in mid-March, a week before the poll was taken (March 21-24) in which he got the 11% rise.

The actual rise started on March 10 with a CNN town hall. At the time, he was a complete unknown with polling still at 1%. From the CNN article [Pete Buttigieg makes star turn in town hall spotlight] dated March 11.

It was at that town hall that he talked about Mike Pence, which became the viral clip.

The CNN town hall was given to Buttigieg when he was an unknown, as noted in their own reporting. That performance started the media coverage that led to the rise in his poll numbers 11 days later.

The media attention to Buttigieg preceded the rise in the polls. Without that media attention, it’s questionable whether he could have risen in the polls as he did.

Are you even bothering to look at the graph??

There is a clear inflection point that is clearly not March 10th. Maybe March 20th or later when it started to rise (which yes is still the middle half of the month so is “mid-March”) His cable media numbers immediately before and as the Emerson poll was in the field were still in the range of Salwell and lower than Booker. Yes his turn at the town hall, and creating a viral clip, got his mentions over Yang, Gabbard, and Delaney. Yang had a CNN town Hall too you know. When his polling was only in the 1% range … which of course is what it remained afterwards.

[Ulf_the_Unwashed]

@Heffalump_and_Roo

Since I quoted a post where Nate Silver points out what you just explained, I’m not sure why you think I’m not understanding it. The part you quoted is where I’m questioning whether Silver applied the same standard to the CNN poll.

Heffalump, you’re not understanding it because even after several people explained the difference in online polls to you, you posted this:

@Heffalump_and_Roo

Iadarola was noting that the data wasn’t age representative. But for some reason, the rules that Silver put out on how to determine if a poll is legitimate or not in this article, doesn’t apply to the CNN poll. The CNN poll only needs to have other online polls agree with it.

That’s where I question how much bias plays a part in the process. I’m looking forward to a time when AI can predict the results more accurately than the pundits.

I’m also wondering how anyone knows whether the demographic information in online polls is accurate. It seems trivially easy to create a bot to post a new vote with a different profile every time. Right now, people are accused of making up fake accounts to do this. I would think it would be easy for a bot to do this as well.

That you could write this shows that there’s still something missing in your understanding of polls in general, or online polls in particular.

*You continue to conflate “online polls” like those that show Yang winning 90% of the vote (in which demographic information probably isn;t accurate) with Morning Consult-style polls (which are set up along completely different lines, with many more safeguards). “A new vote with a different profile every time” could happen in the first type of poll, but not in the second.

*You continue to assert that the CNN poll is being deemed accurate because Silver says it’s backed by “other online polls.” It’s not. It’s (probably) accurate in part because it’s backed by one particular online poll (which we have reason to think is fairly accurate) AND because it is backed by other polls, presumably not all of them online (Silver doesn’t say which ones, but he includes the Morning Consult poll as just one example, because “small sample size” doesn’t apply). It’s also (probably) accurate in part because it’s a poll that follows the standard rules of polling.

*And you continue to think that there is the CNN poll is biased, based apparently on the word of a commentator who may be a perfectly good commentator, but who clearly knows little or nothing about polling. Silver is saying that Iadarola misunderstood the lack of crosstabs and assumed (erroneously) that this lack meant that no one under age 50 was surveyed. Silver is clear that people under 50 WERE surveyed, so the age-range qualification is met. Thus it’s a legitimate poll by his definition.

You didn’t understand those things before Chronos and SlackerInc posted their explanations, and that’s fine; we’re all here to learn. The trouble was that even after the explanations you still didn’t get it. That’s why I tried again. Evidently it didn;t help; oh well. It feels like it’s very important to you to believe that Silver has it in for Sanders, and if that’s the case, well, more power to you; but on a site that’s dedicated to fighting ignorance it’s also important to explain exactly why the CNN poll is not evidence of that.

[Heffalump_and_Roo]

@DSeid

Are you even bothering to look at the graph??

What a curious comment. Nate Silver’s comment that I quoted was right below the graph, so yes I saw it. Since Silver described it, there was no reason to squint at a poorly labeled thumbnail of a graph. It doesn’t matter what the graph showed, Nate Silver’s comment contradicted your narrative.

@DSeid

There is a clear inflection point that is clearly not March 10th. Maybe March 20th or later when it started to rise (which yes is still the middle half of the month so is “mid-March”) His cable media numbers immediately before and as the Emerson poll was in the field were still in the range of Salwell and lower than Booker. Yes his turn at the town hall, and creating a viral clip, got his mentions over Yang, Gabbard, and Delaney. Yang had a CNN town Hall too you know. When his polling was only in the 1% range … which of course is what it remained afterwards.

I’m not claiming that the media surge happened on March 10. The March 10 CNN town hall was the start of the national media coverage that eventually started the surge.

I’m refuting your claim that the poll surge started the media surge. It doesn’t matter whether the media surge started on March 10 or as you now say, March 20. The poll surge preceding the media surge didn’t happen.

@DSeid

Actually we can answer this empirically. The poll surge came first.

