Betty’s post this morning about good polls in Florida, and the news yesterday that the Republicans are pulling ads in Arizona, Pennsylvania (home of Wegner’s) and Wisconsin is all good. It’s a far better thing to be up in the polls, and to have Republicans unable to afford ads in states where they should be competing, than the alternative.
Still, I can’t shake the feeling that these things matter far less than they used to. Polling can’t be trusted for a couple of reasons, including cell phones and tight races being under the margin of error. I don’t know about you, but I see a tiny fraction of the TV ads that I used to. Campaign advertising, like advertising in general, is a black box into which campaigns pour money, with little or no knowledge of whether the ads made a difference. It’s even harder to gauge the marginal value of a dollar spent on TV advertising for a well-funded campaign that is pouring millions into all forms of advertising and GOTV.
Anyway, the political indicators that I thought were meaningful just a few years ago — polls, TV spend and, to some extent, fundraising — don’t have much predictive value anymore, and I’m sure not clear on what indicators do have value. How about you?
Skippy-san
Also , given voter suppression efforts you can’t rest until after election day.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I could see pulling money away from Oz, and maybe the fabled “internal polls’ for Masters look really really bad, I know the public polling has been fairly strong for Kelly even before the GOP primary, but somebody’s gonna have to show me some data that Ron Johnson is limping along. Maybe they’re counting on the Uihleins to pay for Johnson’s campaign
p.a.
… given voter suppression efforts you can’t rest
until after election day.Fixt
NotMax
Fifteen second political spots on stream-with-ads services seem to be the new hot take.
MattF
Agree that polls are nearly meaningless these days— low and biased responses, plus various ‘adjustments’ make the whole business suspect.
rikyrah
I will always contend that a lot of Red States are not Red States. They are Purple States, if not Blue States.
They appear to be Red States, because they are actually VOTER SUPPRESSED STATES.
catclub
The still functioning indicator: Being in an obvious recession in May-June is bad for incumbents. Note 2020. also 1980 and 1992. also 2016 – thanks FED
HumboldtBlue
I saw a poll result fly across Twitter two weeks ago or so that had Biden with terrible numbers. “62 percent of Americans don’t like the way Biden is doing his job.” The total amount of people polled? Something like 630. It’s absurd.
@rikyrah:
Yup. Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania come immediately to mind.
Immanentize
@rikyrah: Agree 💯
Kristine
One thing that’s happened since I cut cable a few months ago–no more ads. Even when I had cable, I didn’t see ads all that often.
Do political ads show up on channel-streaming services like Sling
And I see that NotMax answered my question.
Immanentize
@catclub: But we were not in an obvious recession in May-June, or is that what you are saying?
catclub
@rikyrah:
Our fellow citizens do not vote in large numbers.
Voter suppression might change turnout from 55% (I think this is optimistic relative to the potential number of voters) to 53%, but where the heck are the other 45% of the eligible population?
Betty Cracker
I’m in the same place — who the hell knows.
trollhattan
They can. If you log on via your ISP then they have your location and you can receive targeted ads. Does not infect every channel/service but can happen.
IDK if a VPN borks the process.
Old School
I used to think it was a big deal when candidates/parties had to cut advertising, but there are enough special interest groups out there willing to run ads that I suspect viewers in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin won’t notice a lack of anti-Democrat or pro-Republican ads.
Delk
The best ads, the ones that I actually watch are from states I don’t live in.
catclub
@Immanentize:
This year there was definitely NOT a recession then. You don’t get a recession while adding 500k jobs per month and when DisneyWorld is overbooked. But a LOT of people were hoping for one. These are generally people who are confident THEY will not lose their job in a recession.
Nicole
Oh, man, that Dr. Oz video. So much wrong. I’ve watched it several times and it gets better every viewing.
“Wegmer’s”
“Crudite” (as Fetterman accurately stated, in PA it’s a veggie platter, and you serve it with ranch. Sour cream and onion dip is also acceptable.)
Broccoli, asparagus, a bagful of (big) carrots, guac and salsa. Because that’s what you put on a veggie platter.
Quoting the price of bruschetta as the price of the salsa.
Has the man ever seen a shopping basket?
(Why are you not just buying a pre-made veggie platter and complaining about the cost of that? Oh right, because then you wouldn’t get the raw asparagus.)
If ever one wanted a video demonstrating someone who has never, ever, ever grocery shopped for themselves in their entire lives, it’s this video.
I too, am less trusting of polls than in the past, but I do think Fetterman probably has this one in the bag, as long as he doesn’t do anything stupid. Hell, even if he does, it might not matter. Oz has got to be one of the worst candidates ever to pretend to be from the Commonwealth.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@catclub:
An argument can be made that in 1979-1981, the FED was forced to act to bring inflation down because other less blunt mechanisms such as lowering spending/increasing taxes weren’t being used/weren’t effective enough
At least that’s what I’ve read
Immanentize
@catclub: so many elections are in very narrow margins these days that subtracting 2% from Dems in an election is a very BFD. Georgia is the proof case — massive voter turnout efforts aimed at countering legal suppression methods led to TWO Dem Senators — and today’s bill signing.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Have you contacted a front-pager yet about the meetup? If not, do you want a meetup post?
Immanentize
@catclub: Ok, so incumbents are not in trouble. Or not in as much trouble.
Do you think the media narrative of the Presidents party always losing big in midterms was actually linked to the full on “recession’s a comin'” push? Or is that too tinfoil?
opiejeanne
@NotMax: MSNBC aired an ad last night that touted the accomplishments of Biden and the Democrats, and I thought it was really effective, but this was during Maddow’s show and I’d like to see it on all of the channels including Fox.
