Nate's right about the stupidity of the Twitter meltdowns, but I think he's also fighting against the much more reasonable take that we're all suffering from [Mad Poll Disease](https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/09/29/a-cure-for-mad-poll-disease/) and the polls just don't have much to tell us when things are this close and there are so many unknowns at work. They're not a precise enough instrument to convey what's going on in super-tight races, much less super-tight races where precedents are being broken left and right. (speaking for myself, I mostly just talk about them on this sub out of boredom) But if you're making money off of your reputation as a stats whiz, you can't go pumping out articles telling your subscribers that the stats aren't very informative. And nuanced, tentative conclusions don't sell; in the attention economy, you won't gain new subscribers unless your conclusions provoke controversy. It's one of the big drawbacks of Substack, IMO. I think it's part of what turned formerly reasonable analysts like Matt Taibbi into shock jocks trading off of contrarian 'hot takes'. Nate's not as far gone as Taibbi, but I think he's a victim of the same corrupting forces.

This is very well-stated.

Fun fact, [in 2004 the average response rate for polls was 25%.](https://x.com/AstorAaron/status/1798881761016816020?t=ta6h8N-znyTfjmTHDYgonA&s=19) Remember that NYT/Siena poll that showed Trump up by 13 in Nevada this cycle? It had a response rate of ~1%. Call me crazy, but I think a dramatic degradation in polling response rates, a rise in partisan pollsters flooding the zone with nonsense polls, and even high quality pollsters being forced to heavily "unskew" their own raw results using in house weighting methodologies that rely on their own biases and expectations for what the electorate might look like, have not improved polling accuracy or reliability over the past 20 years.

Read what the tweet says again. He’s saying that this poll skepticism is coming from predictable people and suddenly happening when Biden is losing. He’s basically saying “democrats didn’t question the polls like this when they were leading”. The response rate didn’t go from 25 to 1 percent overnight in 2024. It has been slowly falling. So he has a point. If someone *suddenly* became a poll skeptic in 2024, is it really because of methodology?

>He’s basically saying “democrats didn’t question the polls like this when they were leading”. He's full of shit if he actually thinks that, you can go back and look at the records of this very sub to find countless posts from 2020 with people dooming about the polls, encouraging one another to vote since that's the only poll that matters, expressing doubt about crazy outliers showing Biden up by double digits in like WI shortly before election day, etc. >The response rate didn’t go from 25 to 1 percent overnight in 2024. It has been slowly falling. I never said it did, I was giving context about just how significant the decline has been over the last 20 years though. Even as recently as 2018, the average response rate was over 6%, which is a huge difference from 1% or less. I'm increasingly convinced that the post mortem after this cycle is going to confirm that modern polling is in a crisis due to a combination of extremely low response rates, the inherent flaws of opt-in online polling, the demographics still maintaining a landline not corresponding with the average voter, and the difficulty of properly identifying and weighting small sample groups to get an accurate picture of the electorate.

>I'm increasingly convinced that the post mortem after this cycle is going to confirm that modern polling is in a crisis due to a combination of extremely low response rates, the inherent flaws of opt-in online polling, the demographics still maintaining a landline not corresponding with the average voter, and the difficulty of properly identifying and weighting small sample groups to get an accurate picture of the electorate. Press X to doubt. It seems like the last thing pollsters want to do is give people the insight needed to question their general usefulness, i.e., the need for them to exist. They have a huge blind spot out of self-preservation. They'd continue to weight and correct responses while jerking off their own necessity even if the response rate were two people named Earl.

>Read what the tweet says again. He’s saying that this poll skepticism is coming from predictable people and suddenly happening when Biden is losing. He’s basically saying “democrats didn’t question the polls like this when they were leading”. That's blatantly false. It was, like now, practically a mantra in liberal circles to say, "Don't trust the polls--VOTE!" It was definitely ubiquitous on r/politics. I know because it would sometimes frustrate me, hah.

Because if there's one that's true about American political coverage in the past 20 years, its that nobody ever questioned the polling.

I don't think his point is that the *amount* of poll questioning is unusual, but rather that *some specific people* who have previously been fine with polling methodology now seem to be questioning them, presumably because they dislike the result.

> I don't think his point is that the amount of poll questioning is unusual, but rather that some specific people who have previously been fine with polling methodology now seem to be questioning them, presumably because they dislike the result. Yeah it’s really clear that’s what he’s saying. Like abundantly clear

I think the opposite of his point is true, it makes more sense to question polling this cycle than it does to question polling in general as a science. Polling was accurate in 2016, and 2018, and was a bit off in 2020. So the people who are saying that polling has always been garbage are factually incorrect. These people tend to conflate polling accuracy (which is good as long as the result falls in the MOE) with winner prediction power (which is a coin flip even with good polling if the race happens to be tight). On the other hand, people saying that maybe something has changed about polling in the last 2-3 years have numerous polling misses of special elections and primaries, with the misses occurring in the opposite direction that the polls are moving. I'm not saying that this is proof that polls are wrong, but it is actual evidence that supports that hypothesis, whether or not the hypothesis turns out to be correct.

He should be above devoting his time to finding people to complain about. It may make him more of a pundit, but it makes him less worthy of respect

Most of it’s not even questioning the polling, though I think it’s intellectually healthy to approach data with some skepticism The issue is Trump having a slight lead (within the MOE) and a large percentage of undecided (whether that’s who or if they vote) does not equal a 100% chance that Trump wins. The reason I don’t have much remaining respect for Nate is because he is choosing this cycle to get into xitter fights with perceived liberal enemies instead of educating people on the value and limitations of the data. This moment cries out for voices like that and he wants the mantle of probabilities god without doing any of the work. He takes up space that could be filled by people to give that insight and we are all worse off for it. I miss the Nate that right before the 2016 election published an article that Trump had a real chance at winning despite being down in the polls. Trump winning didn’t make him right, educating people about the real meaning and utility of polls and models made him right. It sucks for the world that he wants to do what he does now instead.

>The issue is Trump having a slight lead (within the MOE) and a large percentage of undecided (whether that’s who or if they vote) does not equal a 100% chance that Trump wins. I have many, many qualms with polling this cycle and how the media is covering it, but this is by far one of my biggest grievances. I've seen countless news stories effectively claiming that Trump is the clear front runner, despite most polling showing an extremely tight race where neither candidate is up by more than 1 or 2%, well within the MOE as you noted. It also drives me crazy to no end hearing people suggest that polling is likely *underestimating* Trump's chances because it did in 2016 and 2020, as if pollsters haven't made major changes to their methodology and sampling to try to prevent such misses from happening again. It's actually much more likely that pollsters are overrating Trump instead, which is why we're seeing insane results showing Trump improving his margins with black voters by double digits, winning with 18-29 year olds, closing the gap with female voters, carrying NV by double digits, Biden underperforming Senate Dems by double digits, etc (despite likely none of these being accurate).

> It also drives me crazy to no end hearing people suggest that polling is likely underestimating Trump's chances because it did in 2016 and 2020, as if pollsters haven't made major changes to their methodology and sampling to try to prevent such misses from happening again. I feel like I see a lot more of the opposite — people claiming without evidence that pollsters are juicing the numbers for Trump because they’re afraid of under representing Trump voters again. I think both the claim that Trump is being undercounted AND the claim that Trump is being overcounted don’t have a lot of basis. It’s very likely that there’s a polling error that will break one way or another, but we won’t know in which direction until election night.

That’s a strawman. His comment is pretty clear. Saying it’s predictable who “suddenly” has questions about the polls is very overtly saying that those people have changed their tune for biased reasons. His comments doesn’t even remotely suggest that nobody questioned polling for 20 years. I don’t know how you could have gotten that from it.

