Monday, August 22, 2016

Nate Silver warns about those polling numbers showing Donald Trump in the lead.



Of course those of us who pay close attention to politics have seen this before.

Courtesy of Salon:  

The biggest laughing stock of the 2012 presidential election wasn’t Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan. In fact, compared with the current GOP nominee, the Romney-Ryan team ran a well-oiled, disciplined, respectable campaign. Though that’s not saying much, given how the bar’s been lowered to subterranean depths. Nevertheless, the biggest laughing stock of the previous go-around might’ve been a guy named Dean Chambers. 

Chambers was a self-styled, self-funded poll denier. His entire mission was to literally “unskew” the polls, believing that every polling outfit, minus, perhaps, Rasmussen, was skewed in favor of President Obama. Chambers served as a convenient security blanket for Republicans who insisted that pollsters were biased in favor of the Democrats and that Mitt Romney was actually winning. Regarding the “security blanket” aspect of Chambers’ feverishly misleading public service, his “unskewed polls” provided much needed confirmation bias for inside-the-bubble Republicans who were too terrified to contemplate a second Obama term. It was comfort food, though entirely cosmetic and inaccurate. Contrarily, anyone who followed Nate Silver, the Anti-Chambers, retained a strong grasp on forecasting the outcome. At the end of the day, Nate Silver was nearly 100 percent accurate and Chambers, Silver’s completely unworthy nemesis, was all but laughed off the stage.

What is Einstein's definition of insanity again?

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? 

11 comments:

  1. This is probably the poll he is referring to:
    http://cesrusc.org/election

    10% margin of error, that one

    Every the_Donald subscriber on reddit was posting this poll on Saturday, though they were denying the value of polling just the day before

    ReplyDelete
  2. Why not try Las Vegas Presidential Odds?
    http://www.paddypower.com/bet/politics/other-politics/us-politics?ev_oc_grp_ids=791149

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous1:46 PM

    The Republican Party just can't stop talking about Hillary Clinton's emails.

    It's long past time we started talking about theirs.

    https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/14100364_946492952129573_1315298543674281857_n.jpg?_nc_ad=z-m&oh=c9c98f34afe6544d67265af5b7bac06a&oe=5840B6EE

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous2:04 PM

    If you're looking for fake polls showing Trump in the lead, every one of them will be at the pee pond. They have nothing else to live for.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous2:05 PM

    Princeton Election Consortium's Sam Wang is even better than Silver/538.

    http://election.princeton.edu/2016/08/16/clinton-runs-5-8-points-ahead-of-trump-in-red-states/#more-17049

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous6:10 PM

      Hard to argue with a man named Sam Wang ;-)

      Delete
  6. Anonymous2:12 PM

    During a Time of Ugliness, Let's Look Back at a Remarkable Moment from the DNC

    Barack Obama and the transformative power of American cool.

    http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a47829/obama-speech-dnc/

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous6:10 PM

    The "insanity" quote is often misattributed to Einstein. No one is really sure who first coined it but it wasn't Einstein and may have been Ben Franklin or a woman named Brown. Einstein himself even said once that he never said that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous6:01 AM

      Correct. I once got screamed at and threatened by a legit insane woman for pointing that out. She was pretty invested in it being Einstein.

      Delete
  8. Anonymous3:22 AM

    My dad and his new wife, in their 70s, not educated, (both have geds), far right wing christian nut jobs, are voting for Drumpf. ONLY because they won't "can't vote for Hillary ecause of Benghazi and the emails.
    FUCK FOX NEWS.
    I actually BEGGED my dad to abstain from voting then. Probably my begging will not work.
    He votes straight ticket too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous12:46 PM

      I feel ya! At my mom's old folks home the tvs in the main areas and alcoves are all tuned into Fox News. I walk through and change them all to CNN or MSNBC whenever I'm there. I don't think these sweet old folks need to be scared 24/7.

      Delete

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