2016 Electoral College polling thread

[rvb]

I did not believe America would go for Trump. I thought America had gone so far left it couldn't elect another Republican. And especially not a crass guy like Trump.

I said years ago the Republican Party would never re-take the White House.... I'm not sure I was wrong. He won on the (R) ticket, but the party sure didn't want him there. Will the party learn from this? Or will they continue to push RINO's in the future?

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

I said years ago the Republican Party would never re-take the White House.... I'm not sure I was wrong. He won on the (R) ticket, but the party sure didn't want him there. Will the party learn from this? Or will they continue to push RINO's in the future?

I think some talking heads I was listening to last night have a point. I'm not sure this is a typical left/right or liberal/conservative or even a democrat/republican election. Traditional conservatives did not win last night. It certainly wasn't a liberty movement event. This is something different. The people didn't wakeup yesterday morning and decide they were done with all the liberal agenda and decide they were constitutional conservatives. They voted (I think) for populist reasons (and to some extent, as Trump correctly put it, Hillary is such a nasty woman).

 

[T.Lex]

Yeah, this election will be studied for years to come, maybe even a few generations. And there'll be about 59M different reasons as to why it ended up the way it did.

 

[rvb]

Traditional conservatives did not win last night. It certainly wasn't a liberty movement event.

absolutely.

Hillary is such a nasty woman.

This is what won him the election. Even though Trump is far from an upstanding pillar, his social crudeness paled in comparison to her apparent corruption...

-rvb

 

[jamil]

I said years ago the Republican Party would never re-take the White House.... I'm not sure I was wrong. He won on the (R) ticket, but the party sure didn't want him there. Will the party learn from this? Or will they continue to push RINO's in the future?

I'm not sure how this will pan out. I do know that Republicans -- well, any politicians -- are adaptive and self interested. They latched onto the TEA Party and made it a vehicle to gain/hold office. Whatever this election is, they'll try to figure out how to bottle it and use it.

But I have different reasons for thinking that the Republican Party did not put Trump in office, at least not single-handed. More like what GFGT is getting at. This wasn't an ideological win. This election blew up the traditional left/right paradigm such that many ideologies converged. There's not really a dominant one. And there are Trumpers and non-trumpers, both of which voted for Trump for different reasons. Some Trump voters really believe in him and really wanted him to win. Other Trump voters just really wanted Clinton to lose. I'm in the latter category.

Yeah, this election will be studied for years to come, maybe even a few generations. And there'll be about 59M different reasons as to why it ended up the way it did.

That 59M different reasons can be categorized, but as I said, probably not into a single dominant ideology. I think it's almost more like a mood than an ideology.

After I decided to hold my nose and vote for Trump, I tried to dig down deep to discover what Trump would have to do that would keep me from voting for him. I decided I'd have to see as convincing evidence against him as there is for Hillary, that he is also as corrupt. I mean, that's what the choices came down to. I am more afraid of a corrupt Hillary than a totalitarian Trump.

 

[printcraft]

So...... since the polls were so wrong across the board....
does the idea that skewed polling as a psychological tactic have any merit?
I mean, it backfired bigly.... but still.

All of the "main stream" media wanted Trump to lose. They were attempting to shape opinion and effect voter turnout.

In light of this..... Anybody reconsidering who their trusted news sources are?

 

[T.Lex]

So...... since the polls were so wrong across the board....
does the idea that skewed polling as a psychological tactic have any merit?
I mean, it backfired bigly.... but still.

No. It wasn't a broad psychological tactic at all.

Some news outlets, with pretty transparent biases, had specific issues. All the polls (with the possible exception, I will grudgingly admit, of the LA Times tracking poll) were flawed, but probably in different ways depending on the modeling.

All of the "main stream" media wanted Trump to lose. They were attempting to shape opinion and effect voter turnout.

In light of this..... Anybody reconsidering who their trusted news sources are?

No. No change.

 

[jamil]

So...... since the polls were so wrong across the board....
does the idea that skewed polling as a psychological tactic have any merit?
I mean, it backfired bigly.... but still.

All of the "main stream" media wanted Trump to lose. They were attempting to shape opinion and effect voter turnout.

In light of this..... Anybody reconsidering who their trusted news sources are?

It might be that. I thought that one of the Podesta emails could be taken to suggest that.

But there is also a simpler cause. More Trumpers voted than they anticipated. They have to weight the polls for the real demographics. If they didn't anticipate the higher than expected turnout of rural voters, and the lower than expected turnout of urban voters, then Trumpers would probably be under-sampled and democrats would likely be oversampled.

It doesn't have to be for nefarious reasons. But the Podesta emails makes you go hmmm. Certainly given the Veritas videos we've seen the lengths to which they will go to get democrats elected. And Wikileaks has shown us evidence that the DNC regularly colludes with the media. So it could happen.

 

[BugI02]

No. It wasn't a broad psychological tactic at all.

Some news outlets, with pretty transparent biases, had specific issues. All the polls (with the possible exception, I will grudgingly admit, of the LA Times tracking poll) were flawed, but probably in different ways depending on the modeling.


