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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   34277 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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There’s been a major swing in predictions markets with Harris gaining serious momentum.

this is due to a new Selzer poll. Selzer is apparently one of the most highly credible polling firms out there, with very high historical accuracy, and it shows Harris winning Iowa by several points. If true, this signifies a potential Harris blowout victory across the entire country.

Either way, it seems polling is fundamentally broken for calling elections now. Emerson is showing a 10 point lead for Trump in Iowa. All the other polls showed Trump ahead for a long time, but they either were subject to “herding” or were just massively off in the opposite direction of previous elections.

Previously I thought Trump had a pretty solid shot at winning this but I’m seriously thinking Harris has it in the bag now, against all odds.

Somebody's definitely going to have egg on their face after this. Selzer has a long track record of proving her critics wrong over and over, and most of the rest of the polling industry has been herding more than at a sheep farm in the Scottish highlands.. There's a good chance polling firms have been cooking the results in favor of Trump, in a desperate attempt not to underestimate him for a third time in a row. Even if the result in Iowa is at the extreme end of Selzer's MoE and Trump wins the state by a point or two, that likely bodes ill for his chances elsewhere. Trump's best hope in this case would be that Iowa just really, really likes black people (it voted for Obama twice).

On the other hand, if Trump wins Iowa by 5-10 points as previously expected, then it will be a rare black-eye for Selzer. I really wouldn't want to bet against Selzer given her track record, but 1 in 20 polls will go outside the MoE even if everything is calibrated correctly.

It'll be interesting to watch no matter what happens.

Her track record looks impressive until you pull back the curtain a bit. She got many primaries wrong. Her final polls differed from polls a month prior in strong ways.

Also there is a bit of survival bias here. Stock pickers that survive may not be that much better; could just be a random walk.

Her track record looks impressive until you pull back the curtain a bit. She got many primaries wrong. Her final polls differed from polls a month prior in strong ways.

Please provide links.

Also there is a bit of survival bias here. Stock pickers that survive may not be that much better; could just be a random walk.

She's been high-profile since at least 2008. 16 years of bucking conventional wisdom is a lot of record to just dismiss as "random walk".

16 years sounds like a lot. In reality you are talking about four presidential elections. Also not nearly all of that was “bucking conventional wisdom.”

Keep in mind the claim re random walk in stock pickers is frequently much larger compared to Selzer.

In 2020 in the penultimate poll she had the race in Iowa tied between Trump and Biden tied. Is it possible the electorate moved by 8 points? Sure but not likely.

She also in for example had the Iowa 2016 primary going for Trump.

She also does midterms and a bunch of other stuff, and I'm pretty sure she started in the 90s sometime and only became well-known in 2008 after a few runs having relatively robust results. You can cherrypick anything she's gotten wrong, but she has one of the best track records of any pollster bar none. It's clear that some around here are only questioning her because they don't like the result she's getting, rather than for any relative inaccuracy.

No we are questioning her because the poll doesn’t make sense for all the reasons given.

My best argument for Trump given this poll:

The poll itself is likely an outlier, and Trump is winning Iowa by low single digits. This might seem to bode badly for swing states. But Trump's power is motivating low propensity voters to come to the polls, and he's spent essentially no effort on doing so in Iowa. In WI, MI, and PA, on the other hand, he is effectively bringing out his broader base, making them much more competitive than you'd infer from this poll. And in other swing states, his path to victory relies on a different coalition, so you can't project IA's results to them. Additionally, Iowa had a six week state-level ban on abortion, which is a state-specific effect that doesn't carry over to other states.

I can buy this argument, but if I were Trump's campaign, I wouldn't be especially happy making it.

It's a pretty mediocre argument for Trump. Polls already try to correct for propensity for voting (read up on "registered voters" vs "likely voters"), and if anyone is doing this correctly, Selzer would. Certainly fewer campaign events on both sides have been held in Iowa, but Trump has always had a relatively poor get-out-the-vote operation, and races have become so nationalized that it's unlikely for local conditions to be particularly anomalous relative to their demographics. It's banking a lot on Trump's rallies having large local effects, when there's not a lot of evidence for that.

The abortion point could be relevant, though, I'll grant you that.

This poll is a complete outlier in the wrong direction. It's not just that it's different from all other polls (which are probably herded to a close split 50-50 so nobody has egg). It's that it's totally divorced from every other fundamental. Republican early turnout is up, voter registration is up, enthusiasm and endorsements are up. Trump is the most popular he's ever been, he's bringing Democrats like Gabbard and RFK onto MAGA, he's got billionaire and tech endorsements, Muslims in Dearborn and Minneapolis are endorsing him, he's filling out rallies in New Mexico and New York. Trump got 40M views on Joe Rogan, Kamala wouldn't even go. If Kamala was winning in Iowa, why isn't she campaigning there? Tim Walz is in the state next door, it would be trivial for him to go. They're campaigning in Pennsylvania. And wouldn't Kamala be more popular? Major newspapers are withholding endorsements, her rallies are tepid at best, shouting broke out at one because attendees didn't get their promised Beyonce concert. It's possible this poll is right and every other indication is wrong -- but then, aren't the crosstabs of this poll awfully convenient? Republicans are apparently shifting further left than Independents, and after 4 years of Biden-Harris, inflation, immigration, and Ukraine, voter's biggest concern is... Abortion? In Iowa?

This is too much, it's not worth taking seriously. Maybe, really really, everything else is wrong and this one poll is right, but it's not very likely. I don't know why this poll gets so much credulity here. It's like listening to a LLM, which has no experience of the world, and has no reference or context. It's possible this one outlier poll is right. But it's exceptionally unlikely. And in the world of crazy outlier predictions, there are lots of other outliers that are just as credible.