FastEdD
It is difficult to react tea leaves, and I am very wary after reading all the assurances that “HIllary Clinton’s got this.” Howeberdo, campaigns supposedly have better information than we do and when they allocate resources based on that info usually they know what they are doing. Holding and even expanding our Senate majority looks pretty good, but I am worried about the House.
jonas
@Nicole: Yeah whoever thought a video of a clearly-out-of-his-depth Oz trying to negotiate a supermarket vegetable aisle was a good idea should not be in that business. Unless Oz has unwittingly hired a bunch of undercover pro-Fetterman guerilla media people intentionally trying to make him look like a doofus.
“Wegmers” was just… *chef’s kiss
Roger Moore
@catclub:
I don’t think voter disengagement is a separate phenomenon from voter suppression. They’re part of a spectrum. A huge part of voter suppression is about convincing people that voting is unimportant and a waste of time. When you combine that with efforts to make voting unpleasant and time consuming, you can keep a lot of people from voting without any formal measure that makes it impossible for them to vote.
pat
@rikyrah:
Wisconsin. 50% dem, 50% rep votes, assembly 70% repuke.
All due to redistricting. And once those …. people are in power, they are not going to give it up.. And the “supreme” court says that ballot drop boxes are “illegal.”
I hope we can get rid of dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks Johnson. That, at least, would be terrific.
WaterGirl
@Old School: Yep. Plus, I do not think for a minute that this Republican party would follow the rules that say there can’t be coordination between the campaign and outside groups.
Benw
I stopped predicting political shit when that unpleasant orange fool got elected
Ruckus
Also we have an unreasonably large portion of citizens who are seemingly in love with a stone cold moron, because he’s as stupid and racist as they are.
We have politics that in some ways resembles a high school student body presidential election. It’s not about any actual governing, it’s about appeasing to the lowest common denominator. Which is this case is racism and hate. People do not understand that this is a huge country with over 330 million people living here and a political system that has been broken, or at least marginally operational for decades. A country can not run on racism, because it turns into WWII Germany and ends up destroying itself or being destroyed. And in today’s world that would very likely be bad for every single living thing.
The republican party has become the openly racist party that thinks that only the wealthy deserve any kind of life. It’s the party it has always been, with the blinds pulled back so we can all see the rotted bigotry and theft.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Roger Moore:
Do people just think things like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid came from the Ether one day?
catclub
@Nicole: We in the US spend a much smaller fraction of our income on food than people do in the civilized parts of Europe. And much that we buy is cheap and crappy – which is how we like it. That was my primary response to that ad. USians expect cheap food.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Not yet. And yes, please.
See #14 from this morning for any details.
Turgidson
After Hair Furor outperformed polls in both elections and GOP candidates outperformed *him* in 2020, I have started to just mentally assume that the vote count will come in with the GOP doing several points better than expected. Especially if the state is Florida. After seeing Hillary hit all her urban turnout targets and 2016 and still lose, Gillum and Nelson lose in 2018 despite persistent polling leads, and Biden lose FL after leading by sometimes large amounts, I refuse to get excited about the possibility of Demings beating lil Marco until the votes are counted.
It seems to me that Trump found and activated hundreds of thousands of non-voting lunatics in FL and polls don’t know how to reach these dolts or factor them in. Meanwhile, DeSatan and his GOP goons hollowed out the restoration of felon voting rights by creating a poll tax of “unpaid fees” that even state workers don’t know how to administer.
RobertB
Tim Ryan’s campaign was advertising for the general election the day after the primary election here in Ohio. As I remember it, they really haven’t stopped.
Every time she sees a Tim Ryan ad, my daughter asks me, “Are you sure he’s a Democrat? There’s nobody else I can vote for?” No, honey, voting for anyone but a Democrat or a Republican is throwing your vote away. My mother-in-law asks the same thing, but that’s just because her memory isn’t what it used to be.
opiejeanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yes. The mortgage rate shot up to 19% for a fixed loan, and stayed there. Realtors and developers were desperate to find ways around that.
JoyceH
@jonas: Someone immediately went out and created a Twitter account for Wegner’s Grocery – it’s been trolling Oz hard.
Omnes Omnibus
I don’t know what pulling the ad buys from three battleground states in August means precisely, but I can say that it’s not good news for the GOP.
I am a firm believer in the idea that success breeds success and that confidence is contagious. Let’s build on our success over the past year and try to run up the fucking score. Dagnabit!
catclub
@Roger Moore:
I agree with this. I still think that USians don’t vote very much and active suppression is maybe 2% while apathy is 43%. If voter suppression is MUCH MUCH worse than it used to be, what was voter turnout in the good old pre-suppression days? About the same.
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yes, many do.
Edmund Dantes
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): yes. Yes they do.
Plenty of people have no idea at all where the stuff they get in their life comes from.
Perfect example are the people I know that still in rural maine. They rail against the post office and think they’d be better off with UPS or FedEx and have no comprehension they could never afford to pay to have stuff shipped to them if the post office was not doing the “last mile” deliveries.
the other famous is “keep the government out of my Medicare”.
wonkie
I count the news as ads because the news is what people see and news can excite people, involve people, or turn them off. I think the good news for Democrats is also good advertising. I see a lot of ads on Facebook and they seem like effective ads–at least, to me. I only see ads for Democrats, probably because of some decision made by FB.
