2024 ELECTION THREAD
The next presidential race will be here soon! Please see current Bovada odds. Thoughts?
So you think administrations should campaign on all the mistakes that they made? Damn I really must be an idiot to have missed that lesson in running political campaigns. I’m sure there are many winning campaigns that go “Kamala/Walz 2024: My Administration Sucked!”
Thanks for enlightening me oh wise one.
So you think administrations should campaign on all the mistakes that they made? Damn I really must be an idiot to have missed that lesson in running political campaigns. I’m sure there are many winning campaigns that go “Kamala/Walz 2024: My Administration Sucked!”
Thanks for enlightening me oh wise one.
"the VP has limited power, not much she could do" was the previous defence to the administrations' misgivings.
Now it's "everything is rosy. everything administration did was good"
You don't think having a thoughtful reflective answer on how some things could have been done better might play better?
The context that is missing here is that she had just answered a question as to what she was planning on doing differently from Biden. She said she would focus on small businesses and that she wants to expand medicare to provide home healthcare for seniors. If you watch the whole interview instead of being a political pervert for soundbites she got into a lot of the policy differences between her and Trump.
And no, I think it would be pretty stupid to run on how horrible and bad your administration is. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. It's the same reason Trump won't ever apologize for anything, but everyone calls that based and alpha. She can't fight on two fronts both trying to destroy and defend Biden's presidency. For better or for worse she has to hold fast and stand by what they have accomplished.
"the VP has limited power, not much she could do" was the previous defence to the administrations' misgivings.
Now it's "everything is rosy. everything administration did was good"
Wrong, absolutely wrong.
They asked her why she didn't pass x or y policy yet. By the way, the Biden administration passed many policies: CHIPS and Science act, Inflation Reduction act, bipartisan infrastructure bill, Pandemic Relief, bipartisan gun legislation... so the idea that "why haven't you passed it yet" is a little dumb to me. But putting that aside, she has a bunch of proposals and wants to come in with a mandate so that she can pass those proposals. The power of the VP in setting the legislative agenda is clearly not as strong as the power of the President, because they have veto power over any bill and are seen to have a legislative mandate when they come in many times.
Now that doesn't mean that she won't stand by Biden's decisions on infrastructure, Biden's decision to discourage removing the filibuster, Biden's decision to respect the parliamentarian when it came to the proposed minimum wage increase in the omnibus bill, Biden's decision to remove certain punitive Trump administration border policies like family separation, Biden's decision to prioritize certain pieces of legislation, Biden's decision to respect the independence of the Fed and the Justice department, Biden's decision to support Ukraine with arms but not troops, Biden's decision to strengthen NATO and reconnect with our allies on the global stage, etc etc etc.
You're conflating two different aspects of power that the executive branch has and mixing them into one.
Little did I know that polls would be received many days after the fact. I have updated my results from 9/11/24 (after the Presidential debate) until 10/1 (before the VP debate).
The 538 and NS numbers are compared with their data from the presidential debate as are mine. I have included their data from today because there have been no polls released for swing states since 10/1 (!) However there have been National polls released and my guess is that 538 and NS integrate those polls somehow (
Good post.
I don't share your optimism with polling and the information that is believed to be extracted from it. What the Huff post put in print in 2016 in regards to Hillary winning was either just wicked advertisement or pure ignorance - it wasn't some edge case scenario that happened. Elections aren't all ins in a poker game that would yield different results if you could take a DeLorean back to the beginning of the voting day and run it again. When so many so called credible polls failed to predict within their margin of error + accepting the fact, as you did, that pollsters can have political biases as well as acknowledging that fact that polling in general is an archaic and generally idiotic way to predict anything on top of them being in the business that does make money to produce polls, i'd suspect that they just aren't worth looking at.
It just isn't realistic to guess accurately who is going to win when so many people can get spooked into voting for someone else over the smallest and most laughable things that has either happened to them in their lives in either a macro or micro sense. I think the larger betting markets have had a much more accurate grasp on things in the last 2 cycles and it would make sense for that to be the case.
incoherent rambling
he has a teleprompter and still can't keep on track
Trump on Thursday spoke at the Detroit Economic Club, where during his speech
he insulted the city and spoke about Elon Musk and rocket ships and bacon.
Dems can do this tho
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/11/house-d...
This headline is misleading and clickbaitish, but the concern is a real one. Trump is a diseased politician. He isn't patient zero, but he is a superspreader. On balance, Democrats may have somewhat better immune systems than Republicans, but they are nowhere close to 100% resistant to catching the disease.
For the sake of civic health, Trump needs to be metaphorically quarantined. If he wins, we will have accomplished the opposite. We will have sent the superspreader into the middle of Times Square to watch the ball drop.
I think the larger betting markets have had a much more accurate grasp on things in the last 2 cycles and it would make sense for that to be the case.