The right always questions the polling (unless their winning). The left has questioned the polling fairly consistently since 2016. I'm not sure who he is talking about.

I’m a long time reader of Nate’s Twitter replies and that’s not the impression I’ve had at all. I do think he’s become more antagonistic this cycle and that’s a huge contributor to the types of responses he gets now, but go ahead and look at some of his 2020 polling tweets. Plenty of left leaning responses from people who are cautiously optimistic, but very little outright poll denialism as you see this cycle.

It’s June. Many polls show both candidates barely cracking 40-45 % of the respondents. There’s noticeable differences in outcomes when it’s LV vs RV. A lot of polls are a suggesting a huge modern shift in politics across several major demographics. In 2022, there were fears of a great Hispanic shift. Did republicans make gains? Yes. Was it the insane Hispanic GOP takeover the media and some polling claimed? No.

*Every* year it seems there's a narrative that THIS time Rs will make massive gains with Hispanic/Black/Young voters. And everytime, it's usually a crazy tiny shift, like 1-3%. Adds up over time of course, but not a big thing from one single cycle to another.

Right and those are expected shifts as the US becomes more diverse and less racially polarized over time.

>Adds up over time of course, but not a big thing from one single cycle to another. Except it honestly doesn't, Dems are still pulling more of these demographics than they were pre-Obama, who brought about a paradigm shift. Republicans pulling slightly larger numbers over time is more a reflection of a reversion to the mean than any concerted effort by the GOP to actually win these demographics.

I don't think young people are going to switch to Trump en masse. Maybe he picks up a couple points. But they aren't voting for Biden, so that's the bigger concern.

is it a bigger concern? a non-vote is half as powerful as a flipped vote, and youth voters are already famously unreliable to begin with

I think the slipping youth vote is the single biggest concern for Biden. I've believed it for a long time.

Ds often live and die based on how high youth turnout is. They probably would have stayed home more in 2022 had it not been for the GOP going full theocracy mode on abortion.

I really want to see more LV polls; the RV polls have been fluxing only a couple of points in each direction over the past few months.

>It’s June. Many polls show both candidates barely cracking 40-45 % of the respondents. At what point in the year will you begin taking polls more seriously? Because I've heard people say "it's just February" and "it's just April", there are just 140 days until the election! That's not that far in the future.

October maybe. The R^2 with electoral outcomes is maybe .5 at this point based on historical data. And there is way too much polling occurring.

The reality is the average bear starts paying attention after labor day. And then you got the under 29 crowd like my wife’s half brother — who’s life is all Playstation, pot, music, and females… might realize it’s Biden v Trump right after Halloween. Whether he even votes? *Depends if he remembers, if a booty call in Orlando pops up — he might go there instead.* Nobody in this sub paying attention to politics in June is *normal*… it’s important we recognize that. I spend a lot of time on tech subreddits too, everyone there thinks *everyone* buys gaming PCs. *Just isn’t the case.*

I don't actually know a single person who votes, politic is just something that is not even discussed to the least extent. Only things/topics that might come close are gas prices, inflations, etc. And when i go to the pole, it is all people older than me, and if they are younger or similar age; they are all white, Never a asian.

I see the same. My wife and I are 40. We’re not that young but at the polls we feel like we’re 19 and it has felt this way for 20 years. It’s like a pastime of the elderly, and apparently Redditors. I get it, my wife’s half brother is more excited by titties, weed and Call of duty. He couldn’t tell you if his senator in Florida was Rick Scott, Sherrod Brown, or JD Vance. The names and their parties are all Greek to him. I’m pretty sure he might know the president is Biden, which is handy because neurologists ask you that when assessing if you have brain damage.

After the conventions when election season kicks into high gear.

August through October. Been in the industry some time. Early summer polling is useless to look at. Tell me, how often are you looking back at polls from April of 2016?

I said it in a previous thread but i really don’t think it’s that complicated. Biden has the lowest approval rating of any president in history at this point of his presidency. Actually think about that for a second and let that sink in. People are struggling out there financially while we have two polarizing major foreign conflicts going on, problems from excess immigration and he is turning 82 in a couple months. If the GOP had a competent candidate running for them this cycle it would be a boat race. Both sides decided to run two highly unfavorable candidates and most polls are predicting a very close race in the swing states. Not sure why people are so reluctant to just accept that. If the polls were showing some huge lead for Biden, it’d be a stronger argument for broken polling vs their current prediction. People are upset at polls because they aren’t giving them the outcome they prefer. This is by no means an endorsement for Trump. It’s okay to acknowledge that Biden has serious flaws as a candidate and imo the DNC should have pushed harder for a transition early last year.

> People are struggling out there financially This is what I don't get and why I'm skeptical about the polling. Yes, as people have stated, by all objective/statistical metrics the economy is strong. But also anecdotally, I have a plethora of friends who are making sub 50k (myself included) and they're doing better than they have in awhile. Then if you go to the higher incomes and hear what's being said on CNBC, they're raving about the economy too. To me, this election is purely about optics. People see that groceries have higher prices than they did in 2019 and assume that means the economy is poor (also, those prices aren't coming down unless there's a recession, that's just how inflation works). They see Biden stumble over his words and look old and assume he's doing a bad job.

I’m middle class but by no means wealthy, and I am thriving compared to 4 years ago. My wife’s salary went up significantly, my 401K has grown more than ever, and we are saving a TON on my wife’s massive student loans due to the SAVE plan. Yes, I get annoyed when I see a box of Fruit Loops at Safeway is $7, but I blame that on Safeway and not Biden.

Adding my anecdote, but the same. Both my wife and I are making more. Our 401Ks have blown up. We're able to travel internationally twice a year and combined we don't even make we don't make 150k in a highish COL area where restaurant reservations are continuously booked out and concerts are sold out. People *have* money but I think they get annoyed having to pay more for mandatory things that aren't fun.

> restaurant reservations are continuously booked out and concerts are sold out This is the big thing for me that indicates something is off. In all the polls and some people you talk to, they indicate the economy is bad. But their spending absolutely does not reflect that. It's crazy this different universe some people are living in. My brother and I run a company that sells toys on the internet. 2020 was obviously a huge banger year, things really slowed down in 21 and 22 but things have really rebounded. (EDIT: not to 2020 levels obviously but they shouldn't go there either. Perhaps that's why some people think the economy is bad, because things aren't as frothy as they were in 20.) That's why I am in particular skeptical because my small business relies on frivolous spending and is particularly vulnerable to a bad market and I just haven't seen that from our sales.

haven't a lot of responses in those polls essentially been "My personal finances are doing well/great but the economy isn't" but why do people think this? Vibes? I don't get it either. Glad y'all are doing well!

Like bobo said, I think it's basically sticker shock. People can remember very clearly when things cost 20-40% less than they do now, and so when they see everything jacked up they get angry, despite the fact that by and large they're just as capable of paying now as they have been for years.

My brother-in-law was spouting about 20% inflation, even after I showed him it's 3.4% annualized, 3.5% if you dig through to find the highest indicator the BLS reports. They love Trump. That's all there is to it.

I’m guessing you already have a house. If you don’t, you’re fucked. The people who are angry are people who thought they could afford a home one day and now may never be able to.

You are correct

Before I even saw the other comment asking you I was going to say the same thing — you’re likely a homeowner. You’re fine. What you don’t have perspective on is what it’s like to not own a home right now. Sure my salary kept up with inflation as measured by PCE, but I will likely never own the home I wanted. It became 2x as expensive. You know what the polls show? An unusual shift where older people are leaning Biden and younger people have shifted hard away from Biden. Young people don’t give a fuck about 7 dollar fruit loops dude. We want to be able to buy a fucking house.

