US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5741

On October 23 2016 12:20 Dan HH wrote:

This nonsense again

-youth voter turnout for brexit wasn't particularly low, that was a myth propagated by Sky News, there is 0 data to support it
-remain was ahead by only 2 points on aggregate the day before the vote, Clinton is currently ahead by 6 points on aggregate
-polling is more reliable for cyclical elections than for one-off referendums
-there is lower enthusiasm (i.e. percentage of voters saying they 'strongly' support their candidate) among Trump voters than Clinton's according to the latest Fox poll, I don't know of others that measure this

Every single factor in that argument is either wrong or unsubstantiated, but even if it weren't and your dream scenario of a brexit repeat happened, aggregators being wrong by 4 points is currently not enough to close the gap

On October 23 2016 20:44 Elroi wrote:
That is such a shitty development. People have lost faith on the establsihment so they can only feel enthusiasm for scumbags? They distrust experts to much that they can only believe lies?

I dont necessarily believe everthing nettles is saying - he always interprets everything in favor of trump. but i am afraid that people are more in favor of trump than they say in the polls because they know they will be percieved as idiots. Correct me if im wrong but wasnt it the same with the brexit polls?

On October 23 2016 20:44 Elroi wrote:
That is such a shitty development. People have lost faith on the establsihment so they can only feel enthusiasm for scumbags? They distrust experts to much that they can only believe lies?

I dont necessarily believe everthing nettles is saying - he always interprets everything in favor of trump. but i am afraid that people are more in favor of trump than they say in the polls because they know they will be percieved as idiots. Correct me if im wrong but wasnt it the same with the brexit polls?

On October 23 2016 18:41 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

Brexit turnout for 65+ was 90%.Turnout for 18-29 was far lower.What about that is "wrong" to say? Thats why the pollsters were so far off.The pollsters predicted Labour to do FAR better in the UK general too, thats why Camoron offered the in/out vote in the first place in the case of a conservative majority - he never expected to achieve a majority just save face.All common knowledge and yet another example of pollsters being wrong.

Look at the crowds Clinton is getting compared to the crowds Obama got in 2008 or even 2012.Compare Clintons crowds to Trumps crowds.This ain't the primaries anymore and she still can't pull big crowds, just over two weeks from poll day? She is struggling bigtime and the public is losing trust in the mainstream media daily.Check Gallup polls, trust in media has never been lower, even amongst democrat supporters.

On October 23 2016 21:16 bardtown wrote:


Not idiots - bigots. When the media is obsessed with portraying a certain group of people in a negative light then people will be more reluctant to openly identify with that group. There are other factors too. Certain demographics being harder to reach for polling, etc. I doubt there will be sufficient shy Trump voters to make up for his deficit, at any rate.

(oh, and distrust in the media includes Fox News/right-leaning sites,

The brexit polls predicted a close race.

These polls don't predict a close race.

One reason for the decline in Democrats' intent to vote could be the depressed percentage of young voters this year saying they will definitely vote -- now at 47%, down from 58% in 2012 and from a peak of 74% in 2008.

On October 23 2016 21:26 TheTenthDoc wrote:


Clinton got a 30K crowd in Ohio not too long ago, I'm not too sure why you're spewing her low crowd numbers nonsense.

Plus, the Democratic surrogate crowds are enormous-look at Michelle Obama's-and those are just as important for her.

(oh, and distrust in the media includes Fox News/right-leaning sites, who I don't trust at all-don't think for a second distrust is entirely based around the left-leaning sources)



The shy Trump effect was pretty much debunked in the primaries, where if anything he underperformed his polling until Cruz and Kasich had the terrible idea to publicly tell their voters to vote for each other. People who support him will shout it to the hills-that's why they have yard signs, wear obnoxious branded gear, and go to rallies.

On October 23 2016 21:51 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

You'll find support for Fox among republicans has dropped sharply the past decade or so.Everyone knows this.I never stated otherwise.

Pretty much nobody expected Brexit to win, especially after Jo Cox's murder.Look at what happened to the stock market, look at what happened to gold, everyone expected unsures to heavily lean remain.Didn't happen.Even disregarding the poll that had remain up by 10% (the poll with the largest sample size in the entire brexit poll dataset) the day before the poll, the best case scenario put out by others of a 2% remain lead in the polls turning into a 4% leave win is astonishing.The pollsters were shockingly off.


Three polls predict a close race, the polls with Clinton up by 11-12% that have popped up recently have been shown to have incosistencies in the dataset that i went over previously namely oversampling of strong democrat leans compared to strong republican leans.I believe it was something like 30% strong Republican/36% strong dem lean in the sampleset but you might want to go back and check yourself.The most important information was what i posted from Gallup a few days ago showing that intention to vote among 18-34 is down sharply from 2012 levels let alone 2008 levels and these are the people most likely to vote democrat.This is exactly what we saw with brexit, far lower turnout among the youth vote making the polling beforehand questionable in value.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/195806/americans-less-sure-vote-president.aspx?g_source=Election 2016&g_medium=newsfeed&g_campaign=tiles

On October 23 2016 21:51 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
That doesn't worry you at all? I'd say it's a compelling argument for a very strong Trump showing.

