It promises to be a campaign the likes of which we haven't seen for about two years

[robkelk]

May as well start a thread about the midterms...

The thread title is from this analysis piece, which to me looks to be fair and balanced: How Fear and a White House witch hunt changed the stakes for the midterms.

The U.S. economy is expanding, unemployment is down, wages are up and yet Donald Trump's approval rating is suddenly falling in each of the most respected national opinion polls in America. In one survey, he's down six points in just a month.

[Rajvik]

I have to agree with Rob that this piece is fairly written, even the links it gives, (at least the ones i checked) go to stories that cover both sides.

that out of the way, i have to put this out there. The average Trump supporter likely does not take opinion polls, because of this the polls that are done are skewed and inacurate. You ask how do I figure this? Simple Observance of previous polling.

During the 2016 campaign most if not all polls showed Hillary beating Trump hands down. Even the most Trump optimistic polls like Fox News had Trump down a couple of points to Hillary, but within the margin of error. Then there was the "upset" and the gnashing of teeth.

Second reason, methods of polling- Most polling (outside of straw polls after elections) is done one of three ways, cold/robo-calling, Internet, or news paper mail back. The last one only hits the paper readers who take the time to send back a response limiting their demographic, (which they sometimes even admit to). I think we can all here at least admit that the internet is inherently left leaning in its bias, (I mean come on, i only discuss politics here because SV and SB are such liberal hug boxes that if I even admit to being a conservative, i would spend months getting hate replies, let alone commenting with a political rejoinder that didn't agree with 99.9 percent of them.) Finally, the first one actually has the most chance of being unbiased except that the only conservatives that answer cold calls or Robo calls and answer the questions are usually elderly shut ins that want the attention, the rest of us are either to busy at work, or to tired from work to deal with the bullshit. I know I hang up on robo-calls simply because i don't like dealing with them, and so does everyone i know that i discuss politics with outside of here.

small sample size and anecdotes i know, but i put it to you guys, how much do you bother with these polling practices

[Labster]

SV and SB are such liberal hug boxes that if I even admit to being a conservative, i would spend months getting hate replies

Have you seen this happen, or are you basing this on behavior that's happened to you elsewhere?  I'm legitimately curious, because I think that this is the worst part of liberalism.  I reject all philosophies that try to create an out group.

During the 2016 campaign most if not all polls showed Hillary beating Trump hands down.

Actually, this is false.  The majority of polls didn't ask the question of whether Hillary or The Donald would win the election, they asked which candidate would get a majority vote on election day.  Some polls asked which candidate would win a particular state.  Only one or two pollsters did a 50 state poll, which could be used to predict who would win the election via the Electoral College -- and most of this was online, lower-quality data.

The distinction is important.  I read Nate Silver a lot, so let's link to the election night forecast for 2016 on FiveThirtyEight.  It showed that Trump had a 28% chance of winning on election night.  Like, that looks like a runaway, but it's not.  It means that if you took two coin flips and they both came up tails, that would be worse odds than what Trump got.  Trump got 46.1% to Hillary's 48.2% -- the equivalent in the 538 meta-analysis is 48.5% to 44.9%.  So, they were off by 2% -- which is the historical average -- it just mattered a lot in this election.  I remember him complaining about how little polling had been done in Wisconsin, which was a large source of uncertainty at election time.

538 also relies on their Pollster Ratings project, which analyses polls for house effects and accuracy, based on their past performance.  Note that house biases can influence the result in the opposite direction you might expect; there are liberal pollsters that consistently put out polls that overstate the Republican's chances.

Like, simple observance of polls isn't enough.  It's a science.  Or a math, at least.  Believing a single poll is folly, but believing a group from different sources is smart.  Polls are misused selectively by all sides to show support for an issue, but this is almost always cherry-picking.  It's like a lot of political speech -- not a lie, but representing the truth either.

[hazard]

SV and SB get actively moderated and do so quite well. If you get harassed like that take it to the moderators there and they will check the merit of your complaints.

Just realize that both sites have a reality and fact based worldview, which the political right currently has an... interesting opinion of.

[Rajvik]

As to the harassment, I don't even bother with their political threads anymore, its just not worth the hassle or my blood pressure getting that high.

Labster, you just brought up another problem with polling, how they ask the question. Your guy seems the most honest of the bunch, or at least the most straightforward, the difference lies in the question. Asking who you think is going to win is different from asking who do you Want to win, or Who are you likely to vote for. From what I remember, these last two questions were what some asked while others asked your guys questions. If asked each of those questions, I would have expected Hillary to win because of the coverage, but I wanted Trump

[robkelk]

I believe I've mentioned this in the past regarding polls.



(Although this time I'll note the line "Not the reputable ones.")

[robkelk]

CBC Opinion: Republicans won a great, pyrrhic victory with Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation

I do not agree with everything said in this op/ed. For one thing, I think Dylan Lamberti is expecting voters to have a longer attention span than I believe is the case.

That said, if he's right, there might possibly be a chance of getting some gender inequality out of US politics. (I don't expect full gender equality no matter what happens - two years just isn't long enough for that. Heck, 20 years isn't long enough, if the Canadian experience is anything to go by.)

I do agree with this paragraph:

But a win doesn't tend to rouse momentum in the same way as does a defeat. The Republicans won. The Senate confirmed Kavanaugh. GOP motivation thus has four weeks to wear away, but Democrats will continue to fester in defeat.

[Rajvik]

I haven't read the article quite yet, (will before I comment further) but I have to disagree somewhat with that quote simply because of how much the left has once more started screaming the word impeachment.

[robkelk]

I see that as part of the festering.

[robkelk]

Kentucky's 6th district is staunchly Republican. The incumbent - a fiscal conservative - has won with larger majorities each time in the last three elections, and the majority House leader is from the same state. But the Democrats are running a retired Marine lieutenant-colonel in the district; "a mother of three who has killed terrorists".

So, apparently, this one district is suddenly a bellwether race and a referendum on Trump's administration... Go figure.

[robkelk]

Today's PvP:

[Black Aeronaut]

I'm gonna cast my ballot for Beto O'Rourke. Cruz can rot in hell for all I care.

I just hope that all my fellow Democrats do so as well despite his history of reaching across the aisle in the name of bipartisan compromise.

[SilverFang01]

I'm gonna cast my ballot for Beto O'Rourke.  Cruz can rot in hell for all I care.

I just hope that all my fellow Democrats do so as well despite his history of reaching across the aisle in the name of bipartisan compromise.

Reaching across the isle is not a negative, unless it becomes a Lucy and the football thing.

[hazard]

The problem is that the Republicans have been doing the football thing for more than a decade now.

[Rajvik]

The problem is that the Republicans have been doing the football thing for more than a decade now.

As have the Democrats, it is not something beholden to any one party.

Now, as i said in another thread, i'm going to step out until after the election, we'll see what happens then.

[Black Aeronaut]

Even if that is the case, I would take the Democrat's side because they seem to be the lesser of two evils. You know, the same people that were staunchly against deregulating the Internet. Republicans were all like, "Oh, there's nothing that could possibly go wrong there!" Two major hurricanes later...