Powered by glolg
Display Preferences Most Recent Entries Chatterbox Blog Links Site Statistics Category Tags About Me, Myself and Gilbert XML RSS Feed
Monday, Nov 02, 2020 - 23:44 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Déjà Vu

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these:
/pol/ was right again."

- an r/politics Redditor sees the light


Well, looks like it's over, lads! Joe Biden appears to be up by nearly eight points in the national polls, there's no coming back from that kind of margin, it was fun while it lasted and I suppose The Donald's supporters might as well all just give up now... or not. Let's put it this way: seeing as how all the mainstream media outlets and their experts are saying that Biden has it in the bag, what's one Singaporean nobody playing Emperor's advocate - as done four years ago - right?



New predictions for old, from MSNPC!
[N.B. It's completely different this time, guys!]
(Original source: 4chan.org)



About Those Polling Numbers

Beginning with the polls, it sure looks worse for TRUMP than in October 2016... er, well, kind of, one regularly had double-digit national leads reported for Hillary as well, with pollsters saying that "the writing was on the wall" (not yet built then, mind), with Hillary herself wondering why she wasn't fifty points ahead; and you lot know what happened. Lest we forget, Newsweek had Hillary on track for an electoral college landslide, as did most every other major newspaper one would care to name. Much exactly the same bias is in evidence for this edition too, and while the usual talking heads have managed to rustle up some explanations as to why it's totally different this time, one might understand why credible doubt has been sown.

But wait - polling is a science isn't it? It's math! The numbers don't lie, these guys are professionals who make a living out of it, surely they have reputations to keep up? Perhaps let us go over each of these points in turn. Beginning with the "science" of polling, one might refer to the RealClearPolitics compilation of major poll results, and pick out a Biden +3 (2.5 MoE), a Biden +7 (2.8 MoE), and a Biden +12 (3.8 MoE), where the margin of error (MoE) refers to the 95% confidence interval. While it sure looks good for Joe here, an immediate takeaway should be that many professional polls are barely consistent as a collective. Put another way, whatever the result, many of them have to be "wrong" from the get-go, where "wrong" is something generous such as "(consistently) giving the actual outcome, a less than 5% probability (i.e. result lies outside the MoE)".

Leaving aside the matter of good versus not-so-good pollsters for now, let's delve a bit deeper into the intricacies of the business. Fundamentally, it's not very complicated - ring up a fair amount of voters - say, a thousand or so - ask them who they're voting for, tally the count, and report the number. Problem is, it's actually quite tricky to take a sample that's truly representative of the population - typical phone survey response rates are below 10%, for starters - and therefore pollsters generally weigh/adjust their raw counts, by some assumed priors. For example, if you think that a certain minority group will compose 5% of actual voters, but your sample contains only 2% of that minority, their impact on the final prediction would be adjusted upwards, ceteris paribus. Now, a clever student might figure that wait, aren't these prior assumptions themselves subject to possibly significant uncertainties, that would require their own polling? They're probably not wrong.

Maybe an interactive demonstration would be in order. There are a number of sites that allow one to adjust the demographics and voting behaviour of the electorate and explore the modelled impact of the tweaks on the election outcome, and I quite like the Cook Political Report's Demographic Swingometer myself. The default figures are supposedly derived from the previous election, adjusted for demographic change, and yield a 307-231 electoral vote (EV) victory for Biden. More or less what the mainstream media has been selling, then. Well, let's try... nothing, really. A paltry 2% swing of the non-college graduate white voter towards TRUMP, from 69% to 71%:


We are the 2%!
(Source: cookpolitical.com)


Effect: TRUMP improves on his previous performance, now wins by 310 EV to Biden's 228 EV, and captures New Hampshire on top of the three Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that he claimed in 2016.

Or perhaps, bump his share of the Black vote, from 8% to a scarcely more impressive 11%? That'll do it too, it's 276 EV with Michigan captured. Gains from the Hispanic crowd take slightly longer to be registered, possibly as they're concentrated in several staunchly-red states already, but upping it to 43% would give him 286 EV. And these are independent scenarios, mind; a tinier increase from multiple demographics would do it too.

We'll go into whether such gains from minorities in particular are realistic, but I hope that this little demonstration illustrates how fine the margins are. How sure do you think the pollsters are, that 69% of the non-college graduate white vote is for the Republican candidate, instead of 71%? What MoE do you figure they have, on this very necessary assumption? Bears a little ruminating about, doesn't it? Another way of exploring the candidates' odds is through a conditional forecast, as FiveThirtyEight has kindly provided; their current prediction gives TRUMP a 10% chance of winning (note, much lower than the near-30% they allowed him, back in 2016), but giving TRUMP Texas and Florida immediately boosts him back up to 30%. Merely awarding Pennsylvania to the incumbent POTUS on top of that, increases his chances to... 83%. I leave it to the reader to consider just how far-fetched (or not) this scenario is.

The above, I hope, gives some insight as to why it might not pay to place too much faith purely in "the numbers" - my personal awakening came when the polls gave Kasich a seven-point lead over Hillary back in 2016, which was frankly entirely implausible given that the guy couldn't even get any of his own supporters to smile, when they were on stage together with him. This new reality seems to be wearing especially hard on Nate Silver, who went from 2012 golden boy to, well, putting out less and less reasonable-seeming projections and opinions. Granted, he's always been a practitioner of statistics first and foremost, but one figures that he's retained enough of a gut feel to recognize when the results of his analyses might well be... very off.

And the usual doubt and hedging begins...


But What If They're Right?

But fine. Let's say that the polls are accurate, or at least about as accurate as they were back in 2016. As the FAKE NEWS loves to remind, the polls were off by only about 3% nationally then, if 5.2% off at state level, over the final three weeks (okay, that sounds not inconsiderable, actually). Of course, the national vote doesn't matter for its own sake, since the name of the game is to win enough states (and their electoral votes); on this, TRUMP's polling performance in the swing/battleground states that are commonly recognized as up for grabs is... almost exactly the same as in 2016.

Not only that, but the polls in these very battleground states have moreover been tightening in the last few days before the election proper, again just like 2016. For example, Biden's lead in the national poll has dwindled from about 13 points just a month ago, to a mere three or four points in several polls released last week. This trend has been mirrored in important states such as Pennsylvania, where what appeared an unassailable lead has shrunken to maybe three points, and then you have the much-consulted (e.g. by The State's Times) RealClearPolitics aggregate suddenly admitting that TRUMP is favoured in Florida, Arizona and Iowa, whaddaya know?

This unlikely tightening of the polls sure makes a lot more sense if one realizes that they're meant to impact (i.e. encourage or suppress) voting, instead of informing on the state of the Presidential race, as their main priority. There is certainly plenty of latitude for that; the pollsters can always disavow the months of pretty-exaggerated polls leading up to Election Day (which however would still affect the voters, obviously), which extends to entirely-cuckoo tips like Texas possibly turning blue. It's not as if there are any real consequences for being inaccurate, after all! In a fair world, one would expect the best polls from the previous cycle, such as from the Democracy Institute, IBD/TIPP, Trafalgar Group and Rasmussen Reports, to have gained more exposure and weightage in poll aggregates. Instead, it's the other less-accurate polls (at least for the relevant domain of Presidential elections) who're retaining the limelight, and Silver's dismissal of Trafalgar polls due to "always knowing what they're going to say" seems strange since it's not like one has to guess what a NYT or CNN poll has to say either... and the latter will even fire pollsters that provide the "wrong" results.


TRUMP/Biden campaign stops
(Source: chicagotribune.com)


Anyway, it's not as if those most invested in the outcome, are believing these public polls either, as (again) echoed by Michael Moore. Instead, the TRUMP and Biden campaigns have, to the best of my knowledge, wisely placed their trust on internal polling instead. Of course, one wouldn't expect any candidate to admit that their own polls show that they're losing badly, but apart from such "cheap tawk", it's probably feasible to read a little into how the campaigns truthfully think the race is going, from costly signals such as ad buys and rally locations.

There's an opportunity cost of irreplaceable time in visiting any particular state, after all, and unless the result is a foregone conclusion (which one expects not to be the case), it behooves the candidates to expend their efforts where it could matter. There's not too much point in contesting Hawaii, California or Massachusetts, since the Democrats are all but certain to get these states, with the converse holding true with Wyoming, West Virginia and Oklahoma for the G.O.P.; this is reflected in the map of campaign stops shown above, with the candidates spending the vast bulk of their time in the battleground states.

