The Race For 2024

[Jimmy Higgins]

I'd say the one Republican that won last night was Nikki Haley. She has enough "outside" the Trump sphere cred (kind of) that she can do the "We need a new direction" angle successfully. DeSantis can to, but he is really just a regionalized version of Trump... in boots. Their debate is tonight... oh goody.

What happened last night?

The third Republican-candidate debate is this night, as I write this.

Trump and alt-right GOP politics got spanked.

 

[ZiprHead]

Election polls from 2016 were a case study in failure

Right about this time in 2016, candidate Donald J. Trump said, “I don’t believe the polls anymore,” when nearly every national poll had Hillary Clinton with a significant lead over Mr. Trump. The polls in that election were dead wrong.

www.washingtontimes.com

The 2016 polls in swing states were way off. The site Five Thirty Eight projected that Hillary Clinton had a 71.4% chance of an Electoral College victory. The site projected big leads in Florida (2%), Wisconsin (5%), Michigan (4%) and Pennsylvania (4%). The New York Times projected an 85% chance of a Clinton presidency. Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball projected Clinton would win 322 electoral votes. No pollster projected a Trump victory, because of faulty poll data in the critical states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. It is possible that we are in a comparable situation right now with similar polling deficits for President Trump in these swing states.

Every four years, the media obsesses over every poll the moment they are released. In too many cases we find out on election day that the polls we believed for months were wildly wrong. Americans seem to have a collective case of amnesia, because we all continue to obsess over polls every four years and tend to believe them. There are other measures of the strength or weakness of a candidacy that helps Americans to see if a candidate has a fighting chance including a growing election prediction markets.

 

[bilby]

Election polls from 2016 were a case study in failure

Right about this time in 2016, candidate Donald J. Trump said, “I don’t believe the polls anymore,” when nearly every national poll had Hillary Clinton with a significant lead over Mr. Trump. The polls in that election were dead wrong.

www.washingtontimes.com

The 2016 polls in swing states were way off. The site Five Thirty Eight projected that Hillary Clinton had a 71.4% chance of an Electoral College victory.

...

No pollster projected a Trump victory...

This is innumerate nonsense, and just demonstrates how poorly most people understand statistics.

538 predicted a 28.6% chance of a Trump victory. That's between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4.

A 4:1 shot isn't great odds, but you'd be crazy to suggest that it was an impossibility.

Insofar as 538 predicted a Clinton victory, they said "but we will be wrong more than one time in four".

Nobody has an excuse to say that that poll didn't warn them.

 

[ZiprHead]

No one said they should be perfect but you cannot deny polling over the last few years has not been very predictive.

 

[ZiprHead]

Minnesota Supreme Court won’t remove Trump from GOP primary ballot in 14th Amendment challenge

The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected an attempt to block Donald Trump from the state’s GOP primary ballot next year based on the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban” but said the challengers can try again to block him from the general election ballot if the former president wins the Republican nomination.

The 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, says US officials who take an oath to uphold the Constitution are banned from future office if they “engaged in insurrection.” But the Constitution doesn’t say how to enforce the ban, and it has only been applied twice since 1919, which is why many experts view these challenges as a long shot.

The ruling is a victory for Trump, in terms of keeping his name on Minnesota’s ballot for the 2024 GOP primary, where recent polling shows he has a commanding lead. However, the Minnesota justices didn’t go as far as Trump’s lawyers wanted, which was to shut down the case altogether and keep the former president on the ballot for both the primary and general election.

 

[Derec]

The 2016 polls in swing states were way off. The site Five Thirty Eight projected that Hillary Clinton had a 71.4% chance of an Electoral College victory.

That is not "way off". The predicted win probability for Trump was almost a third. Like rolling a 1 or a 2 with a die. Less than even odds, but hardly unlikely. So polls were probably good, within their margins of errors. If there is a 28.6% chance the other guy will win, that means any reasonable confidence interval (say 90%) of the electoral vote straddles between a Hillary win and a Trump win, and you can't say that she had it in the bag. It was pundits' fault to be ignorant of probability and statistics, not the fault of polls and models.

 

[marc]

Think part of the problem with polling is that younger people are more motivated to vote, and the usual polling methods don't get their input as much.

 

[ZiprHead]

The 2016 polls in swing states were way off. The site Five Thirty Eight projected that Hillary Clinton had a 71.4% chance of an Electoral College victory.

That is not "way off". The predicted win probability for Trump was almost a third. Like rolling a 1 or a 2 with a die. Less than even odds, but hardly unlikely. So polls were probably good, within their margins of errors. If there is a 28.6% chance the other guy will win, that means any reasonable confidence interval (say 90%) of the electoral vote straddles between a Hillary win and a Trump win, and you can't say that she had it in the bag. It was pundits' fault to be ignorant of probability and statistics, not the fault of polls and models.

That's the equivalent of Maxwell Smart exclaiming "Missed it by that much."

 

[Elixir]

Think part of the problem with polling is that younger people are more motivated to vote, and the usual polling methods don't get their input as much.

Plus, lying is all the rage, thanks to you know who.

