The evidence points to not mind the betting markets much and concentrate on the polls. And I already knew that there is indeed a sizable crazification factor among the American voters, worrisome for sure, but just as high as I expected. I actually expected that the media by hook or by crook would keep the race even closer, but I do think that the media is crying foul at Trump for not keeping his end of the bargain, as in not having enough money to feed the old time media that is still important.
As the article I linked to reported, you fell for what was not the most accurate thing to look at.
Indeed, that would be quite weaker than Obama, who was above 90 the day before Election Day in both races, against opponents who, whatever their flaws, were reasonably decent human beings and patriotic Americans who intended to serve their countries t the best of their ability.
Being up three to one against a person who makes Mitt Romney look like Nelson Mandela is not that impressive a state to be in. Smapti in another thread said in a sane world the final result would be 538-0 Clinton and nothing else is acceptable, and I am inclined to agree. To any sort of logical argument, Trump’s support should be at the Keyes number, and he should go 0 for 51.
I’ve tried, in an honestly decent and friendly way, to engage and reason with Trumpists. They are simply unswayed by reason. I do not sense they are all racists; I do sense that, without exception, they are fearful, weak minded (which is not synonymous with unintelligent, I hasten to point out) and extremely unwilling to discuss facts… most to the point that they subconsciously might know the facts do not support Trump, and so they must engage in cognitive dissonance to vote for the Strong Man who will Save Them. It’s a fascinating phenomenon of authoritarianism, fear, and the hold it has on some people.
Speaking about the emails, I did point months ago at what I do expect the right wing will do, they already had plenty of experience on making big shows out of cherry picked quotes and out of context messages from hacked/stolen e-mails.
(Science writer Peter Hadfield on the fake Climategate conspiracy)
The fake Climate Gate scandal should be looked at to get a look at the most likely thing that is coming. Quotes taken so out of context that become lies from the ones that push them. And media that is also gullible enough to accept them as “information”. I suspect that tactic is coming when I take into account how Trump is also closer to stupid climate denier conspiracy theories.
BTW looking at the Brexit issue one interesting bit that many on the environmentalist and climate science sites I look at noticed that many of the climate deniers were in favor of Brexit; one needs not to be a genius to realize that a lot of the European efforts to control emissions would suffer setbacks with Britain exiting.
An interesting article on the subject. Basically, you might as well be trying to convince someone to switch from being a Yankees fan to being a Giants fan. For the foreseeable future, people will remain tribal and crave simple answers from someone that assures them that they have it all figured out. It’s pretty much how every religion was ever started.
Yes. There continues to be widespread confusion about this. “52% of those polled today say they plan to vote for Hillary” is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CONCEPT than “our model currently gives Hillary a 75% chance of winning in November,” even if the first fact happens to be one of the inputs generating the second fact.
75% is SCARY low. I gave an analogy before, to an optimistic Doper who thought this means Hillary was sure to win: If there are four cartons of milk on the fridge, and you know one of them is spoiled and will give you a major illness if you drink it, would you cheerfully reach for a carton at random and take a big gulp without smelling it first?
Not a perfect analogy, because none of us has the individual power to affect the election outcome (other than in a small way via our vote plus doing some campaign work), but I think it illustrates how far 75% is from a sure thing.
But given the nature of the polls-plus model, given that there are three months to go, it is about as good as can be hoped for. The model includes a prior that weights it towards a close election and a high value for the uncertainty of how polls can travel, not based on past election behavior but on “Brownian motion” (538’s random drift).
Even polls-only includes that latter bit, along with a high value (apparently pretty much pulled out of the air) for some possible currently unknown systemic error skewing all the polls.
These two models are (perhaps appropriately) unable to produce much more confident results this far away from election day.
Of course complacency is uncalled for. And that would be the case even if the number was 99%.
And anything less than 25% is unrealistic. Yes, the stakes are high - to my way of thinking, at least - but pretty much anyone has a puncher’s chance in a Presidential Election this far out.
Those numbers are astonishingly good. There’s a long way to go but that’s a campaign - Hillary’s - that’s taken control of the message and pounding it home.
Another point to make is that it is highly likely that over the next 60ish days the NowCast will get less overwhelmingly Clinton and the polls-only and polls-plus will become more solidly Clinton. IOW the race may become closer in the polls as it regresses to the mean but the uncertainty factors decrease as the date gets closer.