I think the most important thing in this race is the ground game. I have written around one thousand letters and I am writing more. It worries me that Wisconsin doesn’t seem to have any letter writing campaigns going. I am concentrating now on Kansas to help Sharice Davids.
Roger Moore
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Yes, they do. The people starting Medicare today were in third grade when the law creating it was passed, and Social Security is far older than that. It’s totally understandable that someone would see them as having just come from the ether and the process by which they came about as irrelevant to today’s politics.
Omnes Omnibus
@catclub: More people were disenfranchised by WI’s voter ID law in Milwaukee alone than Trump’s margin of victory in the state. But I am sure that made no difference. [eye-roll]
opiejeanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): They have no fucking clue that it could all be taken away from them, like the Jill Stein/Bernie voters who didn’t believe that the Supreme Court was on the line, that Roe could be overturned. They think it’s settled law.
The Moar You Know
I haven’t seen a political ad since 2019 unless one of you posts it here. Cord-cutting 20 years ago and a foreswearing of social media two-plus years ago. I doubt there’s a lot of folks as isolated from that discourse like I am, though.
@HumboldtBlue: As part of my psych major a few decades back, I had to take classes in both stats and study design. Study design is basically the foundation of polling.
I’d be perfectly happy to extrapolate Biden’s approval numbers from half that many people, if I knew information about who had been interviewed, most importantly their demographic info, voter registration status (i.e. registered or not) and location, to insure that I was getting a realistic cross-section of American voters. I doubt very much that most polling companies take good care to insure that.
See “election of Donald Trump, 2016”.
Doug R
Midterm predicting can be tricky. It all depends on turnout. 2010 and you get gerrymandered districts.
Or 2018 which was the biggest midterm turnout in 104 years with historic Democratic gains which would have been even bigger if it weren’t for the gerrymandered seats from 2010.
Ruckus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The problem is that one of our political parties is all about the money and getting and keeping as much as possible in any and every way possible, all the while not spending their fair share on the government that is supposed to be about THE PEOPLE, not the rich people, not the religious people, not the white people. ALL THE DAMN PEOPLE, every last one of them. And not actually doing that really, really fucks up a government of, for and by ALL THE DAMN PEOPLE. This is a country that mostly has done exactly the opposite of what it says it is about.
How many of our legislators are actually rather well off? Having limits for time in office limits many things, and sometimes would limit good things. But overall having term limits would make the people more in charge. We have 330 million people living here, certainly we can find enough people to replace a congress person after say 20 yrs, or enough educated people to be on a 13 body supreme court for some limited time like 15 yrs. This is supposed to be a country of the people but our representation continues to have it’s legs cut out from under all of us by the people not being reasonably represented.
I have a list of things that I think we need to do to bring this country back to being the place it was intended to be, as written in our founding documents, that have changed over time for a number of reasons and methods.
Nicole
@jonas: All I could think was, “Wow, some rich people really end up completely isolated from day-to-day life.” It made me remember how astounded Bush elder was by the grocery scanner, except that that story, from what I remember, turned out to be exaggerated, while this was… it was all there, caught on video. The lack of a shopping basket. Like, what?
Also… so, tequila is necessary for a veggie platter? What kind of party are the Oz’s throwing?
The President and Dr. Biden, I have no doubt, would have gone in, effortlessly located and purchased a pre-made veggie platter and been out in five minutes.
opiejeanne
@Nicole: Maybe he forgot to mention the Wesson oil.
divF
Oz was a medical student 1982-1986, around the time that Madame divF was. As a student, she was able to get a cut-price subscription to the weekly New England Journal of Medicine, which contained a section called “Case Studies of the Massachusetts General Hospital”. These were articles that presented a history of a specific patient, and a some point in the middle of the article, you were supposed to have enough information to make a diagnosis. Anyway, NEJM got on a kick on obscure autoimmune disorders, so that it got to the point that even I (a mathematician, not a physician) could identify a case of “Wegner’s granulomatosis”. There is no question that this name (which has since been discarded, since Wegner has been discovered to have been a Nazi doctor during WWII) stuck in Oz’ memory (as it has in mine after 40 years), and then got blurted out in the ad.
topclimber
@catclub: Disney World is offering deep (state) discounts because they know DeSantis is about to run them out of Florida.
UncleEbeneezer
We watched the feature film Thirteen Lives the other night and really enjoyed it. It’s the story of the Tham Luang cave rescue from 2018 and it was really intense. If you are a bit claustrophobic like me, it will make you very uncomfortable. But it is really amazing what they had to do to get those kids out safely.
topclimber
@Nicole: Fetterman just has to stay healthy. I hope he is eating his crudites.
lowtechcyclist
@HumboldtBlue:
Explain, please. Nothing’s inherently wrong with a sample of ~630, that gives you a 4% margin of error.
The problem is nonresponse bias: caller ID and the near-death of the land line have made it a challenge to get a representative sample responding to your poll. But I don’t see how sheer numbers of responses can overcome that.
Another Scott
@The Moar You Know: I think pollsters know how to do polling right. The folks at the University of Chicago who do the General Social Survey know how to do accurate polls. For example, once someone gets on their list to be questioned/polled, the pollster will (or used to) move heaven and earth to get them to respond and answer the questions. (Because people who have 9-5 jobs can be different from people who have midnight-to- 9 AM jobs, etc.)
But that costs money.
What matters is who is paying for the poll. They determine how slanted it is, how representative it is, how useful it is as an accurate reflection of opinions.
Cheers,
Scott.