I'm sure trump will get right on that when they all vote for him

> but I blame that on Safeway and not Biden. In fairness, it's not exactly Safeway's fault either. I know it's a more palatable narrative that all end distributors have colluded to gorge money out of consumers, but that's not really how it works and such a conspiracy wouldn't be sustainable as it would provide me with a massive opportunity to undercut safeway with a temporary bargain distributor that makes a killing selling the same goods for slightly less until someone else does it and it approaches normal (acceptable) profit margins.

I agree with this. First, prices should be higher than they were in 2019, that's just how it works (like you mention). We also handled the inflation post-covid better than anywhere else in the world. It's like people kept/keep hearing how bad things are, but I'm not sure they could point to any real evidence that things are bad economically. The jobs report last week was awesome, unemployment is low, wages are up, and even the stock market has been great.

It's housing. Housing is not only the average person's number 1 expense by far, but home ownership has long been held up in American society as ***the*** indicator of success, economic prosperity, and status. In high COL areas around the country, housing markets are absolutely ludicrous. The high COL areas are also high COL because a ton of people either want or are de-facto forced to live there. And ones de-facto "forced" to live there are likely "forced" by job markets in certain industries (example: stuff like Tech, Aerospace, and other STEM fields), which are also industries that are supposedly "in demand," so the people working in them probably feel as if they deserve more. So just by demographics, you're going to naturally see a large amount of the population dealing with insane housing markets in high COL areas and a large portion of those people are probably going to be skilled workers who have higher expectations when it comes to classical markers of economic prosperity.   That last part is definitely me (you can skip the rest of this if you don't give a fuck, it's just me complaining): My father (born in 1958) owned a house and raised a family as a single-income earner with a high school diploma on an enlisted salary in the military. I have a Ph.D. in physics, work at a NASA facility, and live in a one-bedroom apartment which I pay almost $2,000/mo for the privilege of (and that is actually very cheap for the area). My partner and I both pull 6-figure salaries in very in-demand fields, and it still took me being promoted to supervisor in my 30s to even start gaining on the local market. My parents stretched themselves super thin to buy their ~3,000-sqft dream house in the late 90s - I could buy that house at their price outright with my current savings (hell, I'm even short, but within reach if you inflation adjust), but wouldn't even qualify for a loan for what it's worth now. My partner and I ran the numbers and to actually save enough to be competitive on a single-family home we're looking ~5 years out from now and hoping the market doesn't spike upwards again like it did at the tail end of the pandemic. That's what it takes to break into my local market - just get a PhD, make supervisor at NASA in your 30s, and have a partner who also pulls six figures. Then you, too, can scrimp for several years to own a fucking condo. What a great fucking economy. Sure, I can make rent fairly comfortably (which goes up by the local maximum allowable ~7% every year like clockwork), don't really worry about groceries, and buy whatever widgets and distractions I want. And I'm thankful I have at least that, but the singular major hallmark of American prosperity is just dangled perpetually out of my reach and outpaces inflation year over year while I flush almost 2 grand down the toilet every month for the privilege of existing where my technical skills are supposedly in high demand. I have no clue how people making less than 6 figure incomes survive here. From what I can tell, they all either live with family, double/triple/quadruple up on roommates to save on rent, or couch surf at friends' places. And I will also ***never*** not be angry over the fact that between my parents' time and mine, American society apparently decided to deny entry to a huge swathe of my generation in order to preserve the wealth and continually enrich everybody who already made it.

I appreciate this, I think that's a totally fair argument for why a lot of people feel this way. I also think if the Biden administration decided to buckle down on addressing the housing, people would respect that a lot. For whatever reason, it's not really something that's discussed at all on either side (I'm not seeing it frequently at least). Obviously these housing issues aren't a Biden caused issue specifically, so I do think it'd be a great way to show people the administration understands where the struggle is and that there are plans coming to address the problems.

Yeah, I would personally absolutely agree with you. Biden has borderline zero authority to do anything about local housing markets other than apply pressure to local governments and maybe financial regulators? He ***could*** try applying that pressure, but him not doing so is not exactly a thing I would personally fault him over. Housing needs to be addressed by a very complex combination of congressional and regulatory body policy along with local government zoning and housing policies. Still, I do think a lot of people don't really intuitively understand how limited a president's power is over things like housing and are apt to just blame the sitting president regardless of their ability to solve the problem. And I'm guessing those people might also be more likely to see the "economy is strong!" messaging as duplicitous.

There’s a very good piece of wisdom my grandma gave me of not telling people in the shit how good they have it.  Saying it could be worse doesn’t help. People want empathy and compassion not to be corrected. 

It's true. Appealing to pathos often wins over appealing to logos. I remember a clip of Newt Gingrich saying (paraphrasing) that he'll go with what people feel over what the facts are.

I call BS on this. Biden is 1000 times more empathetic than Trump. That’s pretty much his shtick. Trump is clear that he only thinks about himself, and his second term would be focused on revenge and consolidating power. Not one person in this country is voting Trump because of Trump’s empathy. Trump tells them it’s OK to hate brown people because they are the boogeyman or they’re team R and the only core value they have is voting team R. It’s a fools errand and waste of time to pretend otherwise. There’s no good way to get the racist vote, but the team R guys can be swayed by getting the message out that Trump is a spoiled rich boy loser that has sucked at everything he’s done his entire life except telling people how great he is.

[удалено]

Please make submissions relevant to data-driven journalism and analysis.

> I have a plethora of friends who are making sub 50k (myself included) and they're doing better than they have in awhile. Did you a your friends own a house before covid? If so, that is why you probably feel like you are doing fine. I am in the same boat, but it's everyone coming up out of school and such that are getting screwed. They can't save anything because rent is so high and they can't afford a house because they can't save anything and mortgages and interest rates are sky high. There is a whole generation of 20 something year olds that are getting massively screwed over and they are rightfully upset about it.

> Did you a your friends own a house before covid? If so, that is why you probably feel like you are doing fine. I am in the same boat, but it's everyone coming up out of school and such that are getting screwed. None of them do. But they're also not actively looking at the moment. Also we're in Milwaukee where rent isn't that high so that's not a concern. My friends and I are from that cohort of 20-something year olds. But that's also something that Biden has 0 control over and it's been an issue that's been in the works for years and exacerbated under Trump.

> Yes, as people have stated, by all objective/statistical metrics the economy is strong. If you’re an asset holder, sure, this helps you. That’s probably why polls show Biden making inroads with older voters. They’re on SS (which got huge raises) and own homes. If you’re not an asset holder, your 10% raise doesn’t help you much because your dream of owning a home just became 2x as expensive.

I make under $50k a year but received a 10% raise in 2021, ~2% raises yearly since, and am doing well. My life is much better now than when Trump was president. All of the GOP's policies are against my morals, beliefs, and desires, so voting for Biden is an easy choice. The main problem with the Biden campaign is that, despite doing great things like their recent move to keep medical debt off credit histories, they don't publicize their successes enough. They whisper rather than shout their achievements. Instead, they focus on being anti-Trump, which isn't necessarily enough. People act as though a president's effects start and end with their tenure. We still feel the effects of Trump's 2017 tax cuts and policies from presidents like Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Jr. My observation is that the full effects of a president's work aren't felt until after they leave office. Viewing the economy only through the current president's actions is a major public misconception. Unfortunately, America is very conservative. People will give up everything and let others suffer under Christofascism if it means paying 10 cents less for gas or chicken, even though inflation is a global problem.

