After that national election, I feel my belief in polls remains close to zero and will remain down there for awhile.
Why? The polls were accurate. Results were within the standard polling error.
Yeah it was the downswing from Comey that mostly borked it from what I understand, but it was almost always within the margin-of-error.
It was mostly a quirk of the distribution of a very small number of votes.
It’s a single poll…and House races ARE tough to poll.
That being said, it is the first poll to show more than a 2-point margin either way.
I distinctly remember a very different tone before the election, and why was that… polls. Someone was running around here telling the rest of us not to jump off cliffs, and then I spent 3 weeks fielding attacks from every racist in the area as they celebrated their guys win. And that’s before we talk about the Hillary’s going to win articles.
National polling was correct. State polling essentially stopped late, and left us without much to go on in some key places – Wisconsin and Michigan especially.
Well, yeah. We basically had 3 states with margins less than 1%, and a fourth that was 1.2% (Florida). Which the margin of error is typically in the 3% range. The election basically required all four to uniformly break in the same direction at the far margin of error, with none breaking against him.
The polling was largely right, but missed that uniform late break in key states. It required a very specific series of event so happen.
Actually, no they were not. Right before the election, the NY Times published a study that showed that actually margin of error of polls recently was closer to 6-7% not the 3% advertised. I posted a link to it but I can’t remember which thread.
The election was razor thin in several states so making statemenst like Comey actions affected the election, while relying on such a crude measuring device is pretty foolish. Even trying to measure the impact of something as huge as the Access Hollywood tape is statistically challenging.
Edit: Found the study here
That’s interesting that margin of error has always been double what we thought it was. However, if I remember correctly, Clinton led by 4 in the polls and then led by 2 in the election, which is within the original (and too low) margin of error estimate.
The national polls were ok, but of course that’s not relevant to how we elect the President. Clinton over performed in places like California and under performed in the places where it counted. 538 did an analysis of the state polls after the election if IIRC, roughly 1/2 the state polls were outside of the margin of error.
Hell, I sent some money down to help ossoff. He needs to win that seat.
Losing seats is what will cause the GOP to abandon this fucking crazy train they are on.
Well, I don’t want to be arguing for the polls being “good” - people placed too much faith in them, but that’s largely because they didn’t pay attention to typical polling errors. The polls weren’t any better or worse than they typically are this time around.
I doubt it. It will make them double down on some of the crazy. Gun rights. Abortion. Illegal immigrants stealing our jobs and stealing public assistance. They might distance themselves from Trump but they can’t alienate some of their cores.
It’s going to be interesting to see the debate on Trump’s proposed budget. He wants to gut some social programs. He wants big tax breaks for people who don’t need them.
I don’t know if he understands, but gutting Medicaid will toss many senior citizens out of nursing homes. I guess those people don’t vote, but their next of kin do. And they are old enough to imagine themselves on the receiving end at some point. The idea that we are going to die peacefully in our beds or have a heart attack while mowing the grass or get terminal cancer while we are still otherwise healthy is not a realistic one. Most of us will require some kind of assisted living for awhile, and the only way to pay for that now for most of us is through Medicaid help.
Maybe they can attribute seniors dying in the streets to those evil Democrats, who won’t help the President fix a collapsing Obamacare?
Also, where do you think most of the sick oldsters are going to go? Back home to their kids, who’d really rather not have to wipe mom’s ass, thanks all the same, Republicans.
And we got that October surprise which caused it to happen, which was too late for polls to factor it in.
That said, people on the left were complacent in many places (not so much in the caliphate because the left here was angry at the state government- but even here Hillary lost by a point)
Not everyone has somewhere to go. Some people don’t have kids, or have kids they’ve alienated. Or have kids who work and can’t provide care. You have a parent with Alzheimer’s who might walk out the door and disappear for two days since no one’s home to keep an eye on him, but you need to go to work to pay your mortgage. What are you going to do?
Even beyond this, there are nursing homes that are 100% Medicaid. That’s job loss too when those close.
It’s a tough deal. We recently dealt with this with my girlfriend’s dad. He was 90 and did very well living on his own, but when he finally started to go downhill, it happened quickly. He went from being able to live on his own to within a few weeks of requiring a nursing home. This was a guy who worked all his life, including working part-time in retirement until he was 85. He served in the military in WW2 - second wave at Normandy. But he didn’t have half a million in savings when he was 90. So he went into a Medicaid nursing home. If Medicaid hadn’t covered it, I don’t know what we would have done. We both work so we don’t have time to deliver that kind of care. For whatever reason he did end up dying quickly, but he had been a hardy soul so he could have spent a few years there. His older brother is still alive in assisted living at the age of 96.
My feeling is we are all in this together as a society, so we all need to chip in and help the needy out. Yes, there will always be waste and abuse, but you see that in the private sector too. Sorry for rambling a bit.
I tend to agree with this: