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Thread: The Polls Aren’t Skewed: Trump Really Is Losing Badly

  1. #1

    The Polls Aren’t Skewed: Trump Really Is Losing Badly

    The Polls Aren’t Skewed: Trump Really Is Losing Badly

    We’ve reached that stage of the campaign. The back-to-school commercials are on the air, and the “unskewing” of polls has begun — the quadrennial exercise in which partisans simply adjust the polls to get results more to their liking, usually with a thin sheen of math-y words to make it all sound like rigorous analysis instead of magical thinking.

    If any of this sounds familiar — and if I sound a little exasperated — it’s probably because we went through this four years ago. Remember UnSkewedPolls.com? (The website is defunct, but you can view an archived picture of it here.) The main contention of that site and others like it was that the polls had too many Democratic respondents in their samples. Dean Chambers, who ran the site, regularly wrote that the polls were vastly undercounting independents and should have used a higher proportion of Republicans in their samples. But in the end, the polls underestimated President Obama’s margin.

    Now the unskewers are back, again insisting that pollsters are “using” more Democrats than they should, and that the percentage of Democrats and Republicans should be equal, or that there should be more Republicans. They point to surveys like the recent one from ABC News and The Washington Post, in which 33 percent of registered voters identified as Democrats compared to 27 percent as Republicans. That poll found Hillary Clinton ahead by 8 percentage points.

    But let’s say this plainly: The polls are not “skewed.” They weren’t in 2012, and they aren’t now.

    The basic premise of the unskewers is wrong. Most pollsters don’t weight their results by party self-identification, which polls get by asking a question like “generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as a….” Party identification is an attitude, not a demographic. There isn’t some national number from the government that tells us how many Democrats and Republicans there are in the country. Some states collect party registration data, but many states do not. Moreover, party registration is not the same thing as party identification. In a state like Kentucky, for example, there are a lot more registered Democrats than registered Republicans, but more voters identified as Republican in the 2014 election exit polls.

    A person’s party identification can shift, and therefore the overall balance between parties does too. Democrats have typically had an advantage in self-identification — a 4 percentage point edge in 2000, a 7-point advantage in 2008 and a 6-point edge in 2012, according to exit polls — but they had no advantage in the 2004 election. Since 1952, however, almost every presidential election has featured a Democratic advantage in party identification.

    Here’s the margin that Democrats have had in self-identification since 1952, according to the American National Elections Studies and, starting in 1972, exit polls.



    And it’s not crazy to think Democrats will have an advantage in party identification in 2016. With a controversial nominee, many Republicans might not want to identify with the GOP, and may be calling themselves independents.

    You should also be skeptical of other attempts to reweight pollsters’ data. One website, LongRoom, claims to “unbias” the polls using “actual state voter registration data from the Secretary of State or Election Division of each state.” The website contends that almost every public poll is biased in favor of Clinton.

    Think about what that means: The website is saying that a large number of professional pollsters who make their living trying to provide accurate information — and have a good record of doing so — are all deliberately biasing the polls and aren’t correcting for it. Like many conspiracy theories, that seems implausible.

    I’d also point out that election offices from different states collect different data. Some states don’t have party registration; other states don’t collect data on a person’s race; some states collect data on neither. There are some companies that try to fill in missing data for each state, though it costs a lot to get that data. Isn’t it more plausible the people who get paid to know what they are doing are right, while some anonymous website on the internet with unclear methodology is wrong?

    Of course, unskewing is simply one of many ways of pretending Clinton hasn’t jumped out to a large post-convention lead against Donald Trump. You could also ask us to imagine a world without polls. You could allege, without any evidence, that outright election fraud will take place. Or you point to Trump’s rally sizes, though George McGovern in 1972, Walter Mondale in 1984 and Mitt Romney in 2012 all had large crowd sizes and lost.