Consider now a proposition like "Texas is a toss-up", as popularized by the polls for awhile. Let us assume that this is vaguely plausible. In this case, wouldn't one expect the Biden campaign to hammer away at Texas with all they've got, or at any rate, a lot more than they're currently doing? Texas has 38 electoral votes, mind, which is more than Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota combined. Instead, Biden's defending Minnesota, where he's supposedly safely up by over ten points (or maybe not), and Obama's headed down to Pennsylvania to help out.


Indirect Signals

Leaving the direct mainstream media-dominated polls aside, there are plenty of indicators that are rather more sanguine as to TRUMP's chances. Incumbency, for one, has to be an advantage, however one tries to slice it - recall, he had to tame first the Republican party, and then the Democrats while fending off the remnants of the Republican establishment, starting from zero in his previous campaign. Now, he's unified the G.O.P. with a 95% within-party approval in the latest Gallup poll, probably a good trade-off given the long-term polarized condition of the American electorate. Furthermore, incumbents with an overall approval of some 46% to 52%, depending on who you're asking, simply don't lose from historical experience.

It's hard to deny that enthusiasm amongst his base is off the charts too - despite not running against any credible opposition in the Republican primaries (which means that voters have no real reason to turn up), TRUMP managed to rack up numbers that dwarfed both of his most recent predecessors, from their own re-election bids. Fed into Norpoth's Primary Model, this suggests a 91% chance of re-election, with a projected 362 electoral votes. And before one scoffs too loudly, it might be considered that the party primaries are perhaps the closest available proxy for the actual election itself, given the real commitment and expenditure of time that it entails. Actions do speak louder than words; anyone can say that they're voting for a candidate, but will they actually drag themselves out of bed, to stand in line for what may be hours, on the day itself?

Various other revealed preferences too paint a very odd picture. Supposedly, according to Gallup, 56% of Americans think they're better off than four years ago, under the previous administration... and this was from September, well after the worst of the pandemic (it was as high as 61% in February)! To this, Biden's response was that these people probably shouldn't support him then, which might say something. Again, this is quite a bit higher than previous successfully re-elected Presidents. When asked who they thought would win, instead of who they would vote for, TRUMP again came up tops, with 56% to Biden's 40%. It was a similar story when Americans were asked who they thought their friends and neighbours were supporting - TRUMP won out 49% to 38% in a Fox News poll, and if that's too partisan, USC Dornsife has also found that framing support indirectly can significantly cut into Biden's lead. Strong and decisive leader? 56% once again, advantage TRUMP.

But surely his boorishness would have chased off a lot of people from the Republican party, then? Nope, the latest Gallup poll on party affiliation actually has the G.O.P. ahead of the Democrats, which is further reflected by increased Republican registration in battleground states relative to the Dems, since 2016; and, let's face it, one doesn't spend time and effort registering for one party, only to vote for the other party's candidate.


No race but American, no colour but Orange!
(Source: businessinsider.com)


But back to enthusiasm. One might, conceivably, downplay online support as coming from Russian troll farms or 4chan hacker bots. However, real-life gatherings can't be dismissed this way, and in this respect, TRUMP has his opponents thoroughly beat. Whether it's the thousands upon thousands lining the streets of Beverly Hills and Newport Beach in California, Michigan, Arizona and basically everywhere for GEOTUS, road caravans numbering in the tens of thousands of vehicles, boat parades that would put the navies of minor nations to shame, and rallies with masses of supporters more than willingly enduring hours in freezing rain or broiling heat, it all adds up to one inescapable conclusion, however the FAKE NEWS attempts to spin it with the aid of egghead pollsters selectively tuning their numbers: TRUMP's support is real (self-driving tech isn't ready yet, afaik), it's yuge, it's broad, and it'll haul itself through an alien invasion to vote for him.