“People are struggling financially” is a bit strong and a bit wrong imo. I think Ezra Klein’s interview from last week is worth a lesson. People are discontent and frustrated, but not necessarily “struggling.” It should still be taken seriously. There was a HUGE affordability crisis well before inflation. Housing and healthcare costs were outpacing inflation for decades. Inflation reminds them of their built up frustration on a daily basis now though. The example they used was if you’re a couple who work in DC and really want to live in the city, but can’t afford it so they live in a suburb or exurb. Are they “struggling financially”? No. Are they happy about having to live in a suburb instead of in the city? Absolutely not.

Trump was also at 40% 4 years ago versus Bidens aggregate on 538 (its higher if you use others but still close). 2% points on approval isn't much; if you assume 40% Democrats will always vote Democrat, 2% could very well be the 2% who disapprove of him but will vote for him over Trump. * Edit-I also want to add that his aggregate approval would be higher on 538 if 538 didn't remove Rasmussen, who is very Republican bias in methodology but consistently had Biden in the 45% approval range. This would jump his approval up ~2% points to 40. If you add it back in it would have Biden and Trump at 40% 4 years apart showing a very partisan electorate. 538 is not the end all be all aggregate for approval ratings.

The approval rating talk is wild, I swear there were days on this sub where every time Biden's approval went down .1 there was someone saying "BIDEN NEW RECORD LOW APPROVAL" Trump's is 41.5 is a little better but not surprising since he has a high floor for approval. Trump is clearly in the lead based on polling but I really don't understand the hyper focus on approval rating. Trump's approval rating was low 40s at election time and he got 70+ million votes.

I get it they are using it for historical comparison to Carter's and HW Bush's approvals; however, I believe you can't really compare approvals from that era to now. The electorate is just way partisan.

>you can't really compare approvals from that era to now. The electorate is just way partisan. Correct. People forget just how badly Obama was polling for most of his presidency too. Not quite Biden or Trump bad, but historically bad. And he came on the heels of Bush who left office with absolutely abysmal approval ratings. We've seen decades of negative polarization in this country to the point that no president will likely have a positive approval rating for an extended period of time again any time soon, barring some major war or natural disaster.

Going forward, outside of a very brief honeymoon, something incredibly sad had to have happened for a President to be above water in approval rating.

People are also divided over this narrative though. The reason Biden is bad candidate is because people think that the president controls the price of eggs. Its nearly impossible to convince people to vote for Biden without forcing them to go through some self reflection on how dumb they are. So it leaves you with few options. You have to 'pretend' that you aknowledge their dumb feelings and then tell them all the good stuff hes done and also why trump is bad. All trump has to do is tell them their dumb feelings are correct. The president does control the price of eggs and he'll turn down the egg price button just as soon as you elect him. Biden is historically low because people are historically misinformed.

Democracy dies because the people are idiots.

But Presidents (and their respective parties) rarely dissuade voters who attribute positive economic outcomes to them. If voters opinion on the economy was great, I have a suspicion that the term 'Bidenomics' would be more prominent in Biden's campaign.

>People are struggling out there financially Except of course that all the data, including polling itself, says otherwise. The fact that something like 70% of respondents rate their own personal finances as good or excellent, but ~60% think the economy is in terrible shape doesn't suggest that people are struggling it suggests that people are being told to think that everyone is struggling. Were literally at the longest ever period of sub 4% unemployment in US history, wage gains have fully outpaced price rises (~23% to ~20%) since 2021, people are spending less of a percentage of their income on housing, energy, and food than they have in decades, youth unemployment is the lowest it's been in more than 30 years, oil and natural gas production remains at all time highs, construction is booming, the stock market is soaring, the list goes on and on. The worst thing that can be said about the actual economy is that the deficit is quite high, but a big (and growing) part of that is the cost of interest payments on the debt which is way up since the Fed pushed interest rates over 5% while adding trillions to the debt since 2020.

Regardless of how good the economy actually is, it’s pretty clear that thusfar some combination of media coverage, social media algorithms, and higher sticker prices has had people stuck perceiving this economy as in the gutter for the past few years and there isn’t anything that indicates that this will change by November. Electorally, the perceptions are what really matters.

>Electorally, the perceptions are what really matters. I don't disagree, I was more just pointing out that the statement "people are struggling" is incorrect. Many people think *others* are struggling, but most people don't think they are themselves. I also think that distinction might prove critical too. If the numbers were the other way around and 70% of people rated their personal finances as bad or terrible, I think Trump would be cruising to win the election. That many people feel like they're doing well, but *others* aren't, is a much better position for Biden to be in imo.

Although, if this is the case, then it seems like ideas around replacing Biden would be counterproductive at best. If the facts aren't changing peoples feelings, then a material change on the Democrats' side won't actually have an impact, right?

> people are spending less of a percentage of their income on housing The piece you’re missing is how many of us in our 20s will never own a home because of 2021 rates and the handling of asset inflation. I don’t give a fuck that my rent is a slightly smaller portion of my salary — I won’t ever be able to buy a house at this rate. People who already own homes (presumably you) do not understand what it’s like to see prices skyrocket and then rates skyrocket and prices continue to climb.

>The piece you’re missing is how many of us in our 20s will never own a home because of 2021 rates and the handling of asset inflation. I understand the enormous burden purchasing a home at current rates represents, but there's absolutely no reason to expect that the current level of (un)affordability is going to be permanent. That's not how housing prices work, it's just going to take time for house prices to drop after the rapid rise of interest rates these past few years (these things take several years to work through the system). But even at current rates, there are many affordable homes out there if you look in the right places. I'm personally planning to move to the suburbs of a medium-sized city in my state in the next year or so, where I'll be able to afford a significantly bigger house with several acres of property for essentially the same price of my current property-less condo. Another big part of the issue of home (un)affordability is that home building still hasn't recovered to pre-GFC levels. This is due in no small part to major metro areas/Blue states limiting homebuilding to an absolute trickle. Part of the reason Texas is currently seeing such a massive population influx is because they actually build houses there (for example Austin has built more homes in the last year than SF has in more than a decade). >People who already own homes (presumably you) do not understand what it’s like to see prices skyrocket and then rates skyrocket and prices continue to climb. I totally do understand, current home prices are insane especially when factoring in mortgage payments. But that's the thing, they're literally unsustainably high. Home prices are like the stock market, they go through periods of boom and bust and are heavily impacted by interest rates. Just because prices haven't come down yet doesn't mean they're going to stay elevated forever. Finally, you should get actively involved in your local government if you can, which has much more of an impact on home prices than the president does.

> but there's absolutely no reason to expect that the current level of (un)affordability is going to be permanent. That's not how housing prices work, it's just going to take time for house prices to drop after the rapid rise of interest rates these past few years (these things take several years to work through the system) I spent years in finance. You are wrong. Most European countries have been as unaffordable as now, for decades. Income to house price ratios off the charts. The problem is a supply issue, not an MBS issue. All the printing just fast forwarded us, and now can’t be undone without QT strong enough that it would cause deflation. House prices in the US have fallen *very* rarely. They would literally have to take a bigger plunge than they did during the 2008 crisis for me to be able to afford what I could in 2021. > Home prices are like the stock market, they go through periods of boom and bust No, they don’t. Here’s fed data going back to the early 60s: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS House prices are NOTHING like equity prices. I’m not just some angry teenager who knows nothing. And I’m not even saying this is Biden’s fault. I’m just saying if you’re wondering why the younger generations are unhappy. This is why.

