Tea leaves?

Discussion in 'Political Discussions' started by nosborne48, Aug 24, 2020.

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  1. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    As a likable, educated Jew I know has sometimes said .... Oy! :(
     
  2. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    The Trafalgar Group polls agree with you!
    https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/523426-positive-trump-polls-spark-polling-circle-debate

    Even on fivethirtyeight.com the average of polls indicates that the swing states are all very tight with Biden having a small lead in each. If the polls are undercounting Trump votes because people don't want to admit to pollsters that they are voting for a racist as The Trafalgar Group theorizes then it is entirely possible. The fivethirtyeight.com polling average gives Trump a 10% chance of winning which is strangely only slightly less than a big Biden landslide.
     
  3. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    The whole thing is a landslide, for sure. Or a train-wreck. A debacle, maybe. A catastrophe, perhaps. We're just trying to put a name on it.
     
    Maniac Craniac likes this.
  4. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    The whole thing will be what American people want via the electoral college.
    I will respect the will of the American people.
    If left wins they will undo what right did, the when right wins they will undo what left did and so its goes.
    Some things is hard to undo.
    Maybe some day there will be another major party in the mix with significant following.
    lets hope its not a train-wreck, a debacle, nor a catastrophe and not Carlito Maxito.
     
  5. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Do keep in mind I have a terrible track record with political predictions.
     
  6. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    Well, that's not exactly how the electoral college works, as we saw in the last election.
     
  7. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Like we have, in Canada? Tell you what -- we'll send you our NDP (New Democratic Party). You can have 'em - free.. :)
     
  8. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Ugh, hard pass! o_O
     
  9. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Not until there are significant reforms to introduce proportional representation, which major party politicians will resist to the death.
     
  10. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Don't blame you. :(
     
  11. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Part of my thinking runs like this: Biden was born in Pennsylvania and was for years a Senator from nearby Delaware. Clearly these people KNOW Biden. Why then is the race in Pennsylvania too close to call?
     
  12. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    I guess that depends on your definition of "too close to call." Here's a couple of thoughts, though.

    First, there is nothing yet to "call." Vote tallies have not been announced yet.

    Second, three polls announced just today (Sienna College/NYT, ABC/WaPo, and another ABC/WaPo) have Biden up by 6, 7, and 4 points, respectively. Those are all outside their respective margins of error, I think.

    So, no "calling" yet. But polling indicates Biden is ahead of Trump in Pennsylvania. Given that 2.3 million Pennsylvania voters have already returned their ballots, the polling reflects in a large way what people did, not what they intend to do.

    Make of it what you will.
     
  13. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    I think that's an excellent point. While the parliamentary system has its faults, it seems to work in this proportional representation kind of way, at least to a degree.
     
  14. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    When that parliamentary system is designed with PR, yes, but there are plenty that are made up of "first past the post" single member districts, which is the real design flaw.
     
  15. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Well, that's just another reason to think I'm wrong. For Trump to win, the common polling and analysis has to be wrong altogether. I don't know. I just have a hard time imagining Biden winning.
     
  16. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Everything is wrong, here. Just a matter of how wrong. It's just like HRC vs. Trump. If Biden wins, it's wrong within normal boundaries. If Trump wins - it just plain isn't.
     
  17. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    At this point in time the best we can do is look at the election as a series of probabilities.

    So for example, looking at the Every Outcome in Our Simulations chart at https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/ there's a bunch of bars the taller the bar the higher the probability of that electoral college result. Now the bars have been smoothed to make a line graph of rolling averages of the bars. We know that the space under the line for Trump winning is 10% from the other charts on that same page. The interesting thing about the chance of Biden winning, notice the line is relatively low and flat at the beginning and has a huge bump at the end. So there's a 10% chance of Trump winning and then a relatively low chance of any electoral college win for Biden going from 270 electoral votes to about 400 electoral votes with a relatively big chance of a landslide (close to 20% I'd guess) victory for Biden. Now I doubt that it's going to happen that way but what it means is that for a very large number of states the race is relatively tight. The huge bump at the end is if most of those do break Biden's way and that Texas ends up going for Biden. This final point becomes clearer perhaps if you look at the snake chart.
     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2020
  18. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    If there's any lesson from 2016, it's that there's only one poll that matters.
     
  19. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    The final margin in the popular vote was within the margin of error. In other words, the polls were right. The margins by which Trump won in three key states were absolutely tiny, which gave him the victory in the "one poll that matters": the Electoral College.

    Can Trump win? Sure. But the odds are currently at 12%, so it would take a huge difference between the polling and the outcome, something not achieved in 2016. In fact, if the polls are as wrong in 2020 as they were in 2016 (again, margin of error), Biden wins and big.
     
  20. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Maybe. But I expect that "shy Tory syndrome" has been a lot more pronounced this time around. Anyway, we'll see in a few days (probably).
     
    Rich Douglas likes this.

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