this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
92 points (91.1% liked)
politics
19097 readers
2904 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS.
It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments.
Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Register To Vote
• Citizenship Resource Center
• Congressional Awards Program
• Federal Government Agencies
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• The White House
• U.S. House of Representatives
• U.S. Senate
Partnered Communities:
• News
• World News
• Business News
• Political Discussion
• Ask Politics
• Military News
• Global Politics
• Moderate Politics
• Progressive Politics
• UK Politics
• Canadian Politics
• Australian Politics
• New Zealand Politics
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Watching early vote exit polls is kind of a tough game to play prognosticator on, but it begins to give us a sense of what the polls mean, because the info is a lot more concrete than polls. Basically, polls have a segment of responses that are undecided, meanwhile exit polls don't. The idea as I understand it is that you can contrast exit polls with polls in order to discern what that undecided vote really seems to be breaking for.
In 2016, that undecided segment broke hard for Trump. It hasn't in any election since.
Here's what exit polls so far say about Trump (vs 2020) and Harris (vs Biden & Obama):
Obviously, again, exit polls are subject to swings and changes over time and so it's all contingent on this continuing, but right now the early votes exit polls are at severe contrast with the aggregators. Like, embarrassingly severe.
One remaining thing from the exit polls worth mentioning - the last minute surge of support for Trump in 2020 was largely because the Republican leadership was stalwart in telling everyone to vote only on election day. That isn't happening this year, though, which means that Republicans aren't going to be able to expect the same kind of last-minute surge this year. Meanwhile, the opposite seems true for Harris: a lot of early votes for Harris are first time voters or infrequent voters, and not from the pool of 2020 early voters.
So, at this point the early vote is around 40m, or 25% of total votes in 2020. In order to get back to the "surprising Trump upswell" that we're all worried about, this trend would have to not only stop, but AGGRESSIVELY reverse course. Either that or all the exit polls are horribly wrong.
And that's the #1 problem with polling.
Look at 538 for PA:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/pennsylvania/
Here's what people miss... Go down the LEFT hand column.
860LV
1,586LV
840LV
812LV
812LV
866RV
866RV
794RV
583LV
794RV
1,084LV
1,256LV
2,048LV
2,048LV
600LV
600LV
"LV" - "Likely Voters".
Of these 16 polls currently up, 12 of them are trying to determine who is "likely" to vote, and no 2 polls use the same definition.
Generally "Did you vote in the last 2 elections?"
Yeah, every time I wind up looking deeply at polls I find more questions than answers. I recognize they're a snapshot of a segment, not representative of the whole segment but sort of a sampling of it.
For example, the 3 polls there from Franklin, and the 4 from Morning Consult: the same methodology and around the same sample size, conducted at the same time frame. Each poll with different outcomes from their sample set.
I also recognize that as long as X% are "undecided", the poll can't really show anything other than trend motions. And these polls are actually kind of static. Like if you plot them all out, they don't seem to have an upper or downward trend trajectory.
It's frustratingly ambiguous stuff.
You mention Trump as up in 18-39 and 50-64 but down in "a bunch of other age groups." How many other age groups are there? 40-49 and 65+ seem like only way to back them up with any significance.
Oh shoot, sorry, I meant 18-29. The groups are:
It's worth mentioning that these groups are not equal! 18-29 is usually a very low representation, where 40-49 is pretty big, and 50-64 / 65+ are huge.
Boomers potentially saving us from Trump was not on my 2024 bingo card (I know that is from a higher base of existing Trump support but still).