    People, though, should stick to reality. Right now, Clinton is leading in almost every single national poll. She leads in both our polls-plus and polls-only forecasts. That doesn’t mean she will win. The polls have been off before, but no one knows by how much beforehand, or in which direction they’ll miss. For all their imperfection, the polls are a far better indicator than the conspiracy theories made up to convince people that Trump is ahead.
    http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/...-losing-badly/
    “I don’t think that there will be any curtailing of Donald Trump as president,” he said. "He controls the media, he controls the sentiment [and] he controls everybody. He’s the one who will resort to executive orders more so than [President] Obama ever used them." - Ron Paul



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  3. #2
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    If that's the case, you have nothing to worry about. In fact, he should just quit. Actually, the government media complex should just save their resources as well.

  4. #3
    CPUd should switch to low energy mode. Save the energy to celebrate Hillary's victory.

  5. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by AuH20 View Post
    he should just quit
    I would prefer that he go down in flames in the most embarrassing way possible.

    Nothing short of absolute electoral annihilation will rid us of the Trumpenstein once and for all.

  6. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by timosman View Post
    CPUd should switch to low energy mode. Save the energy to celebrate Hillary's victory.
    Why is CPUd so invested in Hillary and watching Trump fail? Being aligned with the establishment is unbecoming. Only a fool would align one's self with lifelong enemies that have sabotaged the liberty movement for decades. We have the neocons, the neoliberals and the MSM all opposed to Trump.
    Last edited by AuH20; 08-09-2016 at 09:29 AM.

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by AuH20 View Post
    Why is CPUd so invested in Hillary and watching Trump fail? Being aligned with the establishment is unbecoming.
    CPUd owns 25% of RPF. He also plays the court jester.

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by timosman View Post
    CPUd owns 25% of RPF. He also plays the court jester.
    The Court Jester was always the smartest in the royalty court- showing what was really happening while playing the Fool.
    There is no spoon.

  9. #8
    Whoever wins, the policies of the next administration are going to be a continuation of the status quo.

    In that sense, the election is meaningless.

    In another sense, however, it matters a great a deal.

    If Trump is trounced, the nativist/protectionist faction of the GOP will disintegrate, making room for other factions (like the libertarian) to expand.

    This is good; the GOP can move in a more libertarian direction.

    What happens if Hillary gets trounced?

    ...nothing.

    Hillary will be done as a politician, but she'll be replaced by someone of like mind.

    ...and the Democratic Party will continue to be the steaming sack of $#@! it's been for 100 years.



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  11. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by r3volution 3.0 View Post
    Whoever wins, the policies of the next administration are going to be a continuation of the status quo.

    In that sense, the election is meaningless.

    In another sense, however, it matters a great a deal.

    If Trump is trounced, the nativist/protectionist faction of the GOP will disintegrate, making room for other factions (like the libertarian) to expand.

    This is good; the GOP can move in a more libertarian direction.

    What happens if Hillary gets trounced?

    ...nothing.

    Hillary will be done as a politician, but she'll be replaced by someone of like mind.

    ...and the Democratic Party will continue to be the steaming sack of $#@! it's been for 100 years.
    The nativist/protectorate faction is the underdog, while you're welcoming in 50 years of darkness with the Marco Rubio ilk. Talk about delusions. Trump at least temporarily repels the enemies at the gate and provokes a critical reaction.

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by AuH20 View Post
    The nativist/protectorate faction is the underdog, while you're welcoming in 50 years of darkness with the Marco Rubio ilk. Talk about delusions. Trump at least temporarily repels the enemies at the gate and provokes a critical reaction.
    I think the main delusion of people with Rev 3.0's mindset is that America as a nation actually will exist in this imaginary future of shifting powers. I believe that America is being purposely dismantled and dethroned. It is a hooker having it's throat cut and dumped in a river after the evil men have had their way with her. This idea that something is going to be born from the ashes is delusion. "America" was always just used as a power center. The real power center has no nation.
    When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble?
    When disaster comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it? Amos 3:6

  13. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by wizardwatson View Post
    I think the main delusion of people with Rev 3.0's mindset is that America as a nation actually will exist in this imaginary future of shifting powers. I believe that America is being purposely dismantled and dethroned. It is a hooker having it's throat cut and dumped in a river after the evil men have had their way with her. This idea that something is going to be born from the ashes is delusion. "America" was always just used as a power center. The real power center has no nation.
    The days of playing defense are over, while we blissfully go over the falls. Offensive measures are needed, to force the enemy out of their zone of comfort.