Republicans are apparently shifting further left than Independents, and after 4 years of Biden-Harris, inflation, immigration, and Ukraine, voter's biggest concern is... Abortion? In Iowa?

Well, why not? I've seen a number of people refer to Iowa having a six-week abortion ban just enter into force in July, and it's one of the few states with a six-weeks-or-less that's not deep red (in the sense it voted for the Dem candidate as recently as 2012). If there's an actual swing, it could very well be an effect very specific of Iowa (and with limited predictive value elsewhere).

I'm not sure why Ukraine was included here, most polls I've seen (like this one) have shown supporting Ukraine continue to be relatively popular. Of course the recent events (rapid Russian advance in Donbass) might make a difference, but I haven't also seen the Trump campaign refer to Ukraine too much, compared to issues like inflation and immigration.

Yarvin's theory is pollsters have to adjust for the better Democrat election tech or else they will get egg on their face when they underestimate the Democratic vote.

Where did he write on this?

It was on a podcast: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3kBW-6TebUg

I believe the prediction market swing started days before the Iowa poll, pretty much after the Hinchcliffe joke.

I can't remember, was there this much hubbub among election nerds over one particular poll in Iowa as a bellwether as there has been/is now? When I saw this first start someone had spelled it as "Seltzer poll" and I thought that it was like the bakery "cookie polls" expect with different varieties of Alka-Seltzer or something.

I'd guess I'd give current odds as 60-40 for Harris, but this is solely because the online American right spending the final days before the election losing its shit over some squirrel seems like losing type behavior.

Updating prediction back to 50-50 after seeing news of Finnish Social Democrats doing door-to-door knocking for Harris in the US.

There was a story about British Labour staffers working for Kamala as well. If this isn't illegal, I feel like it should be. I hope it doesn't kick off some trend where Americans help European parties in their campaigns.

I'd guess I'd give current odds as 60-40 for Harris, but this is solely because the online American right spending the final days before the election losing its shit over some squirrel seems like losing type behavior.

I think this is disingenuous way to describe the kerfuffle. It is not about a squirrel, it is so much more. The owner was treated as some kind of criminal, waiting for hours while government agencies raided his home as if he was some member of cartel or something. Also the squirrel we are talking about was a mascot of his nonprofit serving 300 other animals, it was quite famous minor social celebrity with many cute videos. There is so much packed into it besides a cute little squirrel getting killed, it is what its killing represents. There is so much you can read into this: the insane level of licensing, the fact that government probably spent thousands of dollars in mandays of agents investigating and killing some "random" squirrel. It is about facelessness of bureaucracy, where even blunders like these cannot be pinpointed and they just go away as if nothing happened

And it is also about media coverage, including comments like yours here. Which is now standard "why do you care so much about X" response. It is easy to throw back - if some stupid squirrel is so unimportant, why did government went so hard after it? You cannot have it both ways, where on one hand it is just some stupid problem, while at the same time it is a problem that requires probably dozens of people investigating it. So which one is it? If I grant you that it was just some stupid squirrel, then the person in charge of the raid should be automatically fired for mishandling public resources on such a stupid thing, right?

the online American right spending the final days before the election losing its shit over some squirrel

I thought that was everyone, not the right particularly.

The Selzer poll was released on Nov 2, but in the field from Oct 28 to Oct 31. If it were leaked early, it probably would have exerted an effect on the market.

I first encountered Selzer during the Democratic primaries in 2008, when she predicted Obama winning the caucuses, against the conventional wisdom. It was a big deal then. Back in 2016, 538 called her the best pollster in politics: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/selzer/

This cycle, if you followed e.g. the 538 subreddit, you had people regularly speculating on what the Selzer results would be. So the current near orgasmic state and level of interest isn't merely focusing on a random poll because it shows a pro-Harris result.

I can't remember, was there this much hubbub among election nerds over one particular poll in Iowa as a bellwether as there has been/is now? When I saw this first start someone had spelled it as "Seltzer poll" and I thought that it was like the bakery "cookie polls" expect with different varieties of Alka-Seltzer or something.

I heard about this poll pre-election back in 2020. But I think its prominence has increased in the years since because of the amount and degree of polling errors the other big boys have had, which has increased since. Selzer made big outlier pro-Trump calls in 2016 and 2020 and was dead on both times. So given the track record of success combined with the increased inaccuracies of other polls the attention on this specific one has mounted considerably since 2020.

The American left spending the final days before the election losing its shit over Trump calling Liz Cheney a chicken hawk and blatantly lying to claim he wants to put her in front of a firing squad seems like loser behavior.

Kamala refusing a Rogan interview after both Trump and Vance go on likewise reads as "losing type behavior."

At least the squirrel thing is fun and seems to be based on truth.

Sure, neither campaign seems to be covering itself with glory, which is why I said 60-40, which is still pretty good for Trump. The squirrel thing just seems particularly frivolous to me.

Trump's odds in '16 were 70-30 and in '20 they were even worse per 538. 60-40 is the best odds he's ever had.

It is frivolous, but it taps into a particular undercurrent for anybody who distrusts the government and likes cute critters. It sort of analogizes to the theme of "uncaring government arbitrarily killing things you love" vs. those who trust government to be mostly benevolent with its power which defines at least some of the Trump/Harris divide.

I don't know if Harambe dying swung any election outcomes, but it was probably the most popular meme to arise that year, and has persisted for a long time.

