God - thoughts and prayers 
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Rubio was one day saying the government jobs data was cooked for political reasons so we cannot trust what it says and then the next pleading with Florida residents to pay attention to the governmentâs National Hurricane Center projections on hurricane Milton.
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Projections that would no longer exist when NOAA is dissolved, as Project 2025 calls for - presumably for âclimate alarmismâ.
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Harris did her interview with 60 Minutes last night, which prefaced that interview with this segment on Trump pulling out of his previously agreed spot scheduled to air on the same night.
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1843446824105062712
For those who donât know, 60 Minutes is the USâ premier News Magazine show and now have a decades long tradition of putting both candidates through tough 1-1s in the autumn. It is as much a part of our normal election cycle as the debates. Trump didnât just pull out of a previously agreed upon interview, he is rejecting to participate in the expected ceremonies, one the press seemingly believe are vital for the voters to know who their candidates are and what they stand for. But itâs Kamala who wont do substantive interviewsâŚ
Anyway, this all just recalls this hilarious and revealing incident from a 60 Minutes appearance Trump did during his presidency. Leslie Stahl is one of the showâs anchors and the first pic shows her being a given a book by Trumpâs spokesperson detailing the Trump adminâs plan for a replacement of Obamacare. The second pic shows every page is blank 
Obviously this is utterly absurd, but I think it also reveals something even deeper about the inner circleâs attitude towards learning things through reading. I think it is such an alien concept to them that they thought they could give an award winning journalist a 1000 page book and they would not open it because Who The Fuck even reads?
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Interesting take by the good Nate (Cohen) on the most recent NYT/Sienna poll and what inferences it might lead us to about the entire polling landscape. Itâs behind a paywall, but if you have an Athletic account you should be able to read it
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/upshot/florida-poll-harris-trump.html?smid=url-share
The poll shows
- Harris with a widened national lead of 4 points, her best result by NYT/Sienna of the cycle
- An lead in Texas for Trump that isnât big, but not as tight as some of the more hopeful âBlue Texasâ polls have been recently
- A massive 13 point lead in Florida, way outside what anyone else is producing
Nateâs take is this likely comes down to lots of polls using a technique called âweighting on recall voteâ to try to account for the missing Trump vote, something they do not do. In short, it takes the vote share in a state from 2020 and weighs whatever is in their sample based on who respondents tell them they voters for in 2020 to replicate that. The idea is if that Trump 2020 voters refuse to talk to pollsters at a higher rate, then you have to weigh the responses you get from these people more heavily.
What that allows is the poll to capture people who voted for Trump and are moving to Biden, but it doesnât allow the poll to capture a change in the electorate caused by migration or newly registered voters. In Florida both these groups show big advantages for Republicans suggesting 2024 will indeed be much more Republican than the +3 result from 2020, but polls that adjust using weighting.
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So what does that mean? Well, likely that Florida is a fools errand for the Dems in this cycle, at least as far as the Presidential race goes.
But it may also mean that we are over counting the Trump vote in some places. It assumes that 2020 Trump voters who respond to a poll now are the same as 2020 Trump voters who are still unreachable. If they are not, and there is good reason to think they are not, then which direction is the error?
- Is a 2020 trump voter who responds to a poll a bit more of a civic minded person who is more likely than average to have defected from Trump since then? If so, this weighting would actually over estimate Harrisâ vote. It would produce the same 2020 error numerically, but for a different reason.
- Is a 2020 trump voter who is still unreachable likely to reflect some of the dampening enthusiasm for him weâve seen making them more inclined to go back to being a non-voter? If so, this weighting would over estimate Trumpâs vote share
Basically we dont know, but I think the discussion is a really important reminder of what polls are. They arent just a case of asking people questions and publishing the raw results, but the result of an incredibly complex process that require the pollster to make a series of assumptions before it can produce any results. Very often pollsters who âget it rightâ in one cycle get it right by accident after making the wrong assumptions, but ones that point in the same direction as what actually happened. What that means is they are no better positioned to be accurate next time around.
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Not that good? Or is this not âpopularâ vote?
My view on the polls is that if they consistently get it wrong (skewed) year over year, I donât think they will magically fix it this year. I am referring to sum average (or weighted average), not the accuracy of an individual poll, which as you mention is sometimes accurate one year and inaccurate the next.
EDIT: I also ignore national polls that donât drill down by states because I am not interested in how the results of Alaska or Hawaii effect the election.
What?
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But you posted a poll result above?
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And your point? I am taking the âerrorsâ into account, meaning I look at the polls but look at the aggregate of past preformance. Is this an issue to you?
Is the 4 point lead considered good when let say compared to 2020, 2016 or is it way behind? I genuinely donât know.
Again, I donât know really what question you are trying to ask? Is it positive for Harris to now be up by 4 in a poll that has trended more pro Trump this cycle than any of the other major independent polls? Youâd want a bigger margin, but itâs better than losing and now approaching being big enough to account for a normal sized polling error PLUS an electoral college bias.
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The best comedy ever written.
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I completely respect Limieâs knowledge on the polls, and what it all potentially means. Fair play on all that.
My laymanâs take, at least in the age of Trump, is that I donât really trust the polls. I donât think they have found a way to adequately quantify the Trump phenomenon, and lots of people are keeping their cards close to the chest in regard to Trump, and still others are deliberately misleading or obfuscating. I just donât think we are getting an honest and solid take.
Now, if a large gap opens up, that would start to get more trustworthy, and the polling talked about just above is starting to veer in that direction, but itâs not quite enough yet.
I donât know what my number is, but anything within a margin of error, or close to that, isnât substantive enough to me to count on it.
Bottom line: Kamala Harris is (unfortunately, due to a crooked system) going to have to kick Trumpâs ass by quite a margin, to become President.
A narrow victory is in danger of being stolen, and a lot of groundwork has been done by the Republicans to prepare for that very outcome.
Begs another questionâŚCan Trump read?
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Lindsey, another piece of work. Iâm sure weâll shortly hear: âI never said Donald wants to be king or his Jan 6 invaders are flat earthers. I was taken out of context. And Woodward brought down Nixon. You canât trust him. Anyway letâs not lose sight of Springfield where weâve not shown anything is happening, but suggested they might be. Like eating dogs.â
Weirdos mocking flat earthers. Ironic.
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Thatâs my fear as well. That there is a population of voters that, instead of shying away, as youâd expect in the normal human instinct, from Trump when they feel he is an inadequate candidate who has a history of awfulness, but to instead be a closet Trump voter too ashamed to say so except on election day. If this is getting worse with each passing year, thereâs no way to account for it in polls.
I donât think itâs smart to discount it.
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If there is one person who epitomises Trumpâs ability to corrupt even those previously held to be honourable men , then itâs Graham. That obsequious lickspittle has been held on an elastic so tightly for the last eight years that he must be suffering from some sort of concussion. A man it appears who never grows tired of debasing himself so he can remain close to power and who is destined to go down in history as one of Trumpâs chief enablers. Heâs quite literally beneath contempt now and the way in which serious journalists still seek him out and give import to his utterances is beyond comprehension.
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