 

[TomC]

Think part of the problem with polling is that younger people are more motivated to vote, and the usual polling methods don't get their input as much.

More motivated than what? Middle aged church going Christians?

Unfortunately for America, young people are a low turn out demographic. Always have been. It's possible that issues like abortion and lbgt+ equality will motivate more young voters, but they are notoriously hard to get to the polls. Issues like that also motivate Teapartiers.
Tom

 

[Copernicus]

The 2016 polls in swing states were way off. The site Five Thirty Eight projected that Hillary Clinton had a 71.4% chance of an Electoral College victory.

That is not "way off". The predicted win probability for Trump was almost a third. Like rolling a 1 or a 2 with a die. Less than even odds, but hardly unlikely. So polls were probably good, within their margins of errors. If there is a 28.6% chance the other guy will win, that means any reasonable confidence interval (say 90%) of the electoral vote straddles between a Hillary win and a Trump win, and you can't say that she had it in the bag. It was pundits' fault to be ignorant of probability and statistics, not the fault of polls and models.

And statistics are not actually crystal balls. They are snapshots of public opinion at different points in time. During the 2016 election, public opinion was being manipulated by all sorts of factors that made that opinion very wobbly at the end--for example, Hillary's emails and Republican James Comey's brilliant idea to publicly inform the public that he was reopening his investigation days before the election (October 28). The polls didn't tell us how the dice were going to be weighted just as people filled out their ballots.

 

[blastula]

This is a good thread from Desantis campaign, but it's too late, should have been doing this the whole time

 

[Derec]

That's the equivalent of Maxwell Smart exclaiming "Missed it by that much."

I do not know who Maxwell Smart is, but I don't think so. 28.6% of a different outcome is a significant probability. Ignoring that is not the fault of statistics.

 

[ZiprHead]

Your cartoon is somewhat significant if the margin was closer to 50/50, or if there were more than two participants. But the reality is it was an extremely wide margin from so many of the polls as to make them virtually useless.

 

[bilby]

But the reality is it was an extremely wide margin from so many of the polls as to make them virtually useless.

If opinion polls weren't virtually useless, then we wouldn't need elections, we could just save a load of money and effort by taking a poll and enacting its results.

 

[ZiprHead]

But the reality is it was an extremely wide margin from so many of the polls as to make them virtually useless.

If opinion polls weren't virtually useless, then we wouldn't need elections, we could just save a load of money and effort by taking a poll and enacting its results.

Point taken.

 

[ZiprHead]

Trump lawyers fight to keep him on Michigan ballot in 14th Amendment case

Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers pushed back in court Thursday against efforts to remove him from Michigan’s 2024 ballot based on the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist ban, the third state to grapple with the matter this month.

The hearing unfolded in Grand Rapids one day after the Minnesota Supreme Court dismissed a similar challenge – though their ruling only applies to the GOP primary election – and while a Colorado judge is still weighing arguments in a related case.

Trump lawyer Michael Columbo argued in the Michigan Court of Claims that judges don’t have a role enforcing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of, which says US officials who take an oath to support the US Constitution are banned from future office if they “engaged in insurrection.”

 

[Worldtraveller]

Trump lawyers fight to keep him on Michigan ballot in 14th Amendment case

Trump lawyer Michael Columbo argued in the Michigan Court of Claims that judges don’t have a role enforcing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of, which says US officials who take an oath to support the US Constitution are banned from future office if they “engaged in insurrection.”

This is, IMO, a losing strategy, as the US constitution specifically (and in very clear language) says the states have the right to determine how they vote and run their elections.

 

[bilby]

Trump lawyers fight to keep him on Michigan ballot in 14th Amendment case

Trump lawyer Michael Columbo argued in the Michigan Court of Claims that judges don’t have a role enforcing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of, which says US officials who take an oath to support the US Constitution are banned from future office if they “engaged in insurrection.”

This is, IMO, a losing strategy, as the US constitution specifically (and in very clear language) says the states have the right to determine how they vote and run their elections.

It's also notable that the argument in no way suggests that Trump is not guilty of insurrection; It only contends that judges shouldn't be allowed to enforce or uphold the 14th, even if he is.

I mean, if I was being excluded from the ballot for having engaged in insurrection, I would at least make some mention of the fact that I hadn't actually engaged in insurrection - unless, of course, I knew that the actual evidence was against such a claim.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Trump lawyers fight to keep him on Michigan ballot in 14th Amendment case

Trump lawyer Michael Columbo argued in the Michigan Court of Claims that judges don’t have a role enforcing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of, which says US officials who take an oath to support the US Constitution are banned from future office if they “engaged in insurrection.”

This is, IMO, a losing strategy, as the US constitution specifically (and in very clear language) says the states have the right to determine how they vote and run their elections.

Who would enforce the other constitutional qualifications? If someone too young, or someone foreign, were to run for President how would they suppose that gets figured out if they can run and be elected and hold office?

Now, I do believe there needs to be some kind of evidence and it can’t be innuendo or whatever. I don’t see any Republicans suing to have Biden removed from the ballot for insurrection. How else do we sort out the facts if not through the courts?