Wufpack17 said:
Civilized said:
smitt86 said:
The funny thing about polling... how does anyone believe a single poll that is released? I've been contacted numerous times to participate, and I always refuse, see no value.
Every Dem on social media is posting poll after poll showing their candidate in the lead in a given state, but perhaps the margins differ across polls but they only show their candidate in the lead.
Every Rep on social media is posting poll after poll showing their candidate in the lead in a given state, but perhaps the margins differ across polls but they only show their candidate in the lead.
Then you have the various media platforms showing polls that depict their candidate-of-choice is slightly ahead but it's close and folks need to make sure they vote!
It's all a racket. Polls were "wrong" in 2016, they were "wrong" in 2020... they're actually not wrong, it's just that polls are a joke at this point and used to generate clicks/momentum.
All of which is why you rate them longitudinally for accuracy and aggregate them, both of which cut down on error.
The polls struggled in 2016 with Trump. They were better in 2020 but obviously not perfect. They have historically been quite accurate in many races and are often directionally informative even if actual results vary by some normal margin of error.
Regardless, to me, it's just data, which is often interesting.
Vegas likes Trump.
I've been told Vegas never gets it wrong.
I actually love the sports betting comparison.
Vegas predicts straight-up winners "wrong" all the time in sports betting especially as spreads approach a pick-em. It's just also interesting how often games finish pretty close to the closing spread. Both are true.
Harris is a very mild dog right now, probably in the neighborhood of 55/45 to win the EC, but you'd think she was a 21-point underdog based on takes on here.
Betting markets on politics are almost exclusively international so it's not Vegas. Betting on politics in the US has long been illegal and literally just became legal in the last few weeks so most of the action on this election is European betting.
Touchdown favorites (pretty big favorites) lose straight-up 30% of the time. 9-point favorites lose 25% of the time. Two-touchdown favorites (massive favorites) still lose 15% of the time.
We don't bat an eye at 3-point favorites losing in football. We shouldn't bat an eye if it happens in this election either.
This current race is very close based on polling. What will be so interesting is that polling error normally correlates, i.e. if polling is off a little in one state, it's likely off a comparable amount in surrounding states or other similar (swing) states.
So despite this race being a virtual toss-up, if there is a correlated error by even a point or two across multiple states it could lead to one candidate or the other sweeping the toss-up swing states and the final EC count looking like a blowout even though the underlying fundamentals were very close.
Silver actually has this I believe as the most common outcome in his model forecast - something like a 40% chance that one candidate or the other sweeps the 7 swing states.