Nicole
@divF: That’s really interesting and makes total sense. Unfortunately for him, Wegmans is a grocery store that can inspire Apple computer-levels of devotion in its customers. RESPECT MUST BE PAID.
zhena gogolia
@Nicole: eversor pointed out that he chose a damaged head of broccoli.
Ocotillo
I have not looked at the tv today but as of yesterday, some PAC was running ads imploring us to call Henry Cuellar to vote against the IRA. Nice to see their dollars not only being futile but being spent after the horse is already out of the barn.
Roger Moore
@catclub:
I think a huge part of the low prices for food in the USA is because there are so many people living at or near poverty. They are right on the edge of being able to support themselves, and cheap food is a big part of the way they’re able to survive. That’s why price increases on food are such a big deal. Everyone’s got to eat, and seeing prices go from “just barely possible” to “impossible” is something that can motivate people. Now talking about the high price of crudites is not the way of getting those people on your side, but food prices out of control are something a competent outsider politician could use in their favor.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@opiejeanne:
@Roger Moore
@Edmund Dantes:
@Omnes Omnibus:
Pretty much every non-failed state in existence has some kind of old age state pension system
I read the Bogleheads investing forum often and whenever the subject about SS “running out of money/being abolished” comes up, if it’s not locked for being “non-actionable” or violating the site’s “no politics” rule, posters insist that abolishing SS would be political suicide because older people make up a huge voting bloc, and that some kind of fix will have to be found
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Does anybody remember a polling outfit that was going to outperform traditional polling outfits because they were going to remove the bias inherent in polling only land lines? Began with a Z, I think.
(Edit: It was Zogby. They still exist apparently. How’s their reputation, anybody know?)
As I recall, they ended up being among the worst performers in whatever election that was. One of the GW Bush races, I think.
I thought Nate Silver started out as a statistician who was actually doing better than most at prediction and analysis of the many polls, but I could have dreamed that.
bbleh
Campaign advertising, like advertising in general, is a black box into which campaigns pour money, with little or no knowledge of whether the ads made a difference.
This is both true and not true for different reasons, but I think I disagree with the intent of the comment.
It is certainly true that, as I was told long ago by a longtime Hill hand, the voting public is a black box, and when you put something in one end you just don’t know what’s gonna come out the other end. This is as true of campaign advertising as anything else in a campaign.
And it is true that, as John Wanamaker said long ago, I know half my advertising budget is wasted; I just don’t know which half.
AND it is true that, with the diversification of media, TV ads matter a lot less than they used to. (Although they still matter a lot to older voters, who vote in large numbers, and clever campaigns use multiple media, which is not so different in principle.)
BUT … campaigns still advertise. And they do so because if they don’t, it hurts them. If you aren’t “on the air,” it shows in your poll numbers, your volunteers, and your press. You fade. There are exceptions, but TV ads alas, are still an important part of “brand maintenance.” And that’s what makes this news significant.
JWR
Speaking of Florida, Politico:
Good thing she’s mature enough to become a single parent at 16.
Another Scott
@Roger Moore:
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
bbleh
@JWR: Apparently you don’t understand the intent of the law. What matters is the Idealized Baby, not the actual one, and certainly not the sinful vessel that carries it.
Something something Will of God something slutty-slut-slut something, states’ rights something, motion denied, amen.
The Golux
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Paul Krugman’s take on this is that the real problem in 1979-81 was that everyone expected inflation to remain high for the foreseeable future, causing manufacturers and retailers to keep raising prices, and employees to demand higher wages, creating a wage-price spiral.
The current situation is different because polling indicates that people think (at least for now) the current high inflation won’t last.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@topclimber:
This is exaggeration, right? He can’t literally be trying to run Disney, a huge tourist draw for Florida, out of the state, right?
Steve in the ATL
@Immanentize: peak tinfoil was a lie
bbleh
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Statistical models by definition have an underlying model of voter behavior. One can analyze historical data and say that some variables have greater predictive value than others, but ultimately one must choose among those variables to assemble a model of future behavior (even if one follows the data blindly, which is equivalent to asserting that “nothing will change”), and THAT is where the difference among models and modelers comes in.
I think the greatest contribution of statistical analysis has been to say “variable X, assumed since Ye Olden Days by the Council of Pundits to be very significant, actually is not.” I think it has been much less successful or useful at predictive modeling.
Ken
@opiejeanne: @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You think McConnell looks dyspeptic normally, wait until the Supreme Court Six strike down Social Security and Medicare.
(“And the Pulitzer committee is unanimous in awarding the 2023 photography award to the iconic photograph capturing the mob of senior citizens curb-stomping the six justices….”)
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
I think pollsters know how to do the technical side of polling right: how big a sample size you need, how to weight by demographics to account for the poll being not perfectly representative, etc. That’s only one part of the problem, though. You also have to worry about how to ensure your poll is getting a wide enough cross section of people that you can apply that weighting and what the actual voter pool will look like relative to the population at large or the pool of registered voters.
I think it’s those latter points that pollsters are failing on. They have trouble because traditional methods of polling are failing badly enough at reaching some groups that they can’t appropriately weight for them, and because they can’t predict the final electorate well enough to get the weights right anyway.
Another Scott
@The Golux: Yup. The times really were different then.
When the checkout magazines have headlines yelling about how to take advantage of cheaper future money to buy stuff now, etc., then the Fed thought it had to crush the economy to crush inflation.
