President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

The usual one to two percent. Maybe three.

 

Reminder: the national vote in the presidential election was within a point of the final polling average. Trump's surprise win wasn't a polling error, it was people misinterpreting the polls.

The polls said Clinton by 3. It was Clinton by 2. Most of us assumed that there wasn't a realistic way for such a margin to be distributed that would let Trump win the EC. Silver's model actually did warn about it, and he was accused of goosing it to try to make drama.

There weren't skads of Trump voters nationally that the polls didn't detect.

 

So if the rumors are true that now Flynn is being offered a deal to save his son, who is Mueller aiming for that is higher than Flynn?

 

What about the NBC polls Rachel Maddow was crowing about that said South Carolina, Kansas and Utah --- Utah! --- went from solid to "leaning" Republican and that Georgia, Missouri and Iowa were "toss-ups."

The actual vote:

LEAN GOP
Utah: Trump +18.1%
South Carolina: Trump +14.1%
Kansas: Trump +21.0%

TOSS-UP
Missouri: Trump +19.1%
Iowa: Trump +9.6%
Georgia: Trump +5.7%

That ain't misinterpreting the polls. That's swing and a miss.

 

Individual polls and state level polls have large margins of error and pundits gonna pundit

 

In this silly electoral thingy we still call "democracy" for some reason, state level voting is the ONLY thing that matters.

A national poll off by 1 percent means shit if all the state ones are off by 10-15 percent.

 

Polls cited by Maddow were in the immediate aftermath of Access Hollywood tape. Polls by election day in those states much closer to final figures.

 

Not "all" the state ones were off by 10-15 percent. Some of them were. What percentage were off by that much?

Regardless, you are presenting an argument for "polling the presidential election is pointless because of the granular nature of the electoral college breaking down the electorate into expensive to poll reliably chunks." I think that's an overly tempting argument in the wake of our first modern surprise, recency bias and all, but a plausible one.

That is, however, a different argument from "polls can't pick up racists because they are shy."

 

Mid-October poll, 1980:
Reagan 39%, Carter 45%

Actual result 3 weeks later:
Reagan 51%, Carter 41%, a 16-point swing.

Or is modern 2000 or later? Or post-cell phones and caller ID?

 

I don't think so. Access Hollywood tape was released on Oct. 7. NBC poll is dated Aug. 15.

Clinton Surges Past 270 Electoral Votes in NBC News Battleground Map

 

Polls in 1980 showed the shift to Reagan, especially after last debate. Had a college friend who worked for one of the big pollster than. He told me it was in the bag for Reagan weekend before the election. I fail to take your point. Polling isn't infallible. But it's reasonably accurate. There's no reason not to believe that as of this morning, Northam has a small lead with enough undecideds left to throw the race either way. This means nothing that happens Tuesday will be a major surprise, just something that was unforecastable by the nature of polling itself.

 

Here's the full text of that quote, which is even worse, as well as the whole interview section. It actually came in the context of his upcoming meeting with Xi ofChina.

"But the reason our stock market is so successful is because of me. I've always been great with money, I've always been great with jobs, that's what I do. And I've done it well, I've done it really well, much better than people understand and they understand I've done well. But we have a tremendous amount of strength because of what's happened. You know, think of it -- $5.5 trillion worth of value."

Trump: "the reason our stock market is so successful is because of me"