Blowing up the echo chamber: Chances are, the polls are accurate

[kratosbrah]

no ****, sane people realized this like a year ago

ironic that for all the hate the alt-right has for safe spaces, breitbart and the_donald are probably among the biggest safe spaces on the internet

[masterfulsky]

brexit =/= US elections. Not even close.

half the country didnt even know what brexit was. People didnt take it seriously as it was a non binding referendum. US presidency is not even on the same league. People here been getting ready for this last 1.5 yrs.

Your talking absolute bollocks the brexit referendum was treated as seriously as a general election and had a similar turnout

[Fiyero]

Spent a couple hours on The_Donald tonight and while it's still highly entertaining, it's unfortunately turned into an echo chamber that might well be worse than r/SandersForPresident was. I understand they want to ****-post & meme their way to victory and ignore outside noise, but they're creating an incredible bubble over there. There could be a lot of folks on suicide watch come Nov 8-10.

You do realize this board is just as much of an echo chamber as The_Donald right? I think that board is a lot of trolls who don't really support Trump though, where as this board is a bubble of actual Trump lovers.

[anonymous]

You may be right based on the poor early voting results

There are obviously a sizeable proportion of the population who are emotionally based creatures - women, cuckservatives and millenials dont like hurtful words- 50% of voters have no skin in the game when it comes to tax breaks, and a significant number actively want to gut the 2A and 1A and would actively welcome a "progressive" supreme court.

A 2nd cold war and a higher cost of living are a small price to pay for being on the Right Side Of History

And thats not even taking into account the mormon hive mind trying to push the McMullin meme

Its highly likely that the regressive left get to turn the US into Sweden 2.0 in the next 2 decades without more than lip service opposition from the remaining GOPe

[SillieBazzillie]

You do realize this board is just as much of an echo chamber as The_Donald right? I think that board is a lot of trolls who don't really support Trump though, where as this board is a bubble of actual Trump lovers.

The Trump love here is strong.

[MugenNSX]

Of course the polls are accurate.

These companies/universities spend millions and millions of dollars trying to outdo one another to get the most accurate result and improve their standing and reputation in the field.

No amount of unskewing from some basement dwelling neckbeard can change the ultimate outcome.

[Fiyero]

The Trump love here is strong.

It's truly disgusting. This election has made me despise a huge segment of society I never thought I'd have such disdain for.

[dysenterygary]

never even considered voting in the last two elections even though I was old enough. voted in the primary and will vote in the general for Donald as well. (doesn't matter for my state though).

[moksha16]

So who do we believe nationally? Abc or la times/ibd, there is a 12 point difference, how is that even possible?

Correction.. who do you believe EVERY SINGLE OTHER POLL IN EXISTENCE or la times.

If that is a struggle for you, you should probably be wearing a helmet when you operate a toaster.

[TheFornicator1]

You may be right based on the poor early voting results

There are obviously a sizeable proportion of the population who are emotionally based creatures - women, cuckservatives and millenials dont like hurtful words- 50% of voters have no skin in the game when it comes to tax breaks, and a significant number actively want to gut the 2A and 1A and would actively welcome a "progressive" supreme court.

A 2nd cold war and a higher cost of living are a small price to pay for being on the Right Side Of History

And thats not even taking into account the mormon hive mind trying to push the McMullin meme

Its highly likely that the regressive left get to turn the US into Sweden 2.0 in the next 2 decades without more than lip service opposition from the remaining GOPe

Time shall tell, brethren. Plan B: Win the lottery (100 million), dump it in high risk stocks, profit, buy a heap of Islands and create the Next New World.

It's truly disgusting. This election has made me despise a huge segment of society I never thought I'd have such disdain for.

You're one of the most intolerant ideological bigots on the board, so that's not surprising. The only thing you know in the world is your rainbow colored world view, you can't understand or tolerate anything else.

[wickedman]

http://imgur.com/a/1rJpF

[JonathanRhimes]

LOL "alienated and embarrassed" by an anonymous poll? So these are closeted Trump supporters? Sounds pretty "beta" to me.

Leaving the childish alpha/beta labels behind for a minute, we have good reason to think that people will identify as liberal due to social pressures but will actually vote conservative when anonymous. This shows up in lots of exit polls showing D victories when R actually won.

That's if you actually trust the process by which votes are tallied, which is a whole different conversation in the era of computerized voting kiosks. The vote tallying patterns through which Romney defeated Paul several years ago are theoretically statistically impossible (final 40% of vote is all for Romney etc).

[JonathanRhimes]

Of course the polls are accurate.

These companies/universities spend millions and millions of dollars trying to outdo one another to get the most accurate result and improve their standing and reputation in the field.