I dunno, the right clearly likes meme magic more than the left, so its not surprising to me they'd try to cast one last spell right before its time to vote.

I don't know if Harambe dying swung any election outcomes,

It didn't need to directly, specifically affect the election, it only needed to let the inherently-chaotic properties of meme magic do their thing on the fabric of reality.

the online American right spending the final days before the election losing its shit over some squirrel seems like losing type behavior.

Huh... most of the stuff I've seen looks like they're having fun with it.

A lurking issue with the vast bulk of the polls so far: they all show a tossup. Not "they follow a distribution that's consistent with a tossup," but "they follow a distribution that's tightly clustered around a 0-1% margin for one or another candidate, in all the swing states." It's statistically impossible for this to arise by chance. You never see significant outliers. You would with the sample sizes they're working with.

This isn't indicative of a tight race: it's indicative of pollsters being scared to publish results favoring a candidate one way or another. If it were the former, you'd see obviously wrong outliers in one direction or another, but you don't.

If there's a single pollster I trust, it's Selzer. She has a reputation, and it's an earned reputation: she's been willing to publish outliers before, and consistently those outliers have been more consistent with the actual results than the mainstream popular wisdom and other pollsters.

Iowa itself doesn't matter: if Harris wins it, she's already won (and if I had to guess, I'd still bet Trump wins Iowa). But even if the actual results are at the pro-Trump edge of her confidence interval, he's very likely cooked: there is no way Iowa doesn't vote substantially to the right of all the swing states, particularly PA, MI, and WI.

It’s a BS poll. A prior poll had Tru o up 18 over Biden. Do we really think there was in a few months a 21 point swing in Iowa? Look at the cross tabs. It is just a really bad sample.

It would be odd for that result to show in polls, however I think it could be correct simply because everyone is measuring the exact same data. They should be getting results within the error margin of the correct answer. And the reason I tend to buy a dead heat is that Americans are highly polarized on almost every topic. Abortion, Israel, Ukraine, the economy, education, culture, etc. all are by now completely coded blue or red. There’s very littLe left to persuade in the middle. It’s all about the base. That should be producing a very tight race.

Even if the ground level truth is an exact tie in all the states, you would still expect more outliers than there are: there's always the luck of the draw, and it's irreducible. If someone has a process to massage the sample data enough so that these outliers never show up in the final published numbers, they're destroying information in the process.

Interesting, except the number of people claiming to be "independent" is near all time high.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/548459/independent-party-tied-high-democratic-new-low.aspx

I'd say the bases of each party are probably smaller than it has been in a while. Lot MORE people to be persuaded.

I think its a tight race because the Democrats managed to pick a candidate that is arguably less popular and likeable with independents than Trump.

I suspect that's just because it's fashionable among Democratic party-line voters to claim independence. Has been for a long time, but the weaker Harris ticket likely encourages that more.

and not only with the voters, let's not forget that supposedly Bernie Sanders is an independent. In my opinion, the number of true independent voters in any given year is half or less of what we are told.

It's hard to square the Selzer poll with anything else we're seeing. Looking at Iowa early voter turnout as a percentage of 2020, R got 83% and D got 56%. Sure it's possible that there's a huge block of voters coming out on EDay or that large numbers of Rs are coming out to vote for Harris.

The top 2 issues found in the poll were Democracy and Abortion. Which seems a little weird. Iowa passed some major abortion restrictions over the summer. It seems possible that voters would take that out on Trump, but it's odd that it's suddenly showing up in a poll.

Ann Selzer is 67. It's certainly possible that she took a big payout from someone so she could retire and the Harris campaign could save house seats. Or it could be a polling miss.

Or it could be real. But I'm surprised no one else noticed it if it was real.

OK, I'm totally willing to believe that Iowa is way to the left of where is usually is due to abortion. This isn't Missouri here in terms of the voter base's social conservatism and the restrictions are pretty recent. But 'democracy' as a top issue is a dead tell for something weird with the poll; my guess is it's way oversampling nevertrump demographics.

There has been noticing, if you wanted to notice.

There was a recent poll showing Trump only up by 5 in Kansas, in the polling no matter the result Kamala has been consistently doing better among white voters than even Biden, and in general, the Blue Wall state have been holding up better than Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia.

Now, I, a party hack social democratic Democrat don't actually think Kamala is up by 3. But, if it's off by let's say 150% of Selzer's worst result ever in the past basically 20 years - 5 points. So, let's say 7.5 points.

A Trump +4.5 in Iowa would be disastrous., as personally in a busy election-related Discord, Trump +5 was our hope for the poll.

Nate Silver on the Selzer Poll:

Releasing this poll took an incredible amount of guts because — let me state this as carefully as I can — if you had to play the odds, this time Selzer will probably be wrong.

I'm not believing late in the game polls that show large swings out of nowhere. There's been a few influencers that have wisely said 'don't believe anything you see in the news in the last few days before the election.'

Edit: Nate didn't have much good to say about the Emerson poll either.

It’s hard not to view this as just the latest in a long string of people lighting their credibility on fire for a tiny chance of stopping bad orange man. It seems to run contrary to every other piece of evidence: polls, registration, early voting, “vibes.”

A Trump blowout still seems like the most likely scenario to me. There is just too much going in Trump’s favor relative to the very close 2020 election.

The idea that abortion is going to cause a massive polling error in favor of Harris is just a blatant wish fulfillment fantasy. There is no evidence for it. It’s completely made up. Even in 2022 the polls underestimated Republicans slightly, they just didn’t miss as badly as they did with Trump so people misremember them as overestimating Republicans.

