Too soon to start thinking about 2024?

[LawBeefaroni]

Because it's just entertainment at this point. No one is going to be swayed by social platforms or economic strategy. Just entertain them and keep your name in their mouth.

A tropey yarn about Alrnold Palmer's cock sends everyone home with something to talk about. Handlers just letting Trump be Trump.

[Holman]

The NYT is already sanewashing it.



The Times describes a long and inappropriate anecdote entirely focused on Palmer's dick size as "golf stories," as if it's a normal thing a candidate might do.

I mean, white people play golf, am I right?

[Kraken]

The figurative dick-waving is getting dangerously close to being literal. Srsly, trump's doubling down on toxic masculinity because those are the males that the D Party is losing.

[Kurth]

The NYT is already sanewashing it.



The Times describes a long and inappropriate anecdote entirely focused on Palmer's dick size as "golf stories," as if it's a normal thing a candidate might do.

I mean, white people play golf, am I right?

Umm, that’s not what I read in the NYT this evening:

At a Pennsylvania Rally, Trump Descends to New Levels of Vulgarity
The G.O.P. nominee repeated crude insults, and his supporters relished each moment. But the display could alienate swing voters.

Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday spewed crude and vulgar remarks at a rally in Pennsylvania that included an off-color remark about a famous golfer’s penis size and a coarse insult about Vice President Kamala Harris.

The performance, 17 days before the election in a critical battleground state, added to the impression of the Republican nominee as increasingly unfiltered and undisciplined. It comes as some of Mr. Trump’s allies and aides worry that Mr. Trump’s temperament and crass style are alienating undecided voters.

Certainly doesn’t seem like “sane-washing” to me.

[Holman]

Certainly doesn’t seem like “sane-washing” to me.

I see your point, and I'm glad the Times came around.

[Holman]

Pardon the Twitter, but here's a good thread confirming that most of the poll movement "towards Trump" is the result of right-leaning pollsters dumping polls into the mix in order to screw with averages. They did the same thing in 2022, when pollsters predicted a "red wave" and the actual results were the opposite.

[hepcat]

The figurative dick-waving is getting dangerously close to being literal. Srsly, trump's doubling down on toxic masculinity because those are the males that the D Party is losing.

He wants so desperately to be seen as "macho" that he worships masculinity in its most basic forms. To him, masculinity is power and a giant penis is power. So is being a dictator, hence the Putin love affair. It's compensation for the crushing sense of low self esteem he so obviously has.

Pardon the Twitter, but here's a good thread confirming that most of the poll movement "towards Trump" is the result of right-leaning pollsters dumping polls into the mix in order to screw with averages. They did the same thing in 2022, when pollsters predicted a "red wave" and the actual results were the opposite.

That's a good reminder to take these polls with a very large grain of salt. The "red wave" was a certainty to so many people. Then it turned out to be the opposite.

[Isgrimnur]

Pardon the Twitter, but here's a good thread confirming that most of the poll movement "towards Trump" is the result of right-leaning pollsters dumping polls into the mix in order to screw with averages. They did the same thing in 2022, when pollsters predicted a "red wave" and the actual results were the opposite.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1848 ... 22306.html

[YellowKing]

I've been saying the gap closing in the polls is artificial for several days now.

I think the really important takeaway here is that the poll cheating by the right is not primarily designed to give GOP voters hope or depress Harris voters. It is to shape that narrative that Trump is ahead so that when he loses bigly on Nov. 5th (as his internal polling probably shows him doing), he has grounds (in his mind) to contest the election.

It's going to get really ugly. I wouldn't worry about it so much if it was just private citizen Trump trying to pull off the steal, but he's got the backing of billionaires now.

[Holman]

He wants so desperately to be seen as "macho" that he worships masculinity in its most basic forms. To him, masculinity is power and a giant penis is power.

Harris needs to get Stormy Daniels out on the campaign trail.

[Archinerd]

I've been saying the gap closing in the polls is artificial for several days now.

I think the really important takeaway here is that the poll cheating by the right is not primarily designed to give GOP voters hope or depress Harris voters. It is to shape that narrative that Trump is ahead so that when he loses bigly on Nov. 5th (as his internal polling probably shows him doing), he has grounds (in his mind) to contest the election.