    Trump may be a bull in the China closet, but our vase breaking days are long overdue. I want the Establishment to pull out the stops to destroy the Trump and finally drop the hypnotic pablum that they have mesmerized the public with. We're all patiently watching..........



    The bait is bobbing on the top of the water..... Denouncing the false song of globalism in the profitable age of the American Global Empire? Sacrilege!
    Last edited by AuH20; 08-09-2016 at 10:10 AM.

  14. #12

    (Not That I Care About Trump Losing, But...)

    Of course, the polls are skewed.
    "Then David said to the Philistine, 'You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of Yahweh of hosts, the God of the battle lines of Israel, Whom you have reproached.'" - 1 Samuel 17:45

    "May future generations look back on our work and say that these were men and women who, in moment of great crisis, stood up to their politicians, the opinion-makers, and the Establishment, and saved their country." - Dr. Ron Paul

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by AuH20 View Post
    The nativist/protectorate faction is the underdog
    Yes, it's a minority.

    while you're welcoming in 50 years of darkness with the Marco Rubio ilk.
    President Trump would govern (or, rather, allow his advisors to govern) in the same way as President Rubio.

    Talk about delusions. Trump at least temporarily repels the enemies at the gate and provokes a critical reaction.
    Trump is one of the enemy.

    What you think is an outsider fighting the insiders is actually an internecine struggle between different insiders.

    ...just like we see every election.
    Last edited by r3volution 3.0; 08-09-2016 at 10:05 AM.

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Ender View Post
    The Court Jester was always the smartest in the royalty court- showing what was really happening while playing the Fool.
    You are such a brown noser. I see a bright future ahead of you.

  17. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ender View Post
    The Court Jester was always the smartest in the royalty court- showing what was really happening while playing the Fool.
    Often, the king got tired of the jester's childish antics and literally rolled his head down the foyer.
    Last edited by AuH20; 08-09-2016 at 10:15 AM.

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by AuH20 View Post
    Often, the king got tired of the jester's childish antics and literally rolled his head down the foyer.
    Tis true- just like the most famous of all Truth Tellers:


    Jesus the Fool: The Mission of the Unconventional Christ
    by Michael Frost

    "One who is strengthened by God professes himself to be an utter fool by human standards, because he despises the wisdom men strive for.
    "Thomas Aquinas"

    Go and do likewise. . . ."Luke 10:37

    Missiologist Michael Frost is looking for the real Jesus the man who didn't care what people thought, worked on the Sabbath, touched the unclean, ate with sinners, and generally contradicted what was acceptable to the leadership of his day. He's searching for the Jesus who embodies all the characteristics of the ancient tradition of the holy foolish paradigm as described and commended by Paul, the church fathers, and the medieval saints. And he finds him. . . . Saintly fools prefer life out in the open in the secular world, intentionally make themselves conspicuous, and consistently defy rules set by society.

    Frost directs our minds and hearts to the greater story of Jesus. He reminds us that following the Savior is rarely safe and that Christ will continue to redraw our blueprint of what's right and what's righteous; and will persist in calling us to take the alternative, dangerous, ridiculous road walked by wise fools down through the centuries of the church. A much needed and longed for challenge to emergent, contemporary, and traditional gatherings and churches alike.
    https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Fool-Mi.../dp/0801046289
    There is no spoon.



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  20. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by timosman View Post
    You are such a brown noser. I see a bright future ahead of you.
    Mirror?
    There is no spoon.

  21. #18
    FiveThirtyEight, sometimes referred to as 538, is a website that focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging. The website, which takes its name from the number of electors in the United States electoral college,[538 1] was founded on March 7, 2008, as a polling aggregation website with a blog created by analyst Nate Silver. In August 2010, the blog became a licensed feature of The New York Times online. It was renamedFiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus. In July 2013, ESPN announced that it would become the owner of the FiveThirtyEight brand and site, and Silver was appointed as editor-in-chief.[2] The ESPN-owned FiveThirtyEight began publication on March 17, 2014. In the ESPN era, the FiveThirtyEight blog has covered a broad spectrum of subjects including politics, sports, science, economics, and popular culture.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FiveThirtyEight

    for those who don't know, ESPN is a subsidiary of the Disney Corp who also owns ABC -- file this under more media lies.