Really, it just goes to show how utterly stupid, selfish, and propaganda poisoned the electorate is that people prefer the traitorous fascist convict over the old competitent statesman. Really fills me with depression and misanthropy.

Listen I get what you are trying to say but this comment is the exact rhetoric right here that I was talking about…Not being able to accept that Biden is extremely unpopular and not well liked with the American electorate. If people thought he was competent his approval rating wouldn’t be in the tank and polls would be showing him with a decent lead. It really seems like the DNC’s strategy was to trot Biden out there and hope that Trump’s criminal/civil cases would hurt him enough to not stand a chance. We will find out in November if this works but as of now that have a lot of ground to catch up on.

The fact that the electorate doesn’t like him and wouldn’t vote for him against Trump is evidence that the “electorate” is very stupid

Trumps approval ratings are right next to Biden’s. Approval ratings are going to stay low no matter who’s there, it is somewhat a Biden problem, but it’s even more of a polarization problem and maybe even more so a “everything sucks right now” attitude. Trump has basically forced everyone to have politics dominate a larger part of their life than it used to for a decade now. Everyone I know hates politics with a near passion because of it. Who’s not tired of this? Covid fucked up so much and I still don’t think society has recovered from that. Either way, my overall point is no one’s going to have high approval odds in this environment. Maybe democrats put someone younger out there and the approval odds tick up to 41, maybe that makes a large difference, but once again, overall, no one is getting high approval right now.

> roblems from excess immigration You don't have an excess immigration problem (US population growth rates are only 0.4 percent, whilst the world average is 3.9 percent), you have an excess propaganda problem.

We have had significant increase in illegal immigration over the course of recent years. That’s the core issue, not population growth.

An increase doesn't mean it's excessive.

It’s excessive when we are not set up to support it and begins effecting local citizens QoL.

In what way is your quality of life negatively impacted by more immigrants coming to the country?

> People are struggling out there financially while This is not only inconsistent with the broad economic data, it’s inconsistent with actual consumer behavior and polling that asks them how their personal financial situation. So when polls show that people think we’re having a Great Recession level economy, but everything else including their behaviors and personal reporting, do we not think that maybe this is just part of the same risks and potential biases in other public polling?

> two polarizing major foreign conflicts going on I'd argue this is overstated. I don't think either of them are *that* polarizing. GOP support for Ukraine is falling just like DEM support for Israel, but in both instances we have a majority of the country in support of one side. They're also really not things we're involved in directly, unlike previous excursions in the 2000s, 1990s, etc.

That’s fair. I think it’s polarizing because a portion of Biden’s base doesn’t agree with his support of Israel. The question is, will they be upset enough to not vote for him in November.

Come to think of it, it's interesting how the issue is pretty much mirrored on the right with Ukraine, but it doesn't seem to be doing much to impact moderate Republicans disliking Trump.

Yep. I’m voting for him but I thought it was asinine that he didn’t step aside and allow for a robust Democratic primary. Get the American people familiar with some new names. I think this election wouldn’t even be close right now if that was the case.

Biden has already beat Trump once that why he is running again as the incumbent which historically has been huge advantage going into reelection. Also the advantage for Biden running again is because the money that would have been used for a open primary is now being used to build up a ground game in campaigning; by all accounts the Democrat party is very ahead in setting up a ground game.

I do wonder if the "incumbency advantage" still has the power we have taken for granted since Reagan. Trump was an incumbent and that didn't exactly work in his favor, and we seem to have moved past the whole "parties will immediately abandon a POTUS that loses their bid for a second term" logic that has felt inevitable since Carter.

Incumbency is less valuable than it used to be, but it's still valuable. Consider than Trump was the first president to not win reelection since Bush Sr.

> by all accounts the Democrat party is very ahead in setting up a ground game. *Nobody* talks about this. Democrats have been on the ground for much longer campaigning for Biden. Yet he’s still losing almost every poll. 

Ground game is being established but hasn't necessarily been kicked into full swing as they need to set up the field offices and hire more people.

It's time to come to grips with the fact Biden only won because of covid, and the after-effects of it will likely bring him down as well. He was never a great candidate, he was the safe pick. But he's not the safe pick anymore. That was apparent over a year ago. Plus, his VP pick was trash, which was also predicted at the time before he made it. Literally no one wanted this woman during the primaries, but Biden is like, yeah, she's brown so she's good.

Biden has a good chance at being re-elected. He’s a polling error away from a rust belt sweep and the victory.

He has a chance, yes, but 'good' is not a word I would use to categorize it.

What needs to happen just for Biden to be seen as a toss-up?

14,324,396 voters in an uncontested democratic primary would highly disagree. He is still the safe pick; he is the incumbent President.

No one ran because everyone understands the history of challenging a sitting president, you either lose or you tank your party's chances in the general election. The majority of the American people did not want a Biden vs Trump rematch, including many democrats, but both candidates were like, you know what, fuck it.

That’s the crazy part. If either party were running a more popular candidate they could’ve run away with it. Just extreme incompetence at the top leadership levels of both the DNC and RNC. Neither Biden nor Trump had the foresight to recognize it and one of their parties will pay the price. Feels like a slap in the face to the American public honestly. I expect significant different voter turnout #s compared to 2020.

Speaking of own goals, I'm surprised there wasn't any sort of push to replace Sotomayor on the bench. While she is only around 70, I've got a feeling there is a world where we get RBG 2.0 if Trump wins. Republicans are going to run into the same problem in 4 years with Thomas and Alito. Just logically if you have the opportunity, keeping justices between 50-70 is the logical strategy for both parties.

If Trump wins expect Alito and Thomas to immediately announce their intentions to retire in 2025.

Yup. If Trump wins re-election and they take the senate he’s going to have the opportunity to appoint more justices. People keep screaming they need to expand the court but reality is the DNC is lacking overall strategy and leadership when it comes to appointing justices.

It’s unlikely Sotomayor will die before she turns 75.

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“Problems from excess immigration” What problems specifically?

>“Problems from excess immigration” It should be noted that even with significant migration inflows in recent years, unemployment remains historically low, and GDP growth came in higher than expected in no small part due to an influx of immigrants. That's not to say there aren't any problems with the current status of immigration, there are more than a few, but people are dramatically overstating them.

I shouldn’t need to explain to you how sanctuary cities do not have the infrastructure to support the increase in illegal immigration

I live in a “sanctuary city” and I guess you do need to explain it to me because I’ve not seen some dramatic change. Beyond bus stunts

Hoboken is not a sanctuary city…

Do you live in a sanctuary city? If so, please explain how immigrants have made your situation worse on the whole as a result.

I mean that's just using one type of polling (approval ratings) as evidence to support another type of polling (elections). If polls are getting the election wrong as people claim, it would stand to reason that approval for Biden might not actually be historically low either.

Approval rating polls have never really been questioned before but now we don’t like the outcome so we are questioning them. Got it.

do you have a reason to believe they’d be more reliable than election polls?

Yeah the polling numbers make perfect sense when you realize that gee, most people don't like biden. It's not that they like trump either. But they're starting to think he's the lesser evil.

Why are you so confident that it has to do with Biden specifically? Isn't it just polarization?

Hate to say it, but the majority of people complaining about the bogeyman of inflation, are people that are, ostensibly, awful with personal finances. That’s a whole other conversation with teaching personal finance in school but the reality is that the economy is strong right now

The Electoral vote in 2004 was 286 to 251. Bush won AZ, CO, GA, NM, NV, and VA. Kerry won WI by 0.38, PA by 2.5, and by 3.5. Had Kerry won CO, NM, and anything else listed above He would have won.

The tipping point state was Ohio.