And honestly, the smears against GEOTUS of being racist are getting kinda old, as recent polls on his support amongst minorities are revealing. A recent NBC/Marist poll has, for example, TRUMP leading Biden amongst Florida Latinos, which actually makes plenty of sense when one figures that Latinos are inherently a lot more conservative than progressives like to pretend they are, and once they realized that TRUMP wasn't really gonna deport abuela but was instead bent on stopping bad hombres and socialism from crossing the border, it wasn't a tough choice to make - before going into their taste for a dash of machismo. Nothing wrong with that at all!

We've also seen how increasing his share of the black vote from 8% to 11% could hand him the election, and with many polls agreeing that his support amongst blacks is 30% or even more, that possibility definitely doesn't seem all that far out there. Inexplicable as this might sound to Democrats, I believe I might offer a little insight as a guy, if not as a black person - from my experience, many guys don't like being told what to do (at least, more than once), but above that, they seriously hate being talked down to. Now, one might regard Chelsea Handler's getting 50 Cent to recant his TRUMP support as a win for the Dems, after the rap mogul rationally declared that he didn't want to become no 20 Cent due to Biden's tax hikes, but the obvious subtext is whitey again telling me what to do.


Not bullshitting each other, is the beginning of respect
(Source: leavetheplantation.org)


I mean, for goodness' sake, TRUMP was tight wit' da hood from before the latest generation of SJWs was even born, so is it really that unthinkable that a bunch of influential rappers are backing their boy here? They know what he is, he makes money, he likes them more if they make him money, he happy with them making money, he cool with them if they don't do bad shit, he keep it real. Why they follow skinny white unemployed honkies to smash their own neighbourhoods? Same with Latinos and a lot of Asians, by the way. You got a hundred Japanese personally flying down to Pennsylvania to campaign for GEOTUS, while Biden can barely get that many to turn up for most of his rallies, where they tend to get outnumbered by TRUMP fans. It's not due to intentionally restricting attendance either; if they love you enough, they'll gather as part of an overflow crowd as happened in Minnesota, though I'd recommend they keep their MAGA facemasks on. Bears a little thinking about, eh?

Moving on, we come to the type of campaigns that are being run: are voters coming out for their man, or are they voting against the other guy? On this, the verdict seems clear - it's all about TRUMP. 71% of TRUMP's voters are actively voting for him, a percentage roughly equal to Obama's runs in 2008 and 2012, and bested only by Bush's 77% in the middle of the then-popular Iraq War in 2004, with Saddam freshly captured. Biden, in contrast, has only 36% of his voters mainly inspired by his vision - with only John Kerry attracting a lower share, amongst candidates from 1992 onwards - with the rest turning out to deny TRUMP. Well, as they say, love trumps hate in such cases.

And finally, I've been partial to betting markets as an alternative indicator myself for various other predictions, since there's at least some skin-in-the-game with them. It might be noted, though, that the experience from 2016 had been that any state with TRUMP's implied odds at just 20% or above went to him eventually, and the markets appear similarly coupled with mainstream polls once again. Well, who am I to question the wisdom of the crowd - but still, one might muse whether these punters had incorporated actual voting data as from early (mail-in) voting into their bets - which we'll get into now.


Actual Voting Behaviour


The early bird gets the worm, maybe?
(Source: cbsnews.com)


It's difficult to come up with a measure that predicts the real vote count better than... well, real votes themselves, and with the Democrats in particular strongly pushing vote-by-mail (VTM) and early voting in person (EVIP), one would expect a lot more information on the direction of the race to become available, before Election Day proper. On this, various polls such as that from CBS News above, broadly agree - Democrats are planning to vote early, whether in person or by mail, by a vastly larger margin than Republicans. Given the sustained panic over the coronavirus on the blue side, I gather it a fair estimate that they'll be outnumbered by the Repubs on Election Day by a factor or two or more. Of course, the idea is that they would have expanded their traditional advantage in early voting to such an extent, that it wouldn't matter.

As a matter of fact, there's quite a lot of publicly-available official data on early returns... and it's not looking great for Biden. Consider the critical battleground state of Florida, for example. Given what is known about Dem/Repub early voting distributions, it can very conservatively be estimated that Democrats would require a banked advantage going into Election Day of well over half a million votes cast, to be considered as favourites to take Florida (recall, won by about 113,000 votes, or a 1.2% margin, by TRUMP in 2016). Their actual recorded lead did peak at about half a million... on 21st October. Since then, the Republicans have already knocked this lead down to below 100,000 - which is about where they eventually won from in 2016, without the additional slant towards early voting encouraged by the Dems for this edition.