Odds are the polls will underestimate Trump like they always do, meaning it will be a Trump blowout. The “right leaning” pollsters haven’t changed anything about what they do, and the gap between them and the polling average is the same as ever. This strongly suggests nobody has changed anything, meaning they will be wrong in exactly the same way.

The phenomenon isn't unique to the left. Sidney Powell torched her career for no reason last time. Occasionally, people (even smart ones) just self immolate pointlessly. There but (mostly) for the grace of God go I

Most people who have blown their credibility against Trump have blown it the first or second or billionth time he's been on the brink of starting the Fourth Reich or whatever. Selzer hasn't: her results in both 2016 and 2020 were consistent with Trump's margins.

I guess she's nearing retirement, so maybe she wants to blow all her reputational capital in one go on orange man bad.

But I would not be happy if that were my only explanation for her results.

Which results? The final poll? Or the poll before the final poll? Because she showed Biden and Trump tied in September in 2020. Why do we test her against only one poll?

It’s hard not to view this as just the latest in a long string of people lighting their credibility on fire for a tiny chance of stopping bad orange man. It seems to run contrary to every other piece of evidence: polls, registration, early voting, “vibes.”

A Trump blowout still seems like the most likely scenario to me. There is just too much going in Trump’s favor relative to the very close 2020 election.

We've only got a few days to wait so we'll see. But how willing are you to consider that rather than your ideological opponents willfully blinding themselves, it is perhaps you?

I've got no horse in this race; I suppose I would prefer Harris wins but it would certainly be funnier if Trump does. Seems like this pollster has a sterling track record. I'm not sure why your initial response would be blanket denial.

She has gotten a lot of things off. You are being shown a curated list to prove she is right and only looking at the final poll.

I don’t know why after the insanity of the past 8 years, your initial reaction to something absurd like this wouldn’t be blanket denial.

This pollster also shared the results with Kamala surrogates well in advance. People tweeted rumors about it yesterday. Apparently a surrogate let it slip by accident, not realizing the poll wasn’t released yet. So a pollster colluded with Democrats and released an absurd “momentum shifting” poll 3 days before the election, but your default response is to take it at face value? I have a bridge to sell you, man.

So a pollster colluded with Democrats and released an absurd “momentum shifting” poll 3 days before the election, but your default response is to take it at face value? I have a bridge to sell you, man.

Well, we've got three days to see. I'm willing to eat crow if I'm wrong.

I believe Harris winning Iowa about as much as I believe Trump winning Virginia.

Trump winning Minnesota would be the funniest outcome in this election.

Well, I'll toot my own horn:

I called it.

Quoth me 12 days ago:

I also expect the markets to narrow in a bit as we come closer to the election and people decide to close out their positions at a marginal profit rather than actually take the dice roll. If somebody bought a bunch of Trump shares at ~45-50% and can sell them for 55-60% that's a decent profit for a short period trade.

Wasn't sure if they'd get right back to 50-50, but when there's THIS MUCH actual uncertainty (everyone has their vibes, but there simply no trustworthy, unbiased way to call the election in advance) then the 'money' has to return to baseline because very few people are willing to keep their funds at risk all the way to the final bell.

Previously I thought Trump had a pretty solid shot at winning this but I’m seriously thinking Harris has it in the bag now, against all odds.

Lmao. Harris doesn't have any single advantage that Biden lacked going into 2020, and has a number of disadvantages.

My personal expectations, in order of decreasing confidence: Trump squeaker win. Kamala Squeaker win. Trump blowout.

A Kamala Blowout doesn't seem possible, and my post up there explained my thoughts:

So in short, she's got the die-hard Dem base + the anti-Trump brigade on lock, but I think she utterly lacks cross-demographic appeal AND has been boxed in by the dueling demands of demographics they DO have support from, such that any attempts to outreach sincerely to outgroups will be interpreted as defection.

Which demographics is she pulling in 2024 that Biden DIDN'T pull in 2020? Make the case for me because I don't see any way she pulls better numbers than Biden. I can buy that Trump might do a bit worse than he did in 2020.

Which demographics is she pulling in 2024 that Biden DIDN'T pull in 2020?

The argument I've heard (I'm not a polling or campaigning expert, so I can't really gauge how true it is) is that Kamala is relying upon a massive swing among women, of a similar magnitude of the increases in turnout that the Obama candidacy relied upon among black voters. This isn't related to her own sex, but instead a combo of abortion fears and disproportionate female distaste for Trump and concern about potential authoritarianism. That kind of reasoning is the only way that ads like this make sense to me. It also explains why Kamala prefers to go on SNL (demographic overwhelmingly elderly) than Rogan (demographic primarily young and male).

I actually do expect a large gender divide this time, because yes Harris is banking on her appeal to women, mostly single ones. Their attempts to snag married women are, as you see in that ad, tone deaf.

And I expect that single males have been driven away because Harris literally cannot try appealing to them as a group with their own independent concerns without pissing off said single females and a few other groups that she relies on. There hasn't been a single aspect of the Harris campaign that has made me, a white male, feel confident she represents 'my interests' or even acknowledges what those interests or concerns are.

(my opposition to Harris is deeper than my identity, mind)

I'm also on record stating that single females are a reliable voting block who can be motivated and steered by fear. So messaging on fascism and abortion are probably good at energizing these types to get out there and vote EXACTLY how blue tribe wants. What is also does is primes them for absolutely insane freakouts if she loses, though.

So it may indeed come down to male turnout vs. female turnout.

Which demographics is she pulling in 2024 that Biden DIDN'T pull in 2020? Make the case for me because I don't see any way she pulls better numbers than Biden.