No. No change.

T. Lex, I think about something Nate Silver said a while back that kind of got lost in the noise. There are very few data points to work with vis a vis presidential race polling (to modern standards). The MoE has to be yuge and this particular election was an outlier. Not giving up on polling just yet, either

 

[Ericpwp]

It might be that. I thought that one of the Podesta emails could be taken to suggest that.

But there is also a simpler cause. More Trumpers voted than they anticipated. They have to weight the polls for the real demographics. If they didn't anticipate the higher than expected turnout of rural voters, and the lower than expected turnout of urban voters, then Trumpers would probably be under-sampled and democrats would likely be oversampled.

It doesn't have to be for nefarious reasons. But the Podesta emails makes you go hmmm. Certainly given the Veritas videos we've seen the lengths to which they will go to get democrats elected. And Wikileaks has shown us evidence that the DNC regularly colludes with the media. So it could happen.

I see it as a case where the tail was trying to wag the dog. Last night I was watching the Clinton News Network and Must Support Nobody But Clinton (at least until Van Jones' tell your children rant) because I didn't want to be told what I wanted to hear. Wolf was trying to find any way she could win, he just could not believe she was going down. It was comical and sad at the same time. "What about this county over here? There is a strong Democratic base there. No? Let's look at Vermont"


vv See sig line vv

 

[jamil]

T. Lex, I think about something Nate Silver said a while back that kind of got lost in the noise. There are very few data points to work with vis a vis presidential race polling (to modern standards). The MoE has to be yuge and this particular election was an outlier. Not giving up on polling just yet, either

All the standard paradigms have been shattered. How do you know how to weight the samples when everything has changed? They didn't account for it with Brexit either. But I think there was less excuse for that. I mean really. I saw one graphic that showed Millennials didn't show up, and if they had shown up Brexit may have failed. But Jeez! They're millennials! Of course they wouldn't bother to vote! They just ***** about it. Of course the Baby Boomers would over-performed the Millennials. There's no excuse for pollsters not to anticipate that.

Kinda the same thing with this election. Rural Trumpers over-performed the polls. Urban Hillodites under-performed the polls.

 

[hoosierdoc]

MSNBC was looking at Johnson votes and blaming him for her loss in a few states

 

[BugI02]

All the standard paradigms have been shattered. How do you know how to weight the samples when everything has changed? They didn't account for it with Brexit either. But I think there was less excuse for that. I mean really. I saw one graphic that showed Millennials didn't show up, and if they had shown up Brexit may have failed. But Jeez! They're millennials! Of course they wouldn't bother to vote! They just ***** about it. Of course the Baby Boomers would over-performed the Millennials. There's no excuse for pollsters not to anticipate that.

Kinda the same thing with this election. Rural Trumpers over-performed the polls. Urban Hillodites under-performed the polls.

But I think once you start down that road you have an even bigger problem. Once you decide to tweak the raw data, how do you decide how much? You have many more options but even less data to guide you. Where do you get the statistical guidance? More polling?

 

[printcraft]

MSNBC was looking at Johnson votes and blaming him for her loss in a few states

LULZ johnson and weld were backing clinton. Liberals by any other name and all that.

Good news is they are not looking at themselves (dems) as the problem and will do the same stupid stuff the next election.

 

[printcraft]

......All the polls (with the possible exception, I will grudgingly admit, of the LA Times tracking poll) were flawed, but probably in different ways depending on the modeling.......

Q: what was LA Times doing differently and who was running their poll compared to all the others?

 

[jamil]

But I think once you start down that road you have an even bigger problem. Once you decide to tweak the raw data, how do you decide how much? You have many more options but even less data to guide you. Where do you get the statistical guidance? More polling?

Why is it tweaking the data? If you want to know who is going to win a state, do you just randomly call 1000 people in the state? That poll wouldn't be very accurate because it wouldn't represent the true demographics. I think when you're only sampling 1000 or so, it's science mixed with an understanding of the electorate that determines that you're properly representing the people who will actually vote.

 

[jamil]

Q: what was LA Times doing differently and who was running their poll compared to all the others?

I think the LA Times was using a tracking poll, which isn't a statistical probability poll. A broken clock can show the right time twice per day.

 

[printcraft]

No. It wasn't a broad psychological tactic at all.

No?

See this tidbit here ........

It might be that. I thought that one of the Podesta emails could be taken to suggest that. ....

pedoesta gave a list of WHO to target SPECIFICALLY.
If NOT a tactic why would podoesta try to manipulate the polls at all?

 

[jamil]

No?

See this tidbit here ........




pedoesta gave a list of WHO to target SPECIFICALLY.
If NOT a tactic why would podoesta try to manipulate the polls at all?

Well, that's what I'm saying. It's not a smoking gun, but it's very suggestive. If I were a betting man...

 

[printcraft]

Momentum.....

SALES ANGLE......... The candidate they are pushing is the product.



TV COMMERCIAL:
"4 out of 5 dentists recommend Colgate toothpaste."

CONSUMER:
"Hey, that must be pretty good, I think I'll buy some."