Switching to Texas, the story is that early voting has been a huge hit... for the Republicans. Even generously assuming that every single projected-Independent/first-timer that early-voted is going blue, the Republicans' lead there remains some 8%, which frankly simply doesn't reconcile with the picture that polling aggregates have been painting. Much the same tale is being repeated in other states: the Democrats are not quite where they expected to be, which is perhaps why Pelosi and company are now rescinding their previous support for vote-by-mail, and are urging party members to get their asses down to the voting booths. A problem, of course, is that a not-inconsiderable proportion of the Democratic electorate appears to have been convinced that the coronavirus is the Black Death, so it remains to be seen whether they manage to overcome their conditioning, to jostle with the mostly-red crowds.


Only a low 20% rejection rate!
(Source: nbcnews.com)


Still on mail-in ballots - leaving aside concerns that it possibly facilitates fraud, since it allows vote buyers to verify their purchase (as reported by WaPo in 2012, before this angle became verboten), I hope it not controversial to acknowledge that voting by mail carries a non-negligible rejection rate - and not even out of any malice, mind. It simply introduces a number of additional steps, each of which carries its own probability of disqualification. Placed it in the wrong envelope, or together as a family because you didn't think it mattered? Forgot to sign it? Signed it, but forgot that your signature's morphed majorly since you last registered it decades ago? Forgot to place the ballot in the envelope? We've all been there. It has moreover been observed that such errors are (expectedly) far higher amongst first-time mail voters, as compared to seasoned absentee ballotees, a realization that appears to have struck the Democratic leadership slightly late in the game.

Leaving that aside, it might be logical to ask whether there are any models that try to consider this wealth of real early voting statistics in their projections - because it seriously makes no sense not to - and the answer is: yes. In matters of complex modelling, I consider myself a Derman-inspired empiricist, and like to begin from the best, closest model that's available. In this case, then, it would be those that most closely predicted the outcome in 2016. It's logical, no? When you have a bunch of analysts getting the electoral vote wrong by upwards of sixty or eighty EVs, why wouldn't one give more credence to the methods of an analyst who was off by only ten?

Thus was it for the fellow at StatesPoll, whose final prediction of TRUMP 315 EV, Hillary 223 EV probably got him laughed out of many rooms... but not for long. His methodology, as far as I can make out, is quite commendable, and generally holds to the basic principles of superforecasting. Each poll is deconstructed and reassembled - and this is important, reassembled based on transparent justification from known public parameters. Take the most-recent Ipsos Michigan poll as an example. The original results were Biden +10 (Biden 53%, TRUMP 43%, Jorgensen 1%), but adjusting with evidence from the 2018 state senate race produces TRUMP +2. One might definitely regard a +12 swing as ridiculous... until one considers how much precedent there is for such tomfoolery, and how these adjustments tend to have widely-varying polls converge. Just out of interest, StatesPoll's prediction for 2020 is TRUMP with 322 EV, and while it seems slightly generous to me, I have not managed to find any particularly concerning fault in the underlying methodology.


Why So Shy?

I mean, yeah, it is funny, Dad (groan)


It seems that we are at an impasse, gentlemen. On one hand, if the many expert pollsters are to be believed (as in 2016, with almost all of them giving TRUMP a less than 10% chance), it's not going to be anywhere close. On the other hand, if we disregard these polls (probably like most of the public, who aren't exactly full-time political junkies), it sure feels like it isn't gonna exactly be close either, if in the other direction. How is one to accomodate these diametrically-opposed hypotheses, into a single reality?