It's going to get really ugly. I wouldn't worry about it so much if it was just private citizen Trump trying to pull off the steal, but he's got the backing of billionaires now.

That's my read as well. The good news is that this is what passes for the best case scenario these days, so at least we're optimistic.

[Victoria Raverna]

He wants so desperately to be seen as "macho" that he worships masculinity in its most basic forms. To him, masculinity is power and a giant penis is power. So is being a dictator, hence the Putin love affair. It's compensation for the crushing sense of low self esteem he so obviously has.

How can a man that worship and love another's man's penis is macho? Macho = gay?

[hepcat]

Not if you admire it as a testament to manhood and not an object of desire.

Although with Trump, who knows.

[Kurth]

My wife and daughter and I all voted yesterday, and, despite (1) my general despair at our overall situation, and (2) the fact that our vote in OR means absolutely nothing, it still felt good. And patriotic.

[Blackhawk]

He wants so desperately to be seen as "macho" that he worships masculinity in its most basic forms. To him, masculinity is power and a giant penis is power. So is being a dictator, hence the Putin love affair. It's compensation for the crushing sense of low self esteem he so obviously has.

How can a man that worship and love another's man's penis is macho? Macho = gay?

There are plenty of macho gay men.

[LordMortis]

And they love to stay at the YMCA



(Sorry if that was offensive but someone had to call it out)

[stessier]

I voted yesterday as well on the first day of early voting in South Carolina. The line was an hour long at 4:45pm. The poll managers said they have 75 people in line when they opened at 7am and that the line stayed around 30-45 minutes the whole day.

[Unagi]

I voted yesterday as well on the first day of early voting in South Carolina. The line was an hour long at 4:45pm. The poll managers said they have 75 people in line when they opened at 7am and that the line stayed around 30-45 minutes the whole day.

For the rest of us, can we assume that means: massive turn-out in SC?

[Jaymann]

If SC turns blue I will eat my shorts. With fava beans and a nice chianti.

[stessier]

I voted yesterday as well on the first day of early voting in South Carolina. The line was an hour long at 4:45pm. The poll managers said they have 75 people in line when they opened at 7am and that the line stayed around 30-45 minutes the whole day.

For the rest of us, can we assume that means: massive turn-out in SC?

Apparently, yes. I just saw a news report that it set a one day record for early voting turnout statewide - 125,900 people. Previous record was from 2022 at 70,100. There are 11 early voting days left - if the same number came out every day, that would be 1,510,800 votes cast total during early voting.

For comparison, in 2020, 2,471,000 people voted in the whole election.

[stessier]

If SC turns blue I will eat my shorts. With fava beans and a nice chianti.

Oh yeah, I'm not saying it's any indication of the result. I was surrounded by Trump voters. But it's good that people are voting.

[LordMortis]

If SC turns blue I will eat my shorts. With fava beans and a nice chianti.

Reading backwards to find where I last left off, I read this Supreme Court at first.

If SC turns blue I will eat my shorts. With fava beans and a nice chianti.

Oh yeah, I'm not saying it's any indication of the result. I was surrounded by Trump voters. But it's good that people are voting.

That was me in line to drop my absentee ballot off when ever that was. Last week? The week before? Either way numbers up didn't necessarily reflect great things for Harris from my tiny corner of the world. It only reflected universal early absentee voting being adopted more universally.

[Kraken]

My radio said R early voters so far outnumber D in GA and AZ while D leads in, um, WI I think it was. IDK who was supplying that info or how they were counting, so not putting a lot of stock in it. But it’s probably safe to say that R’s are voting early in larger numbers than usual.

[LawBeefaroni]

https://apnews.com/article/musk-1-milli ... 1911ad0197

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla and Space X and owner of X who’s gone all-in on Republican Donald Trump’s candidacy for the White House, has already committed at least $70 million to help the former president. Now he’s pledging to give away $1 million a day to voters for signing his political action committee’s petition backing the Constitution.

The giveaway is raising questions and alarms among some election experts who say it is a violation of the law to link a cash handout to signing a petition that also requires a person to be registered to vote.

Not only election law, but state gambling laws. But eh, he's untouchable.