A much larger portion of the cemetery demographic? The non-citizen demographic?

Which demographics is she pulling in 2024 that Biden DIDN'T pull in 2020?

…even MORE women? That’s the only demo I can see since it’s A) a female president nominee, and B) abortion.

abortion

Are happily married women with children being mobilized by abortion? Are sexless 20-somethings with nose rings shitting themselves over having to carry a purely hypothetical baby to term?

What is happening with this abortion Handmaid's Tale fanfic? Why is the a-word such a powerful meme?

Are women actually afraid of losing policy advantages, or is it just posturing that goes over well in their book clubs and socially reinforces itself into a loosely-held belief? I personally know a married woman who does not want children and would happily kill 2 babies for every abortion she needed to keep her DINK lifestyle, but she is notably liberal to an extent that normal women definitely are not. Does anyone have an actual model for what's going on for this issue?

Are the Democrats really out here convincing every single woman that it's perfectly normal to find yourself needing an abortion, and it will kill you to give birth?

Democrats are quite happily lying about the actual content of abortion bans. It is literally false that Amber Thurman died because Georgia law forbade saving the mother's life when it would kill the baby- for one thing, she had a legal abortion, and for another, Georgia law allows the care that would have saved her life if she'd sought medical care before spending four days bleeding through one pad per hour. But democrats say this anyways.

It is in fact very very unpopular to require women with ectopic pregnancies to just die. There is no state which does that, but claiming that red states routinely do this is a key part of democrat's messaging, their actual ads aren't 'Women are being FORCED to GIVE BIRTH instead of living their best life'.

Looking at "Who Gets Abortions in America?" (NYT article dated 2021)... 60% of women who have abortions already have children, although only 14% are married, so "happily married women with children" aren't getting a large percentage of all abortions. That said, about 25% of women get an abortion at some point in their life, so it's not exactly rare.

Of course, that's not counting "spontaneous abortion" (better known as miscarriage). I was having trouble finding statistics for how many women will ever have a miscarriage, probably partially because it's tricky to define since well, I'll let Wikipedia explain:

Among women who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is roughly 10% to 20%, while rates among all fertilisation is around 30% to 50%.

I bring up miscarriage because some of the concern over abortion bans has been over healthcare for miscarriages getting lumped in with abortions.

I bring up miscarriage because some of the concern over abortion bans has been over healthcare for miscarriages getting lumped in with abortions.

Well yes, because democrats lie constantly about the actual content of abortion bans. Women denied a D&C invariably turn out to have been kicked out of the hospital before it was apparent they needed one because they were uninsured(=hospital had to eat the cost for her being there), or primarily victims of their own terrible decisions(Amber Nicole Thurman should have gone to the emergency room four days before she actually did).

I mean you're also not going to get statistics on miscarriages because no one, except the women who experience them, care very much and lots of them don't get or need any medical care. The whole miscarriage issue is a distraction driven mostly by democrats lying.

Of course, that's not counting "spontaneous abortion"

Oh please, this is like calling death by accudent, illness, or natural causes "spontaneous murder". It has nothing to do with the issue of abortion.

Are sexless 20-somethings with nose rings shitting themselves over having to carry a purely hypothetical baby to term?

As best I can tell yes. And they aren't perfectly sexless. There is some hypothetical possibility that someday they would want an abortion. They could easily obtain one of course.

But yes fear mongering about a hypothetical national abortion ban forcing them to carry a hypothetical baby to term seems popular.

Are happily married women with children being mobilized by abortion?

That phrase describes an increasingly-shrinking minority of women these days. And ones with teenage and older female children may well vote on vicarious fears/worries about abortion access.

Are sexless 20-somethings with nose rings shitting themselves over having to carry a purely hypothetical baby to term?

Young people are low-propensity voters, and overwhelmingly progressive for other reasons. The abortion talk is aimed at 35+ women, who are much higher-propensity voters.

Does anyone have an actual model for what's going on for this issue?

Sure, women find the idea of not being able to even have the option of terminating a pregnancy intolerable, even if they might otherwise want to keep the kid. Also, our culture denigrates devotion to family and unpaid child-raising as a life-style.

Are the Democrats really out here convincing every single woman that it's perfectly normal to find yourself needing an abortion, and it will kill you to give birth?

More like, "it's perfectly normal to find yourself needing an abortion, and banning "normal" abortion care will kill you." Of course, these stories are complete and total BS, not attributable to abortion restrictions. But most people don't look behind the screaming media spin.

Coworker and I were discussing election betting market when a woman on the team asked how concerned she should be about Trump winning. She’s married, has a young child, and, if not outright smarter than me, definitely has better math chops. She’s the best product forecaster we have. I asked her what she was most worried about. Her answer: birth control getting banned.

In case someone doesn't know, birth control is literally the least controversial political issues there is.

People who are smart in one area aren't always smart in another, especially when values, tribes, and deep-set fears come into play. There are vanishingly few people I trust to provide level-headed insights into politics, even people I respect in other areas. It requires an extreme level of intellectual humility to look at such emotionally-fraught issues even-handedly -- something that, understandably, very smart and insightful people often struggle with.

Yes, among actual voters, sure.

But, Republican's voted against various pro-birth control bills on both the state and local level.

Then, you've got members of The Heritage Foundation, who wrote Project 2025 talking about returning consequentiality to sex - https://x.com/Heritage/status/1662534135762624520

Project 2025 also says the morning after bill is an abortion bill and the coverage of it should be eliminated and there's also been talk about the Comstock Act.