No amount of unskewing from some basement dwelling neckbeard can change the ultimate outcome.

Ruh roh, red shill detected

If the polling process was honed to total awe inspiring perfection by the coolest scientists ever then we wouldn't have "scientific" polls released by different organizations at the same time showing different numbers

[rabidbrah]

Tell me how accurate the polls are after you watch this...




Exactly...

[A-GAME]

I agree for the most part, OP. But I don't put too much faith in the polls. Don't forget that only 60% of America votes. This election has energized the populace, and that number will surely be higher. The question is, who will the extra voters vote for? It may be Trump, and it may be Hillary. We'll see.

[T_O_N_Y]

Correction.. who do you believe EVERY SINGLE OTHER POLL IN EXISTENCE or la times.

If that is a struggle for you, you should probably be wearing a helmet when you operate a toaster.

Wrong, most polls have Hillary 4-6 points ahead, where the fuk do they get 12?

[TheFornicator1]

Don't forget that only 60% of America votes.

That's misleading though. 126 million of the 146 million registered voted in 2012. That only leaves 20 million + however many new registrations there have been since.

But yeah I covered that a few posts ago by looking at potential for specific demographics to increase their turnout. Some of Trump's strongsuit demographics have a lot of room to grow.

[Fiyero]

Wrong, most polls have Hillary 4-6 points ahead, where the fuk do they get 12?

Several polls have been in the 11-12 point range, including a new one that came out today.

[Fiyero]

You're one of the most intolerant ideological bigots on the board, so that's not surprising. The only thing you know in the world is your rainbow colored world view, you can't understand or tolerate anything else.

Not even close.

[XerxesIII]

Lol @ Donald.

There is no Republican that can beat a Democrat in national elections.

It's not even about individuals anymore.

[SearsBrah]

Lol @ Donald.

There is no Republican that can beat a Democrat in national elections.

It's not even about individuals anymore.

I don't think that's true.

This was the Republican's election to lose. And they did it by nominating Donald Trump.

A guy like Jon Huntsman could be up 10 on Hillary.

[SillieBazzillie]

Lol @ Donald.

There is no Republican that can beat a Democrat in national elections.

It's not even about individuals anymore.

Disagree here. Trump is such a horrible candidate that Hilldog's going to wreck him. Any other R (save Cruz) would have beaten Hillary.

[Stizzel]

Spent a couple hours on The_Donald tonight and while it's still highly entertaining, it's unfortunately turned into an echo chamber that might well be worse than r/SandersForPresident was. I understand they want to ****-post & meme their way to victory and ignore outside noise, but they're creating an incredible bubble over there. There could be a lot of folks on suicide watch come Nov 8-10.

All of the talk about "+9000" samples is stupid. First, registered voters self-identity as Dems from anywhere between 5-7% more than Republicans some election cycles, and it's constantly changing during the election. That, and given the nature of the current campaign, it's probably volatile.

Moreover, a lot of polls have weighting built into their methodology to adjust for sampling errors (that are unavoidable) to better reflect known census and registration data. This is legit just rehashing the dead arguments from 4 & 8 years ago. However, sampling aside, that wouldn't mean that the polls are by necessity accurate reflections of what's going to happen on election day.

This cycle is certainly an enigma, and if there's one election in which polling would be vastly wrong, it's this one. However, thus far, the data isn't showing it.

Here's what it is showing, through early voting:

FLORIDA:
RCP Average - Clinton +4 spread

Republicans always lead early voting in Florida. Romney smashed Obama in early voting, and still lost the state.



Democrats also had a registration surge in Florida before closing while the Republicans were completely stagnant.

NORTH CAROLINA:
RCP Average - Clinton +2.5

Through the same early voting period in 2012, Republicans had ~34,000 votes in. This year? Just 19,000 - a 45% decrease. By comparison the Democrats are steady at ~17,000.

MAINE:
RCP Average - Clinton +5.2

Reports have early voting momentum with Clinton/Dems, but no sound numbers.

OHIO, IOWA, GEORGIA:
RCP Average - Trump +0.6, Trump +3.7, Trump +4.0



ARIZONA:
RCP Average - Clinton +1.3



COLORADO:
RCP Average - Clinton +8.0



NEVADA:
RCP Average - Clinton +4.2






In summary, early voting returns reflect well on the accuracy of polling by state. This gives minimal reason to suspect that there's a "huge" number of Democrats turning to the Republicans. It's reasonable to suspect that polling is also accurate that there may be ~4% more Democrats turning Republican, than vice versa. This has no chance at swinging the election, it would need to be done by Independents, where Trump's gap has also decreased in polling.

