2020 Election

[Kane]

[Saz]

I mean I get that its unsatisfying, but that's all the polling can tell you. They gave you the interval, it's within the interval, statisticians aren't going to be able to do any better than that. They will try, and they will refine their polls to better capture that midpoint, but at the end of the day they will still tell you an interval and you can't then turn around and say polls are wrong when they did end up within that interval.

It feels like a cover because people like Silver etc have all been pushing polling hard and implying it can do more than it can really do. Campaigns get burned like this all the time as well... they lean to heavily on the polling because they have nothing else to learn on. They know its a wobbly crutch but they rely on it anyway and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

The hard part in much of the polling is predicting the turnout, not how people vote. This election is looking particularly difficult because Republican turnout surged, when for decades now its kind of been common thought that the republicans already bring out everyone they can, and that turnout is a dem game. Doesn't appear to be the case, republicans really boosted rural turnout which offset a lot of the gains made by the democrats. Biden won more votes than Trump did in Florida and Texas in 2016, the problem is Trump eclipsed his own numbers which republicans aren't supposed to be able to do.

[Saz]

[Kane]

FWIW the polls in Maine on Susan Collin's race were wildly wrong. She literally was not up in any poll. She won handily.

But your other points make sense to me, I get it. It's just as you said - it's disappointing.

[John Galt]

https://alex.github.io/nyt-2020-electio ... anges.html

[Saz]

[Kane]

[Saz]

[Kane]

[Kane]

Seems like Trump's base continues to live in an alternate reality. Lots of Trump supporters are turning on Fox News for calling AZ. Wonder how reality will hit them? Or us via them?