Republicans voting against free birth control because some money would go to planned parenthood is what actually happened there and the uberconservative wishcasting to ban the morning after pill was walked back by the Louisiana state legislature, let alone by the national GOP(and aside from a few deep southern states there has not been a case where republicans had a realistic path to getting the morning after pill banned- in all cases they chose not to do it).

Yes, that's what the Heritage Foundation believes. That's also what the Catholic Church believes. Those organizations are not the Republican party or the Trump administration.

If Trump is elected, there will not be a national ban on birth control. Despite the idle wishing by the Heritage Foundation.

I stand by this prediction and discount anyone who goes against it as having lost touch with reality.

Are sexless 20-somethings with nose rings shitting themselves over having to carry a purely hypothetical baby to term?

Yes. Young women are genuinely terrified about the possibility of being raped and forced to carry the baby to term, or having a hookup and [...], or even just accidentally/intentionally conceiving a baby with their husband and having their life threatened by some malady an abortion could fix. Three of the women in my close circle have of their own volition brought up fears about maternal mortality rates/abortion restriction... Despite the fact that all three were on birth control and additionally one also mentioned that she would personally never get an abortion (though she's pro-choice in general.)

I would say the fear is out of proportion to the actual probability of potential negative events, but that doesn't stop them from genuinely feeling it. It's just what women-centric filter bubbles bring up. It's like how men are irrationally terrified of false rape accusations.

It's like how men are irrationally terrified of false rape accusations.

Don't forget irrationally terrified of being seen as a creep because they asked a woman out in the wrong way/in the wrong place.

Or women's fear that their date will turn out to be a creep. Or worse, a Trump supporter.

Something in the water supply's just trying to get men and women to fear each other. And what we fear we often end up resenting, even hating. Women are convinced that men have it easy and waste their privilege playing video games and jacking off while doing things to hurt women ("patriarchy theory"), while men are convinced that women have it easy and waste their privilege eating hot chip and lying putting on makeup and getting railed by Chads ("gynocentrism theory"). These two sides aren't completely symmetrical, and one may have a point in some connection where the other doesn't, but they do reflect growing resentment by normie men and women towards each other.

In that sense, it's no wonder so many people are going, "wow, it must be so much greener on the other side!" and gender-transitioning.

Yeah, I do expect the gender split to be significant.

Because I'm also sure a lot of guys will peel off because holy SHIT the Harris campaign has been horrible at marketing to males, in particular white ones. Not sure if that means they'll come out for Trump, though.

There's certainly an argument that higher female turnout relative to male could tilt it for her.

Women do tend to be more likely to vote than men, especially young women.

Yep. I don't know what is most likely to motivate otherwise detached males enough to get them to the polls, so this might be what tilts it for her, honestly.

Although... it is entirely possible that males are motivated to vote because of how horrible the Harris messaging towards them has been. It might be enough for them to realize there's nothing good for them coming if she wins.

https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1852849659347124434

AtlasIntel CEO confirms that if white male turnout is high, Trump wins. That’s a big if! But also still plausible

Yes, I'm certain it's going to come down to turnout, and that's where the Democrat machine has an unbeatable advantage. They've got people going door to door making sure the right people's ballots are collected here, in a place where turnout literally doesn't matter because half the Democrats are running unopposed or against 5 different permutations of the People's Socialist Environmental Indigenous Justice Party For Killing Whitey.
If they're doing organization like that just for fun in a blue state, I doubt there'll be a single ballot unharvested in swing states.

On the other hand, that's a deep blue state where democrats have a massive advantage in personnel and they have to do something.

Fascinating.

Had you heard that the GOP has tightened the voter registration gap in PA by about 300k?

Do we recall that Biden won PA by 70k in 2020., and the GOP has gained support since then.

Do we think the Dems were more or less efficient at ballot harvesting that year?

Do we think the GOP might be more or less organized at getting out the vote in 2024?

Just thinking out loud. Like I said, Kamala has no advantage that Biden lacked, and some apparent disadvantages.

Seems absurd to expect her to do better than 2020 Biden.

I don't see any reason their ballot harvesting ops would be less effective now. They've had four more years to organize and consolidate power, how could they have lost any capacity?

Because they don't have the advantage of an ongoing pandemic to motivate against in-person voting and creating cover for a sizeable increase in absentee ballots.

I think there's just going to be fewer ballots out there to that are ripe for harvest, ultimately.

Kamala has no advantage that Biden lacked

Except what Curtis Yarvin dubs "Moore's Law of election 'fortification.'"

There are rumors, stemming from the boss himself, that Republicans found some “secret” to help improve turnout. I’m skeptical, but you never know.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/28/us/politics/trump-secret-house-republicans-panic.html

Elon musk lottery?

Might be the efforts of Scott Pressler in PA. The guy exhudes weirdo, cult leader energy and if someone could turn it around for the GOP there, I think it's him.

My guess is Republicans are just using the same election 'tech' that Democrats used last cycle. Shady stuff like vote harvesting.

In general it just doesn’t make sense, given that the demographics showing Harris making new headway compared to Biden are basically swapped in comparison to what you would usually suspect. Crosstab-delving within polls is generally discouraged unless they have wild results, but the issue in this cycle is that all top-line polls are being exceedingly risk-averse in anticipation that their jobs are on the line if they get another huge overwhelming ‘miss’ in getting Trump wrong after the last two elections. The only A-rated pollster (before Selzer) whose methodology isn’t just ‘herd now, answer questions after the election’ so far is AtlasIntel, and they just released a poll stating that Trump is ahead in all swing states.

I would recommend buying the dip in terms of Trump’s odds of winning Iowa obviously, but polling is just totally broken this year. Emerson releasing a poll showing the exact opposite of Selzer in Iowa today (even as Emerson has historically underestimated Trump) is just another example.

Both Emerson and Atlasintel are on watch as some of the worst herders this year. Emerson is especially bad. I'd trust Selzer over these guys just based on reputation beforehand, but especially after learning they're cooking the statistical books.

none of the polls he's including are unweighted; when pollsters get results, they weight them depending on their predicted turnout which is heavily biased towards the last similar election which will necessarily reduce variance

his assumptions are just wrong: no, they won't be a binomial distribution even in theory, and almost no one uses random phone dialer to randomly select voters; they have models and try to find the voters which fit the proxies in their models through panels, surveys, mixed-mode contacts, etc.

His article isn't about "herding" as to how he defines it using his chosen metrics, it's a complaint by an alleged model maker that the people's who work he's relying on stealing don't have more variance which would make his model better. The article is really about pollsters being cowards, which make the almost guaranteed Silver final prediction being 50:50 all the more funny. Nate's a coward only because the people whose work he steals relies on are cowards!

This isn't herding which Silver admits when he refers to 538 penalizing late polls which move towards released polls calling it herding. NYT/Sienna, Washington Post, ABC, the "golds standards," etc., are herding when they release a poll in Sept which is Harris+5 and then just so happen to conveniently get a near identical prediction as Emerson which has been claiming a close race all along. Those pollsters aren't just honest non-manipulators who happened to get Harris+1/Tie as their final result joining all the dirty manipulators.

It's honestly perplexing to me why Silver continues to have such high esteem in these spaces, but it's easy money every election cycle.

cooking the statistical books

pollsters cook statistical books when they weight and predict turnout the same way Nate Silver "cooks the statistical books" when he weights polls in his glorified poll average

Selzer isn't a coward by releasing a Harris+3 for Iowa, but whatever the reason for it and I have my speculations, she'll get a double digit miss as a result.

Polls have long weighted their results, but there's ways to do it well, and ways to do it poorly. The goal is to calibrate demographic metrics based on likely voter data to create a facsimile of a perfectly representative sample. Getting it correct makes for more accurate polls. Getting it wrong in an innocent way can lead to mixups like 2016, where there was insufficient weighting by education especially in swing states.

But with degrees of freedom comes the ability to misuse it, where pollsters can coax their models to produce results they think are "better". Or they can just not release results that show something they think is strange. No matter what happens, polls should still show something resembling a normal distribution. They should create their model first, then enter in their results and see what pops out. The fact they're not getting a normal distribution is evidence that they're looking at results, then tweaking the model and rerunning afterwards, effectively mangling the results into whatever they desire. The fact that this is very prominent around a few polling houses and not others should be an indication that something is wrong.

Selzer isn't a coward by releasing a Harris+3 for Iowa, but whatever the reason for it and I have my speculations, she'll get a double digit miss as a result.

I'd gladly take an even-money bet that Selzer is off by less than 10 points.

The point was trying to make is that because they're all weighted and because the underlying data are not random, you would not expect to see the variance numbers Silver is using as his thresholds. The claim of binomial distribution around +-6 is dependent on the assumptions Silver is making, but those assumptions are wrong. Polls are done individually, they're tailored individually. When Silver writes articles like this, he comes off as someone who would be actually lost if he ever attempted to conduct a poll and then he makes a bunch of statements about polling generally using assumptions which are just wrong for polling.

Polling with predictive capacity is extraordinarily difficult. The end prediction is what matters, not the particulars of the models they use. The models are a tool, they're not the entire prediction. Of course I think pollsters who adjust their model to better fit what they believe is the correct result and they should. I have far more respect for individual pollsters than aggregators, who I consider to just be poll readers.

If I was Selzer, I would have gone back and tried again because her poll is ridiculous for a variety of reasons we can see in the information released about the demos she reached and what they care about. I understand aggregators don't like this and they don't like when variance shrinks, but the pollsters are the ones making the predictions more so than the aggregators stealing their work.

I'd gladly take an even-money bet that Selzer is off by less than 10 points.

Well, I didn't expect a response like this and didn't check back here. I am already overbudget on political bets this season, but I likely would have taken this depending on the amount and hassle to set this up. Bravo, though! I love to see people willing to put money down on their predictions.

Selzer is currently off by a whopping 16.5%. I should go back and look at my model for Iowa and why I undestimated Trump by 3 points. Selzer sold her credibility in an attempt to motivate downtrodden Democrats into thinking it was still possible. No serious person could have looked at some of the results from that poll, e.g., abortion most important topic, among others, and take it at face value; anyone who did should be discounted if not entirely ignored going forward.

For what it's worth, I'll cop to the fact that I would have lost the bet. Selzer had a pretty stellar record before, but this was a massive, high-profile mistake that she'll likely never recover from, at least not fully.

That’s not true according to Silver. https://www.natesilver.net/p/theres-more-herding-in-swing-state

Yes Emerson herds but Atlasintel he is showing as one of the higher quality ones. Also they’ve been very accurate in the past.

The list in that article isn't a list of all pollers, it's just the ones that he's accusing of herding. Atlasintel is borderline. It only looks OK relative to Emerson, where the evidence is more incontrovertible.

That’s not how Silver is framing it. He states:

By contrast, the most highly-rated polling firms like the Washington Post show much less evidence of herding. YouGov has actually had fewer close polls than you’d expect, although that’s partly because they’ve tended to be one of Harris’s best pollsters, so their surveys often gravitate toward numbers like Harris +3 rather than showing a tie.