Back then credit card interest was deductible on your income taxes. Back then student loan interest rates were fixed at < 5%, so more than a few people took out cheap student loans (even if they didn’t need them) to buy 16% CDs – it was free money. People got cost-of-living raises. Lots of things were different back then that don’t apply now.
I’m not worried about a 3-3.5% Fed Funds rate. That shouldn’t kill the economy, and if normal humans can earn more than 0.05% interest on their savings again that would be a very good thing. But Powell better do what he says about watching the numbers carefully… :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Ken
@Another Scott: Coincidentally(?), on my lunchtime walk I picked up some trash threw it into a dumpster, which annoyed the raccoon that was investigating the garbage buffet.
(I backed off quickly, they are not supposed to be active during the day, so it may have been ill.)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Another Scott:
I think I agree with you. Although, I’ve seen speculation that the Fed does plan to continue raising interest rates further into next year, depending economic conditions of course
I only earn like 0.01% interest on my brick and mortar savings account. My bank’s offerings for CDs are a complete joke, and even the local credit union, which are supposed to offer better rates, only have like 0.40% on their savings. HYSAs are superior but I really do like having a one stop shop for my banking needs and I already have my Treasury Direct account linked to my current bank. *Shrug*
I’ve decided to start slowly converting my cash savings/emergency fund into I Bond
The Cleveland Fed has an Inflation Nowcasting thing that estimates current inflation measures, including Core CPI, headline CPI, and Core PCE.
As of 8/16, CPI is at 5.79%
Redshift
@Nicole:
It is definitely the George HW Bush and the grocery scanner of this campaign season. And that at least had the excuse that it was news coverage, this was something Oz’s campaign thought was a good idea to put out themselves!
Jinchi
@Roger Moore:
I think pollsters are failing more often because the political system itself has become chaotic. Trump was a symptom of this, but the problems we face here, including stresses from climate change and Covid, together with the battle between autocrats and democrats are being replicated across the globe.
We live in interesting times. That’s made prediction hard.
Mo MacArbie
My memory of the GHW Bush shopping trip was that he asked where he could find croissants. Don’t get me wrong, I freaking love croissants, but holy arugula, Batman, that ain’t exactly man-of-the-people. Now a tube of Pillsbury crescent roll dough and some hot dogs to wrap them around on the other hand…
Roger Moore
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Nate started out as someone who realized you could basically narrow the polling margin of error by aggregating polls. Essentially, any poll has a built in margin of error because you’re sampling only a subset of the population. The math works out that quadrupling the sample size will halve the percent error. So if you can aggregate 4 polls, you’d expect to have half the margin of error of any single poll. This can also help if you think the polls may be biased in some way; the aggregate is likely to be less biased than a random individual poll, though dealing with bias is much more complicated.
Anyway, Nate realized this and developed a methodology based on aggregating the data from multiple polls. He even went further and developed a fairly sophisticated method that looked at state polls, tried to use neighboring states to estimate what was happening in states that didn’t have enough polls, figure out how much correlation there was between states, and so on. As far as I can tell, his methodology for aggregating polls is still pretty solid.
Where he really went off the rails was thinking he could generalize into other areas of journalism. He started acting like a pundit rather than a quant, making unsupportable quantitative predictions about Trump’s likelihood of winning the nomination in 2016. He also spread out into other areas of data journalism, and acted like mastering polling meant he could say something meaningful about epidemiology in 2020.
Mike in NC
@Redshift: Pretty sure Dr Oz, who lives in a mansion in New Jersey, has flunkies who do his grocery shopping. He looked clueless in that video.
jonas
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Based on conversations with some family friends who recently returned from a week at Disney World with a mostly drained bank account, they aren’t discounting shit.
SiubhanDuinne
@bbleh:
Schrödinger’s Assertion.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
I don’t understand this mindset. Even today, when we’re down in the polls and down in fundraising, people believe that. But when those same metrics show us doing well they don’t believe it.
catclub
@Omnes Omnibus:
I agreed that suppression is 2% – even though there is very little evidence and no clear experiment to determine that number.
la caterina
Does anyone have info on writing postcards to voters?
catclub
@SiubhanDuinne:
Godel
Redshift
@Immanentize:
The “red wave” narrative may have been linked to that, but not losing significant seats in midterms. That’s a real pattern, even if most “explanations” of it are as bogus as the “reason” the stock market went up or down on a given day.
It’s all about turnout. If we don’t lose seats in November, it’ll be because of overturning Roe and the very visible threat of TFG and his minions and mini-me’s. (And possibly because of insane GOP primary voters putting forth nutcases and obviously unqualified idiots that their general election voters aren’t enthusiastic about. Not counting on that, but enthusiasm and turnout on both sides matter to the outcome.)
Mike in NC
@Mo MacArbie: Didn’t somebody ask George H W Bush what his favorite snack was, and he told them it was pork rinds. Pretty sure he never ate one in his life.
Baud
I hope they take Oz hunting.
Bill Arnold
@The Golux:
Also, there are (older) people with power who have memories of what the Federal Research(Paul Volcker) did, which was (if I recall correctly) to raise the fed funds rate like 8.5 (?) points and temporarily kill the industries that depended on lower interest rates. Unemployment shot up to well over 10 percent. Like 20 percent in the town I was living in at the time.
Redshift
@Roger Moore: I agree, but I feel like another bit of Nate’s “magic” was the ongoing “if the election were held today” predictions, which sounded like predictions of the election outcome (and got the attention that came with that), but that he could deny were ever wrong, because anything other than the final one (which usually wasn’t that different from other polling predictions) wasn’t really an election prediction.
