US Presidential Election 2020

[a_majoor]

More on the unreliabilty of polling. Even the Biden campaign is now stating polls are not accurate. Obviously the methodology needs to be changed dramatically if polling is ever going to be a trusted and reliable source of information again:

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/10/17/biden-campaign-admits-the-polls-are-off-n2578277

Biden Campaign Manager Confirms What We All Knew About These 2020 Polls
Matt VespaMatt Vespa| @mvespa1|Posted: Oct 17, 2020 3:45 AM

We’ve been saying it for weeks now. The 2020 polls are trash. Things just don’t make sense. Joe Biden cannot be up by 10 points over Trump and be in a dead heat with him in Miami-Dade County, the most populous Democratic county in the Sunshine State. I’ve seen polls where college-educated voters are oversampled. Democrats are oversampled. And some firms haven’t moved away from registered voter models. Zipcodes where Trump Democrats live are bypassed and suburban GOP voters are targeted more than rural ones for the obvious reason that the former group is hostile to Trump. Also, yes, there is a shy Trump vote this year. It’s projected to be larger, with urban black women likely to fall into this category. Also, not everyone is as forthcoming with these pollsters over the phone. We have data on that too. What about young people? Youth interest in this election has dipped to levels not seen since 2000. We could see one million fewer young people vote in this cycle.

And if Biden is ahead by that much, he could hunker down in his bunker until Election Day. There’s no need for an ad blitz either, but look at where he’s campaigning folks. If you’re up by this much, there’s no need to give a speech in Detroit. Some liberal folks think conservatives are in denial mode. Wrong. Even the Biden camp admitted yesterday that they’re not up by double-digits in the polls (via Fox News):

Biden campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon, in grassroots summit, emphasizes that their polling does NOT show a double-digit lead nationally.

"Please take the fact that we are not ahead by double digits"

“Those are inflated national public polling numbers” pic.twitter.com/v95za3XRGZ

— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) October 16, 2020
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign manager warned against trusting inflated national polling numbers released this week, which showed Biden in a double-digit lead over incumbent candidate President Trump.

"Please take the fact that we are not ahead by double digits,” Jen O’Malley said Friday, according to a New York Times reporter. “Those are inflated national public polling numbers.”

Polls released this week by NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist and NBC News/Wall Street Journal show Biden ahead of Trump in national polls by 11 percent.

Although Real Clear Politics, which compares several polls and combines the average has Biden in a lead ahead of Trump by 8.9 percent in national polls.

Though national polls are less important than key state polls, and Biden will need to secure a number of swing states.

Yeah, things aren’t looking too hot for Biden on the swing state front. Trafalgar, the most accurate battleground state pollster for the 2016 cycle, pretty much says as of now that Trump is headed for re-election. Trump has, among other things, the enthusiasm gap on his side by a huge margin. Since 1988, the candidate who has held that edge has won the election. I think that’s why Biden’s campaign manager admitted this; she’s popping warning flares early.

The take away from all this is polls are pretty much dead as a source of information anymore, but even using "push polls" as a form of disinformation is also no longer effective - everyone pretty much discounts polls anymore. I would suggest the same issues of methodology and unreliability also affect polls in Canada and throughout most of the Western world.

Of course the question of what can be used to replace polls is also fraught with issues. "Big Data" models based on information scraped from the Internet not only suffer "self selection" issues, but also deliberate manipulation, such as we saw when Twitter and Facebook blocked any posting or reposting of the New York Post story of Hunter Biden's emails, and this is far more pernicious since it is much mroe difficult to see the data or the underlying algorithms, not to mention any manual "placing fingers on the scale". Most people also don't realize there is an entire ecosystem of much smaller social media sites like Gab.ai, Ideka or Minds, which also act as conduits of information on smaller scales.

Farther upthread I mentioned an article which suggested a possible outcome based on looking at economic data such as ordering materials, but that requires a large chanin of inferences, and monitoring large numbers of vendors for prolonged periods of time (and of course other factors can come into play - for example candidates from previous elections can simply recycle a lot of materials like campaign signs).

