On this I would do some homework! If you drill down on how Silvers 538 as I did in 2016 and 2020 vs actual results I found RCP was 50% closer to actual. Just sayin'
Isn’t RCP one of the polling firms, like Rasmussen that skews its polls until close to the election when they adjust their number back to the mean? So after the election they look like they called it right, but during the course of the election season they were considerably off the mark. I’m not sure if I’m remembering correctly, but I read an in depth analysis years ago about some of the polling firms doing this.
I think the idea is that Monmouth is couching their polls in language that says stuff like "probably voting for" so if their topline numbers end up being inaccurate they can just say "well 52% of voters said they probably wouldn't vote for trump, they didn't say they were definitely not voting for him" if their topline turns out to be inaccurate.
Not just that, but if your question flow is allowing people who are polled to answer the questions back-to-back then you can easily have some bad data to report on. Basically, put if someone is voting for Candidate A and then is asked "would you vote for Candidate B" you're giving the person polled a potential double answer where they could vote for Candidate A and B by replying "yes". In reality we know that unless its ranked choice voting or an election with multiple seats to fill (i.e. Parks board, City Commission, School Board) you aren't voting for more than one candidate in any given race. Obviously if it's an election where more than one candidate can win then a "Would you vote for..." question might fit better.
Previous to this change, those polls were not counted as horse race polls, and so they were not included in accuracy/bias calculations of the pollster. It's a way of polling on the presidential race without getting dinged for getting it wrong.
Yes, exactly. He wasn't including those polls previously, because they were non-standard polls, and so they weren't being counted in their overall accuracy rating. He is now basically saying "That's dumb, they should be included, and they should count towards the accuracy rating".
Most polls ask some version of “who would you vote for of the following options?” - pitting the candidates in the race head-to-head. Monmouth asks “How likely are you to vote for Donald Trump in the election for president – will you definitely vote for him, probably vote for him, probably not vote for him, or definitely not vote for him?” And then asks the same about Kamala Harris separately. So they’re kind of skirting around the “horse race” question.
It's probably a better way to do a survey that provides more insight into how potential voters actually think, but because it is harder to crunch those numbers into a model Silver and the analytics crowd call it nonstandard and disparage it.
It seems kind of ridiculous to jump to the conclusion that Monmouth is wording their survey differently to protect their reputation or accuracy -- while disregarding the legitimate methodological reasons to ask people questions in alternative ways beyond what is essentially a multiple-choice horse race poll, which -- as we've come to learn -- provides little insight into how or why people vote the way they do.
I like the extra data about inclination and don’t know shit about survey design, but I don’t fully get why Monmouth wouldn’t also ask a question that mirrors the reality of the ballot. Like theoretically you’re inviting some weirdness at the margins if a respondent can say they’re probably/ definitely voting for both Trump and Harris, when they can’t do that irl.
Is Nate over-estimating the significance of his own pollster ratings?
A more innocuous explanation: they are trying to tease out both 3rd-party voters and fence-sitters. If you're planning to vote for Cornel West but considering voting for Kamala Harris; or if you're considering voting for Trump or not voting at all; these questions would capture you. And do so in a way different than other pollsters that they might think is more revealing or reliable?
The problem is they don’t actually present the data that way to make that clear. It’s interesting data, for other reasons, but they don’t provide that particular Venn diagram info.
Honestly, I'm a bit baffled by the fuss. When I read that bit, I just assumed Monmouth is doing it as a way of weeding out low-quality respondents. Anyone who says they're probably voting for Trump and probably voting for Harris is either not paying attention, not answering sincerely, or not understanding the question. Discarding their responses will likely raise the quality of the resulting dataset.
A lot of surveys (especially online ones) will have similar mechanisms in place - a common approach to weed out bots and people who just blaze through surveys as quick as they can is a question like "For this question, please answer 'strongly disagree' to prove you are paying attention. Question: I enjoy cold water when in the desert". Some others will ask the same question twice and discard (or strongly reduce the confidence score of) any survey where the respondent answered the questions differently.
Not sure how so many people here don’t understand this — Monmouth is basically just choosing not to do a head to head poll because they don’t want to be held accountable when the real results come in on Election Day (they don’t want people to have a direct Harris vs Trump comparison that they’ve made to be able to compare to).
Presumably by just not taking any side, they won't be seen as having gotten it "wrong". It's kind of like a boxer with an undefeated record being very careful about choosing their opponents to fight.
I think it's more about the wording of the questions that makes it hard to gauge if it's a good poll or not.
If you ask a 100 people "Given the list of candidates below, who would you vote for?" and list all possible candidates or the likely candidates on most state ballots, you force each person answering the poll to make one choice and one choice only.
What Monmouth is doing is "Would you vote for Candidate A" and then ask another question "Would you vote for Candidate B". And as far as we can tell from results a person answering the poll could say "yes" to both questions. Meaning there can be an overlap of approval for the given candidates asked, although with how deadlock the electorate is, chances of that happening are slim. Nonetheless it makes it hard to determine if the poll is an accurate snapshot of the electorate and race at that moment in time.
I'm not sure your debate prediction was all that bold Nate. It was a double whammy: Harris performed strongly, but Trump was remarkably bad. 'They're eating your pets' is frankly one of the oldest racist tropes in the book, and while it might be red meat (dog or otherwise) to a section of his base, it's a turn off for swing voters.
However, as you say, the election isn't this week. The debate was far too early to have any lasting effect. And there's no way in hell Trump's people will agree to another. It would be a blunder to top all their other ones.
One point I am curious on though: Taylor Swift's endorsement isn't likely to make a huge difference to the race at large but, seeing as she's one of Pennsylvania's favourite daughter's, is there some chance she'll be the difference there, maybe even make up for the lack of Shapiro on the ticket?
Swift’s GOTV effect could be meaningful, PA & otherwise. What she seemed to do for the NFL surprised me. That’s a lot of attention she commands with millions. It probably wouldn’t work on who to vote for, but the attention to voting at all intersects well for Harris with her core audience
Swift will have a real effect. Not just because of her endorsement, but because of her push for people to register. She is making it likely that a large swath of recently eligible voters will actually be legally ready to vote when the time comes. That’s huge in such a close election.
Given that Trump voters were under-polled in both 2016 and 2020, it seems likely that what appears to be a tie between Trump and Harris actually reflects a lead for Trump.
They barely took majority of the house (a tie really, to your standards 🤣🤣🤣) with the opposite party in the Whitehouse. This was a sizable underperformance in historical context, and compared to what shameless hacks on Team Red were supposing would happen.
House Republicans won the 2022 vote by something like 1.5% nationally. If anything they probably underperformed in terms of the number of seats won compared to the national margin.
And again, Dave Wasserman, Matthew Yglesias, etc. have pointed out that in the past higher educated voters typically turn out for midterms while nobody else does. As the Democrats and Republicans trade bases that means that the R's traditional advantage in midterms has been flipped.
All models are based on the past. Historically Republicans have had an advantage in midterm elections compared to general contests. If that's been flipped on its head then those models (i.e. polls) are going to have problems for a while until the human beings running them adjust to new conditions.
>>Remember that red wave of 2022 that didn't happen.<<
Not really, no. It's possible *pundits* were talking about a red wave, but the polling was remarkably accurate in 2022; if anything, Republicans slightly over-performed the poll numbers two years ago.
The polls were very accurate in 2022. Lots of people were predicting the GOP would overperform their polls, like they did in 2020. But they didn't. They got pretty much what the polls were predicting, which was a very mediocre year for an out party in a midterm.
The Other Nate did a really good interview with Isaac Chotiner last month in the New Yorker where he addressed the past Trump underpolling and what's changed (for NYT's polling at least) between then and now. Kinda surprised I didn't see anyone else here talking about it then.
"Looking back, you could point to a few signs that maybe indicated that the polls were poised to be off. One of those signs was that Democratic voters were much likelier to respond to polls in 2020 than Republican voters...so far this cycle, we don’t see that same pattern. The proportion of Democrats and Republicans who respond to our polls is roughly even. I think that’s a somewhat positive sign, but I find it hard to say that that rules out any systematic problem in the polls. It’s worth noting that non-response bias is not the only reason the polls could be wrong."
"Given that Trump voters were under-polled in both 2016 and 2020, it seems likely that what appears to be a tie between Trump and Harris actually reflects a lead for Trump."
Perhaps. But it also could be that unique conditions in both 2016 and 2020 contributed differently in each year to polling errors that favored Democrats.
Specifically, the 2016 polling error (D+1.1) could have been caused by undecides breaking toward Trump in the last week because Comey bonehead-ly publicized the supposed "reopening" of the Clinton email investigation.
In 2020, a lot of post-mortems blamed the polling error (D+4.3) on the fact that Democrats were easier to reach by phone because more of them were at home trying not to catch Covid.
I hope it's the case that these two separate unicorns explain Trump's overperformances (because I think another Trump term would be disastrous for our country). But I don't think even Nate presumes to have a firm handle on that.
This year, the unicorns (that we know of) have been related to conditions rather than polls. For example, how will Harris' late entry affect voters, turnout and the campaigns? Or, between an elderly former president and a current VP, who's viewed as the incumbent? (If she's viewed as the incumbent, selling herself as the "change" candidate may not get traction. And visa-versa.)
This is why I wonder (hope?) that Nate's model is overly bullish on Trump's chances. There are so many bizarre events that a model based on priors could be less predictive than the polls themselves. In that case, Nate's model be more predictive late in the race -- when he relies almost entirely on polls, rather than other data.
Of course, a late black swan could still upend things, a la 2016. For example, I fully expect Trump (and maybe Russia) to spring some dirty tricks on Harris in October. We also don't know whether voter intimidation (particularly in Georgia) will affect any state outcomes. Or news events could cause things to break late one way or another.
It’s a literal impossibility that a second Trump presidency would be worse for American than another 4 years of Democratic rule. You have to literally be the kid of person to look at the Blue sky and call it Green to not see what’s gone on around you in the last 4 years, and shudder at the thought of another 4 years of such blatant mismanagement.
Absolutely insane take. Damn near everything is worse than it was 4 years ago. Inflation. Economy. Housing. Illegal immigration. Access to healthcare. Every. Thing.
I voted for Biden in 2020 because I expected something better, but I was wrong. I’m voting for Trump in 2024 to prove that I’m not an idiot, and help out the country back on track.
Your assessment is totally skewed..4 yrs ago we were in financial freewill and thousands of your countrymen were dying everyday. Trump suggested putting inserting bleach..how did you think we were going to recover,?
Sample size of 2. It certainly could happen again. Or not. Anyone who thinks they know is welcome to get rich ( or not) in the betting markets. History says polling errors are not predictable in direction.
I don't think Trump voters *were* under-polled in 2016 and 2020. I think undecideds that make the final choice in the ballot box will always break conservative and, if they've got the option, anti-establishment, if all else is equal. If they're that scared of making a choice, they're gonna lean away from progressivism, but everyone wants to express displeasure with government. So, Trump himself will always skew the results away from average because he's way higher on the anti-establishment scale than any other presidential candidate, but it's not because these people knew what choice they were gonna make when the poll was conducted.
Important to note there's no reason to expect that effect to not exist this year, but honestly who knows what is gonna carry the day for folks unable to make a decision? Clearly not anything I understand.
>Given that Trump voters were under-polled in both 2016 and 2020, it seems likely...<
Your conclusion that Trump voters are being undercounted doesn't follow from your "given." There's been loads of stuff written about this. Yes, it's *possible* we'll learn in November that the polls have been underestimating the Republican vote as they've done in the past. It's also *possible* we'll learn in November that the polls have been underestimating the Democratic vote as they've done in the past.
Both parties have seen seen their candidates' chances under (or over) estimated by the polls in recent cycles.
Suffolk, the D+3 PA poll, had an average bias of R+0.7 in 2020. Insider Advantage, the R+2 PA poll. had an average bias of R+3.8 in 2020. So that reinforces the likely accuracy of the ~D+0.7 polling average in PA.
(Harris voter here) Both are well within the margin of error so I'm not sure where you're getting that confidence from. Slaw's assertion seems completely reasonable to me.
I've been hanging around here for over a month at this point and haven't seen much from them that would suggest dishonesty, just that they seem to piss off some of the more openly partisan members here from time to time.
The polling is showing a pretty mild rise for Harris post-debate. The model is showing a much more aggresive rise because the convention adjustment is being faded out. The convention adjustment first caused Harris's odds to artificially fall, now that the correction is being corrected she'll artificially rise to maybe a slight favourite. In reality she maybe went from 55% to 50% and now is maybe going back to 55%.
Any comment regarding the Selzer (top pollster) poll showing Trump leading by (only) +4 in Iowa? How much is this poll affecting the bottom line if at all? Kennedy still getting 6% in that poll (he's on ballot), so perhaps that accounts for most of the difference from 2020 (+8.5). Kennedy's strong showing perhaps may indicate he might still be a spoiler where he is on ballot (Michigan, Wisconsin).
I do think it's worth keeping in mind that Selzer's polls have in the past vacillated quite a bit between September and right before the election. I'm not personally putting a lot of weight in it either way myself but it has been very funny to see all the smug right-wing blowhards on here and Twitter convinced that her poll was gonna show Trump with +15 go from "She's the gold standard! This is gonna obliterate the blue wall! Harris is cooked!" to "whatever, she's a partisan hack anyway who wants to puff up Democratic numbers before she shows the "real" ones in October."
Here’s one way to think about that Iowa poll: Trump won Iowa by 8 points in 2020. That’s the baseline of comparison.
So RFKJr is at 6 in this poll. Even though he will remain on the ballot, I bet his support will fade by Nov. 5, and I’ll call +2 for Trump. (E.g. of the 6 pts: RKFJr holds 1, 1 stays home, Trump gets 3, Harris gets 1. Whatever you like, but Trump will get some reasonable fraction from RFK.)
The poll showed Trump +4, add in +2 from RFK, and we’re at +6 … not so far from Trump’s +8 last time.
Lotsa words, but I think a simple enough perspective.
If Trump wins Iowa by "only" 6 points - I think he lost the election. I wonder what the model would say. Also, if RFK actually gets 1-2% in Michigan and Wisconsin, that could be the spoiler.
Yes. The Iowa situation says a lot more about the national vote—and Trump's (diminishing?) chances for flipping Biden 2020 states—than it does about the probability of his losing Iowa (which seems very, very small, as much as I'd love to see it). Four points is still a pretty big gap, and, given the partisan lean of that state for a fair number of cycles now, my intuition is that the margin of error reverberates to Trump's advantage.
"I’d be wary of any conclusion that Trump and JD Vance passing along conspiratorial claims about Haitian immigrants is some sort of savvy political strategy, such as by putting immigrantion back in the news."
I don't think that Trump is anywhere near that smart, but it is having the "desired" effect.
It IS tempting, certainly, to believe the old line that there is no such thing as bad press.
Harris gained ground after the first primary debate in 2019 (when she pulled her bussing stunt against Biden) just to lose ground dramatically in the weeks after as, in hindsight, people realized her debate performance was far poorer than the initial media hype surrounding it.
True enough, but they WERE talking about plenty of extreme policy proposals which, while less audacious, probably had more relevance to the life of the average voter.
Right, but the reason she didn’t maintain the ground she gained in 2019 Dem debates is because she wasn’t as effective in the subsequent debates. This time, because of her opponent’s limitations, it appears she won’t face that test.
It was a different moment. Harris was under attack for being a DA and AG during a time in America where overly aggressive policing and racial inequality were getting national attention. Harris couldn’t run as the law and order candidate that she actually is.
As we have seen both in this race and during her time as senator, Harris is at her best as a prosecutor. And she wasn't able to make that style work in the friendly Dem primary. She tried it with Biden to some success but started flailing quickly once Warren outflanked her on the left. Was she going to attack Warren?
In a more contentious Dem primary, like 1992, Harris probably would have been fine. To the point, her 2019 failures are irrelevant for this campaign.
In general, the whole "surprise" at Harris's relatively strong performance these last six weeks underscores the widespread ignorance about the fact that many ultimately successful presidential candidates have gone through rough patches at previous points in their political careers. FDR was on a ticket that took a drubbing in 1920, and some years later suffered a health crisis that would have broken almost any other politician of that era. Lyndon Johnson was beaten handily by JFK in 1960, only to go on to win one of the greatest election triumphs in US history a mere four years later. Nixon famously last to Kennedy the same cycle, and then lost again in humiliating fashion in 1962 in California. Ronald Reagan lost multiple bids for the GOP presidential election before ultimately winning it all in 1980 (and 1984). George HW Bush lost both a Senate election (1970) and a bid for the GOP nomination (1980) before finally winning the big prize. Bill Clinton very nearly destroyed his own presidential career before it even started—at the 1988 DNC. Obama lost his first attempt to get to Washington in 2000 when he was beaten in a Democratic House primary. And Trump and Biden each made unsuccessful runs at the White House before ultimately prevailing...
I don’t consider people who are fired for gross incompetence “respected peers.”
She didn’t lay down a single policy proposal, unless how have a very generous and very broad definition of “policy proposal.”
True. Trump didn’t lay down policy proposals either. At least he was entertaining to watch.
The eye contact thing I honestly don’t remember but I highly doubt it’s relevant to any median voter.
It’s fine you liked her performance! But i’m going to safely assume you aren’t a swing voter and thus (and I say this kindly) it really doesm’t matter what you think about the debate.
🤣 To laugh AT? Because she put a leash on him & paraded him around the stage.
It was some serious Jedi Mind Trick stuff. She didn’t set him on fire, she handed him a gas can, a match, & suggested he looked a little cold. He set himself on fire over & over.
Then she delivered the “confused” line at the end.
You’re allowed to believe whatever you want. I’m not going to try to debate opinion.
But the question at hand is what the “undecided voter” thinks. And when people are hurting, smugly telling them “it’s not as bad as you think” isn’t going to resonate.
Dick Cheney wasn't fired for gross negligence BTW, nor were most of the people Trump fired. His revolving door of highly competent staff was a laughing stock on the world stage..much like Trump nearly knocking over the newest member of NATO to get to the camera! Please let's all turn the page on Mr Chaos
Look, you clearly have no interest in having a real debate. Might I suggest doing something more productive with your time? Maybe reading a book? I have some good recommendations if you like.
Strongly disagree. A lot of the Harris voters are just relieved that they have a choice other than Biden and Trump. A lot are not at all enthusiastic about her , particularly males.
When there are about 50 million voters for either of the candidates, they both definitely have millions of highly enthusiastic voters, millions of hold-their-nose unenthusiastic voters, and millions of voters at various levels of enthusiasm in between. The interesting question is not whether there are a lot of unenthusiastic or enthusiastic people - the interesting question is rather the absolute numbers of these groups.
I think this post debate bounce will calm down after two weeks or so. Given that AtlasIntel, the most accurate pollster of 2020, has her down nationally (poll conducted post debate), I suspect that there's a response bias going on in a lot of these other polls.
The Suffolk Poll is also quite poor, if I may add. It missed big in 2016 and 2020. Their recent poll has a small simple along with a high margin of error.
youre reading too much into a single poll because it confirms your belief that trump is ahead. yes harris is probably benefiting from non-response bia, but theres no reason to think atlasintel is dealing with it any better than anyone else.
Well, they were ranked by Nate as the most accurate of 2020 (only 0.2% off the national vote). 0.3% off the national electorate in 2022 GOP. Consistently accurate with latin elections and the only poll to capture Brazil's first round of voting. Their methodology is quite unique and they do something other pollsters don't.
I'd lean more towards AtlasIntel being wrong. If Trump is up 2-4% in the popular vote, it means the environment right now is redder than 2022. It's possible that's true, but non-polling indicators like for e.g., WA primary show it's probably unlikely...
Given the obvious importance of battleground states, and especially, say, the top 3 likely tipping point states, why don't pollsters do more polls in these critical states. I would think those polls would have at least as much value for news media and so they'd do about as many Pennsylvania polls as they do national polls. And yet even in Pennsylvania there are barely enough polls for a meaningful tracking average, while there are daily data points for national polls. What gives?
Honest political science -- after the debate, Harris should be destroying Trump in the polls, *if the debates mean anything*. Normally, at least in the last 2 decades, they haven't. But, of course, this year the Trump-Biden debacle did. What I suspect is happening is that the tribes have settled down into their respective camps and *nothing* that happens between now and November will matter a sausage. It's all going to come down to turnout in PA, GA, AZ and WI.
“I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed and I will sign it into law.” - Kamala Harris on the bill that Trump intentionally scuttled because he didn’t want things solved. In his 4 years of demonstrating he couldn’t seal a Tupperware bowl, maybe we should have considered deep down he didn’t want to fix things?
Please inform me! Just want to understand how anyone can justify ignoring our laws as well as the incredible burdens on many states and municipalities as as result of this policy. This is not prejudice- the law itself refers to them as illegal aliens.
What laws are being ignored? The laws that say that when someone applies for asylum you must legally wait for an immigration court to have an opening to schedule for them to make their case before you take any adverse action against them?
Right. After the first debate, Democrats responded and changed the candidate. That obviously is impossible for Republicans, even early on before the convention. The entire reason the Trump campaign didn't prepare for the switch is that they just can't conceive that somebody in power would just walk away from it. Suckers and losers, right?
You seem to be making an all-or-nothing argument: The debates have been less important over the last 2 decades, so therefore they now mean absolutely nothing. I don't think that follows from your premise.
Oh? How so? I'm not sure what you're getting at. If debates are less important, it would naturally follow that including them as a variable would not have a discernible effect.
For the sliver of voters who are undecided, I did see some interviews with some who said the debate convinced them to vote for Harris, but there really aren't enough to cause a sea change in polling.
It seems possible Monmouth's polling strategy is purely for polling accuracy purposes rather than institutionally self-protective. Perhaps, for example, they are trying to avoid some kind of polling bias, such as participants not wanting to admit to a pollster they are going to vote for one candidate (or the other) [which seems close-minded, perhaps especially for one of the candidates] but willing to admit that they are at least considering voting for that candidate [which seems open-minded].
Nate really should have a discussion with them to find out if they have a valid reason for their questioning strategy rather than wildly speculate as to some kind of self-protective interest.
NATE - Love the bullet point format. ❤️❤️❤️Encourage more of it, easy to identify each point - particularly helpful for busy readers of everything that you write.
Disagree #10 unless you’re saying it is unintentional, in which case I’d agree. Controlling the narrative is important and a bad debate turned into a stupid discussion about immigration with who eats what. But if you’re polling way ahead in immigration, then you welcome that change.
I've been reading Nate's analysis for a long time, and think he's very good, but in a political-instinct competition with a guy who became President by tweeting obnoxious things, Nate is severely out of his league.
Maybe not when “being ahead” is predicated on the border & illegal entry but the discussion is centered around legal immigrants. Immigration “the right way” is actually reasonably popular, which is why there’s been a LOT of effort put in by the GOP to frame the discussion around illegal entry & specifically the [southwest] border.
I know that other, more important things take precedent for a site being run by literally two people but I am very much looking forward to there being some sort of mod presence here so we don't have to keep dealing with dicks who are just here to spew bile or troll. Not that there have been all that many but still.
How can this be a place for adults with adult intellects to discuss the election if we need nannies on the lookout for someone who says something that hurts our feelings? It would be far better to just ignore what you don't like, and have the people who don't possess the emotional maturity to get chased away from the comment sections. If people don't engage with those they feel are trolling, then those apparent trolls also will feel no reward for doing it if that is what they actually are.
I'm confused about your point on Monmouth Uni. How are they ducking accountability and protecting their pollster rating by taking this strategy?
Nate should write an entire article on this since his pollster ratings, for better or worse, have sort of become gospel for a lot of people.
On this I would do some homework! If you drill down on how Silvers 538 as I did in 2016 and 2020 vs actual results I found RCP was 50% closer to actual. Just sayin'
Isn’t RCP one of the polling firms, like Rasmussen that skews its polls until close to the election when they adjust their number back to the mean? So after the election they look like they called it right, but during the course of the election season they were considerably off the mark. I’m not sure if I’m remembering correctly, but I read an in depth analysis years ago about some of the polling firms doing this.
OK, you have traveled further into the weeds than have I!!! I just don't know about them to that degree...
I think the idea is that Monmouth is couching their polls in language that says stuff like "probably voting for" so if their topline numbers end up being inaccurate they can just say "well 52% of voters said they probably wouldn't vote for trump, they didn't say they were definitely not voting for him" if their topline turns out to be inaccurate.
Good luck to them on that strategy if that is actually what they are thinking.
Not just that, but if your question flow is allowing people who are polled to answer the questions back-to-back then you can easily have some bad data to report on. Basically, put if someone is voting for Candidate A and then is asked "would you vote for Candidate B" you're giving the person polled a potential double answer where they could vote for Candidate A and B by replying "yes". In reality we know that unless its ranked choice voting or an election with multiple seats to fill (i.e. Parks board, City Commission, School Board) you aren't voting for more than one candidate in any given race. Obviously if it's an election where more than one candidate can win then a "Would you vote for..." question might fit better.
As I understand it:
Previous to this change, those polls were not counted as horse race polls, and so they were not included in accuracy/bias calculations of the pollster. It's a way of polling on the presidential race without getting dinged for getting it wrong.
But he said he wasn't including them up until now? Maybe I also misunderstand what horse race polls means...
Yes, exactly. He wasn't including those polls previously, because they were non-standard polls, and so they weren't being counted in their overall accuracy rating. He is now basically saying "That's dumb, they should be included, and they should count towards the accuracy rating".
Most polls ask some version of “who would you vote for of the following options?” - pitting the candidates in the race head-to-head. Monmouth asks “How likely are you to vote for Donald Trump in the election for president – will you definitely vote for him, probably vote for him, probably not vote for him, or definitely not vote for him?” And then asks the same about Kamala Harris separately. So they’re kind of skirting around the “horse race” question.
If it’s phrased that way, it seems like it’s a way of trying to tease out undecided voters and their actual level of indecision.
I’m not sure it’s the best way to do that, but I’m also not sure it’s a way to avoid having polls in pollster ratings.
It's probably a better way to do a survey that provides more insight into how potential voters actually think, but because it is harder to crunch those numbers into a model Silver and the analytics crowd call it nonstandard and disparage it.
It seems kind of ridiculous to jump to the conclusion that Monmouth is wording their survey differently to protect their reputation or accuracy -- while disregarding the legitimate methodological reasons to ask people questions in alternative ways beyond what is essentially a multiple-choice horse race poll, which -- as we've come to learn -- provides little insight into how or why people vote the way they do.
I like the extra data about inclination and don’t know shit about survey design, but I don’t fully get why Monmouth wouldn’t also ask a question that mirrors the reality of the ballot. Like theoretically you’re inviting some weirdness at the margins if a respondent can say they’re probably/ definitely voting for both Trump and Harris, when they can’t do that irl.
Is Nate over-estimating the significance of his own pollster ratings?
A more innocuous explanation: they are trying to tease out both 3rd-party voters and fence-sitters. If you're planning to vote for Cornel West but considering voting for Kamala Harris; or if you're considering voting for Trump or not voting at all; these questions would capture you. And do so in a way different than other pollsters that they might think is more revealing or reliable?
The problem is they don’t actually present the data that way to make that clear. It’s interesting data, for other reasons, but they don’t provide that particular Venn diagram info.
+1 on also not understanding this exactly. It seems weird, but it's not clear to me why it's bad or why it's good.
Honestly, I'm a bit baffled by the fuss. When I read that bit, I just assumed Monmouth is doing it as a way of weeding out low-quality respondents. Anyone who says they're probably voting for Trump and probably voting for Harris is either not paying attention, not answering sincerely, or not understanding the question. Discarding their responses will likely raise the quality of the resulting dataset.
A lot of surveys (especially online ones) will have similar mechanisms in place - a common approach to weed out bots and people who just blaze through surveys as quick as they can is a question like "For this question, please answer 'strongly disagree' to prove you are paying attention. Question: I enjoy cold water when in the desert". Some others will ask the same question twice and discard (or strongly reduce the confidence score of) any survey where the respondent answered the questions differently.
Ditto the above. Yes Nate: please explain.
Yeah, I didn't understand it either.
Not sure how so many people here don’t understand this — Monmouth is basically just choosing not to do a head to head poll because they don’t want to be held accountable when the real results come in on Election Day (they don’t want people to have a direct Harris vs Trump comparison that they’ve made to be able to compare to).
Presumably by just not taking any side, they won't be seen as having gotten it "wrong". It's kind of like a boxer with an undefeated record being very careful about choosing their opponents to fight.
Given the accusation that Monmouth is being disingenuous, can their polling still be trusted? Should their weight be lowered?
I think it's more about the wording of the questions that makes it hard to gauge if it's a good poll or not.
If you ask a 100 people "Given the list of candidates below, who would you vote for?" and list all possible candidates or the likely candidates on most state ballots, you force each person answering the poll to make one choice and one choice only.
What Monmouth is doing is "Would you vote for Candidate A" and then ask another question "Would you vote for Candidate B". And as far as we can tell from results a person answering the poll could say "yes" to both questions. Meaning there can be an overlap of approval for the given candidates asked, although with how deadlock the electorate is, chances of that happening are slim. Nonetheless it makes it hard to determine if the poll is an accurate snapshot of the electorate and race at that moment in time.
I'm not sure your debate prediction was all that bold Nate. It was a double whammy: Harris performed strongly, but Trump was remarkably bad. 'They're eating your pets' is frankly one of the oldest racist tropes in the book, and while it might be red meat (dog or otherwise) to a section of his base, it's a turn off for swing voters.
However, as you say, the election isn't this week. The debate was far too early to have any lasting effect. And there's no way in hell Trump's people will agree to another. It would be a blunder to top all their other ones.
One point I am curious on though: Taylor Swift's endorsement isn't likely to make a huge difference to the race at large but, seeing as she's one of Pennsylvania's favourite daughter's, is there some chance she'll be the difference there, maybe even make up for the lack of Shapiro on the ticket?
Swift’s GOTV effect could be meaningful, PA & otherwise. What she seemed to do for the NFL surprised me. That’s a lot of attention she commands with millions. It probably wouldn’t work on who to vote for, but the attention to voting at all intersects well for Harris with her core audience
Swift will have a real effect. Not just because of her endorsement, but because of her push for people to register. She is making it likely that a large swath of recently eligible voters will actually be legally ready to vote when the time comes. That’s huge in such a close election.
Yep, the prediction was boldish at most.
"She got a high-quality poll showing her ahead by 3 points in Pennsylvania, for instance, but another one showing her behind 2 points there."
I suspect that the race is really tied and the polls are just showing one candidate leading another based on random error.
Given that Trump voters were under-polled in both 2016 and 2020, it seems likely that what appears to be a tie between Trump and Harris actually reflects a lead for Trump.
This is also what I'm afraid of
Remember that red wave of 2022 that didn't happen.
The GOP still took over the House. And there is a theory that Republicans now attract lower propensity voters in a distinct reversal from the past
They barely took majority of the house (a tie really, to your standards 🤣🤣🤣) with the opposite party in the Whitehouse. This was a sizable underperformance in historical context, and compared to what shameless hacks on Team Red were supposing would happen.
🤡
House Republicans won the 2022 vote by something like 1.5% nationally. If anything they probably underperformed in terms of the number of seats won compared to the national margin.
And again, Dave Wasserman, Matthew Yglesias, etc. have pointed out that in the past higher educated voters typically turn out for midterms while nobody else does. As the Democrats and Republicans trade bases that means that the R's traditional advantage in midterms has been flipped.
All models are based on the past. Historically Republicans have had an advantage in midterm elections compared to general contests. If that's been flipped on its head then those models (i.e. polls) are going to have problems for a while until the human beings running them adjust to new conditions.
>>Remember that red wave of 2022 that didn't happen.<<
Not really, no. It's possible *pundits* were talking about a red wave, but the polling was remarkably accurate in 2022; if anything, Republicans slightly over-performed the poll numbers two years ago.
Was that really that strong in the polls though? (I honestly don't remember)
The polls were very accurate in 2022. Lots of people were predicting the GOP would overperform their polls, like they did in 2020. But they didn't. They got pretty much what the polls were predicting, which was a very mediocre year for an out party in a midterm.
It's a midterm as compared to a general election though, so I would be cautious about comparing the two.
The Other Nate did a really good interview with Isaac Chotiner last month in the New Yorker where he addressed the past Trump underpolling and what's changed (for NYT's polling at least) between then and now. Kinda surprised I didn't see anyone else here talking about it then.
"Looking back, you could point to a few signs that maybe indicated that the polls were poised to be off. One of those signs was that Democratic voters were much likelier to respond to polls in 2020 than Republican voters...so far this cycle, we don’t see that same pattern. The proportion of Democrats and Republicans who respond to our polls is roughly even. I think that’s a somewhat positive sign, but I find it hard to say that that rules out any systematic problem in the polls. It’s worth noting that non-response bias is not the only reason the polls could be wrong."
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/what-the-latest-presidential-polls-say-and-what-they-might-be-missing
"Given that Trump voters were under-polled in both 2016 and 2020, it seems likely that what appears to be a tie between Trump and Harris actually reflects a lead for Trump."
Perhaps. But it also could be that unique conditions in both 2016 and 2020 contributed differently in each year to polling errors that favored Democrats.
Specifically, the 2016 polling error (D+1.1) could have been caused by undecides breaking toward Trump in the last week because Comey bonehead-ly publicized the supposed "reopening" of the Clinton email investigation.
In 2020, a lot of post-mortems blamed the polling error (D+4.3) on the fact that Democrats were easier to reach by phone because more of them were at home trying not to catch Covid.
I hope it's the case that these two separate unicorns explain Trump's overperformances (because I think another Trump term would be disastrous for our country). But I don't think even Nate presumes to have a firm handle on that.
This year, the unicorns (that we know of) have been related to conditions rather than polls. For example, how will Harris' late entry affect voters, turnout and the campaigns? Or, between an elderly former president and a current VP, who's viewed as the incumbent? (If she's viewed as the incumbent, selling herself as the "change" candidate may not get traction. And visa-versa.)
This is why I wonder (hope?) that Nate's model is overly bullish on Trump's chances. There are so many bizarre events that a model based on priors could be less predictive than the polls themselves. In that case, Nate's model be more predictive late in the race -- when he relies almost entirely on polls, rather than other data.
Of course, a late black swan could still upend things, a la 2016. For example, I fully expect Trump (and maybe Russia) to spring some dirty tricks on Harris in October. We also don't know whether voter intimidation (particularly in Georgia) will affect any state outcomes. Or news events could cause things to break late one way or another.
It’s a literal impossibility that a second Trump presidency would be worse for American than another 4 years of Democratic rule. You have to literally be the kid of person to look at the Blue sky and call it Green to not see what’s gone on around you in the last 4 years, and shudder at the thought of another 4 years of such blatant mismanagement.
Biden cleaned up the mess left by Trump. Josh Shapiro or someone else will have to clean up another Trump mess if Trump wins.
??? This presidency was a “clean up”?
Absolutely insane take. Damn near everything is worse than it was 4 years ago. Inflation. Economy. Housing. Illegal immigration. Access to healthcare. Every. Thing.
I voted for Biden in 2020 because I expected something better, but I was wrong. I’m voting for Trump in 2024 to prove that I’m not an idiot, and help out the country back on track.
Everything was better 4 years ago in the middle of Covid? And a response so bad it was embarrassing to watch?
Were you under a rock 2020 was the height of Covid mismanaged but Trump from jump!
Inflation started trending upward in February, 2021. That's all on Trump unless you believe Biden destroyed the economy in a couple of weeks.
"I’m voting for Trump in 2024 to prove that I’m not an idiot"
Voting for a guy who has concepts of a plan.
Your assessment is totally skewed..4 yrs ago we were in financial freewill and thousands of your countrymen were dying everyday. Trump suggested putting inserting bleach..how did you think we were going to recover,?
Sample size of 2. It certainly could happen again. Or not. Anyone who thinks they know is welcome to get rich ( or not) in the betting markets. History says polling errors are not predictable in direction.
I don't think Trump voters *were* under-polled in 2016 and 2020. I think undecideds that make the final choice in the ballot box will always break conservative and, if they've got the option, anti-establishment, if all else is equal. If they're that scared of making a choice, they're gonna lean away from progressivism, but everyone wants to express displeasure with government. So, Trump himself will always skew the results away from average because he's way higher on the anti-establishment scale than any other presidential candidate, but it's not because these people knew what choice they were gonna make when the poll was conducted.
Important to note there's no reason to expect that effect to not exist this year, but honestly who knows what is gonna carry the day for folks unable to make a decision? Clearly not anything I understand.
Are you assuming that pollsters haven’t adjusted their models for the previous errors?
>Given that Trump voters were under-polled in both 2016 and 2020, it seems likely...<
Your conclusion that Trump voters are being undercounted doesn't follow from your "given." There's been loads of stuff written about this. Yes, it's *possible* we'll learn in November that the polls have been underestimating the Republican vote as they've done in the past. It's also *possible* we'll learn in November that the polls have been underestimating the Democratic vote as they've done in the past.
Both parties have seen seen their candidates' chances under (or over) estimated by the polls in recent cycles.
Suffolk, the D+3 PA poll, had an average bias of R+0.7 in 2020. Insider Advantage, the R+2 PA poll. had an average bias of R+3.8 in 2020. So that reinforces the likely accuracy of the ~D+0.7 polling average in PA.
Oops. Correction. Above are 2022 average bias. In 2020 Suffolk average bias was D+0.6 and Insider average bias was D+1.1.
https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/blob/master/pollster-ratings/2020/pollster-ratings.csv
You could edit your first comment, you know.
Because I use averages, I suspect Harris is ahead 0.5%, with the usual broad margin of error.
The averages in 2016 and 2020 were biased.
I suspect you’re a shameless hack that’s desperately trying to ignore the implication of the average.
🤣🤡
(Harris voter here) Both are well within the margin of error so I'm not sure where you're getting that confidence from. Slaw's assertion seems completely reasonable to me.
That’s “statistical tie” nonsense.
PS The evidence of Slaw being shameless dishonest is well outside the margin of error. 😜
I've been hanging around here for over a month at this point and haven't seen much from them that would suggest dishonesty, just that they seem to piss off some of the more openly partisan members here from time to time.
I’ve pressed him on some things. He’s a Rich Lowery wannabe, not here in good faith at all.
Rather unfair comparison. I haven't heard Slaw accidentally say a racial slur on the air a single time.
Who's currently favored in Silver's model again?
And what exactly are you trying to argue here--that one candidate or the other is actually leading?
Harris 48.1%, Trump
47.6%
Congrats on the beautiful self-goal, dillweed!!!
Ok, I’ve had my fun for the day punching down on the 4th grader, until later! 👋
You're looking at the polling, not the model. Trump's something like a 60-40 favorite in the model. You're welcome.
The polling is showing a pretty mild rise for Harris post-debate. The model is showing a much more aggresive rise because the convention adjustment is being faded out. The convention adjustment first caused Harris's odds to artificially fall, now that the correction is being corrected she'll artificially rise to maybe a slight favourite. In reality she maybe went from 55% to 50% and now is maybe going back to 55%.
Thank you. In a paragraph you summarized my issue with the convention bounce this cycle.
Any comment regarding the Selzer (top pollster) poll showing Trump leading by (only) +4 in Iowa? How much is this poll affecting the bottom line if at all? Kennedy still getting 6% in that poll (he's on ballot), so perhaps that accounts for most of the difference from 2020 (+8.5). Kennedy's strong showing perhaps may indicate he might still be a spoiler where he is on ballot (Michigan, Wisconsin).
I do think it's worth keeping in mind that Selzer's polls have in the past vacillated quite a bit between September and right before the election. I'm not personally putting a lot of weight in it either way myself but it has been very funny to see all the smug right-wing blowhards on here and Twitter convinced that her poll was gonna show Trump with +15 go from "She's the gold standard! This is gonna obliterate the blue wall! Harris is cooked!" to "whatever, she's a partisan hack anyway who wants to puff up Democratic numbers before she shows the "real" ones in October."
Regardless of partisan lean, it's always helpful to have thoughts jotted down before results come in.
Here’s one way to think about that Iowa poll: Trump won Iowa by 8 points in 2020. That’s the baseline of comparison.
So RFKJr is at 6 in this poll. Even though he will remain on the ballot, I bet his support will fade by Nov. 5, and I’ll call +2 for Trump. (E.g. of the 6 pts: RKFJr holds 1, 1 stays home, Trump gets 3, Harris gets 1. Whatever you like, but Trump will get some reasonable fraction from RFK.)
The poll showed Trump +4, add in +2 from RFK, and we’re at +6 … not so far from Trump’s +8 last time.
Lotsa words, but I think a simple enough perspective.
If Trump wins Iowa by "only" 6 points - I think he lost the election. I wonder what the model would say. Also, if RFK actually gets 1-2% in Michigan and Wisconsin, that could be the spoiler.
Yes. The Iowa situation says a lot more about the national vote—and Trump's (diminishing?) chances for flipping Biden 2020 states—than it does about the probability of his losing Iowa (which seems very, very small, as much as I'd love to see it). Four points is still a pretty big gap, and, given the partisan lean of that state for a fair number of cycles now, my intuition is that the margin of error reverberates to Trump's advantage.
"I’d be wary of any conclusion that Trump and JD Vance passing along conspiratorial claims about Haitian immigrants is some sort of savvy political strategy, such as by putting immigrantion back in the news."
I don't think that Trump is anywhere near that smart, but it is having the "desired" effect.
It IS tempting, certainly, to believe the old line that there is no such thing as bad press.
Harris gained ground after the first primary debate in 2019 (when she pulled her bussing stunt against Biden) just to lose ground dramatically in the weeks after as, in hindsight, people realized her debate performance was far poorer than the initial media hype surrounding it.
Just sayin'
Her opponents in Dem primary in 2019 weren’t talking about legal immigrants eating dogs, prompting their campaigns to bypass any further debates.
True enough, but they WERE talking about plenty of extreme policy proposals which, while less audacious, probably had more relevance to the life of the average voter.
Right, but the reason she didn’t maintain the ground she gained in 2019 Dem debates is because she wasn’t as effective in the subsequent debates. This time, because of her opponent’s limitations, it appears she won’t face that test.
Sure. And maybe you are right. But I don't see it.
In the context of a 2020 primary, those extreme policy proposals would have been helpful to their standing, not hurtful.
We just fundamentally disagree on this point.
It was a different moment. Harris was under attack for being a DA and AG during a time in America where overly aggressive policing and racial inequality were getting national attention. Harris couldn’t run as the law and order candidate that she actually is.
As we have seen both in this race and during her time as senator, Harris is at her best as a prosecutor. And she wasn't able to make that style work in the friendly Dem primary. She tried it with Biden to some success but started flailing quickly once Warren outflanked her on the left. Was she going to attack Warren?
In a more contentious Dem primary, like 1992, Harris probably would have been fine. To the point, her 2019 failures are irrelevant for this campaign.
In general, the whole "surprise" at Harris's relatively strong performance these last six weeks underscores the widespread ignorance about the fact that many ultimately successful presidential candidates have gone through rough patches at previous points in their political careers. FDR was on a ticket that took a drubbing in 1920, and some years later suffered a health crisis that would have broken almost any other politician of that era. Lyndon Johnson was beaten handily by JFK in 1960, only to go on to win one of the greatest election triumphs in US history a mere four years later. Nixon famously last to Kennedy the same cycle, and then lost again in humiliating fashion in 1962 in California. Ronald Reagan lost multiple bids for the GOP presidential election before ultimately winning it all in 1980 (and 1984). George HW Bush lost both a Senate election (1970) and a bid for the GOP nomination (1980) before finally winning the big prize. Bill Clinton very nearly destroyed his own presidential career before it even started—at the 1988 DNC. Obama lost his first attempt to get to Washington in 2000 when he was beaten in a Democratic House primary. And Trump and Biden each made unsuccessful runs at the White House before ultimately prevailing...
It’s an interesting argument, I could be persuaded by it. But the problem is I haven’t seen prosecutor Harris so far this election cycle.
She’s talked about it. The media have talked about it. But I haven’t seen any ACTION that screams “prosecutor” to me.
To me, her debate performance last week felt a lot like…. her debate performance in 2019. And that's not a promising sign.
There really are people like this, tune into politics for the insult comic show 🤷♂️
That is an extremely generous read of the debate.
I don’t consider people who are fired for gross incompetence “respected peers.”
She didn’t lay down a single policy proposal, unless how have a very generous and very broad definition of “policy proposal.”
True. Trump didn’t lay down policy proposals either. At least he was entertaining to watch.
The eye contact thing I honestly don’t remember but I highly doubt it’s relevant to any median voter.
It’s fine you liked her performance! But i’m going to safely assume you aren’t a swing voter and thus (and I say this kindly) it really doesm’t matter what you think about the debate.
> At least he was entertaining to watch.
🤣 To laugh AT? Because she put a leash on him & paraded him around the stage.
It was some serious Jedi Mind Trick stuff. She didn’t set him on fire, she handed him a gas can, a match, & suggested he looked a little cold. He set himself on fire over & over.
Then she delivered the “confused” line at the end.
She took him apart.
You’re allowed to believe whatever you want. I’m not going to try to debate opinion.
But the question at hand is what the “undecided voter” thinks. And when people are hurting, smugly telling them “it’s not as bad as you think” isn’t going to resonate.
Dick Cheney wasn't fired for gross negligence BTW, nor were most of the people Trump fired. His revolving door of highly competent staff was a laughing stock on the world stage..much like Trump nearly knocking over the newest member of NATO to get to the camera! Please let's all turn the page on Mr Chaos
Oh agree KH wasn't *great* on policy stuff. But aren't we discussing her prosecutorial (i.e. lawyerly takedowns) stuff?
Seems the weight of opinion post-debate is that her prosecution of Trump's words and actions were excellent.
She has put more policy forth in 60 days than Trump has in 9 yrs.Tarruffs are a tax on American consumers, Tead Klugman today!
Yeah look I take your point, and you may be right. Certainly post debate polling looked good for Trump
But
SINCE the debate, the average American does not seem to be swayed. The polling tightened, but marginally, and not really in the swing states KH needs.
I don’t think the average Joe feels KH “prosecuted Trumps words and actions.”
You may totally be right. I could be wrong here. But I just don’t feel it the way others seem to.
Look, you clearly have no interest in having a real debate. Might I suggest doing something more productive with your time? Maybe reading a book? I have some good recommendations if you like.
Cool theory.
Nate - what about the enthusiasm gap? Can this be factored in? I think Harris’ voters are probably more enthusiastic at this stage than Trump voters.
Strongly disagree. A lot of the Harris voters are just relieved that they have a choice other than Biden and Trump. A lot are not at all enthusiastic about her , particularly males.
When there are about 50 million voters for either of the candidates, they both definitely have millions of highly enthusiastic voters, millions of hold-their-nose unenthusiastic voters, and millions of voters at various levels of enthusiasm in between. The interesting question is not whether there are a lot of unenthusiastic or enthusiastic people - the interesting question is rather the absolute numbers of these groups.
🤣
I think enthusiasm (as measured by polling) has historically not been a very good indicator of turnout
Enthusiasm should show up in polls in the conversion from RV to LV, assuming the polls are doing that reasonably well.
I think this post debate bounce will calm down after two weeks or so. Given that AtlasIntel, the most accurate pollster of 2020, has her down nationally (poll conducted post debate), I suspect that there's a response bias going on in a lot of these other polls.
The Suffolk Poll is also quite poor, if I may add. It missed big in 2016 and 2020. Their recent poll has a small simple along with a high margin of error.
youre reading too much into a single poll because it confirms your belief that trump is ahead. yes harris is probably benefiting from non-response bia, but theres no reason to think atlasintel is dealing with it any better than anyone else.
Well, they were ranked by Nate as the most accurate of 2020 (only 0.2% off the national vote). 0.3% off the national electorate in 2022 GOP. Consistently accurate with latin elections and the only poll to capture Brazil's first round of voting. Their methodology is quite unique and they do something other pollsters don't.
Past performance is not a great indicator of future performance, as they say, especially when they appear to be an outlier.
Their 2020 predictions were also regarded as outlier, because all the A rated pollsters were shitting out Biden +10-12 at the time
Then we will just have to see.
I'd lean more towards AtlasIntel being wrong. If Trump is up 2-4% in the popular vote, it means the environment right now is redder than 2022. It's possible that's true, but non-polling indicators like for e.g., WA primary show it's probably unlikely...
The WA primary isn't really an indicator of anything. It's equivalent to Alan Litchman's keys
Given the obvious importance of battleground states, and especially, say, the top 3 likely tipping point states, why don't pollsters do more polls in these critical states. I would think those polls would have at least as much value for news media and so they'd do about as many Pennsylvania polls as they do national polls. And yet even in Pennsylvania there are barely enough polls for a meaningful tracking average, while there are daily data points for national polls. What gives?
Honest political science -- after the debate, Harris should be destroying Trump in the polls, *if the debates mean anything*. Normally, at least in the last 2 decades, they haven't. But, of course, this year the Trump-Biden debacle did. What I suspect is happening is that the tribes have settled down into their respective camps and *nothing* that happens between now and November will matter a sausage. It's all going to come down to turnout in PA, GA, AZ and WI.
It's the "I could shoot someone on 5th avenue" effect. Dems have standards for their candidate, MAGA doesn't.
Do those standards include unlimited immigration across our borders despite its illegality and poisonous effects? Just wondering!
🤣🤣🤣
🤡
“I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed and I will sign it into law.” - Kamala Harris on the bill that Trump intentionally scuttled because he didn’t want things solved. In his 4 years of demonstrating he couldn’t seal a Tupperware bowl, maybe we should have considered deep down he didn’t want to fix things?
Please inform me! Just want to understand how anyone can justify ignoring our laws as well as the incredible burdens on many states and municipalities as as result of this policy. This is not prejudice- the law itself refers to them as illegal aliens.
What laws are being ignored? The laws that say that when someone applies for asylum you must legally wait for an immigration court to have an opening to schedule for them to make their case before you take any adverse action against them?
May I respectfully suggest we keep debates about pure policy - as distinct from polling data or campaign tactics - to other forums?
I like this to be a place for nonpartisan forecasting :)
Please provide specific citations for the following assertions:
- Who is enabling unlimited immigration across our borders?
- What policy by what agency calls for unlimited immigration across our borders?
- Who is justifying ignoring American immigration law?
- What incredible burdens are "illegal aliens" placing on states?
- What incredible burdens are "illegal aliens" placing on municipalities?
- How is current immigration law creating those "incredible burdens"?
Thank you in advance for your assistance in clarifying.
Some have no interest in facts, at least when compared to their intense interest in tropes.
Provide them yourself. Nobody owes you anything.
Right. After the first debate, Democrats responded and changed the candidate. That obviously is impossible for Republicans, even early on before the convention. The entire reason the Trump campaign didn't prepare for the switch is that they just can't conceive that somebody in power would just walk away from it. Suckers and losers, right?
DNC standard: "Must not say the quiet part out loud."
MAGA standard: "must fight" -we'll do some cognitive dissonance with the bat shit.
Good summary - and always like any comment that recognizes the impact of cognitive dissonance.
DNC standard: "we know we're bat shit crazy but people are buying it so who cares...we want power"
MAGA standard: "we're not bat shit crazy, all this stuff is real, but it doesn't matter because people are buying it so who cares...we want power"
You seem to be making an all-or-nothing argument: The debates have been less important over the last 2 decades, so therefore they now mean absolutely nothing. I don't think that follows from your premise.
No, I did not say they mean absolutely nothing, I said they will not move the needle on Nate's models or any other.
Saying the debate(s) won't move the needle on Nate's model doesn't follow from your premise that debates are less important over the last 2 decades..
Oh? How so? I'm not sure what you're getting at. If debates are less important, it would naturally follow that including them as a variable would not have a discernible effect.
Look up what a "false dilemma" is.
For the sliver of voters who are undecided, I did see some interviews with some who said the debate convinced them to vote for Harris, but there really aren't enough to cause a sea change in polling.
It seems possible Monmouth's polling strategy is purely for polling accuracy purposes rather than institutionally self-protective. Perhaps, for example, they are trying to avoid some kind of polling bias, such as participants not wanting to admit to a pollster they are going to vote for one candidate (or the other) [which seems close-minded, perhaps especially for one of the candidates] but willing to admit that they are at least considering voting for that candidate [which seems open-minded].
Nate really should have a discussion with them to find out if they have a valid reason for their questioning strategy rather than wildly speculate as to some kind of self-protective interest.
Strong possibility, good point
NATE - Love the bullet point format. ❤️❤️❤️Encourage more of it, easy to identify each point - particularly helpful for busy readers of everything that you write.
Disagree #10 unless you’re saying it is unintentional, in which case I’d agree. Controlling the narrative is important and a bad debate turned into a stupid discussion about immigration with who eats what. But if you’re polling way ahead in immigration, then you welcome that change.
I've been reading Nate's analysis for a long time, and think he's very good, but in a political-instinct competition with a guy who became President by tweeting obnoxious things, Nate is severely out of his league.
Maybe not when “being ahead” is predicated on the border & illegal entry but the discussion is centered around legal immigrants. Immigration “the right way” is actually reasonably popular, which is why there’s been a LOT of effort put in by the GOP to frame the discussion around illegal entry & specifically the [southwest] border.
Trump gonna get his cheeks clapped
I know that other, more important things take precedent for a site being run by literally two people but I am very much looking forward to there being some sort of mod presence here so we don't have to keep dealing with dicks who are just here to spew bile or troll. Not that there have been all that many but still.
Love that directly below this comment is someone calling democrats fascists for apparently trying to assassinate Trump.
How can this be a place for adults with adult intellects to discuss the election if we need nannies on the lookout for someone who says something that hurts our feelings? It would be far better to just ignore what you don't like, and have the people who don't possess the emotional maturity to get chased away from the comment sections. If people don't engage with those they feel are trolling, then those apparent trolls also will feel no reward for doing it if that is what they actually are.