March 24, the date of the report of the poll surge is not before March 20, the date you’re now claiming started the media surge. The media surge came first.

You were trying to prove that the poll surge caused the media surge. It did not.

@DSeid

What happened that week to cause the media to start paying attention to him? This Emerson poll of Iowa in the field 3/21 to 3/24 suddenly having him in third at 11%.

The media chased the polling without question. If Inslee surged from 0 to 2% to 11% in the Emerson Iowa poll then Inslee would have been getting the media attention.

This is clearly not true. Buttigieg was given media attention when he was a complete unknown polling at 1%.

The reason you were trying to prove that the poll surge was first is your contention that candidates earn media attention.

@DSeid

The media didn’t drive Buttigieg’s rise in popularity; they chased it.
. . … .
As happened with Buttigieg, if a candidate earns on the ground interest the media will cover, following the interest. That is as it should be.

In the case of Buttigieg, he didn’t earn the media attention with ground interest. He got media attention as a complete unknown which led to a surge in poll numbers which got him more media attention. The media chose to give that attention to Buttigieg.

In the case of political candidates, where national exposure could give the increased possibility of that person becoming known enough for people to vote them into office, should there be more fairness in the system? If not, as David Brooks noted, the media will become the gatekeepers of who is worthy of the nation’s attention.

[septimus]

Perhaps I’m a natural pessimist. But some of you are cock-eyed optimists. (If you think I’m too pessimistic, let that spur you into action.)

@from another thread

Bill Clinton came up from 5% because he was an amazing campaigner with outsized oratory skills who connected with wide swaths of voters. Hillary Clinton lost despite a commanding lead because she was running against someone with similar skills and abilities.

Biden will likely not get the nom if someone demonstrates those mad skillz this time. Too soon to say that they won’t. But if no one shows those chops he’s the default nominee. The early numbers at least mean that thing.

“Too soon to say that someone won’t demonstrate mad skillz”? Barack Obama was widely lauded even before his famous oration of 2004. Bill Clinton became Governor at age 32 — one of the youngest Governors ever — and had some national fame even before his bid for the Oval. If we had someone with the charisma of Obama or even Clinton, we’d know it already. Heck, I’d settle for the folksy charm of a Dubya — we don’t even have that.

Obama, BTW, was special in that he moved from the Senate straight to the White House. Historically, Presidents have higher credentials than that: Governor, Vice Pres., Secy of State, or Supreme Commander.

Some of the touted candidates don’t even have a Senator bullet on their resume. The right woman might appeal to the white men of the Rust Belt, but that woman isn’t Warren or Harris. (Might Klobuchar have a chance?) These eliminations leave us with just three among the frontrunners:
[ul][li] Joe Biden. Even if he appears hale and hearty throughout the campaign, the haters will insist that he release a full medical report and any minor ailment will be blown out of proportion. (Obviously this will be gross hypocrisy given the Dotard-in-Chief’s condition, but hypocrisy is the GOP’s motto.)[/li][li] Bernie Sanders. He was a friend of Fidel Castro. Eighteen months from now, he’ll be viewed as a friend of Josef Stalin and Ho Chi Minh. I just wonder if his motive for running is masochism or sadism.[/li][li] Cory Booker. Bright and qualified. But is he charismatic?[/li][/ul]

And … who else is there? (The media and money are already sucking oxygen away from any dark-horse.) Maybe a generic Democrat could beat Trump, but we don’t have a generic candidate. We’ve got two geriatric candidates and a non-charismatic black man.

I expect our tragedy to last Four More Years.

[SlackerInc]

@septimus

Bernie Sanders. He was a friend of Fidel Castro. Eighteen months from now, he’ll be viewed as a friend of Josef Stalin and Ho Chi Minh.

I love this.

But hard disagree about Booker’s charisma. Did you see the documentary about him that went around the film festivals a few years ago? It’s on Netflix, I believe.

[Velocity]

I’m curious if 23 candidates is the end, or if we may hit 30 or 40. There is still well over half a year to go before even 2020 itself rolls around.

[Thing_Fish]

There are now 18 candidates who have met criteria to be included in the debates; welcome, Mr. Swalwell and Ms. Williamson! I think this is really too many. All you need to qualify is 1% of the vote in three polls, which is pretty much a rounding error. If you’re included in a bunch of polls and you have any supporters at all, it’s not hard to meet that criterion. Or, like Ms. Williamson, you can just have 65,000 donors across the country.

I checked all national polls over the last month; didn’t count but there were about twenty of them. I didn’t count the ones that didn’t include Biden.

Biden and Sanders got at least 10% in all polls, substantially more in Biden’s case.

These candidates had at least one poll where they got less than 5%, but also at least one where they got over 10%: Harris, O’Rourke, Warren, Buttigieg.

Cory Booker hit exactly 5% in a couple polls. Hillary was included in a couple polls and got 6% in one.

Two candidates were polled only once or twice and got 4%: Stacy Abrams, and John Kerry for some reason?!