So what is the answer? I really don't know. Some analytical methodology incorporating multiple information sources is obviously going to be needed, but which information sources are suitable and what sorts of weighting each different source should get will need lots of study.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Finally, why is he campaigning in GA anyway?  Trump needs to secure the undecideds (whatever miniscule amount is left undecided) so he should be campaigning in swing or even Blue states.  His base is voting for him anyway, so why bother at this point in the campaign?

Because strangely, Georgia is now a swing state: some polls have Biden/Trump tied at 47%. Others have the two within 1-2 points of each other. Go figure.

 

[Remius]

Because strangely, Georgia is now a swing state: some polls have Biden/Trump tied at 47%. Others have the two within 1-2 points of each other. Go figure.

I think his point is that Trump should not have to be campaigning there at this stage of the election.

 

[Remius]

Biden’s team is taking nothing for granted.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-campaign-warns-against-complacency-in-memo-donald-trump-can-still-win-this

A good position to take given what happened last time.

 

[Jarnhamar]

Biden’s team is taking nothing for granted.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-campaign-warns-against-complacency-in-memo-donald-trump-can-still-win-this

A good position to take given what happened last time.

I see what you did there

 

[dimsum]

Because strangely, Georgia is now a swing state: some polls have Biden/Trump tied at 47%. Others have the two within 1-2 points of each other. Go figure.

Huh.  I thought GA was firmly red.  Who knew.

 

[Brad Sallows]

GA polling +/- was one of the narrowest in the RCP "Battlegrounds", and has moved in Biden's favour in past few days.  If the opinion polls are accurate, it's a fight and not to be ignored.

 

[Remius]

GA polling +/- was one of the narrowest in the RCP "Battlegrounds", and has moved in Biden's favour in past few days.  If the opinion polls are accurate, it's a fight and not to be ignored.

And here I thought that polls should be ignored... ;D

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Helmet Norpoth is predicting with 91% certainty that Donald Trump will win the Electoral College.  He is a Political Statistician from Stony Brook University.  Considering Stony Brook's prominence in Math and Science, I put more faith in their research than most pundit polls.  He also argues opinion polls don't really matter.  His model has correctly predicted 25 of the past 27 Presidential Elections:

http://primarymodel.com/

 

[Remius]

Helmet Norpoth is predicting with 91% certainty that Donald Trump will win the Electoral College.  He is a Political Statistician from Stony Brook University.  Considering Stony Brook's prominence in Math and Science, I put more faith in their research than most pundit polls.  He also argues opinion polls don't really matter.  His model has correctly predicted 25 of the past 27 Presidential Elections:

http://primarymodel.com/

Good source and to be honest it shouldn’t shock anyone if he does win the electoral college.  Some state races are just to tight and will probably come down to a county or two.  And as I’ve said I think the polls are tighter than they look.

 

[Infanteer]

Helmet Norpoth is predicting with 91% certainty that Donald Trump will win the Electoral College.  He is a Political Statistician from Stony Brook University.  Considering Stony Brook's prominence in Math and Science, I put more faith in their research than most pundit polls.  He also argues opinion polls don't really matter.  His model has correctly predicted 25 of the past 27 Presidential Elections:

http://primarymodel.com/

Meanwhile, Allan Lichtman, who has been 9 for 9 in predicting Presidential elections since 1984, says his model indicates a Biden win.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/america-votes/after-predicting-trump-s-2016-win-allan-lichtman-says-he-knows-who-s-going-to-win-in-2020-1.5081463

I wonder what Grimelda the Gypsy Fortune Teller things, because she's probably just as likely to get it right....