Anyway
@topclimber:
Yes, stay away from the charcuterie, John. I am getting a little anxious seeing all the “PA is in the bag” tweets. It’s too soon, people.
Roger Moore
@Jinchi:
I think I’m on the same general page as you are, though @bbleh probably said it better. Pollsters are good at asking people what they think, but you need some kind of model to translate what that limited set of people say into a reasonable prediction of the future. How good a pollster is ultimately depends on both the data and the model. The data may be less good because of problems getting everyone to respond to polls, and the model may be less good because the chaotic political situation means you can’t depend on past behavior as a predictor of the future.
catclub
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
have you done a search on KASASA checking accounts? Mine has gotten worse, down from 3% to 1.5% or so. But you would think they are hidden in a locked file cabinet in a basement with ‘beware of the leopard’ signs on the door, from how many other people never have heard of them.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mo MacArbie:
Funnily enough, I was just at the grocery store (not Wegner’s) and almost impulse-bought a tube of Pillsbury crescent roll dough. But at almost $5 bucks a can, I quickly decided against it.
Geminid
@opiejeanne: Stein certainly drained voters from Clinton that year. Also, a lot of voters disaffected with the Democratic party voted for Gary Johnson that uear. The Libertarians got almost 2 million more votes in
20202016 than they did before or after.Many were all over the map ideologically but shared the common trait of misogyny. I think some were certain trump would lose and thought they had a “free” protest vote..
edited to correct the year.
brendancalling
@Nicole: who doesn’t chase their raw asparagus and salsa with tequila? What are you, a weirdo??
JoyceH
Okay, what if – Cheney loses her seat and the Dems keep the House. Should the Dems hire her for the J6 committee? She does good work there, and she’s pretty much said her Mission is to make sure Trump never gains power again, so what better way to do that?
JMG
What has had the most impact on polling is caller ID. People see a number they don’t know and say, “Nope,” not even picking up the phone. Internet polls are gradually taking over, but they attract people who actively WANT to participate, whereas back when people answered their phones, it was easier to get less committed folks just because they were sorta flattered to be asked.
Also, IMO, if a poll is off be 3-4 percent, which is plenty to have the wrong candidate leading in many elections, it’s not inaccurate. That’s about as close as they can get consistently. But because elections are zero-sum games, polls get blasted if that happens. Example: The final Fox poll (a pretty good poll) for the Virginia Governor’s race had Youngkin ahead by 8. The final WaPo poll (also a good one), had McAuliffe leading by 1. Youngkin won by 2.5 or thereabouts. In math terms, the WaPoll was closer to the final result, but people didn’t see it that way.
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore: I don’t think you can account for viral social media, either.
catclub
@Redshift:
Biden’s approval ratings are historically low. I attribute this to Republicans viewing the world – and the economy, and how the US is going – extremely politically, while democrats are still somewhat more evenhanded. It is polarization on one side that we all understand. Biden’s ratings were about as bad as GWBush’s in 2008, when the world economy was falling apart. The fact that it is NOT falling apart now does not penetrate.
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
I didn’t mind the “nowcast” predictions, and I actually appreciated the ability to look at both how the polls stood today and what that probably meant for the future. It was annoying that people looked at the “nowcast” as if it were a final election prediction, but Nate was pretty explicit about the difference between the two models.
Redshift
In the DC area, there were wall-to-wall TV ads for the recent Maryland elections for weeks. (The Ms. watches broadcast news, but I’m pretty sure they were on cable, too.)
I’ve long suspected that most of the money spent on TV ads was wasted, especially once we had campaign managers who funneled stuff through “media consultants” (who were sometimes owned by the campaign manager.) It’s worthwhile to have some so people remember the candidate exists and knows their name on Election Day, but I’m dubious whether they’re effective for any other purpose (persuasion, turnout), especially considering the cost relative to other campaign expenses.
Viva BrisVegas
@JoyceH: If Cheney loses her primary, what’s to stop her from running as an independent? Respect for the party?
SiubhanDuinne
@JoyceH:
I was just wondering the same thing. Pretty sure she could stay attached to the J6 committee as Counsel or something.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
Nitpick: there hasn’t really been an ‘or since’ yet. ;-)
Geminid
@JoyceH: I think the J6 Commitee intends to finish its work this year. There will be more hearings, and a big fat report. Maybe the Commitee will be revived if Democrats control the next Congress, but Cheney will have other ways to carry on her fight with the Trumpists.
trollhattan
@Viva BrisVegas: That’s what Murkowski did after losing her primary to a teabagger. It worked.
JWR
Oops, they did it again! ( Politico )
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Thanks, you caught an error. I meant to say 2016, not 2020.
Tony G
@MattF: Polling is essentially useless now, in my opinion. About 90% of the calls that I get on my cell phone and landline (yes, I am old, therefore I still have a landline) are spam, so therefore I never answer the phone unless I know the caller. Fewer and few people watch conventional commercial TV. The old methods will not work anymore.
Baud
@Geminid:
Trump will be indicted after the election anyway.
topclimber
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You busted me. It was snark. Actually DeSantis wants Disney to turn into a creationist theme park. Because those in Florida have been so successful…not.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid: I should have picked up that you meant 2016, that was obvious once you said it.
