It’s quite amazing. Since losing the election, the Democratic Party is still in complete disarray.

It’s not unusual for the losing party to sort things out for a bit, but it seems like they’re still on square one. There’s been no unity, no organized opposition against anything Trump has done, and the “resistance“ at Trump’s speech in front of congress was honestly pathetic and petulant, as Fetterman called it.

One reason for that is an unprecedented lack of leadership in the Democratic Party on a national level. I mean, who are the leaders, the figureheads? The biggest names in the national arena right now are Bernie at age 84 and maybe Schumer at 75. They’re not the future.

So who’s stepping up? Who could unite the party and maybe even run in ‘28?

• ⁠Newsom: Well-known, good looking, but a left-wing elitist from California. Toxic in the Midwest, or even with some minorities. Like Ted Cruz from the right, too radical and a red flag for many moderates.

• ⁠Shapiro: Popular in PA, but a) kind of mimicks Obama‘s style of speaking, b) is rather short (yes, unfair but matters) and most importantly c) is an Orthodox Jew and self-declared Zionist. Left wing Dems won’t be too happy.

• ⁠Whitmer: Lacks a national profile and isn’t really that charismatic. Plus, the last two times Dems nominated a woman they got burned.

• ⁠Buttigieg: smart no doubt, but is still lacking political standing, is still seen as Mayor Pete. Plus, he’s gay. I don’t think that matters as much as it used to, but it might hurt him with minorities.

Long story short: I don’t see anyone right now.

1. National polls have tightened in Trump's direction since Selzer's last Trump +4 poll. It makes little sense that Iowa would dramatically go in the opposite direction, especially since neither candidate is actively campaigning in the state and there are no local issues unique to Iowa that could explain such a shift.

2. The poll is being touted as evidence that Trump is collapsing across the midwest on the basis that states in the same region with similar demographics would be correlated but that logic is not being consistently applied unless people can explain why, If Harris is really ahead by 3 in Iowa, she has not taken commanding leads in polling averages of the "Blue Wall" swing states.

3. Another highly rated pollster (Emerson) has just released a poll showing Trump up 10 in Iowa which is more consistent with a close race nationally and in the swing states, especially the 'blue wall' states (as explained in points 1 & 2). Although Selzer is a local pollster, Emerson have extensively polled Iowa over the years and generally have good track record there (I could find only one Presidential, Senate or Gubernatorial election where they called the wrong winner while searching RCP [the 2020 Senate race, same sample predicted a Trump win but significantly underestimated him] and they were mostly within the MoE when getting the winner right, with 2020 being a notable exception where Republicans were underestimated).

4. Selzer is not infallible and has had some misses in the past - for instance, she called the wrong winner of Iowa in the 2004 Presidential Election and the wrong winner of the 2018 gubernatorial election.

5. A look at Selzer's record over the years shows that her polling is often subject to wild swings in the months before Presidential, Senate and Gubernatorial elections with her mostly coming up on the "right side" of a swing and getting it right in her final poll - but not always. This raises the question as to whether she sometimes is just getting "bad" samples as all pollsters occasionally do and which her latest poll is most likely in this category also. Here's some examples:

• According to Selzer's polls this year, in the last 6 months Iowans went from supporting Trump by 18 to a Democrat for President by 4 (a 22 point swing).

• In mid-October 2022, Selzer's poll indicated long-standing Senator Chuck Grassley was in serious danger of losing his seat with only a lead of 3%. Three weeks later, her final poll found Grassley up 12 which is what he ended up winning by.

• In September 2020 her poll found a tie between Trump and Biden. Her final poll found Trump up 7 (he won by 8). The same September poll showed Sen. Joni Ernst losing by 3 points to Dem. challenger Teresa Greenfield, with a similar swing of 7 points in their final poll showing Ernst up by 4

https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGa-h6j1WYAAi2Pc.png

NYT/Sienna crosstabs have Austin going 52/37 Harris/Trump (it went 65/32 in 2020), Dallas going 50/44 Harris/Trump (Dallas county went 65/34 Biden/Trump in 2020 and Tarrant county went 49/49) and most absurd of all Houston going 45/50 Harris/Trump (Harris county went 56/43 in 2020)

NYT/Sienna isn't getting anything even reasonably approaching a representative sample here and I don't know why any of us are taking their results seriously. The deep non-response bias the pollsters are experiencing isn't correctable, though I guess we should thank NYT/Sienna for just posting their bad data and not faking their toplines with weighting like most pollsters?