[LawBeefaroni]

Oh, and I've seen a few Trump/Vance stickers on Teslas, and not just the Cybertruck.

It's worth noting that Trump stickers on vehicles are few and far between in the city.

[Jaymann]

My radio said R early voters so far outnumber D in GA...

Too bad no one can give them any water.

[Unagi]

In a perverse, but wisdom driven way, I'm actually happier for the 'message' to be one that the Rs are turning out in large numbers - so that the Ds don't think they have this all wrapped up and stay at home.

If there were reports of it all being a Dem wave, right now - I'd worry that too many people would feel "we got this".

I hope it's Ds, and the reporting makes even more Ds show up. And I hope (beyond hopes) that the Rs that are showing up are not voting R - but turning on him.

But hope can go park it's ass in the garage for a couple weeks... I'm here to worry.

[YellowKing]

I heard someone say today that in a truly tied race, the candidate with the best ground game wins the election. I don't think there's any question that Harris has the better ground game going into the final stretch - she has more money, she has more field offices, she has more employees, and she has a built-in infrastructure from Biden's tenure that isn't relying on outsourcing to PACs like Trump. Obviously we don't know what is going to happen, but if this election is decided by a few thousand votes, she's certainly in the better position to turn those out.

[Smoove_B]

That might be the conventional wisdom, yes. However, I can't help but shake this nagging idea that I've had over the last 5+ years - that there are a lot of people that are super comfortable with a Donald Trump presidency. Like...really just totally ok with it. They might not wear a red hat or put a flag on the bumper of their pick up truck, but behind the curtain they will vote for him without any hesitation.

[LordMortis]

That might be the conventional wisdom, yes. However, I can't help but shake this nagging idea that I've had over the last 5+ years - that there are a lot of people that are super comfortable with a Donald Trump presidency. Like...really just totally ok with it. They might not wear a red hat or put a flag on the bumper of their pick up truck, but behind the curtain they will vote for him without any hesitation.

^^^^^
That

[Holman]

I wish the Harris campaign would lean into the idea that Trump doesn't have four years left in him, and that a vote for Trump is a vote for President Vance. There's just so much weirdness to highlight about that guy.

[msteelers]

My wife and I just got back from voting in NC.

Overall it was incredibly easy. The hardest part was parking, but there were plenty of volunteers helping to direct traffic. Based on the cars in the parking lot I assumed we would be waiting in line, but we were able to walk right in. The total process took 45 minutes from when we left our house to when we returned, maybe 10-15 of that spent at the actual polling place.

The only thing I didn't like was I felt the ballot wasn't very secret. They had us go to a machine, make our votes, and then our selections were printed onto a piece of paper that we then had to walk over to get scanned. Not a big deal for us, but if someone was trying to keep their vote secret from a spouse or parent pushing them to vote a certain way I could see it causing problems.

[stessier]

The only thing I didn't like was I felt the ballot wasn't very secret. They had us go to a machine, make our votes, and then our selections were printed onto a piece of paper that we then had to walk over to get scanned. Not a big deal for us, but if someone was trying to keep their vote secret from a spouse or parent pushing them to vote a certain way I could see it causing problems.

That is the same system in use in SC. They shouldn't allow anyone else near the Ballot Marking Device (BMD) while you are using it (within 5' here in SC). Once you have it marked, they should make you proceed directly to the scanner - no loitering waiting for someone else to finish. If you try showing it to anyone, they should say that you shouldn't (for the same reason you can't take a selfie with a ballot - so you can't sell your vote). When you scan it, the scanner can take the paper in any orientation, but you should be instructed to scan it face down for privacy. Considering a paper trail is required, it's as secret as practical.

[Kraken]

I heard someone say today that in a truly tied race, the candidate with the best ground game wins the election. I don't think there's any question that Harris has the better ground game going into the final stretch - she has more money, she has more field offices, she has more employees, and she has a built-in infrastructure from Biden's tenure that isn't relying on outsourcing to PACs like Trump. Obviously we don't know what is going to happen, but if this election is decided by a few thousand votes, she's certainly in the better position to turn those out.

