This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Crikey, my existing view of 538 commentary (outside of their polls) is that they possibly could be more progressive if they tried, but that they would have to try very hard.
If the new regime is "You are conservative? To the gulag!" then wow. Nate got out at the right time (I think he's a lefty himself, but at least he can produce good data even if he then has to write a post about why it's terrible the Bad People are slightly getting an advantage in Woollybully, ND).
You can only hide reality so long before you're condemned by reason to insanity to admit what the data indicates over time. I'll give this one to 538, but this doesn't score any integrity points for them on their side of the ledger, IMO.
More options
Context Copy link
What are you havering on about. The controversy here is not that Elliot Morris is threatening to exclude Rasmussen because conservatism is bad, rather the exclusion is being considered on the grounds that Rasmussen is a partisan agency that produces Republican-friendly polling deliberately. This is still a silly thing to do for the reasons Nate points out, but the reason their close affiliation with conservative organisations is somewhat incriminating, or at least suspicious, in the eyes of Morris, is that it calls into question the motivation behind their polling.
And who decides Rasmussen is partisan while the left-leaning, Democrat-supporting polling groups are fair and impartial? That's the problem here. Maybe Rasmussen is partisan, but this makes it look like "if you produce any results that are Republican-friendly, we will consider you partisan". That isn't much use if the results on particular questions really are friendly to Republican views because the general public is switching to a more conservative view of a topic. It further means if you want not to be tagged as "unclean", you better massage your data not to get Republican-friendly results.
How do you think that is going to help with finding out the true attitudes on the ground? "Why won't anyone vote for our 'teach three year olds to be furries' initiative, it polled so well! Truly a mystery!"
You are wildly overestimating the effect of pollster 'house effects' in both directions. Even PPP, which is explicitly affiliated with the Democratic party, has overrated Democratic candidates by an average of just 0.9% - and to be fair Rasmussen is not much higher than that in the opposite direction. Of course such fine margins do matter in elections, but when you say something like this you're giving a bit of a false impression;
Polling 'bias' probably isn't turning thumping conservative majorities in issue polling into close runs or liberal majorities, where they exist they are very slightly shifting the scale of the majority or in a very, very close cases they might tip the balance. In any case, we can rest easy because the big-name 'establishment' pollsters publish issue polls favourable to Republicans all the time, so clearly they aren't afraid to do so.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Upthread, people are saying that Rasmussen is as partisan as the average polling company, but it's the only one that's partisan for Republicans.
If you accept that claim, then you'd expect to see a story like:
several times over, for the companies with the same amount (but opposite valence) of partisanship.
The partisan lean per se was not the cause of the letter. After all, there are other R-biased pollsters he didn't go after. Harris for instance has a similar average overestimate of Rs to Rasmussen. The crucial point was their close relationship to explicitly Republican/conservative outlets and institution.
I'll repeat myself: would a close relationship to explicitly Democrat/progressive outlets and institutions trigger the same response? I don't think so, and neither does Nate Silver:
https://natesilver.substack.com/p/polling-averages-shouldnt-be-political
I think this is a quite different claim. What I suspect is the case here is that the undoubtedly Democratic views of the 538 team lead them, consciously or perhaps more likely not, to be more suspicious of right-leaning pollsters. Which is to say that they genuinely do think Rasmussen is guilty of uniquely bad practice, but perhaps yes, their ideological dispositions brought them to that conclusion. So I don't think Morris considers it targeting of Conservatives per se, he just sincerely thinks that Rasmussen are unusually unscrupulous pollsters.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link