For the first time since 538 published our presidential election forecast for Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, Trump has taken the lead (if a very small one) over Harris. As of 3 p.m. Eastern on Oct. 18, our model gives Trump a 52-in-100 chance of winning the majority of Electoral College votes. The model gives Harris a 48-in-100 chance.
Just fucking vote. Polls don’t win elections. Plus, the majority of the most recent polls are backed by red wavers. I wouldn’t put much stock into them regardless, but especially not the most recent ones.
Polling aggregators like Nate Silver and 538 take those Republican leans into account.
You can read about it and their methodology here:
https://www.natesilver.net/p/are-republican-pollsters-flooding
Edit: lol, love the “I was told there would be no fact checking” attitude on the downvotes.
No matter what Nate says and how many times you link his website, polls do not matter.
ETA: maybe, just maybe, you’re being downvoted because you keep linking the same article from the same pollster to defend polling.
They’re already getting ready with the same excuses they used for Hillary. If Kamala loses, it definitely can’t be a result of the fact that Dems seem to actively despise the left.
How is anyone planning on voting for this giant piece of shit? 2016? Ok I could sympathize with one or two people. But in 2024!? Jesus fuck, you have to be a real knuckle dragging hood wearing degenerate to try and make that case. How about trump and everyone that loves him just move to Texas and build a wall? I’m sure the entire world would be grateful.
It’s the result of settling for “not trump”.
To some people “good” is binary. So they do think both parties will fuck them over economically and not actually fix the shit that honestly the majority of Americans agree need fixed.
So all the economic policy is a write off.
That leaves social issues they don’t really understand because they were raised vaguely religious and have fallen for right wing propaganda.
All politicians are corrupt liars
Is something you will hear damn near anytime politics come up in deep red areas. Which is why yelling about how trump is a corrupt liar to your face turns blue doesn’t accomplish anything.
They know that, they’re not even in denial about.
To be clear, I’m voting D. But the county I grew up has never voted less than 95% for trump.
That’s what they’re ok with voting for him tho. But if Dems ran a charismatic progressive who people believed was different and authentic?
Well, look what Obama did
While moderates have favored the Democratic candidate in each of the past five elections, Barack Obama gained the support of more voters in the ideological “middle” than did either John Kerry or Al Gore before him. He won at least half the votes of independents (52% vs. 49% for Kerry), suburban voters (50% vs. 47% for Kerry), Catholics (54% vs. 47% for Kerry), and other key swing groups in the electorate.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2008/11/05/inside-obamas-sweeping-victory/
His gains wasn’t from progressives, we always show up. His gains were because people in those deep red areas believe all politicians are corrupt liars, and if a rare one shows up that seems authentic, they don’t give a fuck about party labels.
I was a big Bernie fan :( you make some great points though. The big problem I see is it’s not just a difference of ideology, you literally have one candidate calling himself a day 1 dictator and shitting on poor and brown people and women, and the other not doing that. How can you go for ketchup steak Hitler? I guess if the Old Testament gives you a boner for all the slaves and genocide and stuff, then that’s your answer.
I’m not just defending them because that’s where I came from, I’m not defending them at all honestly.
Just explaining the “why”. If you just write them off as evil idiots, it’s harder to prevent it next time. We need to understand “why” because the fight against facism is literally never over. Might be 5 years, might be 50, but they’ll be back.
How can you go for ketchup steak Hitler?
Because they think both parties are the same, and they see Trump’s comments as “telling it like it is”.
When you think both will be dictators “at least he admits it” could be a positive.
They believe all the rightwing bullshit about what Kamala will do despite Biden not already doing it. From that perspective they have the choice of two evils and “the lesser of two evils” for them is the one that’s “honest” about being a dictator and says he agrees on social issues, not even getting into SC seats.
Every excuse for voting R for them tho disappears if we run a good candidate. So the most extreme will stay home and the moderate ones will vote D.
That’s how we win votes from Republicans, if we try to meet them in the middle with conservative policy, it just legitimizes the conservative party. Those voters don’t want a negotiator.
Obama showed us the path relatively recently, it’s just the money behind the party would rather trump wins. Someday we’re going to have to re-evaluate why the people running the DNC are just whoever gets the most donations from corporations and billionaires and put someone that knows how to win elections in leadership
I think it’s the same sort of reactions that you see on the vote pattern for this post or anything else suggesting Kamala might not win.