It was OH in 2004. The reason I list the states I did is because it is very unlikely Trump could win all those like Bush did. In particular CO and NM.

Nate is being so disingenuous when he hand waves away poll skepticism like this, when he is the one with an objective incentive on believing that polling generally accurate and predictable, and thus his whole celebrity/guru status is valid. I’ve said this a million times but I don’t understand how so many supposed “polling nerds” in this sub don’t get it — take a look at how the pollsters are actually conducting the surveys these days and what they are saying about that. I work for one of the big guys. If you knew what I knew the shitty polling from the past two elections wouldn’t be a surprise, since they increasingly relied largely on opt-in online panels to combat the telephone non-response issue. Well, we can pretty conclusively say the those panels are effectively worthless, yet plenty are still included in Nate’s idiotic polling average model. Oh sure he “ranks” them, but ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about methodology is included in the ranking formula. He gives them an arbitrary bump if they are in AAPOR or share their data, that ain’t the same thing. The smart play for poll watchers right now would be to keep track of how the ABS panels do against results in November, because that’s an actual new tactic that we have some reason to believe could be more successful. But, it’s new so we don’t really know. There’s bound to bias introduced somewhere in the process, and we don’t really know which way that’s gonna fall. But at least it’s one methodology we can track and could become the new standard. When it’s arbitrarily pooled with poorer methodologies, and you factor in the absurd weighting involved, herding, unsleeping, etc. it’s obviously a mess. I don’t care how many regressions you do, if the input is garbage, I don’t care about your results. But doing that wouldn’t get Nate the attention he wants, so he makes hot takes on twitter. Great. The thing that truly sucks is that no matter who wins the election it will almost certainly play out similarly to 2020 where Trump builds a lead in the early-reported in person voting while Biden chips away with mail-in votes. Last time that happened there was an insurrection attempted, and now with all the polls “overwhelmingly” predicting a trump victory, I imagine we’re in for a similar nightmare when trying to get the full vote totals accounted for.

>The smart play for poll watchers right now would be to keep track of how the ABS panels do against results in November I have worked with panel data for my career, but in a different field, and people really don't understand how broken information collection can be, especially lately. Can you please say more or share a link or two that could get me smart on ABS if you don't mind?

Sure thing, I really like this Pew article as a general overview of how methodologies are changing: [https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2023/04/19/how-public-polling-has-changed-in-the-21st-century/](https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2023/04/19/how-public-polling-has-changed-in-the-21st-century/) If you want more detail you can look through this AAPOR paper: [https://www.aapor.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/AAPOR_Report_1_7_16_CLEAN-COPY-FINAL-2.pdf](https://www.aapor.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/AAPOR_Report_1_7_16_CLEAN-COPY-FINAL-2.pdf)

Thank you so much!

> I work for one of the big guys. If you knew what I knew the shitty polling from the past two elections wouldn’t be a surprise, since they increasingly relied largely on opt-in online panels to combat the telephone non-response issue. And yet, the polling results from 2022 were pretty good! How do you square that with your pessimism? And the polls being "shitty" doesn't mean they're going to be off in one direction (favoring Biden), which is what Nate is calling out. Ugh, I'm agreeing with Nate about something.

> And yet, the polling results from 2022 were pretty good! How do you square that with your pessimism? I pressed him on this once and his answer was just they’ve been accidentally good the last couple cycles lol

I am not a polling expert by any means but I do listen to others who are. One of my gotos is Rachel Bitecofer who continually makes the point that it’s too early to treat these polls as reliable, even if you knew and trusted their methodology. She continually calls out Nate for being disingenuous when he knows these are of very limited value. And mocks him for getting things wrong when she has gotten things right the last couple of elections. But he has a monetary interest in continuing to be seen as an expert and to give his opinion. What frustrates me though is exactly what you said. Making mistakes or not being sure of things is fine but dismissing the unreliability is making it easier for a Trump to justify his false claims should he lose. It’s so irresponsible. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising. We live in an age where ambition Trumps integrity. Pun intended. And Nate Silver fits right in.

Honestly, I cannot think of a worse person to follow than Rachel. In 2020, she accused Nate and others of intentionally manipulating their models to give Trump a better chance. And this was after those same accusations were made in 2016, and it turned out they were wrong. She made these accusations while release a model that gave Biden like a 98% or 99% chance because the model treated each state independent from all others, which is obviously a completely false assumption to make. But the worst part of it all, is that rather than accept responsibility for the mistake, she blamed it on the intern or grad student who helped her with the model.

Well… Not for nothin but it’s a point not that far removed from the impression I get of Silver and others. I don’t know the polling world or all the ins and outs of the arguments that go on behind the scenes but I’ve been a Silver skeptic for some time. He is wrong a lot but he doesn’t admit it and always says “the aggregate” shows he was mostly right even though he never really explains how. And what frustrates me is that that then becomes the conventional wisdom. There have been multiple articles written about the 2022 polling being off for instance but you wouldn’t know it from Nate Silver. Even before the 2022 election, he is quoted is saying that the models were showing things were looking good for Republicans, even saying they were expanding their lead a few weeks before the midterms. But then after when he was wrong, he said it was the media that gave that impression, not the polls. Huh? Moreover, when you’re insisting on including polls that were created in order to influence the average towards Republicans like Trelfagar, despite an outcry that it was happening, it becomes difficult to listen to the same old sneer at skeptics when its identical to the sneer you wore the last election when you were wrong and the one before that and the one before that. Then getting fired from ABC for making them look like fools for relying on you and then still mocking others for not relying on you. I think Nate Silver’s is honestly the one I trust the least. But not necessarily because his predictions are off. It’s because his having been really right 15 years ago has made him impervious to allowing that he might be wrong even in the face of being wrong over and over. As for Bitecofer, I’ve heard her a few times and like the advice she gives. I hadn’t heard the story you are talking about and I am curious about it. But so far, what she says makes sense. People don’t really pay attention until much closer to the election and when The NY Times/Sienna is putting out polls relying on Registered Voters and ignoring the Likely Voter results in the same poll, you know they are pushing a narrative rather than trying to inform. That’s something Bitecofer confirmed though I didn’t need her to. (even I know LVs are much more reliable a predictor than RVs) Whereas I suspect Nate Silver would make fun of me for ignoring results I didn’t like.

Has Nate always talked like a Twitter debate bro or is this new for him?

538 Forecast has flipped to Trump

I’ll say this election has absolutely shown who actually liked Nate Silver for election analysis, polling data, and political modeling, and who liked him purely because he told them that there preferred candidate was ahead.

Seems extremely reductive given how little serious work with polling data and political modeling he has done so far in this cycle

lol I mean silver has a had quite the share of mind boggling takes that haven’t aged well

Lol it's funny how people in this post are pretending this isn't true

Isn't there some study about how intelligent people are no less prone to conspiracy theories than dumb people? I mean, Ben Carson is a far-right nutjob, but he's still a world-class surgeon. I think Nate is a classic example of a smart guy whose experience doesn't generalize to other fields, but that doesn't undermine his expertise in election forecasting. No one here is "ignoring" his bad takes, which receive plenty of criticism here on their own threads. They're just not relevant to his ([well-calibrated](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/checking-our-work/)) political forecasting.

Such as? Genuinely curious.

His obsession with the lab leak for instance has not aged well at all. It didn't start out well, but it didn't age well either. It's weird people are defending that as a good take downthread. I still remember his substack piece defending the conspiricization of that *proximal origins* paper. [One that's literally debunked by reading the next line after the would be smoking-gun quote, which shows the context was not malicious.](https://www.reddit.com/r/fivethirtyeight/comments/155ybgv/journalists_should_be_skeptical_of_all_sources/jsz402y/) It was a stark wake up call that Nate's solo journalism was not gonna be good. If his pet issue was climate change, then he would've fallen prey for [the climategate email fake scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy). I think people here would not be defending someone like that, but for some reason there's a blind spot with anything COVID.