Well, one possibility instantly presents itself - some TRUMP voters are simply not admitting it to pollsters. The prevalence of these shy or secret voters has been fervently downplayed in the mainstream media, and looking at all those boisterous rally attendees and householders that carpet their garden with yard signs, one might be inclined to agree. However, consider Bob. Bob's your average approaching-middle-age American male, a pretty okay guy who's married, has maybe two kids, a mostly-paid up house and a grill in his backyard. Bob doesn't like many of TRUMP's tweets (though, admit it, some of them are pretty dang hilarious), but he likes that his taxes have come down, a factory or two's reopening in the next district, and honestly, the fella hasn't gotten the country entangled in a new conflict. This was about as much Bob wanted out of a POTUS, given his forty years of hard experience. On policy, he's basically been a pragmatic moderate in historical terms - so why not?

Bob is, however, also not dumb. Bob knows that if some of his friends came to know of his inclinations - even if indirectly - their relationship might be changed. Bob is entirely okay with discussing his reasoning, including how he doesn't really like "peaceful protestors" that tend to incidentally bring fires in their wake, but somehow he recognizes that logic might not work here, and that it might not end with that. Bob is not that young, Bob doesn't have the energy to deal with additional crap in his life, Bob very reasonably decides to just smile and keep his mouth shut, when he can. Bob barely has the time to give some pollster twenty minutes of his precious Saturday afternoon, but he does anyway, and as he's nearing the end, he realizes that the caller knows where he lives, and that it wouldn't be hard to dig out his name, and that he has no assurance that they even are a real pollster - which is why some 94% of those being polled, hang up immediately without ever getting this far.

Now, Bob figures, he got a wife, he got kids, he got a fairly-okay job and plenty of bills to pay, and he likes most of those things. Bob has also heard things, he knows probably 99.9% of those supporting the other party are decent fellow citizens, but he isn't sure of the 0.1%. Bob knows that one answer is definitely safe, and at this stage of his life, Bob doesn't want to take risks - heck, he doesn't even put the ol' Stars and Stripes up, due to that. So Bob smiles and says he hasn't decided, or gives the "right" answer. Bob is obviously not going to put his real answer in an envelope with his name on it either, but when Bob is alone in the privacy of a voting booth, well...

The question, then, is how many Bobs and Bobettes are there?


One might be surprised at how many Moms have an attitude too!
(Source: babylonbee.com)



It's Biden

"Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up."

- the wisdom of Barack Obama


I've actually compiled quite a large collection of links on Biden for purposes of opposition research, as in the March post on the Democratic field, but next to none of that will be discussed here. What's the point? It's not like the Dems themselves are trying to hide that nobody's really coming out for Biden, though they did clear the way for him. When you have both Obama and Kanye West agreeing that he "doesn't have it" and "isn't special", one understands that this election isn't about Biden at all.

So, given that Biden can be nice at times, as when he conflated TRUMP with Abraham Lincoln (easy mistake to make), I'm not going to dig into Hunter's dealings and laptop (also because the latter would require me to put up a warning on this blog); because he can be disarmingly honest at times, as when he admitted that he would ban fracking (if with an unsuccessful attempt to recant) and bragged of assembling the "most extensive voter fraud organization in history", I think it's unfair to pick on his accidental slips, as when he claimed to have been in the Senate for 180 years (not that there's all that much to show after 47 years in politics), or when he professed to be running against George Bush. And it would just be poor form to point out his having to read from a massive teleprompter or take many long rests (contrast TRUMP's ULTRA HIGH ENERGY), when he really shouldn't be doing this in the first place, and when his running mate's husband is already referring to her as the next POTUS.

In a way, it's kinda sad. He could have been fondly remembered as loyal sidekick to the First Black President, instead of running as Generic Old White Guy #89; Heck, Hillary was hardly universally liked in 2016, but she had her core supporters, who were intent on making her First Female President (only to be defeated by the First Orange President). Honestly, he should never have been put in this position, and I wholeheartedly wish him a bliss-filled retirement whenever it comes, where he can spend his days having little kids play with his leg hair by the poolside, as he regales them with tales of how he beat off bad dudes like Corn Pop in his heyday...



Perhaps posted previously, but only the more appropriate for that




comments (0) - email - share - print - direct link
trackbacks (0) - trackback url


Next: Subscription Renewed


Related Posts:
7 Reasons Why TRUMP Will Be The Next POTUS
War Of The Worlds
Men Against The Machine
Being Accurate For Fun And Profit
Pregame Entertainment
Back to top

Copyright © 2006-2025 GLYS. All Rights Reserved.