Baud
@JWR:
We are in ur base killing your dudes.
delphinium
@la caterina: Try Postcards to Voters:
https://postcardstovoters.org/volunteer/
Pennsylvanian
@opiejeanne: I was young but I remember that. My primary memory is that my frugal parents were thrilled to get a 10 year CD that paid something like 14%. Unheard of! This was before 401ks/iRAs so savers rarely saw the risk/return of being in the stock market I think. That was probably the only good part.
trollhattan
@JWR:
If anything, it seems to have encompassed a bigger area than last week’s air base blast.
As always, there’s video.
Ka-boomksi.
Jinchi
Agreed, but there’s also the very real motivator of legislative accomplishments. Manchin and Sinema blowing up the BBB and other major legislation was a real threat to the Democratic majority. Recent wins by Biden, are a big deal.
Jinchi
@trollhattan:
That’s one hell of a dropped cigarette. What are the Russians smoking these days?
Another Scott
@Roger Moore: IIRC, he started out being a wunderkind in sports betting or something. Then branched out into politics. He’s not learned to stay in his lane yet.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Ugh. Why do people think I want to get to know them as people?
topclimber
All you jackals with your elitist anti-elitist statements about the Oz-man’s food vocabulary are missing the big picture. Oz has always been the friendly quack who pleasantly peddled his nonsense on the Oprah Winfrey show and the like. But he never had the killer instinct. To see him saying “you’re fired” is risible.
Now a killer Oz might take this talk about veggies to a higher level: “Hey, Fetterman, laugh all you want about how I refer to a veggie platter (because it is so unlike mocking Obama about arugula) but really, man, how about your health? Are you eating the good foods it will take to keep you out of the hospital? I am worried about you, man. Ease off on the Philly cheese steak and the corn fritters at the Bethlehem county fair, man. Put more crudites into your life.
“Pennsylvania needs a healthy senator.”
Geminid
@trollhattan: Murkowski’s write-in victory in 2010 was very exceptional. She won with strong support from labor unions and Alaska’s Native Corporations. Also, Murkowski’s father was a powerful politician in the state. Cheney would not have those advantages. If she loses today she’ll have little prospect of winning in November.
Murkowski had to run again in 2016. This time she won the Republican nomination. The tea partier who opposed her in 2010 was the Libertarian candidate that year.
Later this month Murkowski will compete in the first primary inder Alaska’s ne w electoral system. There will be an all-party, “jungle” primary. Then the top four finishers will advance to a ranked-choice election in November. This method almost seems designed with Murkowski in mind, and maybe campaign professionals too.
JWR
@trollhattan:
Wow! It really starts to go “Ka-boomski” at the 1:00 mark. Thanks!
artem1s
@The Moar You Know:
I wonder if the polling companies continue to use the same lists of contacts because they know they will get a good response rate. Only problem is they aren’t updating the contacts info to reflect their actual demographics or political leanings over time. And their lists are full of people easily contacted and who will take the time to answer a poll. That alone naturally skews results, even if you hit all your cross-section target numbers.
RaflW
The appalling thing about our attention economy is that far too few people pay attention.
We’re a nation that now has our “bat boy” National Enquirer stories spoon fed 24/7/365 with no effort to go to the store, throw the Enquirer in the cart, and then flip thru it later at home.
And every Republican (and a few Dems) are only looking for metrics, clicks, shares, engagement. Governing? Boooooo-ooooooo-ooooo-RING!
trollhattan
@JWR: Right? Thought all the ka-booming was in frame until they pan left. Holy hell.
Pennsylvanian
@Another Scott: why would he report a 40% chance candidate? Um, looks like NJOz should be reported as facing a 60% chance of defeat. That is your headline.
I know, heads they win, tails we lose.
I can’t believe Oz did that grocery store thing. Crudite is not a food in 80% of Pennsylvania. It’s something you scrape off your boot.
Please tell me he is installing a car elevator in his NJ mansion. This HAS to get better.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@JWR:
If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… the A-Team
cain
@JWR: “Oops, they did it again ” – Brittany Spears
Gvg
@topclimber: those look like the normal state discount rates to me and I bet desantis goes before Disney myself.
Baud
Don’t know if this link has been shared.
The Biggest Climate Bill of Your Life
https://youtu.be/qw5zzrOpo2s
The Lodger
@Baud: Pennsylvania deer season starts Oct. 2.
The ads should be spectacular.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Pennsylvanian: I’m old enough to remember how the liberal media dragged John Kerry through the streets for putting swiss cheese on his steak sandwich.
But Oz is republican, so the media will give him a free pass.
SiubhanDuinne
@Pennsylvanian:
Uh, did you happen to notice who wrote the tweet?
Another Scott
@Pennsylvanian: To be clear, DougJ was dragging Nate in that tweet. Dragging him one of his staples.
Cheers,
Scott.
Immanentize
@topclimber: There are a LOT of unhealthy voters in PA. Your “killer Oz” ad would just bring doubled down ridicule on Oz. The man will be mocked, and he will like it.
Now I want to see Shapiro do Mastriano.
Dan B
@trollhattan: Amazing video. I was concerned about the projectiles coming towards the guys doing the video. It’s hard in a 2D video to yell how close they were getting.
Pennsylvanian
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Yeah, I’ll up you one spicy mustard and a tan suit. The horror!
The Lodger
@SiubhanDuinne: I think Cheney’s future as an elected GOP official is done for if she ever starts working for the Democrats, no matter when Trump’s downfall happens. Even the Never Trumpers would find that unforgiveable.
Starfish
TikTok is where the future of advertising is going, and I linked to a Twitter of a TikTok of a Black man singing about the FBI.