  22. #19
    “I don’t think that there will be any curtailing of Donald Trump as president,” he said. "He controls the media, he controls the sentiment [and] he controls everybody. He’s the one who will resort to executive orders more so than [President] Obama ever used them." - Ron Paul

  23. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by AuH20 View Post
    . Only a fool would align one's self with lifelong enemies that have sabotaged the liberty movement for decades. .
    Not ONLY a fool. A clever anti-American, anti-human, anti-liberty sh1tbag would also align in such a fashion.

  24. #21
    Chester Copperpot
    Member

    Quote Originally Posted by timosman View Post
    CPUd owns 25% of RPF. He also plays the court jester.
    If thats true then i might as well leave now... it means the whole board has been compromised.. I hope youre joking

  25. #22
    Ron Paul forums polls show support for Trump falling, so why does this place look even more like Trump forums these days? Something tells me it's not CPUd.

  26. #23
    i finally decided to support Gary Johnson....its our only hope now.

  27. #24
    Clinton leads in NC for first time since March

    PPP's newest North Carolina poll finds Hillary Clinton leading in the state, albeit by a narrow margin, for the first time since March. She's at 43% to 41% for Donald Trump, 7% for Gary Johnson, and 2% for Jill Stein. In a head to head contest just between Clinton and Trump, she leads 47/46.

    Voters haven't changed their feelings much about Clinton since our June poll in the state- her favorability rating was 39/55 then and it's 40/55 now. But Trump- already unpopular- has become even more so. He's seen a 7 point decline in his net popularity from -14 at 38/52 down to -21 at 37/58. His missteps from the last few weeks may be further damaging his reputation.

    One finding from the poll that bodes particularly well for Clinton is that voters would prefer a continuation of the Obama administration to Trump's vision for the country, 50/45. When you look at who the undecideds are in the Clinton/Trump head to head it fits what we've found in our other recent polls. By a 33 point margin they prefer Obama over Trump and they have a positive view of Bernie Sanders, giving him a 45/28 favorability. They hate Trump- giving him a 1/94 favorability- but they're not much more favorable toward Clinton who comes in at 2/75. Because of the direction these folks prefer for the country it seems much more likely that they'll end up voting Clinton than Trump- or perhaps more likely than anything else staying home. At any rate it's more likely that they'll build Clinton's lead than eat into it when they come off the fence, and that's good news for Clinton given the advantage she already has.

    Donald Trump said a lot of different things last week so we polled to what share of his supporters bought into each of them:

    -69% of Trump voters think that if Hillary Clinton wins the election it will be because it was rigged, to only 16% who think it would be because she got more vote than Trump. More specifically 40% of Trump voters think that ACORN (which hasn't existed in years) will steal the election for Clinton. That shows the long staying power of GOP conspiracy theories.
    -48% of Trump voters think that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton deserve the blame for Humayun Khan's death to 16% who absolve them and 36% who aren't sure one way or the other (Obama was in the Illinois Legislature when it happened.) Showing the extent to which Trump supporters buy into everything he says, 40% say his comments about the Khans last week were appropriate to only 22% who will grant that they were inappropriate. And 39% of Trump voters say they view the Khan family negatively, to just 11% who have a positive opinion of them.

    -Even though Trump ended up admitting it didn't exist 47% of his voters say they saw the video of Iran collecting 400 million dollars from the United States to only 46% who say they didn't see the video. Showing the extent to which the ideas Trump floats and the coverage they get can overshadow the facts, even 25% of Clinton voters claim to have seen the nonexistent video.

    -Trump said last week that Hillary Clinton is the devil, and 41% of Trump voters say they think she is indeed the devil to 42% who disagree with that sentiment and 17% who aren't sure one way or the other.

    We've been writing for almost a year that there's a cult like aspect to Trump's supporters, where they'll go along with anything he says. Trump made some of his most outlandish claims and statements yet last week, but we continue to find that few in his support base disavow them.