On October 23 2016 21:51 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

You'll find support for Fox among republicans has dropped sharply the past decade or so.Everyone knows this.I never stated otherwise.

On October 23 2016 23:50 TheTenthDoc wrote:


You threw in "trust in the mainstream media has never been lower even among Democrats" as though it has some relevance to this election in any way whatsoever, which to me means you somehow think it's going to be linked to decreased Democrat turnout when the current distrust in the media is pervasive throughout the left and right.

Also, the reason the close race hypothesis fails isn't the 11-12 point polls (which are obvious outliers just like the tied race polls). It's the consistent smattering of 5-7 point Clinton lead polls with no analogues for Trump alongside state polling that is heavily suggestive of a 5-7 point Clinton lead. Saying the race is close is saying all the state polling we're currently seeing is hugely off.

Trump has led in ONE poll in Florida since the Cuba embargo and tapes leaked. ONE. He cannot win the election without winning Florida.

On October 24 2016 00:25 Acrofales wrote:


Polls can be wrong. They come with error margins for a reason. And that is just for the statistical bias. Systematic bias is impossible to account for (without expensive and time consuming follow-up research).

If the polls were a sure thing, 538 would have Trump's chances of winning at 0%...

On October 23 2016 18:41 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

Brexit turnout for 65+ was 90%.Turnout for 18-29 was far lower.What about that is "wrong" to say? Thats why the pollsters were so far off.The pollsters predicted Labour to do FAR better in the UK general too, thats why Camoron offered the in/out vote in the first place in the case of a conservative majority - he never expected to achieve a majority just save face.All common knowledge and yet another example of pollsters being wrong.

Look at the crowds Clinton is getting compared to the crowds Obama got in 2008 or even 2012.Compare Clintons crowds to Trumps crowds.This ain't the primaries anymore and she still can't pull big crowds, just over two weeks from poll day? She is struggling bigtime and the public is losing trust in the mainstream media daily.Check Gallup polls, trust in media has never been lower, even amongst democrat supporters.

What we did was to take voters in our poll who said they were very likely to vote in the referendum, but still hadn’t decided whether to vote ‘Remain’ or ‘Leave’, and allocated them to one side or the other, on the basis of their answers to these questions, which regression analysis had shown to be strong predictors of a Remain or Leave voter:

‘Is Britain stronger by being in the EU, or weaker by being in the EU?’

‘Would remaining in the EU or leaving the EU be most risky for you personally?’

‘Would remaining in the EU or leaving the EU be most risky for you and your family?’

Those giving consistent ‘Remain’ answers or ‘Leave’ answers to these questions were reallocated accordingly. Far more undecided voters aligned with the Remain argument on these questions, so this reallocation increased the Remain vote in our poll – and made it more wrong.

Past elections and referendums have proved that estimating turnout, and who will actually vote, on the basis only of how likely respondents say they are to vote, is highly prone to error.

Populus decided to experiment with a different approach entirely. Our detailed analysis of the 2015 general election identified very strong relationships between demographic factors and likelihood to vote. Although we noted that these factors were not consistent over successive general elections, since the last general election was only a year ago, we decided to apply a ‘demographic propensity’ analysis to our EU referendum poll. This, in effect, assumed that even if the percentage turnout was not the same as at the general election, any increase in turnout (which we always assumed very likely) would occur fairly evenly across all demographic groups. The turnout weighting had the effect of further increasing the apparent Remain vote share in our poll – and, therefore, making our poll more wrong still.

A key factor in the referendum result was significant differential turnout, which our poll did not reflect. Overall turnout was about 8% higher than at the 2015 general election. But turnout in Scotland, which needed to be a key stronghold if Remain was to win, was lower than at the general election. The increase in turnout in London – the bedrock of the Remain vote – was much lower than in the rest of England. Among those who didn’t vote at the general election, but did vote in the referendum, blue-collar Eurosceptics vastly outnumbered pro-EU 18-24s.

On October 24 2016 01:57 LemOn wrote:
Does anyone actually vote proudly for Hillary? :D

On October 23 2016 21:51 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
Three polls predict a close race, the polls with Clinton up by 11-12% that have popped up recently have been shown to have incosistencies in the dataset that i went over previously namely oversampling of strong democrat leans compared to strong republican leans.I believe it was something like 30% strong Republican/36% strong dem lean in the sampleset but you might want to go back and check yourself.