However, what should worry everybody, is that there are very real and clear signs here that Clinton voters are actually the ones that are enthused to vote, not Trump voters. The trends and momentum are heavily in favor of Clinton overall, in terms of winning the electoral college. Crazy as it sounds, she might very well match '08/'12 turnout numbers, while it's looking more and more like Republicans aren't enthused to vote at all and Trump's turnout will be very disappointing. If Republicans don't turn out, he can't win. A 6-10 point margin with independents isn't going to do ****.

Finally, I am not saying the race is over. There are two weeks to go, a lot can happen, and trends can change. Trump's certainly been the come-back king. There are also other factors to consider that I didn't bother covering here. However, at this point it is stupid to whine about polling, and it is extremely likely that Trump is on track to lose by a decent margin if these trends continue through Nov. 8

With all the shenanigans that have gone on and the fact that we're talking about arguably the most corrupt politician we've seen in the past century, you cant blame people for being highly dubious.

[Fiyero]

Lol @ Donald.

There is no Republican that can beat a Democrat in national elections.

It's not even about individuals anymore.

Joining my other dembros and disagreeing with this. Hillary is very popular once in office, but she's not popular as a candidate. A non-social conservative religious nutjob who supports small government and conservative economics would be winning right now.

[JihadMeAtHello]

Disagree here. Trump is such a horrible candidate that Hilldog's going to wreck him. Any other R (save Cruz) would have beaten Hillary.

Horse**** dude. What the media did to Donald they would have done to any republican.

[SearsBrah]

Joining my other dembros and disagreeing with this. Hillary is very popular once in office, but she's not popular as a candidate. A non-social conservative religious nutjob who supports small government and conservative economics would be winning right now.

Jon Huntsman 2020 let's do this

[XerxesIII]

And people thought Romney could beat Obama the day before the election.

This is all hypothetical, but you are underestimating the appeal of Trump for a strong part of the Right.

I meam you have to understand he got MORE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY votes than any other Republican in history.

This means a lot of the apathetic uneducated White vote he inspired would have fallen out of the election if he lost.

A Romney couldn't win without Trumpers and Trump can't win without Romneyites---just to be competitive with Democrats.

And yet these two groups hate each other.

I think the only guy that would have been serious competition to Hillary was Kasich and he is as RINO as you get. He seems more like a Blue Dog Democrat.

[CalmWind]

No, the polls aren't right.

2016 Trump = 2008 Obama.

The polls are over sampling, and it's been proven that the Establishment is rigging them. 90+ percent of the Media donates to Democrats.

Frank Luntz is a scummy dude who tried to extort Trump out of money back in 2015, Trump told the story at a rally back in 2015. I remember it. Trump doesn't like Frank Luntz and told Luntz to GTFO with his polling services. Luntz is now hates Trump.

Trump has a lot of enemies in the establishment.

If you want a good assessment of the rigging of the polls right now, follow Bill Mitchell on twitter. He constantly examines the polls and exposes them.






I'll leave this here.

2016 Trump = 2008 Obama

[TheFornicator1]

Horse**** dude. What the media did to Donald they would have done to any republican.

Yeah it's a chit argument. No typical (R) had a chance whatsoever. With an establishment candidate, there would've been 5 times less mudslinging. Rubio would've been the typical pretty boy image trying to paint himself as your typical well-groomed (R) politician, while Clinton would tear him down piece by piece, and engender the argument of "failed free-markets" and promising socialism. Imagine Rubio trying to pin Clinton Foundation crimes on Clinton... lmao... real effective

Cruz would've lost 35-65

Kasich is a prime target for people like Clinton. He did well with favorability and head-to-head because nobody gave a fuk about him enough to pay any attention. He was just the quiet "nice" uncle, but really he's a whining bish and would've exposed it the more he was on TV.

Rand Paul was my original choice but the nation ain't ready for him. Would come across as a dweeb

Bush... LOL

[TheFornicator1]

No, the polls aren't right.

2016 Trump = 2008 Obama.

The polls are over sampling, and it's been proven that the Establishment is rigging them. 90+ percent of the Media donates to Democrats.

Frank Luntz is a scummy dude who tried to extort Trump out of money back in 2015, Trump told the story at a rally back in 2015. I remember it. Trump doesn't like Frank Luntz and told Luntz to GTFO with his polling services. Luntz is now hates Trump.

Trump has a lot of enemies in the establishment.

If you want a good assessment of the rigging of the polls right now, follow Bill Mitchell on twitter. He constantly examines the polls and exposes them.

I'll leave this here.

You're incompetent. Bill Mitchell is the exact type of ****ing retard I am talking about.

Read my post in its entirety. Primary turnout is utterly irrelevant unless it translates and it is not translating.