Regardless of what you think about polls, I wouldn't say that better markets have been particularly accurate either. HRC was a prohibitive favorite in betting markets in 2016, and there was plenty of free money to made in 2020 betting on Biden, even after all the votes had been counted.
Also, the one thing that reliably moves betting markets is a shift in polling results.
There's been a remarkable increase in the number of brand new conservative-funded polling outfits recently (this is verifiable). Crazy how it coincides with a shift in the results (particularly among those polls specifically).
Good post.
I don't share your optimism with polling and the information that is believed to be extracted from it. What the Huff post put in print in 2016 in regards to Hillary winning was either just wicked advertisement or pure ignorance - it wasn't some edge case scenario that happened. Elections aren't all ins in a poker game that would yield different results if you could take a DeLorean back to the beginning of the voting day and run it again. When so many so called credible polls failed
I appreciate your point of view.
The problem in 2016 was basically that the polling in MI, PA, and WI all had Hillary over 52% and when the election came around she dropped by ~7% in MI, ~5% in PA and WI. Trump did gain by ~2.5% in those 3 states but he ended up well below 50%. The polling was just wrong. And Trump gained on election day by what would have been normal considering the undecided %. I'm not sure why the polling was so bad in those states but it might have been because Hillary didn't campaign in them, nor did Trump. My guess is that there weren't as many polls in those states as there were in "swing states" like AZ, FL, GA, NC just like there aren't as many polls this year in NH, NM, and VA all states that are more or less now where MI, PA, and WI were in 2016 and similarly all states that Kamala isn't campaigning in.
The problem in 2020 was not that the polls were off (though they were wrong in FL and NC which they had for Biden by about 1%). Biden did lose a little of the predicted vote % but more or less remained within 1% of his original polling average (except in Wisconsin where he lost about 2.7% of his original polling %) but Trump got most of the undecided voters which again was fairly high. In some states though Biden got some of the undecideds as well just not as much. In most of the swing states Biden got about 10% of the undecided voters and Trump got close to 50% (though in GA Biden got close to 25%).
What I am seeing this year that is different than in 2016 and 2020 is that the undecided % is far lower than it was then. Even with RFK Jr out of the picture now (in recent polls in MI and WI where RFK Jr will still be on the ballot, he is not getting even 2% in the recent polls in those states perhaps because of his endorsement of Trump). If Kamala does the same as Biden in terms of losing ground she will lose the election (unless the polls shift as we get closer to election day). Similarly if the undecideds break the same way they did in 2020 Kamala will have no chance in most of the swing states. But what I am seeing is that the undecideds are shifting differently now than they did in the past. Trump is currently gaining ground but Kamala had also gained ground until recently. And the recent polls are almost all being sponsored by Republicans or have tilted in their direction before.
Until recently I though Kamala was going to win by solid margins in swing states like MI, PA, and WI. Now I think she will need to be lucky to win. But I am curious how the polls are going to go in the next few weeks.
New voters are notoriously hard to get polling data on, and there are TONS of new voters this time, and they are mostly women and minorities. It will take a lot to make me believe this election won't be a blowout.
I appreciate your point of view.
The problem in 2016 was basically that the polling in MI, PA, and WI all had Hillary over 52% and when the election came around she dropped by ~7% in MI, ~5% in PA and WI. T
Is that true?
had Clinton at 45, Trump 42. She ended up with 47. It wasn't so much that she crashed, just that undecided plus polling error both went towards Trump and enough for him to get a small win.
FYI appreciate your general polling data posts. I enjoy reading them and they obviously take some work to do, so thanks.
New voters are notoriously hard to get polling data on, and there are TONS of new voters this time, and they are mostly women and minorities. It will take a lot to make me believe this election won't be a blowout.
I strongly doubt that. 2020 was the highest turnout of all time, factoring in ability to register. I bet it won't even increase, much less substantially. Polling is still hard. There are plenty of unreliable voters and it's not easy to say which will bother.
I strongly doubt that. 2020 was the highest turnout of all time, factoring in ability to register. I bet it won't even increase, much less substantially. Polling is still hard. There are plenty of unreliable voters and it's not easy to say which will bother.
I don't understand what you doubt. That there are tons of new voters? This is easily verifiable with the number of people newly registering to vote. Their demographic data is also available.
New voters are notoriously hard to get polling data on, and there are TONS of new voters this time, and they are mostly women and minorities. It will take a lot to make me believe this election won't be a blowout.
The polling doesn't seem that different from 2016 or 2020, which were both insanely close elections.
The polling doesn't seem that different from 2016 or 2020, which were both insanely close elections.
Yeah. A decisive win by Kamala driven by unprecedented turnout among women may be more likely than a decisive win by Trump. But I would be hugely surprised if either person won decisively.
I don't understand what you doubt. That there are tons of new voters? This is easily verifiable with the number of people newly registering to vote. Their demographic data is also available.
You said there are a ton of new voters this time. The only way that's true is if there are a ton of new voters every time and 2016 and 2020 were not blowouts. No reason to think 2024 will be.