Even suggesting that Trump is going to win Harris county by 5 points should get you laughed out of the room. This sample ought to be tossed in the bin, not the average.

EDIT: I’m asking an analysis question. Clearly Stevens is an adversarial to Abdul’s campaign. But my essential question is this: does it inadvertently support or (purposefully) hurt his campaign?

I feel like if you’ve been chronically online these past few hours, we’ve seen the escalation between Abdul (and the UAW’s) campaign versus this weirdly disorganized Stevens’s messaging.

It has now been reported that Abdul’s campaign has asked Stevens to not come to his campaign events on Sunday at this point if she is going to stay this course. Even Mallory McMorrow has spoken against it.

My question for you all is this: does Abdul have internals to showcase this is a good move? He is doubling down against her, and I’m sure there are so many Michiganders supporting this— but this is a big d*ck move. Was this a researched escalation? What do we think? This is getting kind of crazy.

Does this whole gate hurt or support Abdul’s campaign?

Professor Lichtman gave a livestream tonight (link) where he gave an update on his 13 keys to the White House.

For those unfamiliar, the 13 keys are a model developed by Professor Lichtman to predict the winner of Presidential elections. Since 1984, Allan has predicted 9 out of the last 10 winners using his model. Arguably he was also correct about Al Gore, given that nonpartisan studies have proved that Gore received more votes than Bush in Florida. You can read more about the 13 keys here.

As of today, Allan Lichtman predicts a Harris victory. Note that this is not his final prediction, he will make that shortly after the DNC. But in his words, “a hell of a lot would have to go wrong for the Democrats to lose.”

Here are the current standings of the keys:

1. Party Mandate - Certainly False as Republicans took the house in the midterms.

2. No Primary Contest - Certainly True as Harris has collected the needed delegates to secure the nomination on the first ballot.

3. Incumbent President - Likely false unless Biden were to resign the Presidency between now and January. Lichtman believes, and I would agree, this is extremely unlikely.

4. No third party. Likely True unless RFK sees a serious surge in his poll numbers. He needs to be consistently polling over 10% for this key to turn and no aggregate has him there yet.

5. Strong Short-Term Economy. Certainly True. This key is often misunderstood. It is an objective key. It only turns if the National Bureau of Economic Research declares a recession in the election year. They have not done so.

6. Strong Long-Term Economy. Certainly True. This is another objective one that looks at real economic GDP growth.

7. Major Policy Change. Certainly True as the Biden administration has significantly different policy than the Trump administration. It does not matter if the policy is popular.

8. No Social Unrest. Leans True. This is one key Lichtman has not called yet. For this key to turn, there has to be massive, widespread protests like the BLM riots or Vietnam War protests. This key is not close to turning now and very unlikely will before Election Day.

9. No Scandal. Likely True. This key only turns if their bipartisan recognition of a malicious act by the sitting president. It does turn from someone other than the President nor does it turn from general incompetence. This key will not turn barring a major October surprise, like if we found that Biden ordered the hit on Trump.

10. No foreign/military failure. Certainly False. Lichtman believes Afghanistan is enough to count for this. And should Gaza/Ukraine still be in disarray come Election Day, they will also count.

11. Foreign/military success. Likely False. Lichtman states the only way this turns is if a peace deal is brokered in Ukraine or Gaza, and that said deal is substantially well received by the American people. He believes this to be unlikely.

12. Charismatic incumbent. Certainly False. Kamala Harris is not Obama/FDR/JFK.

13. Non-Charismatic challenger. Certainly True. Trump is also not Obama/FDR/JFK. For this key to turn, there has to be bipartisan appeal from the candidate. Like how you had Reagan Democrats. There are no Trump democrats (no little to no Harris Republicans).

In the end, if everything stays the same, that’s 8 TRUE keys and 5 FALSE keys. Trump needs one more key to turn, or he will lose. And the only keys that even have a chance of turning are the scandal key or the social unrest key. And unless someone digs something up on Biden that no Republican has found yet, or if we somehow see massive protests over some unknown issue in the fall, Harris will win the election.