People don’t want (or maybe nowadays lack the capacity) to hear/read/engage critically with news they find upsetting. So you get these echo chambers, immune to outside info.
From someone who doesn’t follow non-Conservative news, inflation is absurd, housing is increasingly out of reach and uncontrolled immigration is a problem. I personally think some of these are global issues, some are deep systemic and other than immigration, I’d be stunned if the republicans actually addressed those issues. But, the same mental habits that lead Lemmy to downvote statistical reporting because we don’t like what it says are the same that prevent trump voters from changing.
I don’t think you’re entirely wrong there. I think you describe the human condition in a lot of ways. I’ve felt for a long time the biggest problems are socioeconomic and classist rather than purely political- and those issues are only indirectly addressed by the currently political spectrum (at best).
The problem is, their simulations are based on their polling, and their polling is being manipulated.
As I noted elsewhere:
Yes, Trump appears to have momentum, but it also appears to be a phantom momentum driven by right leaning polling organizations.
https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/the-hungry-harris-campaign-early?utm_source=publication-search
"I now count 27 Republican or right-aligned entities in the polling averages:
American Greatness, Daily Mail, co/efficent, Cygnal, Echelon, Emerson, Fabrizio, Fox News, Insider Advantage, McLaughlin, Mitchell Communications, Napolitan Institute, Noble Predictive, On Message, Orbital Digital, Public Opinion Strategies, Quantus, Rasmussen, Redfield & Wilton, Remington, RMG, SoCal Data, The Telegraph, Trafalgar, TIPP, Victory Insights, Wall Street Journal.
In September 12 of the 24 polls of North Carolina were conducted by red wave pollsters. Check out the last 4 polls released in PA on 538. All are red wavers."
Yes, but their “house effects” (how much their polls lean Republican or Democrat) are accounted for by every worthwhile polling aggregator.
If they were just taking the averages and spitting out results, well, it’d be nonsensical. You could maybe argue that Republican pollsters have tweaked their systems to be more trumpy but that’d be a pretty huge red flag and mark you as completely non trustworthy in your professional field.
You can read Silver’s more in depth and interesting explanation here:
https://www.natesilver.net/p/are-republican-pollsters-flooding
Harris reacted by doubling down that “Nothing would change between a Biden and a Harris white house”.
“If you are hurting, in trouble, demanding that something - anything - should change about any aspect of life in America … vote for Trump, cause I want to keep everything the same.”
Harris’s advisors reportedly were bashing their heads against the wall screaming “don’t say that out loud!”
Lol at people downvoting what they don’t want to hear.
Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High
On a positive note, Harris is still leading 4/7 swing states in the WaPo averages: https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/interactive/2024/presidential-polling-averages/
Down outing because anyone watching polls has seen floods of bullshit polls flood the arena in the past few weeks. They’re totally made up and inaccurate, and in cahoots with the Trump campaign to try and give credence to another attempt and overthrowing the government by crying about the election results.
I’ve seen the reports. I highly doubt any of the arm chair statisticians (who have never taken a day of mathematical or proof-level stats) have a clue what they are talking about. The polls’ histories and lean are factored into 538’s averages. They are not new to this.
And how many polls are left leaning? The graph posted a couple of days ago on midwest claims 35% are right leaning, and a correlation with the drop in support for Harris. What it doesn’t say is the proportion of democratic polls, and there really isn’t a correlation over the length of history shown.
Hard to make informed decisions when half the information is hidden. (But arm chair statisticians don’t recognize the issue do they?)
Left or right leaning isn’t the problem. Deliberately skewing the averages is. I don’t care for Nate Silver, but in his own words: https://www.natesilver.net/p/are-republican-pollsters-flooding
A .5% shift in bullshit data explains all of this right here. Polling is useless anymore anyway, but when you are in Trump’s little circus of assclowns who want to form a pretext of something like a stolen election, it sure as fuck serves a purpose.
Edit: and then you have shit like this: https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-2669441230/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/large-bets-election-prediction-market-are-overseas-source-says-2024-10-18/
Not suspicious or coordinated at all.
I’ll give you your references. Will have to read later.
It’s because right-wing pollsters are flooding the landscape with fudged polls. They’re literally all liars, why do we trust their polling methodologies. Seems to me they’re just setting up for the eventual loss so they can point to this polling during the Steal 2.0.
Bingo!
Ehhhhhh, yes they are putting out more polls but all reputable polling aggregators, including 538, account for them and their biases.