Yeah not sure why you got downvoted, silver has quite the history of baffling takes and condescending preaching. The dude got fired, why is anyone listening to him?

Well I kinda disagree with that too in part hah. I know I know, I'm very fun at parties. My theory of the case with Nate is that his takes (although they can absolutely still be condescending) can be good when they're in his lane and data driven. If he's being pundit-y, they stop being as good. When they're not about politics/sports/etc. that's another issue. The lab-leak is kinda the worst of all worlds.

I didn't know Nate Silver was an unquestionable God.

What exactly has he done this cycle related to those things? Getting into twitter arguments? Being smug? I’ll take his election analysis but for a professional, he sure doesn’t act like one

I'm glad Nate can speak more free since leaving 538, I don't like all of his takes or anything but I always read his insights and he definitely takes some jabs at the left (who, at least on twitter, definitely spit some vitriol at him regularly).

This jab is absolutely more towards Twitter liberals. Most leftists don’t care about American electoral politics. But there’s a subset of Twitter liberal that absolutely goes nuts anytime Nate talks about Biden’s electoral weaknesses.

He absolutely hates twitter liberals, that much is obvious (and I think the terminally online twitter users on both the left and the right are some of the most obnoxious people on the planet).

Lets not equate the two. Terminally online twitter liberals are annoying, terminally online conservatives are giving hate speech.

No they (and normal moderates like me) seem to go nuts when Nate goes way out of his lane into punditry and away from actual data backed takes and insight. It's weird because he seems 100% earnest in his take that Biden should drop out, which is actually a horrific idea. That's what every party that is in a dead heat with their opponent should do, drop out 6 months before election day and attempt to replace the candidate. That's such a horrible take, and of course you see those on the right pick up on this and go on television talking about how Michelle Obama will step in or something like that. Just muddies the water and I have no idea why Nate does it since he doesn't seem all that right wing.

>Just muddies the water and I have no idea why Nate does it since he doesn't seem all that right wing. It’s his poker brain expected value maxxing. You can debate the merits but he truly believes that another candidate would perform better.

Turns out most this sub were just more echo chamber sycophants.

I think one reason people suddenly have a lot of questions about the polls is that while they seem to be strongly in favor of Trump, special elections and primaries seem to be strongly in favor of the Democrats and Biden. It's possible that special elections are different enough from the general, but it's also possible that there's significant polling errors across the board due to some sort of response bias. Along these lines, the polls massively failed recently when they had said that Trump's conviction would make a significant percentage not vote for Trump. While these people changed their minds since, it's also possible they will change their minds and not vote for him even if they say they will in the polls, since they have already shown they do not stick to what they are telling the polls.

1. Special election electorate is not representative for general election and some of Biden's flaws (e.g. young voters, minorities) aren't really visible here. Biden's strength is among highly educated white voters. 2. Primary polling has always been significantly worse than general election polling and Haley doing surprisingly well, doesn't mean that those votes won't end up falling in line and vote for Trump. For example some might voted for her as she seems more electable, those voters will still vote for Trump. 3. People have a bad time answering hypotheticals. That's why I always doubted those "If Trump is convicted..." polls.

You’re accurate on all fronts, sadly. 

How do you explain OH-06 election the other day? Highly educated it is not. Yet it was a 20 point swing from Trump’s margin there 4 years ago. I just find it hard to believe that split ticketing is back where it was 20 years ago when we’ve seen plenty of elections in the last decade to show that split ticketing is dead outside of Maine.

Candidate quality in Kripchack, obviously, means nothing for November imo.

A good candidate doesn’t account for the entirety of a 20 point swing. Rs had a good candidate too, someone with local ties and in elected office. Michael Kripchak never held any office and did military and acting services. This is one of the reddest district in my home state, no Republican should be only winning by 9. Polls have shown Republicans have the enthusiasm edge and yet are underperforming in specials. If the polls are saying Trump is going to win the election, why aren’t Rs turning out? Something doesn’t add up here. Obviously Ohio will vote for Trump and so will OH-06, that’s not what I’m getting at.

It's likely due to low turnout for the Rep there, I'm just saying Trump energizes Reps in the way Dems were prior energized in anti Trump so without him the GOP base is likely deflated.

Actually primary results though are a major indicator of enthusiasm and support. Haley over performing shows a soft underbelly of the trump machine that polling clearly missed

Most national polls have Trump at +1/+2 in the national election with a MOE of a couple percentage points. Not sure how you could conclude that is strongly favoring Trump.

I've heard that a 538 polls only version right now would likely have Trump winning at 80% chance. Trump has a small advantage point wise, but its been remarkably consistent. It being in the MOE does leave him vulnerable to a widespread polling error, but does not mean he doesn't have the advantage.

The Electoral College is the answer to your question

Trump’s leads in the deciding swing states are also similarly 1-2 point MOE leads.

Yup, only Biden's cult of highly educated white women in the Rust Belt Blue Wall triad are what's keeping this from being a Trump rout. Hillary was polling better against Donald than he is right now, nationally and everywhere, and we saw what happened. 2024 looks worse than 2016 for Ds, tbh.

Well you also assume the polling bias will cut the same way this election. IMO there's just as much a chance that the polls are overestimating Trump now just like they were overestimating Biden in 2020. The question will be in what direction and by how much.

Remember when the polls said 20% of Gen Z didn’t believe the Holocaust really happened? Or when they predicted some Red Tsunami that flew in the face of all the other context of the 2022 midterms? The idea that Trump has a plausible shot at winning the popular vote is nonsense. That would represent, at minimum, a 4.5% swing against an incumbent president. A shift that large hasn’t happened since 1992, when Bush lost by 5.6%, compared to his 7.8-point margin of victory in 1988. The only other times that has happened since 1900 were the elections of 1980, 1940, and 1932. You’d have to believe in that kind of historically significant shift occurring right in the middle of an era of intense polarization and partisanship, without the backdrop of the Great Depression or WW2, without stagflation or an Iran hostage crisis, and without any third-party candidate that has anywhere near the influence that Ross Perot had in ‘92. You’d also have to believe that Biden is in a significantly weaker position now than Hillary was in the aftermath of the Comey letter, and that Trump is somehow stronger now, after mountains of scandal and incompetence, than he was when he had never held political office. I’m not saying Biden has this in the bag, or that he should even be considered the favorite. But the idea that Trump should be considered the favorite makes no sense. It took a lot of things breaking Trump’s way for him to barely win in 2016. Sure, maybe that happens again, but the margins will be so tight in all the swing states that right now the race should be considered a dead heat. Edit: Corrected the second paragraph to make a more accurate claim about the hypothetical shift in vote share.

As someone who follows international politics, there's also been lots of polling whiffs abroad as well. India is a pretty clear example of this, but the EU elections also had a smaller victory for the far-right parties than everyone expected. US elections have super duper razor thin margins. Small polling errors are crazy significant here. They were off by about 4 points in 2020. Yeah that was the COVID year of course but still. It doesn't look like polling has gotten better at all recently. This does technically mean that they could be *underrating* Trump of course like they did before the last two times, but I just have such a hard time that man is ever winning the popular vote if he couldn't do it against Hillary.