If Clinton maintains the same lead in the polls, the NowCast should not get worse for Clinton. It is a reflection of the state of the polls at the present time. If she continues to get strong polls, it will actually get a little better, as older, less favourable polls drop away in importance, and will eventually plateau if the polls keep reporting the same rough spread.
If in fact her lead stabilized at 8-10 points the Nowcast would, within a few weeks, get very close to 99%. If every poll says you are winning by 10 points, you are not going to lose an election if it’s held now. The Polls casts would then begin to climb towards that number as November 8 approached, and would converge on the evening of November 7.
[QUOTE=Jonathan Chance]
Those numbers are astonishingly good. There’s a long way to go but that’s a campaign - Hillary’s - that’s taken control of the message and pounding it home.
[/QUOTE]
Frankly, I think it’s the Trump campaign pounding home a message right now. It’s not the one they wanted to, but it’s loud and clear.
My post states my belief that current polling may very likely regress to the longer term mean, with NowCast being less extreme, but that even if that happens, and the national lead becomes a bit closer again, the odds of a Clinton win in the poll-only and polls-plus models will likely go up. An 8 point lead now has less certainty in predicting the result than a 5 point lead does 6 weeks from now.
Yes an 8 to 10 point lead going into the election means a near certainty of win … but it also impacts that which it measures and predicts in unpredictable ways.
As a sign of how strong Hillary is, she’s actually focusing heavily on Republican moderates/centrists. How many will she get? Some, probably not many. But the fact that she can afford to do that shows how strong she is–and to defend against it, Trump has to expend resources either winning back or keeping voters that should be “locked in” for the GOP nominee. This is time/money/effort he should be focusing on the few swing voters in the few swing states, but because of his behavioral problems he cannot do that.
Meanwhile a campaign memo was leaked showing his master plan is to target people who “normally don’t vote”, much like he did in the primaries. But there’s a data analysis problem there. While Trump did draw in some people who don’t usually vote, he actually won because of voters that do normally vote in the general election, but don’t normally vote in the primaries, so a repetition of his primary strategy is simply unlikely to generate enough votes to win.
New polls. The polls coming out now reflect the DNC primary, which was successful, and a subsequent series of Trump gaffes - the Khan family spat being easily the worst of them - and a general aura of ineptitude around his campaign.
I’ve not a doubt in the world that if there was a Constitutional miracle and the election was being held today Clinton would probably hammer him. The Trump campaign is sputtering and the public impression of him is as negative as ever.
Conversely, two and a half weeks ago I’ve no doubt the Nowcast was right and an election magically held then would have been a nailbiter. Clinton looked terrible after the Comey report and Trump hadn’t yet attacked parents of a dead war hero.
As each poll comes in, it affect the Nowcast. ONE poll that says “Clinton plus eight” might not mean that much. But there’s a lot of polls saying basically that in the last few days, so it appears to be essentially true.
Historically, 3-4 weeks after the last convention, the campaigns don’t swing much. But historically, we also don’t have that many sample points for Presidential campaigns, and since they’re only quadrennial we also have to exclude most of them before a certain number of years ago simply because America in 1932 was vastly different from America in 2016.
All that being said, I think if Trump is down by the margins he’s down now, end of August, his campaign is going to be highly unlikely to prevail. Partially because of historical trends to that effect, but also because while Clinton isn’t an “amazing” campaigner, she’s a competent one–and Trump has proven time and again he’s not just incompetent, he’s a fucking disaster at running a campaign.
Yeah, I’m treating this election like one of those dramas where the bad guy gets pushed off the boat ten minutes before the movie ends. if you haven’t actually driven a stake through his heart or seen the body drifting away with a fizzling flare where its lungs used to be, then it’s not safe to let your guard down.
Cut off the head, stuff the mouth with garlic, sew up the lips, stake through the heart, buried at the crossroads, paved over with concrete. A twenty four hour guard booth. The smaller sort of tactical nuke with a motion-detecting trigger in the lead casket. No need to worry about worms and maggots setting it off by squirming about, even maggots have some dignity!
Nobody should have paid any attention after just the Republican convention. Obviously it was going to push the polls higher for Trump. Just as obviously the polls would swing back after the Democratic convention.
Really, it’s embarrassing that we have people here that made noise about the polls halfway through. It’s like asking why one end of a seesaw is on the ground when only one person is sitting on it.