 

[Remius]

Helmet Norpoth is predicting with 91% certainty that Donald Trump will win the Electoral College.  He is a Political Statistician from Stony Brook University.  Considering Stony Brook's prominence in Math and Science, I put more faith in their research than most pundit polls.  He also argues opinion polls don't really matter.  His model has correctly predicted 25 of the past 27 Presidential Elections:

http://primarymodel.com/

I looked a bit further into it.  Some information on that sort of prognostication.

https://theconversation.com/political-forecast-models-arent-necessarily-more-accurate-than-polls-or-the-weather-144266

Another similar non poll prognosticator.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/allan-lichtman-presidential-election-accurate-prediction-trump-biden/

Interesting stuff.  Thanks for the breadcrumbs HB.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Meanwhile, Allan Lichtman, who has been 9 for 9 in predicting Presidential elections since 1984, says his model indicates a Biden win.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/america-votes/after-predicting-trump-s-2016-win-allan-lichtman-says-he-knows-who-s-going-to-win-in-2020-1.5081463

I wonder what Grimelda the Gypsy Fortune Teller things, because she's probably just as likely to get it right....

Incorrect:

Eichtman's model predicts the "popular vote" not the winner of the election.  He predicted Donald Trump would win the popular vote in 2016 which he didn't. His model also didn't correctly predict the 2000 election.  Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election. 

I looked a bit further into it.  Some information on that sort of prognostication.

https://theconversation.com/political-forecast-models-arent-necessarily-more-accurate-than-polls-or-the-weather-144266

Another similar non poll prognosticator.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/allan-lichtman-presidential-election-accurate-prediction-trump-biden/

Interesting stuff.  Thanks for the breadcrumbs HB.

I find it interesting because I think popular vote is an irrelevant metric in a system like ours or the American Electoral College.

 

[mariomike]

Eichtman's model predicts the "popular vote" not the winner of the election. 

Pretty easy to predict. The Republicans have lost it in six of the last seven presidential elections.

That is not including the next one in a couple of weeks.

 

[ModlrMike]

Who cares? That's not how the US system works. Of course neither is it how our system works.

 

[mariomike]

Who cares? 

Someone apparently does,

Eichtman's model predicts the "popular vote" not the winner of the election.  He predicted Donald Trump would win the popular vote in 2016 which he didn't. His model also didn't correctly predict the 2000 election.  Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election. 

I find it interesting because I think popular vote is an irrelevant metric in a system like ours or the American Electoral College.

Of course neither is it how our system works.

If you want to get into Canadian Politics, here's 42 pages,

Electoral Reform (Senate, Commons, & Gov Gen)
https://army.ca/forums/threads/25692.1025
42 pages.
LOCKED.

 

[a_majoor]

The primary interest in this article is the different methodology being used (not to mention the actual inclusion of third party candidates - many people who lie to pollsters may falsely claim to be voting third party - this gives an idea how much of a shift is realistically possible). This is also perhaps the first pollster who openly speaks of the potential of vote fraud:

https://pjmedia.com/election/victoria-taft/2020/10/18/pollster-who-called-trump-win-in-2016-is-back-with-2020-call-and-issues-a-big-red-flag-in-pennsylvania-n1066382?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=onsite&utm_campaign=582

Pollster Who Called Trump Win In 2016 is Back With 2020 Call And Issues a Big Red Flag in Pennsylvania
By Victoria Taft Oct 18, 2020 1:31 PM ET

The latest state polling by the Trafalgar Group predicts another win for President Trump in the upper 270’s to low 280’s in the Electoral College, but the CEO highlights a couple of big cautions for Republicans.

In an lengthy interview on the National Review “The Editors” podcast, the Trafalgar Group CEO Robert Cahaly told NR’s Rich Lowry that he predicts Trump will win the battleground states of Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Texas. He said things are tighter in Wisconsin and Arizona, though Cahaly says Trump has the lead and will “probably win” in Arizona.

In Michigan, where Senatorial candidate John James has a slight lead, Cahaly says that a combination of James’s strength, hatred for Governor Whitmer’s COVID response and her job killing Green New Deal, and the Trump economy will propel the president to a win there.

A huge red flag is over Pennsylvania, where Cahaly predicts a Trump win, but said the state is ripe for voter fraud.

    I believe Pennsylvania to be the number one state that Trump could win and have stolen from him through voter fraud. Pennsylvania has had a lot of voter fraud over the years and giving people unsolicited absentee ballots is literally like giving voter fraud operations steroids. I think it’s the state he’s most likely to win and not get the votes from.