    The public as a whole is a different story though. A number of the things Trump has been in the news for lately have the potential to be very damaging to his campaign overall:

    -Vladimir Putin has a 9/63 favorability rating with North Carolinians, and Russia as a whole comes in at 14/51. By a 49 point margin they're less likely to vote for a candidate Russia is perceived to prefer for President, and by a 33 point margin they're less likely to vote for a candidate seen as friendly toward Russia. This issue is not doing Trump any favors.

    -58% of voters think Trump needs to release his tax returns, compared to only 31% who don't think it's necessary for him to. In every state we've polled recently we've found an overwhelming sentiment that he needs to release them- independents say he needs to 54/33.

    -Even though Trump's own voters might support the approach he took to the Khan family, only 19% overall think it was appropriate to 54% who think it was inappropriate.

    -And after his reported comments last week only 38% of voters think Trump can be trusted with nuclear weapons, to 54% who think he can't be trusted.

    Trump is already in a hole- and none of those issues are doing him any favors in trying to get out of it.
    http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/p...e_NC_80916.pdf
    “I don’t think that there will be any curtailing of Donald Trump as president,” he said. "He controls the media, he controls the sentiment [and] he controls everybody. He’s the one who will resort to executive orders more so than [President] Obama ever used them." - Ron Paul



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  29. #25
    Libertarians will never win. They are a bunch of cucks or too busy f@cking themselves. People who will win are freedom loving Americans that's don't give a $#@! about hurting your feelings.

    Edit: funny how Trump "collapsed" nationally yet all battle grounds are close as hell.
    Last edited by silverhandorder; 08-09-2016 at 03:25 PM.

  30. #26
    Looks a lot like 2000 polling to me. Gore led all summer until after Labor Day and came out of the DNC with a huge +10 bump, and then things tightened.

    Of course, I remember Bush never caught up and Gore ended up winning a landslide. So yeah, Trump is probably doomed.


  31. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by silverhandorder View Post
    Libertarians will never win. They are a bunch of cucks or too busy f@cking themselves. People who will win are freedom loving Americans that's don't give a $#@! about hurting your feelings.

    Edit: funny how Trump "collapsed" nationally yet all battle grounds are close as hell.
    I'm not sure they are cucks but they are being awfully petty. Things are not going to improve for their stead once Trump is vanquished.

    This mythical idea that you have to operate under the gentlemanly rules of the establishment is the first failure of the 'Big L' libertarian base. Thieves, murderers and charlatans don't garner respect. Gary Johnson's campaign is proof positive of this soft underbelly of appeasement.
    Last edited by AuH20; 08-09-2016 at 03:55 PM.

  32. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by AuH20 View Post
    This mythical idea that you have to operate under the gentlemanly rules of the establishment is the first failure of the 'Big L' libertarian base. Thieves, murderers and charlatans don't garner respect. Gary Johnson's campaign is proof positive of this soft underbelly of appeasement.
    You're projecting.

    No one cares about Trump's "un-PC" rhetoric except Trump supporters and Democrats; you love him for it, they hate him for it.

    We libertarians, on the other hand, wonder just WTF is wrong with all of you, for totally ignoring all the ISSUES that actually matter.

  33. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by r3volution 3.0 View Post
    We libertarians...
    Please don't speak for libertarians. You're not one. You're a monarchist. Anyone with half a brain and a week's worth of receipts from the public library who has read your spew can see it.
    Last edited by Natural Citizen; 08-09-2016 at 05:43 PM.

  34. #30
    Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight have been wrong about Trump for over a year.

    How I Acted Like A Pundit And Screwed Up On Donald Trump by Nate Silver

    How Data World Missed the Boat on Trump
    I just want objectivity on this forum and will point out flawed sources or points of view at my leisure.

    Quote Originally Posted by spudea on 01/15/24
    Trump will win every single state primary by double digits.
    Quote Originally Posted by spudea on 04/20/16
    There won't be a contested convention
    Quote Originally Posted by spudea on 05/30/17
    The shooting of Gabrielle Gifford was blamed on putting a crosshair on a political map. I wonder what event we'll see justified with pictures like this.

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