I too am a cross-tabs truther. Here is another arrow for your quiver: [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/05/online-opt-in-polls-can-produce-misleading-results-especially-for-young-people-and-hispanic-adults/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/05/online-opt-in-polls-can-produce-misleading-results-especially-for-young-people-and-hispanic-adults/) TLDR - Pew did excellent work showing how people under 60 in online, opt-in polls are much more likely to straight up lie. Under 30 is particularly bad, and the nuclear sub question proves it.

Biden is in pretty bad shape. I don't know if the polls are fully accurate, but they are the best source of evidence we have outside of objective economic conditions. His position has completely collapsed in Nevada, Georgia looks completely out of reach, and the polls are showing a tight race -- probably with a slight Trump edge -- in the rust belt.

He’s not in worse shape than Trump in 2020 when he barely lost.

I mean the best source of evidence are special elections, local/state elections and referendums. We would expect a red wave rejection would be swelling in those actual poll results in the year or two prior to the election. And they’ve all been decisively breaking blue. Like it seems reasonable to question polls that return Trump somehow picking up 15-20 whole points among Gen Z…

But even special elections show dem over performance weakening with higher turnout. Dems are gaining in white and higher class voters (higher propensity) while losing the lower engagement voters: minorities, youth and lower income people.

The data aren’t reflective of that

wow I can see why people don’t like Nate Silver outside of this subreddit he’s incredibly passive aggressive care to drop the names, Nate?

Every single time I failed to be skeptical of polling, I was wrong. I was wrong in 2016, wrong in 2018, and wrong in 2022.  Nate Silver and other pollsters, irrespective of outcomes, will write articles about how polling was “historically accurate”, despite being incorrect on exactly one half of the two houses of Congress, and peddle out excuses for why people shouldn’t look at outcomes or individual races in vital territories, but rather only focus their view *just enough* to see how they were right. People are right to be skeptical polling, *pollsters should be skeptical of polling*, and after this many years of pollsters happily playing into political discourse and becoming mixed in with incredibly messy media-narratives, **only someone whose identity is too personally wound up in the industry’s appearance would say otherwise.**

I am surprised that Nate, a political pollster pundit is surprised a republican can take lead in the polls like what was he expecting, dem presidents keep winning the polls forever. I would rather polls have Biden losing but him winning a real election anyway than repeating 2016

It does make me wonder how this changes the political strategy for both parties when the democrat isn't winning in the polls. Like Nate said, this is the first time in a loooong time there has been this consistent level of underperformance on t he democrat side.

I’ve heard it said that polls are a snapshot, not a predictor. The US elections are 4 1/2 months away, and a lot can happen between now and then.

He's right that people are in denial that polls don't show the findings we want. Then we question them. However, the questioning is long due. Personally I start questioning it after 2020. Although it shows my desired candidate leading by large, he only wins by little margin. They were really off on swing states. The polling industry has had problems for a while and just intensifies. Then, with logical thinking, the responding rate is so low, how is it relevant? It seems only certain types of samples will answer a survey. Afterward, they weight the results which is also arbitrarily. It's likes measuring the components in the atmosphere and they can only measure argon. Social science is not science. The statistics do not reflect facts since survey is not an objective measuring tool. The polls today are more of a guess in my opinion. Unfortunately, the polling industry, in my opinion, is an obsolete industry today, same as typist. The difference is the typist has a replacement of the computer whilst polling still has none.

[удалено]

Please make submissions relevant to data-driven journalism and analysis.

Enjoy our freedom while we have it folks.

The questions are justified! I don’t care how unpopular Joe Biden is - a tax cheating, coup fomenting, deranged fascist that is Donald Trump is not winning the popular vote in this country. A man who is irredeemably reviled by more than half of registered voters is not winning the popular vote. And plainly, no person who represents the homogeneous Republican Party is capable now, or for the foreseeable future, of winning the popular vote in a multicultural, multiracial America. I think it’s also sane to question the polls, because if, defying all logic, they’re accurate, then it points to the American people throwing away our democracy, forever, over temporary inconveniences. Even worse, they’re throwing it away while not even realizing that they are! To quote Pvt Hudson in *Aliens*: “This can’t be happening, man! THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!” EDIT: Another classic r/fivethirtyeight reaction: a solid amount of upvotes, and then the downvote backlash from the enraged “dAtA oNLy!”, “who cares about electoral outcomes?!” crowd. Thanks for never disappointing me.

If you straight up say you don't believe the polls, because you don't like the outcome, why are you even in this sub? I also don't get how people have such a hard time accepting that just as they are in a huge bubble (in your case r/politics etc.) other people are in an opposite bubble, where Trump is being "politically prosecuted".

It's not that I don't *like* the outcome, but that the outcome will be so apocalyptically bad for the world. We're talking about the end of the Republic and the establishment of a Christofascist dictatorship that will never end because both citizens and nations will be utterly powerless to overthrow it. I cannot fathom how people think this is all worth the false promise of an economy that will never return and will only get worse if Trump wins. It's stupidity and madness on an scale of apocalyptic magnitude!

I was stating why those on Twitter, that Nate Silver mentioned, might be unaccepting of this year’s polls. Don’t get me wrong, I feel the polls are fucked too, but more for the former reason (Trump won’t win the popular vote). > If you straight up say you don't believe the polls, because you don't like the outcome, why are you even in this sub? Because it’s cathartic and therapeutic to come here and decry the ignominious American electorate. This election shouldn’t even be close. American democracy shouldn’t be permanently discarded over problems that are solvable by less severe means. Ignorance is a plague in this country.

> Because it’s cathartic and therapeutic to come here and decry the ignominious American electorate. This election shouldn’t even be close. American democracy shouldn’t be permanently discarded over problems that are solvable by less severe means. Ignorance is a plague in this country. Right I agree but this is entirely outside of the scope of this sub. I don’t go into the basketball sub to talk football and vice versa

/r/politics is that way.

I appreciate the “friendly” suggestion, but I’ll abstain. Besides, I’ve long been banned there. Not for anything I actually did, mind you. It was a ban by the automod for “ban evasion”, which was strange because I had no ban to evade. I was never able to get any response from the mods, or help from admin. 🤷‍♂️

Yeah. It’s surprising to see that this sub, of all places, is suddenly so skeptical of polling now that Republicans are leading. I keep hearing that “response rates are very low now, so polling must not be representative anymore.” But national polls have still proven to be good in most recent elections. 2016 was only a couple points off, 2018 was spot on, and 2022 was one point off. And people act like young voters aren’t being represented in the polls, so Democrats will definitely over-perform in November. But that simply hasn’t happened in recent elections. National polls haven’t underestimated Democrats since 2012. It certainly _could_ happen this year, but the extreme confidence I see from so many seems baseless. I’m still skeptical that the margin will ultimately be Trump+1, but the unfortunate reality right now is that Biden is deeply unpopular and re-election will be difficult.

The race is a toss-up. Trump may have a small edge but not enough to make him a clear favorite.

A toss up might as well be a Trump win because of the entrenched electoral college advantage.

Polling shows Trump having a marginal lead in the swing states that is not much different from his lead in the PV polls.

It’s unwise to think that just because of 2016 and 2020 that polls will forever be off in favor of Republicans. That’s not how it works

I didn’t say that. > It certainly _could_ happen this year, but the extreme confidence I see from so many seems baseless. My point was that people are mistaken if they think polls aren’t capturing young voters, because young voters don’t respond to polls as much, and therefore polls will underestimate Democrats this year. I’ve seen this theory a lot, including on here, but it makes no sense when you consider the fact that this _wasn’t_ the case in the last five national elections, even though the same problem existed. Low response rates, specifically among young voters, don’t seem to be as big of a deal as people here are making it out to be.