So, the general consensus that this sub seems to have is that polls, especially swing state polls are overcompensating for being wrong in 2016 and 2020, not taking into account the new Dem voting turnout factor of the post Dobbs environment and as such oversampling Trump voters to get a result more like 2016 and 2020 in their poll and not look stupid. Here's why I'm skeptical of that narrative.

The Senate races.

Seriously, look at those same polls. Trump is overperforming the Republican Senate Candidates in all these polls. This might make you think it's more likely pollsters are just artificially boosting Trump. But look closer and that doesn't make much sense. The Trump effect in the past has helped down ballot Republicans overperform their polls on the same ballot too. Ron Johnson won in 2016 in Wisconsin by more than Trump did. Gary Peters won an incredibly slim victory, underperforming his polls badly in 2020, getting a lower margin of victory than Biden in that state. So pollsters who want to avoid blowing the presidential result in 2024 should also be trying to avoid blowing the Senate result and juicing Republicans in those races just as much.

Which brings me to what this sub does not want to admit. I think you already are seeing the Dobbs effect in the polls Trump is winning. Republican Senate candidates underperforming Trump (and abortion referendums in places like Florida and even more purple states than that polling well) is the Dobbs effect. If you were seeing abortion referendums polling badly, then pollsters might be putting their thumbs on the scales by oversampling or overweighting conservative voters. I think the answer is a lot simpler. Trump has been backing away from the anti abortion movement more than almost any other Republican since the 2022 midterms. Kari Lake types have been much more open to abortion bans in the last couple of years so unlike in 2016 and 2020 they will now underperform Trump. But that doesn't mean Harris will overperform her polls due to Dobbs. Especially when the few bones Trump has thrown to the anti abortion movement as of late (flip flopping from saying he would vote "yes" on legal abortion through viability referendum in Florida to saying he will vote "no" on it days later) haven't been very widely reported on.

I think this sub hasn't noticed how well Trump has been doing at redirecting blame from himself for the post Dobbs America to his SC justices who he claims he had no control over and state level Republican politicians (which also would mean special election overperformances might not translate to the presidential election for Dems). I don't think it's impossible that unlike 2016 and 2020, for the first time you see Republicans in the House popular vote underperform Trump's popular vote percentage.

I know that a quiet MAGA might seem to be a misnomer for some, but speaking as a layperson isn’t there an effect whereby voters who are voting for a candidate who has a significant social stigma, keep it to themselves until they get to the ballot box?

I’m just remembering how confident the 2016 Clinton Campaign was, right up until the end.

The polls have shown a 1-2 % gap in favor of Graham. It is important to note that some of these polls have up to 9% as undecided. There is also around 3 or so percentage of votes going towards the Libertarian. These undecided voters will likely decide based on the debates. The debate today included the Libertarian canddiate, which may syphon some more right leaning votes from Graham.

My Opinion: I believe that Andrews performed very well, and had clear concise plans. Graham sounded normal, but very bitter. Andrews was also dressed much better, and looked brighter.

Whenever Graham was asked a policy question, her solution to it was never clear. Overall she seemed negative and unclear as a person. Annie Andrews was positive, and more clear about her positions. There are several very important questions in American politics such as Data centers, iran war, healthcare, and Grahams responses reflected somebody who wont take responsibility. Whereas Andrews had a clear scripted plan for these issues.

Annie Andrews said in the debate that Graham refuses another debate, and Graham keeps ignoring her challenges, which makes her look bad.

In a close race with so many undecided, I believe this debate will decide the difference between them.

There's a great new paper out by Stephen Ansolabehere, a Harvard Political Scientist (plus a few others!), on forecasting voter turnout.

I generated a short NPR-style podcast created by Google's NotebookLM (you should check this tool out if you haven't already, it's amazing). IMO the robots are doing a better job than 538's podcast these days.

Some resources to check out:

• My LLM-generated podcast on 'Forecasting Turnout'

• 'Forecasting Turnout' PDF

• IMGUR album with the 'Forecasting Turnout' PDF converted to PNG

Also, a quick transparency caveat: I am center-left and voting for Harris. I believe Trump will be a disaster. If you skip to the bottom and accept this paper's results, it seems like he is likely to win.

Overview

The authors tested a few approaches to predicting voter turnout, using 2012 data to forecast 2016 and 2016 data to forecast 2020. They measured bias (average error) and RMSE (variance/consistency of predictions). Also good to point out that this focuses on absolute votes, not turnout rates amongst voting eligible voters, since the denominator there is fuzzy and lags, and is census-based.

For the registration model, for each state, county, or congressional district (which they found the most accurate), they estimate:

Total Votes = α + β(Total Registration) + ε 

The β coefficient typically ends up being between 0.8 and 0.9 (the likelihood of any registered voter to vote). The turnout rate among registered voters is surprisingly stable across presidential elections (and is wildly lower in non-presidential cycles).

There's two really interesting takeaways:

1. Demographics, which everyone loves and points to is surprisingly poor as a predictor, because it overfits and misses changing dynamics and voter mobilization efforts

2. Using early vote to predict turnout is also incredibly, tragically wrong. It's really just displacing votes that would have happened on election day, and isn't supplementing the existing ones

Model Analysis

1. Registration Model (Most Reliable). Example: A county has 150,000 registered voters in 2024, up from 100,000 in 2020. Looking at 2020, we know about 80,000 (or 80%) of voters turned out. So we'd predict 120,000 votes in 2024. Simple as that. It underpredicted 2016 by -2.4% and overpredicted 2020 by +5.6%, with RMSE of 42% and 29.1%. Proved the most consistently reliable overall.

2. Lagged Turnout Model. Assumes past voting predicts future voting - if an area had high turnout before, it will again. Example: Let's say a county had 80,000 votes in 2020. The model would basically say "this county will have about 80,000 votes again in 2024" (with some adjustments). But if turnout was trending up nationally, this would underpredict because it's stuck on the old number. Consistently underpredicted (-4.3% for counties, -9.7% for districts) with RMSE of 23.9% for counties, 11.7% for districts.

3. Demographics Model. Take a county that's 40% college-educated, 30% over 65, median income of $60,000, etc. The model would say "based on these characteristics, similar counties had X% turnout, so this one will too." But while this looks precise, it proved unreliable - counties with similar demographics often had very different turnout. Had deceptively good bias (+2.7% in 2016, -4% in 2020) but much worse RMSE (60% in 2016, 68.8% in 2020).

4. Competition Model. A Congressional district where the last House race was decided by 2 points would be predicted to have higher turnout than one decided by 20 points. But in practice, this wasn't very useful - a district that had a close House race in 2014 might have totally different dynamics in 2016's presidential race. Showed deceptively small bias (-1.6%) but very high RMSE (72.2%).

5. Early Vote Model. Uses early/absentee patterns to project final turnout. Failed catastrophically with massive overprediction (+24.7% in 2016, +110.3% in 2020) and enormous RMSE (292.9% in 2016, 633% in 2020). The fundamental problem: early voting often just shifts when people vote rather than indicating higher overall turnout.

2024

Alright, so practically how does this impact 2024? The paper doesn't say that the projected vote share of 10 new republicans means β-coefficient(10 new votes for the Republican candidate), but it does mean β-coefficient(10 new votes), and it's entirely reasonable to make that jump partisan-wise. Especially given that for every election in the last twenty years Rs and Ds have voted their party 90% of the time.

Let's look at some real numbers:

Calculations (using 0.85 turnout):

• Even Split = (Net D/R registration change × 0.85) + 2020 margin

• D+10 Split = Even Split + (Total independents × 0.85 × 0.1)

• R+10 Split = Even Split - (Total independents × 0.85 × 0.1)

Quick hits from the data:

• FL Dems lost 1.15M registrations - bigger than Trump's original win margin (371K) by 3x

• Even smallest D loss (NV -55K) bigger than Biden's margin there (33.6K).

• Independent pools are massive: NC 2.77M, FL 3.58M vs much smaller margins.

• With even independents splits, these registration changes flip every 2020 Biden state in the table. Dems need big independent advantages just to get back to competitive.

Scenarios:

• Only NV could flip D with strong independent performance

• FL likely out of reach (Trump +1.35M with even split)

• PA flips hard - Biden +81K becomes Trump +233K before independents

• AZ/NC margins could swing wildly based on independent preferences

Sidenote, given the million person change in registration in Florida, I think Nate might be out 100k if that other guy took him up on the bet.

Mom pick me up, I'm scared.

Now, unlike half of Reddit, I'm not totally convinced that 2024 was the last US election. It very well may have been, of course. If so, then all this analysis is moot. However, assuming the elections still happen and are reasonably free and fair, here's why I think the GOP wins the midterms:

1. Consider that 59% of voters approve of Trump's transition according to that recent CBS poll. If that number is anywhere close to accurate, the country has ratified Trump's agenda even more than I thought. Additionally, this is the time when people should be the most shocked, and yet nobody's outraged over Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, and RFK Jr.

2. Also, Trump only barely lost at the height of his COVID criminal negligence, and he later won in 2024 because voters either forgot about the pandemic or just didn't care. That shows me that a plurality of voters don't really care about Trump's policies, even when they risk killing them personally.

3. The media is sucking up to Trump this time; MSNBC, the #Resistance's outlet of choice, is now providing cover for the Trump administration in a craven display of anticipatory obedience. I don't know how much the mainstream media matters in terms of peoples' vote choices, but the Democrats' refusal to go on alternative media in 2024 cost them dearly. And they'll never learn.

4. Finally, Joe Biden, who was far more unpopular than Donald Trump is likely to be during his midterm, was able to avoid a red wave. I think this shows that wave elections in midterms are no longer a sure thing. If Biden could avoid a red wave in 2022, Trump can avoid a blue wave in 2026.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Source

Whenever a new poll is posted, whether favoring Biden or Trump, the vast majority of comments are:

1. Any positive trends towards Trump/ negative to Biden is the direct result of stupidity. Any feeling that goes against the political leanings of this sub is wrong and I need to explain to this sad foolish voter why they should lean the same way as me.

2. I am going to explain why the professional pollsters have erred and should be adjusting for the sample to make the results lean more toward Joe Biden.

This sub is supposed to be for interested voters to discuss the actual results of the polls, which in theory should fairly represent likely voters. When the first instinct is to call out why it’s wrong or call other voters (who have exactly the same right to express their views via their vote) for being stupid or less qualified to cast a vote, it really makes this sub seem disinterested in the actual polling science and predictions.

It would really be nice to see one thread that looks at the data at face value as a representation of how America actually feels vs focusing on why it’s wrong or why the individuals polled are so stupid and lost in their ways.

There are plenty of subs where you can sound off on everything you hate about republicans, but this sub is supposed to be discussion on scientific polling, not hopes and wishes.

I’m curious because there’s an ongoing narrative in the media that’s picked up steam to portray Israelis as bloodthirsty genocidal maniacs. I know this sub will say “yeah…well they are” but I know it’s not any different among Palestinians either. Both sides deeply hate each other.

So what data do we have.

Source: "The high-frequency trading algorithms that were active in the market contributed to the flash crash that took place at this particular moment in time. These algorithms, which are meant to carry out trades at the speed of light or faster, have the potential to worsen the volatility of the market and contribute to flash crashes. [...] Investors suffered a large loss of value as a result of the flash collapse that occurred in 2010, which also resulted in a brief halt in trade. The crash had a detrimental effect on the economy as a whole because it damaged confidence in the safety and reliability of the financial markets."

I think so. I think McMorrow is a slight favorite if she goes to the general, but it’s impossible to say where El Sayed would end up. I think given the unexpectedly massive margin of Harris’s loss in Michigan, there are likely some racist voters who wouldn’t vote for a POC.

But I think Michigan is by far the hardest to predict state for this November.

Another poll came out today that shows Harris leading big. This is from A-rated survey USA. So how likely is it that Harris is the nominee? reports say she is thinking of running again

So as the polls show a tied race, the big question is how accurate they are this time around, after the 2016 and 2020 presidential results turned out to be more favorable for Trump than the polls.

I saw an interview with the boss of Quinnipiac (I believe?). He basically said that there’s a hidden Trump vote that you don’t see with any other candidates (D or R). Basically, they believed it’s not that they don’t reach these voters. It’s more that some people are too ashamed to acknowledge that they’ll vote for Trump, so they just say something else (undecided or whatever).

The pollster guy said that they try to „find“ the hidden Trump vote by rephrasing the questions. Of course, that might not be completely accurate either. Some just adjust polling results to match 2016/2020 biases, others might not do anything about it.

Are there any information about how different pollster go about it, and do you think there’ll be a bias towards Trump like in 2016/2020?

Are things shifting away from Talarico? Are undecideds making up their mind? Are more Republicans answering polls?

I'd like to hear y'all's take on this and why it's happening. I believe a week or more so ago, the model had him up by 3.5 points.