Over at Hot Air, Allahpundit nutshells why Trafalgar enjoys the respect it’s gotten.

    They’re the firm that called Trump’s wins in Michigan and Pennsylvania four years ago when nearly every other pollster was predicting Clinton victories, some by blowout margins. (Trafalgar was the only outfit to find Trump ahead in Michigan in any survey taken that year.)

The IBD/TIPP poll of 2016 also predicted a Trump win.

The Trafalgar CEO says conservative voters are five to one less likely to take polls than progressives – worse than even in 2016. He said that reluctance by conservatives to take polls has moved from 4 conservatives for every progressive to 5:1 in just the past few weeks. People who hate Trump are glad to tell anyone, especially a pollster. That’s why he believes so many of the other polls showing a clear Biden win are wrong.

Conservatives, he said, are reluctant to admit voting for Trump because they don’t trust pollsters to keep their identities secret. Conservatives are concerned about social blowback such as losing their jobs or worse.

Cahaly also said that the built-in “social desirability bias” – telling pollsters the politically correct answer –  is at work as usual but believes it may be responsible for as many as a five to eight points difference in the actual polling numbers. That’s a huge gap that many pollsters, he claims, don’t attempt to mitigate in their sampling. He said his short polls, taken by text, email, phone and by other digital means, take into consideration such questions (that other pollsters have stolen) as “who is your neighbor voting for” and “do you own a hunting or fishing license”?

Besides Pennsylvania voter fraud, Cahaly warned that Republicans have an achilles heel that they need to fix. He said they don’t appear to have a plan for health care. It’s why instead of attacking Amy Coney Barrett for her religious beliefs during the Senate confirmation hearings for the US Supreme Court, they harped on ObamaCare. He said if voters think their kid won’t get their asthma medicine by voting for Trump, they’ll vote for their kid. Yes, we know that, to the extent they have a plan, Trump and the Republicans will include coverage for preexisting conditions and drugs as they’ve so stated, at this point, but the perception is they don’t have a plan.

Cahaly says this is not a “persuasion election, it’s a motivational election.”

If you want motivation, look no further than the Trump rally in Georgia on Saturday night.

and the link to the podcast: https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/the-editors/

 

[OceanBonfire]

New strategy from Trump with him lagging behind Biden: hammering how the pandemic is nothing and going after scientists:

Trump dismisses pandemic, rips Fauci as 'disaster' in campaign all-staff call

He called the infectious disease expert and other top scientists "idiots."

In a remarkable move with 15 days to go until Election Day, President Donald Trump on an all-staff campaign call Monday morning leveled his most aggressive attacks yet on Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation%u2019s leading infectious disease expert on the president%u2019s own coronavirus task force, calling him a %u201Cdisaster%u201D while also outright dismissing the pandemic, saying Americans are %u201Cover COVID%u201D as deaths near 220,000 in the United States and cases rise around the country.

"People are tired of COVID. Yep, there's gonna be spikes, there's gonna be no spikes, there's gonna be vaccines%u2014with or without vaccines, people are tired of COVID," the president said on the call, seemingly annoyed to even talk about the ongoing pandemic.

Trump then pointed to his packed rallies as evidence that "people" are saying "whatever" regrading the pandemic that%u2019s still ravaging the country. "I have the biggest rallies I've ever had and we have COVID. People are saying whatever, just leave us alone. They're tired of it," he said.

Trump then turned to his fire to medical experts, blasting Fauci in some of his harshest language yet, even openly seemingly disappointed that he can%u2019t fire him because, he said, it would be a bigger "bomb."

"People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots -- these, these people, these people that have gotten it wrong," Trump said.