You can read about it here:
https://www.natesilver.net/p/are-republican-pollsters-flooding
Nate Silver IS a right winger, though, so I don’t believe anything on his site, and I especially don’t believe him on this topic. Even if he wasn’t outright a right winger, polls do not matter and are frequently incorrect for various reasons.
Plus, he’s no longer affiliated with 538.
Calling Silver a right winger is more than a bit silly. He’s not as far left as some but damn, to call hin right wing, that’s just some kind of ridiculous.
And no, he’s not affiliated with 538 but he is explaining how polling aggregation, which 538 and others do, works.
Again, even if he isn’t an outright right winger, that’s fine. I’m willing to back off on that. But polls do not matter, and in fact the only thing they seem to do is reduce turnout. I really don’t care about Nate’s thoughts, and never have since 2016. I think a lot of people stopped trusting polls and definitely stopped trusting him back then.
All they do is predict the future.
Here’s 538 going over the 2020 predictions (in a historically difficult polling year):
Even in a year when the polls were mediocre to poor, our forecasts largely identified the right outcomes. They correctly identified the winners of the presidency (Joe Biden), the U.S. Senate (Democrats, after the Georgia runoffs) and the U.S. House (Democrats, although by a narrower-than-expected margin). They were also largely accurate in identifying the winners in individual states and races, identifying the outcome correctly in 48 of 50 presidential states (we also missed the 2nd Congressional District in Maine), 32 of 35 Senate races1 and 417 of 435 House races.
They sure didn’t get 2016 right, which is what I referenced and what caused distrust. Just because they got 2020 right doesn’t mean they’ll get 2024 correct. It’s meaningless and only serves to make people feel like they don’t have to turn out. They definitely don’t just “predict the future”.
Also, I’m not sure if quoting the very pollsters that got 2016 wrong will make people trust them now. It’s certainly not working for me.
Well yeah, but that’s assuming their pollster quality metric is actually good. Without knowing the result, who’s to say that previously reputable pollsters weren’t “bought” this cycle. With the billionaire interest and dark money floating around, why not?
Polls are shit, go vote!
This is getting into some pretty nonsense conspiracy level.
Given that high quality pollsters like Emerson, Sienna, the Times are all showing similar movements in their polls, your theory about buying out reputable pollsters requires most pollsters to simultaneously burn their reputations, be open to corruption etc allegations and presumably suffer criminal penalties as most of their polls are technically done for a client. And none of whom are instead exposing the very offer as a huge media boost? And for what? So the polls look marginally better for trump?
This kind of wishful thinking reminds me of listening to stolen election nonsense, where yeah, you can make believe a conspiracy where the Dems bought off a bunch of judges, election officials, forensic analysts etc but it beggars belief.
All polls are useless:
This article is pure silliness but extrapolating from it.to say all polls are useless is to miss even the point of the article!
Yes, national polls aren’t particularly helpful because of the electoral college. Which means state level polling is what matters. And polls 6 months out, are not helpful. This is why no polling aggregator is still including them.
Meanwhile, in reality, the polling aggregators pretty much called every 2022 midterm race. In 2020, 538 “correctly identified the winners of the presidency (Joe Biden), the U.S. Senate (Democrats, after the Georgia runoffs) and the U.S. House (Democrats, although by a narrower-than-expected margin). They were also largely accurate in identifying the winners in individual states and races, identifying the outcome correctly in 48 of 50 presidential states (we also missed the 2nd Congressional District in Maine), 32 of 35 Senate races1 and 417 of 435 House races.”
Meanwhile, factually and statistically, out of all the presidential polls ever conducted, they’re only 60% correct.
All polls are useless.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding the difference between polling aggregators, like 538 and a poll.
Though, if you really believe what you’re saying, how crazy lucky do you think, 538 must have been to get 32/35 senate races right, 417/435 house races and the presidential rave. Seeing as they repeated the performance in 2022, those lucky jerks should be going to Vegas, not working! /s
Yeah, it’s kind of amazing.
If there’s a good poll for Kamala, it’s upvotes to the moon. If it’s a good one from trump, voted to the underworld.
That sort of hive mind, shut out anything I dislike attitude is the same attitude that makes half the country ignore any and all criticism of trump.
I think you’ll find the same number of people saying that polls are meaningless and to just vote in any of these “poll says” threads.
Absolutely but polls one way get huge upvotes and polls the other get huge downvotes.
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