Note that WaPo has the same odds of herding as AtlesIntel. So if Silver thinks WaPo isn’t herding, then he thinks atlasintel isn’t either.

Alright, yeah I've reread it and you're correct.

are on watch as some of the worst herders

I assume you're referring to the chart titled 'Which pollsters are the biggest herders?'. Unless I'm reading this wrong AtlasIntel appears to be doing little or no herding, as their 'Actual' total of small margin polls matches the 'Theory' total of small margin polls. The smaller the fraction in the 'Odds against...' column, the more herding they are doing right? By my reading Redfield, Emerson and InsiderAdvantage are herding most, while AtlasIntel, WaPo and Rasmussen are doing the least.

You are right and the other poster is wrong. Read the article and not what Ben Garrison stated.

Like I said to the other guy, that chart does not include all pollsters, it just includes the ones that show the worst signs of herding. AtlasIntel is borderline, and only looks ok next to egregious examples like Redfield and Wilton.

And you seemed to miss the context where Silver said WaPo is one of the high quality non herding. Silver had them as the same odds as Atlasintel. So Silver, who published the article, clearly disagrees with your assertion.

I am a native of Tennessee, have lived in Kentucky, and currently live in Ohio. None of these could be described as "blue states." Pretty much everyone that I talk to on a daily basis lives and votes in one of these three states.

For the last three or four months, almost every person I know has been assaulting my ears, unsolicited, with monologues about how Trump is a racist, sexist and fascist, and he must be kept out of the White House. Literally - I'm not saying that as a stock example, I mean that people have actually used those terms, in series, in sentences to describe him and his politics. Additionally, multiple people have told me they wish the would-be assassin's bullets didn't miss their mark. These people include my dad - a blue-collar tradesman; my coworkers, at a blue-collar manufacturing firm; my mom, a retail worker; a close friend of mine who joined the Army; and a guy I know who works in construction. No matter their age, race, or who the winners' policies would be likely to benefit, there is a lockstep consensus, even though these are all people who are the types of people, in the appropriate states, that you'd expect to support Trump. The only exceptions that I personally have are my fiancee and her family, a close friend from church, and an old coworker. All other people are happy to start venting about Trump to me.

(Notably - and this is not meant to be boo outgroup - I never hear anyone talk about how the election outcomes, or the policy outcomes that follow from that, will affect them personally. One guy I work with did at least reference his neighbors who are voting for Trump because they don't want their taxes to go up, which he described as "greed.")

My subjective impression, is that this is primarily caused by the successful capture by liberals of so many institutions, resulting in leftism becoming the "default position" in America. When all the big companies, all the media, and all the artists and musicians push in the same direction, you have to be a serious non-conformist to push the other way; and that is an uncommon trait. With that in mind, I don't know how the Republicans ever win any elections.

Given that the election is a dead heat, the House is split and by thin margins, and a conservative leaning SC, perhaps there isn't any non-conformity so much as an extremely common difference of opinion. I'd wager that R's win elections because approximately half of voters are R's.

Did you go eat at McShlucks after?

LOL

Tbh, it's like I'm the guy in the original post except I really want it to stop.

With that in mind, I don't know how the Republicans ever win any elections.

My impression is that people will say one thing and vote another. It’s the only explanation, because I see the same pattern of virtually everyone hating on conservatives or its ideology.

I have no idea what's going to happen. But I do think there's a real chance of a Harris blowout. Trump was underestimated in 2016, but the previous 8 years have not been kind to his reputation among low-information voters. The abortion debate and Harris's gender have joined revulsion to Donald Trump as factors polarizing a lot of female voters to the left. I suspect we're going to see unprecedented gender splits on the ballot.

Whether anyone likes it or not, Trump is uniquely polarizing, with 40% of the population loving him, 50% hating his guts, and 10% trying to figure out what to do. As someone who moved from column B to column C, I don't see how Trump gets over the hump of how many people believe he's deeply evil.

I'm going to vote for him for the first time ever, but if I had any money to put down, I'd bet on Harris.

Yeah, I’m thinking the same. I’m disappointed since I think illegal immigration is going to be a huge issue for the western world in the coming decades and we needed to set a strong precedent with Trump for mass removal, as well as his government efficiency and moves towards Musk being big bonuses. But unfortunately the sole champion we had was this guy who couldn’t get enough women on-side, because he is quite frankly a pig and a womanizer, and such a megalomaniac he couldn’t take an L

My only hope now is that Kamala wasn’t lying with her pivot towards the centre. It’s a very slim hope; I know.

I wish my boy Musk luck - not sure he will survive a Kamala term.

If it makes you feel better, there was never any chance Trump would manage a significant removal of non-natives. It's as likely as ending social security.

I'll bet you a Trading Spaces dollar right now that Elon Musk is alive and well when Kamala leaves the Oval Office, whether it's 2029 or 2033.

I don’t mean literally survive, I mean he’ll be ruined from a business perspective

I'll take the other end of that bet. In 4 years, Musk will be fine and about as rich as he is now.

As rich as he is now would be a huge hit to him, given we should expect large growth. Or do you mean he will still be the richest man on earth?

sure, if you want to retreat to that particular bailey.

the great filter is rocket men get thrown in jail before they can explore the stars

For what it's worth, the Soviets did fish Korolev out of the gulag after WWII because they needed him...

Musk is hardly anywhere as technically competent as Korolev

Korolev's also had the benefits of state resources, sharashkas and priority in a state planned economy go a a long way.

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