...


https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-dismisses-pandemic-rips-fauci-disaster-campaign-staff/story?id=73697476

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-calls-fauci-disaster/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump/trump-calls-fauci-a-disaster-and-seeks-to-reassure-his-team-he-can-win-idUSKBN2742AD

https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-virus-outbreak-joe-biden-donald-trump-nevada-00a1dc6f5932c9fe778ee5e9cabacc71

https://globalnews.ca/news/7405711/donald-trump-anthony-fauci-disaster-covid-19/

 

[a_majoor]

Perhaps the biggest story isn't the story itself, but rather how the corporate and social media have gon all out to try to hide or dismiss the story. Even more disturbing is the knowledge that this laptop drive has apparently been in the hands of the FBI for more a year already. Given how "leaky" the agency has been with every sort of rumor or speculation raised against Trump, their silence on this matter is also very telling:

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/19/the-biden-corruption-scandal-isnt-about-hunter-its-about-joe/

The Biden Corruption Scandal Isn’t About Hunter, It’s About Joe
The Hunter Biden scandal indicates that Joe Biden, while vice president of the United States, knowingly allowed his son to sell access to the Obama administration, then lied about it.
By Margot Cleveland
OCTOBER 19, 2020

Hunter Biden’s addiction is not the issue. Joe Biden’s addiction is: His addiction to power and money. And it is the evidence of the former vice president’s corruption, and the national security risk our country would face by electing Biden, that is the story of the MacBook hard drive, not the salacious, verified photographs and videos of Hunter Biden.

For nearly a week, corporate media successfully ignored or downplayed news of the trove of Hunter Biden’s emails, texts, photographs, and videos recovered from a laptop abandoned at a Delaware computer repair store. Then confirmation of the authenticity of the materials first reported in the New York Post, and the release of a second set of emails — also confirmed— from another source finally forced the press to acknowledge the issue.

On Friday evening, CBS News’ Bo Erickson asked Joe Biden about the New York Post story as the Democrat candidate for president departed from a campaign stop in Michigan. “I have no response. It’s another smear campaign — right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask,” Biden snipped at the long-time reporter.

With more details coming out daily, this non-answer will not placate even a compliant press for long. Nor will the “Russia disinformation” narrative pushed by Biden’s media boosters suffice because multiple confirmations of the evidence establish this story is not disinformation.

snip

While Hunter Biden’s highly lucrative position on the board of the Ukrainian company Burisma has received some press, the media all but ignored the U.S. Senate committee report on “Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns.” This report not only details “examples of extensive and complex financial transactions involving the Bidens, it also describes the quandary other U.S. governmental officials faced as they attempted to guide and support Ukraine’s anticorruption efforts.”

The report’s key findings included concerns raised by “officials in Vice President Joe Biden’s office about the perception of a conflict of interest with respect to Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board,” and a senior State Department official’s warning to Vice President Biden or his staff “that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. policy in Ukraine.” The report also confirmed that former Secretary of State John Kerry “had knowledge of Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board,” even though he falsely denied that knowledge during a town hall event in 2019.

The report was not limited to Hunter Biden’s role on the Burisma board and the Obama-Biden administration’s knowledge of that conflict of interest. The Senate committees also detailed Hunter’s receipt of “a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow,” and Hunter’s opening of “a bank account with Gongwen Dong to fund a $100,000 global spending spree with James Biden and Sara Biden,” as well as his “business associations with Ye Jianming, Gongwen Dong, and other Chinese nationals linked to the Communist government and the People’s Liberation Army.”

So all the reports of "collusion" turned out to be true after all - just pointed at the wrong person.

The fallout of this still remains to be seen. Certainly the behaviour of the FBI leadership for the past four years is called into question, but given the evident selling of access to the then sitting Vice President to American adversaries like Russia and China, there are massive security implications for Biden, as well as the rest of the Obama Administration - how deeply was it compromised and who else knew about Bidens "pay for play" activities? If President Trump wins a second term, then this boil will be lanced, but if he loses, then all we will ever know is the tip of the iceburg this exposed.

 

[CBH99]

You may be 100% right.

However, the mainstream media - especially the American mainstream media - has discredited itself so much over the last 4 years, a very small segment will take it at face value anyway.


American politics, as portrayed by a sensationalized & idiotic mainstream media, has become more of a reality show than what people interpret as 'news'.  And as such, if the show remains the same but the characters change - I think a lot of folks will just get sick of the whole thing altogether, and stop paying attention. 


:2c: