2024 Presidential Election - Take II

[MFS62]

The GOP accuses the Democrats of having crisis actors at mass shootings.
These were bullshit actors at a staged photo-op. The workers and customers were all pre-screened and coached, so no one would have driven up and told him the Burge King burger was bigger.
Later

[metirish]

I find it hard to believe that the "conversation" that Kylie Jane Kremer had actually took place.

Of course it didn't , just more lies

[metirish]

Old ,but gold

[Centerfield]

It's possible that the betting markets are being skewed by four "whales" that are placing bets at an alarming rate.

https://www.aol.com/polymarket-whale-pl ... 35047.html

I don't understand everything in that article, but the gist of it seems to be that four users (that might be one user) are placing a high number of bets on Donald Trump winning, and that has had the effect of moving the odds in his favor.

If you're of the mindset that Trump, or his supporters, are playing with these numbers in order to better challenge the results later, it certainly does make sense. Betting markets usually free from manipulation since people have to risk their own money, but if you're playing in these circles, $46M might be chump change for some of the guys involved.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Nate Siver's gut delivers a gut-punch.



Nate Silver: Here’s What My Gut Says About the Election. But Don’t Trust Anyone’s Gut, Even Mine.

In an election where the seven battleground states are all polling within a percentage point or two, 50-50 is the only responsible forecast. Since the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, that is more or less exactly where my model has had it.

Yet when I deliver this unsatisfying news, I inevitably get a question: “C’mon, Nate, what’s your gut say?”

So OK, I’ll tell you. My gut says Donald Trump. And my guess is that it is true for many anxious Democrats.

But I don’t think you should put any value whatsoever on anyone’s gut — including mine. Instead, you should resign yourself to the fact that a 50-50 forecast really does mean 50-50. And you should be open to the possibility that those forecasts are wrong, and that could be the case equally in the direction of Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris.

It’s not that I’m inherently against intuition. In poker, for example, it plays a large role. Most of the expert players I have spoken with over the years will say it gives you a little something extra. You’re never certain, but your intuition might tilt the odds to 60-40 in your favor by picking up patterns of when a competitor is bluffing.

But poker players base that little something on thousands of hands of experience. There are presidential elections only every four years. When asked who will win, most people say Mr. Trump because of recency bias — he won in 2016, when he wasn’t expected to, and then almost won in 2020 despite being well behind in the polls. But we might not remember 2012, when Barack Obama not only won but beat his polls. It’s extremely hard to predict the direction of polling errors.
Why Trump could beat his polls

The people whose gut tells them Mr. Trump will win frequently invoke the notion of “shy Trump voters.” The theory, adopted from the term “shy Tories” for the tendency of British polls to underestimate Conservatives, is that people do not want to admit to voting for conservative parties because of the social stigma attached to them.

But there’s not much evidence for the shy-voter theory — nor has there been any persistent tendency in elections worldwide for right-wing parties to outperform their polls. (Case in point: Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party underachieved its polls in this summer’s French legislative elections.) There’s even a certain snobbery to the theory. Many people are proud to admit their support for Mr. Trump, and if anything, there’s less stigma to voting for him than ever.

Instead, the likely problem is what pollsters call nonresponse bias. It’s not that Trump voters are lying to pollsters; it’s that in 2016 and 2020, pollsters weren’t reaching enough of them.

Nonresponse bias can be a hard problem to solve. Response rates to even the best telephone polls are in the single digits — in some sense, the people who choose to respond to polls are unusual. Trump supporters often have lower civic engagement and social trust, so they can be less inclined to complete a survey from a news organization. Pollsters are attempting to correct for this problem with increasingly aggressive data-massaging techniques, like weighing by educational attainment (college-educated voters are more likely to respond to surveys) or even by how people say they voted in the past. There’s no guarantee any of this will work.

If Mr. Trump does beat his polling, there will have been at least one clear sign of it: Democrats no longer have a consistent edge in party identification — about as many people now identify as Republicans.

There’s also the fact that Ms. Harris is running to become the first female president and the second Black one. The so-called Bradley effect — named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who underperformed his polls in the 1982 California governor’s race, for the supposed tendency of voters to say they’re undecided rather than admit they won’t vote for a Black candidate — wasn’t a problem for Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012. Still, the only other time a woman was her party’s nominee, undecided voters tilted heavily against her. So perhaps Ms. Harris should have some concerns about a “Hillary effect.”
Why Harris could beat her polls

A surprise in polling that underestimates Ms. Harris isn’t necessarily less likely than one for Mr. Trump. On average, polls miss by three or four points. If Ms. Harris does that, she will win by the largest margin in both the popular vote and the Electoral College since Mr. Obama in 2008.

How might that happen? It could be because of something like what happened in Britain in 2017, related to the “shy Tories” theory. Expected to be a Tory sweep, the election instead resulted in Conservatives losing their majority. There was a lot of disagreement among pollsters, and some did nail the outcome. But others made the mistake of not trusting their data, making ad hoc adjustments after years of being worried about “shy Tories.”

Polls are increasingly like mini-models, with pollsters facing many decision points about how to translate nonrepresentative raw data into an accurate representation of the electorate. If pollsters are terrified of missing low on Mr. Trump again, they may consciously or unconsciously make assumptions that favor him.

For instance, the new techniques that pollsters are applying could be overkill. One problem with using one of those — “weighting on recalled vote,” or trying to account for how voters report their pick in the last election — is that people often misremember or misstate whom they voted for and are more likely to say they voted for the winner (in 2020, Mr. Biden).

That could plausibly bias the polls against Ms. Harris because people who say they voted for Mr. Biden but actually voted for Mr. Trump will get flagged as new Trump voters when they aren’t. There’s also a credible case that 2020 polling errors were partly because of Covid restrictions: Democrats were more likely to stay at home and therefore had more time on their hands to answer phone calls. If pollsters are correcting for what was a once-in-a-century occurrence, they may be overdoing it this time.

Last, there is Democrats’ persistently strong performance over the past two years — since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — in special elections, ballot referendums and the 2022 midterms. Democrats shouldn’t hang their hopes on this one: High-quality surveys like the New York Times/Siena College polls can replicate these results by showing Democrats polling strongly among the most motivated voters who show up in these low-turnout elections — but Mr. Trump making up for it by winning most of the marginal voters. So Democrats may be rooting for lower turnout. If those marginal voters don’t show up, Ms. Harris could overperform; if they do, Mr. Trump could.
Or maybe pollsters are herding toward a false consensus

Here’s another counterintuitive finding: It’s surprisingly likely that the election won’t be a photo finish.

With polling averages so close, even a small systematic polling error like the one the industry experienced in 2016 or 2020 could produce a comfortable Electoral College victory for Ms. Harris or Mr. Trump. According to my model, there’s about a 60 percent chance that one candidate will sweep at least six of seven battleground states.

Polling firms are pilloried on social media whenever they publish a result deemed an “outlier” — so most of them don’t, instead herding toward a consensus and matching what polling averages (and people’s instincts) show. The Times/Siena polls are one of the few regular exceptions, and they depict a much different electorate than others, with Mr. Trump making significant gains with Black and Hispanic voters but lagging in the blue-wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Don’t be surprised if a relatively decisive win for one of the candidates is in the cards — or if there are bigger shifts from 2020 than most people’s guts might tell them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/opin ... arris.html

[batmagadanleadoff]

A WAPO reader asks Eugene Robinson:

Seriously, how is this close?
Guest
Oct 22, 1:01 p.m.
When Kamala has run a nearly flawless campaign, spanked Trump in the debate, out-raised him by an astonishing amount, been endorsed by more prominent Republicans and ex-Trump administration officials than any Democrat ever, has the superior ground game, excited young voters, etc. Meanwhile Trump puts his dementia on full display, swaying to the oldies for 39 minutes and waxing poetic about Arnold Palmer's penis for 10. His own former Vice-President won't vote for him, there are more never-Trumpers than ever. A woman's right to control her own body is on the ballot if not literally then figuratively in every state. Early voting is breaking records and there seem to be a LOT of women in those lines. Is all this horse race polling meaningless click-bait? I remain hopefully skeptical given the apparent real-world evidence to the contrary. Never mind that in every House special election since Roe was overturned, Dems have outperformed polls by an average of 4 points. I read that Republicans have been flooding the zone with right-leaning polls this last week - is that true? If that's a strategy to depress the Dem vote, it only motivates me more to make GOTV calls.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... live-chat/

[metirish]

Mick Foley, wow 👌

[Lefty Specialist]

I'm mailing 500 postcards to swing state voters tomorrow. I've gone door-to-door for my local congressional candidate. F*ck Nate Silver.

[TransMonk]

There are plenty of reasons not to give any credibility to Nate Silver's gut.

[Lefty Specialist]

In an article published by The New Republic on October 23, journalists Greg Sargent and Michael Tomasky emphasize that GOP-aligned pollsters, according to critics, are making a concerted effort to create the impression of Trump enjoying momentum during the final days of his 2024 campaign.

Sargent and Tomasky report, "A flood of GOP-aligned polls has been released for the precise purpose of influencing the polling averages, and thus the election forecasts, in Trump's favor.… Coming at a time when right-wing disinformation is soaring — and Trump's most feverish ally, Elon Musk, is converting X into a bottomless sewer pit of MAGA-pilled electoral propaganda — these critics see all this as a hyper-emboldened version of what happened in 2022, when GOP polls flooded the polling averages and arguably helped make GOP Senate candidates appear stronger than they were, leading to much-vaunted predictions of a 'red wave.'"

[Edgy MD]

The Post also led today with a story about the former sheriff's deputy from Palm Beach County who fled to Moscow after being indicted for extortion and wiretapping. He is now working with the Kremlin, successfully using AI to create deepfake content to convincingly spread lies about Biden/Harris/Walz on social media.

[Edgy MD]

LA Times editorial page editor Mariel Garza resigns, alleging that the paper's biotech billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong vetoed the editorial board's endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

Soon-Shiong denies the allegation, claiming that the editorial board independently decided not to make an endorsement in the presidential election for the first time in over 100 years.

Newsroom blows up on Slack:

[Chad ochoseis]

Strangely enough, Soon-Shiong went from being a major Democratic donor to being a major Republican donor when Trump took office. My guess is that similarly to Jamie Dimon, he doesn't like Trump but really really super doesn't like the potential consequences of speaking out against him.

In other words, he's chicken.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Harris Drops the F-Bomb on CNN’s Town Hall

Excerpt:

And while the F-word no doubt provided moral comfort for her supporters, it struck me as politically ill judged, for three reasons.

First, like “racist” or “sexist,” the fascist epithet has lost much of its moral force over the years by dint of overuse. George W. Bush, along with most other past Republican presidents, was also often called a fascist; even Keith Olbermann later apologized to Bush for the overheated language. To use the word now feels both tired and meaningless.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/opin ... -hall.html

I agree, but for different reasons. Personally, I doubt that half of the electorate even really knows what the word means or suggests. To them, it's just an abstraction for something "bad" or "negative" and no different than if Harris were to call him an asshole. But they'll find out soon enough. The hard way.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Strangely enough, Soon-Shiong went from being a major Democratic donor to being a major Republican donor when Trump took office. My guess is that similarly to Jamie Dimon, he doesn't like Trump but really really super doesn't like the potential consequences of speaking out against him.

In other words, he's chicken.

Literal Billionaires Are Afraid to Publicly Endorse Kamala Harris for Fear of Retribution by Donald Trump


Excerpt:

As you’ve probably heard by now, there’s a presidential election happening in less than two weeks. Voters will have the choice to vote for Kamala Harris, who has never incited a deadly attack on the Capitol or fawned over dictators, or Donald Trump, who even Republicans have said was responsible for the 2021 insurrection that left multiple people dead, and who has never encountered a dictator he didn’t admire—including Adolf Hitler.* In other words, the fate of democracy is very much on the line, and the candidate who isn’t openly pro-fascism could use as much help as she can get, given that the polls, somehow, show a neck-and-neck race.

And yet, despite the very grave stakes, at least two powerful billionaires who privately support the vice president are apparently too frightened of Trump—and the blowback of going against him—to publicly endorse Harris.

One of those billionaires is JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, an extremely outspoken executive who The New York Times reported Tuesday “has made clear” in private “that he supports Vice President Kamala Harris” but “isn’t making his stance known publicly because he’s fearful that if Mr. Trump is victorious, he could retaliate against the people and companies who publicly opposed his run.” (In a statement, a spokesman for JPMorgan said Dimon, a registered Democrat, “has never publicly endorsed a presidential candidate, but he speaks out forcefully and often on policies to help strengthen our country and lift up communities.”) According to two people familiar with his private conversations, Dimon has told fellow Wall Street executives that while he is a backer of Harris, “he has a duty to JPMorgan shareholders to protect the public company from potential political retaliation.”

The other billionaire—and a billionaire many times over, to be exact—that supports Harris but is afraid of the repercussions of publicly saying so is Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Also on Tuesday, the Times reported that “after decades of sitting on the sidelines of politics, Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world, has said privately that he recently donated about $50 million to a nonprofit organization that is supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential run.” That $50 million will no doubt have been appreciated by the campaign, but the fact that it was reportedly “meant to stay under wraps,” and that Gates also has chosen not to publicly endorse Harris, is more than a little concerning. (According to the Times, the multimillion-dollar check went to Future Forward USA Action, an organization that does not disclose donor names.)

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/b ... n-by-trump

[Edgy MD]

I like how he says "Oh .. HEY, guys!" like somebody just showed up in his doorway a few minutes before he was expecting them.

Spoiler alert: "These allegations" do not appear anywhere in his video, but they are totally dropping tomorrow.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Well, if you can't believe George Santos, who can you believe?

[Edgy MD]

"This is gonna swing the election, but we have to control the release. We have to play this close to the vest until then. Let's really keep the circle closed."

"Can I tell Santos?"

"George? Yeah, whatever. Of course."

[Lefty Specialist]

When billionaires are afraid, think about others.

If I was a late night talk show host, I'd be scoping out places to emigrate to. Same for any politician who's crossed him. A president who has total immunity and a weaponized DOJ will strike fear in a lot of hearts.

[Edgy MD]

I say that he can bring it on. Let him emigrate for fear of me.

Also, please say "fascist" all you want to if that's what you believe. Fishbone isn't afraid, and Vice President Harris shouldn't be.

[Lefty Specialist]

[Edgy MD]

Jeff Bezos follows suit in vetoing The Washington Post's editorial board's endorsement of Vice President Harris.

We were going to unsubscribe anyhow, but this expedites matters.

[Frayed Knot]

The Wa Post went even further and stated that it would no longer endorse candidates in the future either.
The editor's statement talked about how this move was going back to the paper's roots of covering rather than making news.

[Lefty Specialist]

The Wa Post went even further and stated that it would no longer endorse candidates in the future either.
The editor's statement talked about how this move was going back to the paper's roots of covering rather than making news.

And that's bullshit. Bezos doesn't want to lose lucrative government contracts. All these guys are making their calculations. There's no down side to pissing off Harris, but there is a down side to pissing off a vengeful, unhinged Trump. Jamie Dimon of Chase basicallly said that out loud the other day.

[Edgy MD]

Of course it's a bullshit cover story. It doesn't even have to be believable. Just (very) remotely within the realm of possibility is all that he needs.

I think my wife — who has less affection for Vice President Harris than I do — is cancelling our subscrippy in the next room as I'm typing here.

　　"Do not obey in advance."

　　"Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.
　　 In times like these, individuals think ahead about what
　　 a more repressive government will want, and then offer
　　 themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts
　　 in this way is teaching power what it can do."

　　　　— Timothy Snyder, 𝘖𝘯 𝘛𝘺𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘺