They are both propaganda for their team. Period. If you think they're not, and are somehow giving you the real truth, then you're delusional.
I think the story of this election is somewhere in the neighborhood of the dem lost, but it shouldn’t have been close at all. To inflate the gop win as if there is no left wing momentum is foolish. At the same time, there is still plenty of Trump support out there.
Basically, they had a special election to fulfill the remainder of the term since the previous guy quit to take a private sector job in the late middle of his term. The seat is up again for the regularly scheduled election and both parties stated ahead of this special election that the respective candidates would be running for that seat in November irrespective of the outcome of last night.
Correct. This is the district I live in and it's been solidly in red since the Reagan days. This is a typically double digit Republican won district, so the fact that it was less than 1 percent (could still potentially fluctuate as there are about 4800 provisional ballots still to be counted, but those are all mostly from Delaware county which tends to be heavy republican) was seen as a sign of positivity from the Democrats side. I'm still trying to find the exact figures, but I also want to say that I heard on the news this morning that there was something like 84% Democratic turnout from Franklin county, which is staggering for an off-cycle special election.
And, if the Democrats take over the majority, assuming Trump isn't dead or otherwise removed from office by then, he'll just use that as a way to get reelected. "Well, I tried to cut taxes / improve healthcare / secure the borders / etc. but Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer stopped me." And, if the Republicans keep the majority, I guess he'll use that success(?) as a way to get reelected. Yes, the whole system is stupid.
Trump supporters are still in the “why should we take polling and election results seriously if they failed so epically to predict trumps election?” mode. I think it’s foolish to write too much off to that becoming complacent will get you tossed from power. I’m starting to take Hollywood’s old adage more seriously. Nobody knows nothing, when it really comes to polling predictions and it’s mostly just to gain talking points for each sides narrative.
Watching the faces of the Young Turks team melt on election night when the NYT poll meter started going the other way was the the best part of the whole thing.
That happened on Fox the night Obama’s was elected. Every reporter refused to make the victory announcement, so they just did this overhead crane shot of the reporters while a disembodied voice announced Obama’s win. When the extreme ends of the Horshoe Effect don’t get their way it’s hilarious how obvious and pathetic their tantrums are.
Call it a tariff bubble, production has ramped up so much in anticipation of the tariffs. What happens when inventory is maxed out? Hello bears
I've never accused Trump supporters of being smart, so I don't expect them to square with the facts, but: The national polls were dead on accurate. 538's last prediction was 48.5% Hillary (actual: 48.2%), 44.9% Trump (actual: 46.1%). Their biggest miss was slightly overstating the amount of Republicans who would defect to Johnson in a protest vote. The state polls were more noticeably off, but still within their stated margins of error. The oft quoted "99% chance of winning" figure is not a poll, it's an analysis of the available polling data. A bad analysis does not mean the underlying data is bad. Better analysts (like the aforementioned 538) put Clinton's chances in the 70% range, which given the razor thin margins in PA, MI, WI sounds about right. Many of the above predictions were made a few weeks out from the election and didn't take into account things that happened in the last weeks of the campaign, particularly Comey's letter to congress. In all likelihood Clinton's chances of winning if the Comey letter is never delivered were astronomically high (538 had her approaching 90% likelihood of winning before the Comey letter). % likelihood of winning does not equal % of the vote likely to be received. This should be obvious, but I get the strong impression a lot of Trump voters don't understand that point. Polling should be taken seriously because it is accurate if you understand the actual claims it is making and not just what you want it to be making so you can continue feeling disrespected and aggrieved.
"Far West Coast" is so Freudian. As opposed to the "near West Coast" which is just the bank of the Mississippi?
Some, but not all polls. If there’s one thing I took away from my pointless degrees it’s that when you look “under the hood” at the methodologies, they’re more misleading than they purport. There’s a ton of statistical hazards at play that lend to one result or another. More than one professor made a point to overstate that election polling should only be taken seriously at about 1-2 weeks out. There are a ton of issues with how Gallup and Rasmussen do things, but ones like 538 (as you quoted) and Quinnipiac are far better. The ones that are not “scientific” are not even worth considering.
I would consider understanding the methodology and the general statistical usefulness of the poll is part of understanding the actual claims that the poll is making. The reason 538 is so good is because they are aggregating a number of polls whose methodologies they deeply understand, and tracking movement over time so they can identify genuinely outliers vs data indicative of a new trend or baseline. And yeah, any self selecting poll is utterly useless to the degree that I wouldn't even consider them being referred to when anyone is talking about "the polls."
Not sure if this belong in the rant and rave thread or this one, but I literally just heard my dad rale against intellectuals ruining this country. He is a Notre Dame educated man with a degree in physics. What the hell is going on?
The Khmer Rouge would be conflicted by that statement. On one hand hes educated, on the other hand, theyd agree with that.
He probably means the multi degree Liberal Arts intellectuals trying to drive discourse and policy, no? Physics degree=/= gender/ethnic studies degrees.