He is getting slammed on Twitter.
538 has now swung back to Harris being in front by the thinnest of margins, 50/49.
What larks, Pip!!
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In all seriousnessā¦
Good luck to our American posters. I hope very much things go the way the world needs. The utter emptiness at the heart of Trump helps no-one, other than himself and the disgusting acolytes that swim in his wake. Another term will energise the very worst America has to offer and will set the joint back decades.
Unfortunately what happens in America matters to the rest of us, too, and the world needs that piece of shit in charge like it needs another pandemic. Have a look at what happened in Valencia this week, as just a single exampleā¦having Trump and Musk at the wheel, even for a day, would be catastrophic.
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One analysis Iāve seen suggested about the polling data is that the pollsters are all convinced in a hidden Trump supporter base that wasnāt being reflected in their actual polling data - everyone is trying to adjust for it and force their results slightly to the Trump ticket.
Then as more and more polling companies do the same they begin to find a middle ground where the polling companies are then scared to get out of and be the isolated poll result - so they continue to force their results to fit the 50/50 narrative even if their polling suggested stronger support for one or the other candidate.
The Iowa poll coming out and being a gold standard poll for that area has blown up the model and gives more license for polls to believe the support for Harris is real.
Weāll know by Wednesday probably whether this is true or just another narrative but I can believe it.
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God Save America ā¦ and send that bastard to jail , where he belongs. 
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Iām afraid that the result of this election will even have more impact on the rest of the world, while people in the US might not notice much change in the short term for their everydeayās life, as they live in a decentralized country anyway.
- However, for us Europeans, the outcome of what happens in Ukraine is vital for our future, as well as the evolution of our relationship with the US. Trump has already stated that the EU is the USā enemy in an economic sense.
- For the Middle East, Iām afraid that the shitshow going on in Gaza and Lebanon will only get worse if Trump gets elected.
- The relationship between China and the US is also crucial for the world economy and global peace. Trump has already shown between 2016 and 2020 that he wants to label them as the big enemy.
- As you say, the acknowledgment of global earth warming will be totally washed away if Trump comes into power. We have already lost four precious years while he was in charge, and now four years again? Hopefully not, for the sake of everyoneā¦
- The worst of all in my view, is that if Trump gets elected, there will be a flurry of Trumps emerging everywhere. His success in undermining the democratic institutions will give ideas to others, and very soon, Project 2025 will not be solely confined to the US, but spread everywhere, carried by people with the same brutality and vulgarity. All authoritarians in the world are rooting for Trump as we speak, and will get a massive boost if he gets to power again.
- As for equal rights between women and men, it will be four years of curtains, possibly with nasty long-term effects.
I donāt expect much from Harris as the new president, but at least, sheās likely to counter those disgusting and dangerous global side-effects a new Trump term would have for the world.
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What I understand of it is more that for many pollsters, their polls from previous elections had a āmissā or a bias (statistically speaking, not ideologically speaking) towards the Democrats, i.e. they were predicting results more favourable to Democrats than actually transpired to be the case.
To understand why, itās important to understand how polling works.
Thereās the data collection part, which was, as I understand it, relatively simpler in the 90s and 2000s. A pollster would just randomly call numbers and ask them questions, which would be easy to geolocate given that phone numbers were segregated into area codes. I think Iāve seen figures that response rates used to be at least double digit percentages. Now, barely anyone answers calls from numbers they donāt recognise. The question then is how to get a good sample, given that if you advertise only on Instagram for example, youāre biasing your sample towards the people who would (a) be on Instagram, (b) click on ads on Instagram.
Even in the old phone days however, there would then be the second problem of how to get a representative sample. It was clear in the last couple of decades that people who answered the phone tended to be older, which is a problem if political affiliation also correlates with age. So pollsters need to weigh their samples, although some do publish raw data along with their reports.
Pollsters need to weigh their samples, but how? By what? One way in which they do this is by previous election results, where they look at the demographics of who voted, and try to statistically adjust their data to account for that, such that their findings reflect the respective demographics. Iām not sure if the polls that only report on registered voters do much adjustments apart from ensuring that their analyses account for the demographic mixes of registered voters, but it becomes more problematic for the polls that report on likely voters, which means they would then have to come up with a way to quantify how likely someone is to vote. All these adjustments result areas where potential bias may be introduced.
However, there therefore arises problems if you try to adjust for political lean as well, which I believe is what many pollsters are doing, trying to correct for what they perceived as a systematic underpolling of Trump voters. In the case of NYT/Siena for example, they reported that in the past, they did not count voters who hung up after shouting āF*** you Iām voting Trumpā. There are too many potential confounding factors here, especially assuming that voters would vote in similar ways again, which is problematic since thatās precisely what youāre measuring, how people will vote.
In any case, all of these are also grounded in presumptions that the demographics of each election will turn out to be similar to the demographics of previous elections. In the early voting results thus far, one thing that is clear is that women are voting in larger numbers than men. If the polling thus far did not adjust their weighting for that, then that would also introduce bias.
Given that their reputations are at stake here, thereās a much larger incentive for pollsters to risk missing a bias to Harris than a bias towards Trump. This reputational factor is also a reason for this herding, I suspect.
One issue with the herding is mainly that there are very few outliers, and the results are too closely clustered to be believable. Given normal polling, there should be a wider spread of results, but this just isnāt happening.
There is also a larger, more sinister issue that this election cycle has seen the rise of polling to influence opinion, not to measure it. There are pollsters for which thereās evidence that their reports are politically motivated, and the underlying suspicion is that the intention is to manufacture support for Trump to justify the narrative that the election was once again stolen from him, and overturning it in courts, if not in the courts of public opinion. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Supreme Court is affected by public opinion, so itās not unreasonable to believe that that may produce an effect here.
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Gotta love these nerd pollster wars.
My simulation has him at 50.1378 % chance.
Mine has her at 50.2412.
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An article from seven days ago, so it might have been posted already, but here goes:
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Are you actually trying to suggest throwing paper towels at Valencianos wouldnāt have helped the situation??
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I shouldnāt laugh.
Has the voting started? How many of us is voting (or eligible to vote)?
I voted for Kodos, 27 times.
George Soros bussed me in from *insert blue state here.
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Lyse Doucet is an excellent journalist.
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Haiti?
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Thereās an increasing number of Americans who believe that US shouldnāt be getting involved militarily. Quite a chunk of those voters would be voting for Trump (For the promise that heāll end the Ukraine Russia war). More and more Americans prefer isolationism and right now equate anti-war to isolationism. Trump has gotten those votes in.
Also on another tangent, this is what happens when elections are made into a personality battle. The impression that Trump gives of himself as a strong man matters more than performances.
A Trump win would be disastrous for Europe/NATO/Allies and a win for Russia. Goes without saying. As far as other major countries go, Really depends. The balance of power in my book has shifted irrevocably to China. China wonāt be fussed either way. Itās not going to be a big difference maker to the other countries (Whetther itās India or whether itās Brazil/Argentina). The approach of Trump in the middle east wouldnāt be much different from the existing American status quo. Sure there will be much more support to Netanyahu but it isnāt as if Israel is really bothered who wins. Expect the idiocy called Trump Peace Plan to be doled out again which much harsher terms now.
Harris should have pivoted much more to the left. Especially on the Israel issue. She had nothihg to lose there. A definite promise of stopping arms sales to Israel would have served her better than the down the middle approach which really doesnāt help her. Itās useless trying to reach out to the republican voters. Push comes to shove, theyāll still be voting for Trump/Party Lines at the end of. But thatās American politics and the need to play down to the middle (as far as Democrats go) all for gaining those votes from otherwise irrelevant states.
The electoral system in America needs to be changed.
A couple of well placed reporters, including Tim Alberta who has written several must read pieces on the inner workings of Trump world, started reporting last night the mood in the Trump camp is foul, full of finger pointing and self reflection on how they could have convinced themselves their candidate was worth their time and effort.
Of course he didnt think he was winning in 2016 either
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To return again to that Atlantic pieceā¦I cannot fathom how anyone would want to sink into something so toxic.
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