Trump’s counter is Leon Musk’s bottomless pockets and tech-bro analytics. IDK if that’s enough to outweigh Harris’ conventional forces, but it's definitely something.

[El Guapo]

Interesting article on polling errors in 2016 and 2020.

Spoiler:

Two Theories for Why the Polls Failed in 2020, and What It Means for 2024
To make polling better, you have to figure out what went wrong in the first place.

Nate Cohn
By Nate Cohn
Published Oct. 22, 2024
Updated Oct. 23, 2024

Will the polls be wrong again this cycle?

It’s the question I probably get most, for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, it’s not an easy one to answer, and one reason might surprise you: Pollsters still don’t know exactly why the polls underestimated Donald J. Trump four years ago.

As a post-election report by professional pollsters put it: “Identifying conclusively why polls overstated the Democratic-Republican margin relative to the certified vote appears to be impossible with the available data.”

The exact explanation matters. Under some theories, polls may be much better in 2024; under others, pollsters are still vulnerable to another misfire.

In the absence of a clear answer, most theories center on “nonresponse bias,” in which Mr. Trump’s supporters were less likely to respond to surveys than demographically similar Biden voters. This is reasonable enough, but the details are murky — and again, they matter. In particular, they need to explain why the polls have sometimes been accurate during the Trump era.

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It’s easy to forget, but the polls haven’t always been terrible since Mr. Trump came down the escalator. For all the problems with state polling in 2016, the high-quality national polls were excellent, and almost all high-quality polls excelled in the 2022 midterm elections. This variation in results requires pollsters and analysts to build a theory that fits the shifting error. It requires something much more nuanced than “Trump supporters don’t respond.”

Pollsters and analysts have studied the last eight years very closely (and they have made substantial changes, which we explored as part of a series). Although they have countless hypotheses, I’d broadly say there are two not-entirely-mutually-exclusive theories for the polling misfires in 2016 and 2020. Depending on which you find more compelling, you’d have a different guess about how vulnerable the polls are to a misfire in November.

The unified theory
Let’s call the first approach the unified theory. It tries to explain, in one swoop, why the polls and Democrats do well in midterms, while the polls and Democrats do poorly in presidential elections.

This theory holds that pollsters simply can’t reach enough of the least politically engaged voters — and these voters overwhelmingly back Mr. Trump. The polls can do fine in midterm elections, when only the highly engaged (and now relatively Democratic-leaning voters) cast ballots, but they underestimate Mr. Trump in presidential elections.

If you’re a liberal reader of this newsletter, this theory may send a shiver down your spine. All cycle, we’ve noted Mr. Trump’s strength among less engaged voters. We’ve agonized over the challenges in polling. Recently, we’ve observed that the Times/Siena poll shows strange similarities to the midterm election. The unified theory stitches all of this together into one potential nightmare for Democrats, where all the subtle patterns in the Times/Siena data add up to a harbinger of yet another polling misfire — and another Trump presidency.

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A version of this theory is popular among the most renowned pollsters and data scientists, and there’s a lot of evidence to support it. Pollsters have known for decades that the least engaged, least political voters are least likely to respond to surveys. This may even sound obvious: A political junkie would naturally be more excited to take a poll than someone without any interest in politics.

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We see this in our data, too: In a typical Times/Siena poll, people who have previously voted in a primary are about twice as likely to respond to a survey as people who haven’t. Worse, the people with no voting history who do take polls clearly aren’t representative of nonvoters as a whole. The previous nonvoters who take polls are much more likely to vote compared with otherwise similar registrants who decline to respond to surveys. (We know this because, once the election is over, we’re able to see which people we’ve polled actually voted.)

There’s also considerable evidence that less engaged voters are likelier to back Mr. Trump, especially after accounting for their demographic characteristics. The Times/Siena data has supported this proposition all cycle — including once Kamala Harris became the nominee, if to a lesser degree.

Put it together, and pollsters might be stuck: As hard as they may try, they will never properly represent politically disengaged voters, and they will therefore never show enough support for Mr. Trump — at least when those disengaged voters decide to vote, as they tend to do in a presidential election.

The patchwork theory (but ultimately the pandemic)
The second theory is not so unified. Let’s call it the patchwork theory, though ultimately a lot of eggs wind up in the “it was the pandemic” basket.

In this tale, the polling errors in 2016 and 2020 may look similar, but they were actually very different. For one, the “gold standard” national polls were pretty good in 2016, while they were terrible in 2020. This suggests that there were distinct challenges in both elections, like undecided Republican voters who disliked Mr. Trump in 2016, the failure of state pollsters to weight by education, and ultimately the pandemic.

In most cases, these challenges have either faded since 2016 and 2020 or they have been fixed by pollsters. This theory doesn’t necessarily dispute that there’s a challenge reaching less engaged Trump voters, but perhaps that’s only one of many problems. With those other problems gone, the polls might be set up for a much more accurate 2024 cycle.

The patchwork theory obviously lacks the sweeping coherence of the unified theory, but in many respects there’s more evidence for it, starting with the 2016 election:

Education. In 2016, most state polls — including polls by the campaigns — were not weighted by self-reported education, and consequently had far too many college graduates. (Before 2016, whether you had a college degree was not a meaningful predictor of whether someone would vote Democratic or Republican; that’s no longer the case.) By our estimates at the time, weighting by education shifted polls by an average of four percentage points toward Mr. Trump. This helped explain the accuracy of the traditional national surveys, which were almost always weighted by education.

Late deciders. The 2016 election also featured an unusual number of undecided voters and voters backing third-party candidates. These voters were disproportionately Republican, and they appeared to break toward Mr. Trump over the last few days, based on the exit polls and post-election studies that recontacted previously polled undecided voters. Here again, the national polls had the edge: There were many national polls taken over the final few days of the race, and they were both accurate and showed Mr. Trump gaining. Conversely, there were few or no high-quality state polls taken over the last five days of the race. Every major final national poll, for instance, was fielded entirely after the end of the last high-quality education-weighted poll in Wisconsin — a Marquette poll fielded from Oct. 26 to Oct. 31.

These factors gave pollsters cause for optimism heading into 2020. In theory, weighting by education alone would fix many state polls, while late shifts wouldn’t be so much of a problem with fewer undecided voters. Put them together, and pollsters entered 2020 confident there wouldn’t be another polling misfire.

This confidence turned out to be misplaced. In 2020, the polls erred even worse than they did in 2016. This was especially true for the national pollsters who seemed to nail the 2016 election. The state polls fared no better than they did in 2016, and they often erred in the same places — like Wisconsin, where polls underestimated Mr. Trump by about eight points. They erred even though nearly all the state pollsters weighted by education, and even though the number of conflicted, undecided voters had plunged. So what happened?

The unified theory holds that the same underlying problem was behind the polling misfires in 2016 and 2020, helping explain the similar geographic distribution of error across the Northern battlegrounds in both elections. In this view, this nonresponse problem became even more severe as turnout rose to record modern levels and drew even more disengaged Trump voters into the electorate. The higher turnout in 2020 effectively canceled out the gains pollsters made by weighting on education.

When it comes to 2020, the patchwork theory ultimately leans a lot on one explanation: the pandemic, an extraordinary event that affected every American. Importantly, the pandemic affected people’s behavior. Many people stopped going outside and started working from home. All of this had a clear effect on surveys. Response rates went up, and surveys were becoming cheaper and seemingly demographically more representative — so much so that pollsters were rejoicing.

The pollsters may have been right to celebrate in April, but by the fall the pandemic was becoming partisan. Democrats tended to be masking and staying home — and more likely to respond to polls. The (overly simplistic but plausible) story here is that Democrats were free and available to take surveys all day, lonely and grateful to speak with a human, enraged by Mr. Trump and the pandemic, all while Republicans tended to be out living their lives.

There’s a mix of evidence to support a major but hard-to-quantify role for the pandemic in the 2020 survey error.

Response rates. As mentioned earlier, there’s clear evidence that response rates increased during the pandemic. Democratic response rates were significantly higher than Republican response rates in 2020 — about 20 percent higher in Times/Siena data — although we can’t be sure the pandemic was the reason for Democrats’ higher response rates relative to Republicans.

Timing. Before the pandemic, the polls showed a highly competitive race. The Times/Siena polls in November 2019, for instance, were extremely close to the final result, as were the polling averages by state in early 2020. Of course, it’s possible the polls were always wrong and Mr. Trump actually held a significant lead until his response to the pandemic put President Biden over the top. But the pattern is nonetheless what one might have expected if the pandemic had induced a problem in the polls.

Landlines. Landline telephone polling, which might be expected to be most affected by people staying at home, had extraordinary survey error. Remember the infamous ABC/Washington Post poll that found Mr. Biden up 17 points in Wisconsin? The landline respondents backed Mr. Biden by 30 points.

In Times/Siena polling, registered Democrats were twice as likely to respond as Republicans on a landline, but there was little to no gap among those reached via cellphone (the majority of our respondents).

Geography. There was a relationship between coronavirus prevalence in November 2020 and the polling error. Wisconsin was the epicenter for cases in late November, along with other states across the Northern tier. At the time, this was considered the likely explanation for why Mr. Biden was surging in Wisconsin down the stretch — that infamous ABC News poll contended: “Covid Surge Hurts Trump in WI.” In retrospect, the surge might have been merely helping Mr. Biden in the polls.

Which theory is right?
We’ve looked at two basic ways of understanding polling error in 2016 and 2020, but just about every analyst would probably position themselves somewhere on a spectrum between them.

After all, almost every theory for error described so far has merit. They’re rooted in reasonable theories of survey response. They’re backed by evidence. They would help explain why the polls were worse in 2020 than 2016, and why polls were better in 2022 and 2018 than either presidential election.

Unfortunately, there’s almost no way to untangle the relative merit of the various theories.

The best-case scenario for pollsters would go something like this: Pollsters fixed the problems that hurt them in 2016, and the pandemic hurt them in 2020 but it’s over now. Thus, the polls will finally have a good cycle in 2024 — possibly even if they make no meaningful methodological changes whatsoever. Maybe the polls could even underestimate Democrats now, if there’s some new source of error working to Mr. Trump’s advantage. The polls underestimated Democrats back in 2012, after all.

On that point, it’s noteworthy that many of the worst pollsters of 2020 seem to be producing far better results for Mr. Trump in 2024, even when they’re not making many or any methodological changes. The Quinnipiac poll is perhaps the best example. It’s the last remaining of the traditional telephone political polls using random-digit-dialing, and it’s shown far better results for Mr. Trump than four years ago. It’s not easy to explain how the Quinnipiac poll can show Mr. Trump ahead in Wisconsin and Michigan under the most extreme version of the unified theory, unless Mr. Trump is on track for a landslide.

Similarly, it’s hard to argue that the survey respondents who yielded a Biden +17 lead in Wisconsin were representative of the midterm electorate — the implication of the unified theory. Those respondents probably wouldn’t have said they favored the Republican Ron Johnson in the race for U.S. Senate, if they had been asked two years later. Clearly, something got a bit easier for pollsters for them to get the midterms right.

While it’s reasonable to say things might be better for pollsters, the worst-case scenario still remains: There is no reason to assume pollsters can reach the least politically interested voters in sufficient numbers, and there is plenty of reason to think they will back Mr. Trump in November. If this challenge remains just as great, the polls might miss badly yet again. Perhaps the polls could fare even worse if Mr. Trump fares even better among less engaged voters than four years ago, as polls have shown all cycle.

In that event, pollsters will hope that the changes they’ve made since 2020 will help address the problems that come next. Here, we took a closer look at those changes — and whether that gives them a chance to avoid another 2020-like polling error.

[Holman]

Interesting article, but may I again lobby for the use of spoiler tags on looooong quotes?

[Blackhawk]

Or better yet, don't quote entire articles. Quote enough to give an idea of what it's about, and link the rest.

[El Guapo]

Or better yet, don't quote entire articles. Quote enough to give an idea of what it's about, and link the rest.

Yeah, but if you don't people complain about the firewalls.

[Blackhawk]

There are plenty of ways to bypass firewalls ( ), but the end of the day, getting paid content for free should be up to the individual.

[Grifman]

Or better yet, don't quote entire articles. Quote enough to give an idea of what it's about, and link the rest.

It’s not that hard to scroll past it. Really, it’s not.