Assuming Hillary and Kerry aren’t going to jump in, that’s six and a half real candidates, plus another half if Abrams runs. Can we stop there?

Lowering the bar a bit more, Amy Klobuchar, Julian Castro, and Andrew Yang all managed to hit the 3% mark in exactly one poll each. In the case of Castro and Yang, it was the same poll, which was also the only poll that had Sanders in first.

Can the people whose campaigns aren’t doing as well as Andrew Yang’s just go away now?

[Thing_Fish]

I note that the above ten candidates are also all in the group of eleven who have currently qualified for the debates by both the polling and fundraising criteria; the other one is Tulsi Gabbard. I’m comfortable with drawing the line just above Tulsi Gabbard.

[DSeid]

Ten on stage at a time. Two hours per night? Intro and presenting the questions takes up a chunk of time. We’re looking at what? Six or seven minutes on average per candidate of time to “debate”, read present a canned part of their stump speeches?

Hard to break out of the pack or goof badly and fall too bad in that venue. Breaking out would need a helluva good line!

[jsc1953]

The only issue with the number of candidates is the debate. So whoever is managing the debates just needs to break them up into manageable groups…I’d set it at 5 per stage, with every candidate having the same opportunities to participate. (And each debate should be a mix of well-knowns and unknowns, so we don’t get the “kiddie table” phenomenon.)

[asahi]

@DSeid

Ten on stage at a time. Two hours per night? Intro and presenting the questions takes up a chunk of time. We’re looking at what? Six or seven minutes on average per candidate of time to “debate”, read present a canned part of their stump speeches?

Hard to break out of the pack or goof badly and fall too bad in that venue. Breaking out would need a helluva good line!

This is the problem with the lower-tier candidates: there’s really no way for them to be memorable in a good way. We’ll probably end up with a handful of the contenders going back and forth at each other like the GOP primaries. The only way to enter a packed race is to be a spectacle like Trump was. He made noise before with his infamous comments. Obviously the Democrats aren’t going to go that route. That’s why I give Andrew Yang a slight chance to survive til the end of summer, because his ideas are so out of the mainstream that he just might get asked about them.

Down the line, I think the more fucked up the country is, the more it benefits Biden. If there’s a major recession, if American troops are in violent conflict and if Americans just aren’t feeling good about the state of the country, then Americans are going to be more likely to think about voting for a return to the days when a “steady hand” governed. Biden may be gaffe-prone but he’s going to win the “Let’s get back to the way it was a few years ago” vote. But if the economy is still strong and impeachment support isn’t there, then it’s going to be hard to predict where the electorate will go.

[septimus]

@Thing_Fish

I note that the above ten candidates are also all in the group of eleven who have currently qualified for the debates by both the polling and fundraising criteria; the other one is Tulsi Gabbard. I’m comfortable with drawing the line just above Tulsi Gabbard.

I’m afraid that premature culling of the flock will eliminate the best candidate.

Of the top ten you mention, only Biden and Booker even have a chance to beat Trump, and I’m not over-enthused about either one. I’d love to see Jay Inslee given a chance to shine. Or maybe there’s someone else not even yet “on the radar” at all who is The One.

[asahi]

@septimus

I’m afraid that premature culling of the flock will eliminate the best candidate.

Of the top ten you mention, only Biden and Booker even have a chance to beat Trump, and I’m not over-enthused about either one. I’d love to see Jay Inslee given a chance to shine. Or maybe there’s someone else not even yet “on the radar” at all who is The One.

I think Harris could beat Trump, but under the right circumstances - I think “under the right circumstances” applies to most, if not all, the Dem challengers at this point.

Right now the majority of the country just hates Trump’s ass, but a majority of the country are relatively okay with the state of the country overall. It’s going to be tough to defeat Trump if the mood of the country doesn’t change. If the country begins to run off the tracks, then I think Biden, if he can survive the inevitable attacks against him, would benefit from that as much as anyone, if not more so.

Now, nobody knows the candidates, so the polls don’t really mean much. What we know is that about 1/3 of the candidates will be gone before the end of the year and another 1/3 will be pretenders who are barely hanging on just to get some leverage for a possible cabinet position. I’d guess that by October we’ll be talking about mostly 4 or 5 candidates. I think Joe will come down. I’d be very surprised if he blew the rest of the field out of the water. The real question is that aside from Sanders, who is Joe’s competition?

Buttigieg will be interesting. I don’t see him winning, but I could see him affecting the race.

[CarnalK]

@jsc1953

The only issue with the number of candidates is the debate. So whoever is managing the debates just needs to break them up into manageable groups…I’d set it at 5 per stage, with every candidate having the same opportunities to participate. (And each debate should be a mix of well-knowns and unknowns, so we don’t get the “kiddie table” phenomenon.)

They’ve already set the rules, afaik. 10 per stage/night selected by drawing lots. So it’s about 50/50 that Sanders and Biden will be the same night, then about 25% chance whoever is number 3 is on as well. An accidental kiddy table could happen.