Immanentize
@Pennsylvanian: oh my Dude (are you from Forty Fort?), NYTimes Pitchbot is a snark account.
Pennsylvanian
@SiubhanDuinne: I did. That’s why I asked why “he” (Nate) reported it and not “you”. No insult intended.
Nicole
I guess Oz figured Hillary Clinton carpet-bagged her way into a Senate seat, so why can’t he?
Difference is that Clinton did her goddamn homework and learned everything she could about the state she wanted to represent. Oz can’t even be bothered to learn how to spell the town he claims as residence.
Baud
@Pennsylvanian:
@Immanentize:
I didn’t see the author either. But I nonetheless choose to believe it’s true.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Polling is flawed. To get a handle on today’s politics I hold seances with Larry O’Brien and Clark Clifford.
topclimber
@Immanentize: Yes, he will like it, because, guess what–he lacks the killer instinct. The non-Fetterman if you will. Hell, even if you won’t.
Gvg
@JMG: and the reason nobody answers a number they don’t recognize is that the government has not done enough to stop fraud and abuse by phone. In the best case scenario it’s a salesman. In the worst, they fraudulently switch your cell phone service or charge you for something you didn’t ok. The elderly get taken advantage of and everyone learns don’t answer the phone. The government can’t and shouldn’t stop it all, but they could have done a better job of stopping out of country fraud calls, enforcing the do not call list etc.
Now we have people who won’t answer unless they recognize the number. I wonder if a polling firm could get a better response if our phones announced it was Gallup polling and we could be sure that it wasn’t a lie…some system that prevented fake IDs for registered businesses….
Another Scott
@Gvg: I got a call on my landline (with caller ID) from Gallup a few years ago. I had some time so I answered it and answered the questions – to a point.
At the end there were various “please tell us which demographic category you fit best” questions, which was fine.
Then he started asking questions about financial stuff (family income, etc.). I refused to answer those. I can see why it might be helpful for a legitimate poll to have that information, but the trouble is one has no idea where that information goes once it’s out of your control. He pressed that they really need the information for the responses to be valid, but I didn’t budge.
So, the legitimate outfits use Caller-ID correctly, but AFAIK there’s nothing to prevent a spammer in Bangalore from saying they’re calling from Zogby or whoever.
Polling can be useful for candidates and parties, but it’s valuable for the respondent as well. Pollsters make a living based on information that they are given for free. If they were to pay people for their time (it was over 30 minutes in my case, IIRC), and give them enforceable policies about how personal information is going to be redacted, they might get better responses.
Cheers,
Scott.
billcinsd
@Ruckus:But overall having term limits would make the people more in charge.
If by people you mean lobbyists, and ALEC you are correct
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@catclub:
I’m looking at them now and they seem interesting if a little confusing to sign up for. It’s mostly inertia keeping me where I’m at now
Betty
@Nicole: Just based on what I am seeing from family, enthusiasm is really high for Fetterman. He is very good at connecting with people. After stopping to pose for a picture with my niece’s family, he commented when they posted the picture on their Faebook page. That’s unusual.
Marc
Three random observations from Oakland, CA:
That is all.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
Not betting. He worked at Baseball Prospectus, which focuses on predicting how good players will be in the upcoming season. It’s useful for people who play Fantasy Baseball, but it is really aimed more at people who care a lot about baseball. I knew most of the original Baseball Prospectus crew when they were on rec.sport.baseball and the Prospectus was just an idea, and they were mostly just baseball enthusiasts rather than gamblers.
Matt
Why do they need ads in Arizona or Wisconsin?
They plan to have their co-conspirators in those legislatures override the results if they don’t win outright.
Then their co-conspirators in the Supreme Court will make up some bullshit about how the Founders totes believed that something something IOKIYAR.
Tazj
This year the press seems to be unusually skeptical of positive poll numbers for Democrats. Some seem downright angry with the polling.But inflation! But Biden is old and can’t get anything done! But Afghanistan! But the president’s party always loses in these elections!
Maybe they’re right and the polls can’t possibly be this good for Democrats. Like you said I’d rather be ahead right now in polling than behind. They can’t beat us over the head with how feckless Democrats are for a little while.
Ramona
@rikyrah: I think you may be right about that.
Another Scott
@Roger Moore: 👍
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
We can’t use cell phones here at home. We’re surrounded by rocky walls and steep hillsides, and there is no cell service even up on the ridge top, let alone down here in the cove, where, by the way, it stays 8-10 degrees cooler on summer afternoons than out in the wide valleys and hillsides. Anyway, we have a land line phone service because it is the only phone service available here because of the geography of the cove hollow where we live.
So, we get a lot of spam calls. Rarely someone claims to be a pollster. Wife is accepting at first, but pretty soon wants to know who wrote the questions, and who is paying for the poll — usually she hangs up not too long after they refuse to answer those questions. I’m a little easier. I think I can tell who is paying from the questions and the order they are asked in. And I always answer as if I was an employee of Joe Biden.
FelonyGovt
One other one factor impacting polling is the iPhone feature “silence unknown callers”. I have it turned on and calls from numbers who are not in my contacts go straight to voicemail.
Ramona
@JWR: I hope she can come to Virginia and get the care she needs here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt:
Not doing to happen. It didn’t happen in 2020. What makes you think it will happen now. Being vigilant is good. Being paranoid doesn’t help.
Nancy
@Nicole:
Damn straight. I like Wegmans because they give scholarships to the students who work for them.
Lots of donations within the local community.
They appear to treat employees well.
They do not support a union.
So I’m not completely devoted.