Posts Tagged ‘don't believe the polls’
And a Very Merry Election’s Night’s Eve To You Too
- ICYMI: My Ministry for the Future review has been most-read at LARB for a few days straight, and the new episode of Grad School Vonnegut on the Slaughterhouse-Five graphic novel might be the best one we’ve done. Catch Canavan Fever! There’s no cure.
- How to give the climate story a happy ending: KSR goes on the Fiction Science podcast.
- Trump advisers said their best hope was if the president wins Ohio and Florida is too close to call early in the night, depriving Mr. Biden a swift victory and giving Mr. Trump the room to undermine the validity of uncounted mail-in ballots in the days after. Have a great Election Day, everyone!
- Keep the Pundits Off the Air Until There’s a Winner.
- America is a failing state. And establishment politics can’t solve the crisis.
- A Possible Majority.
- Sanctions and Suppression. A Medium post from the student demonstrator Marquette has singled out for punishment for opposing the budget cuts.
- Meanwhile, OurMarquette has extended its dread reach to Facebook.
- Extremely normal country: Police use pepper-spray on protesters — including children — marching to Alamance polls.
- U.S. detained migrant children for far longer than previously known.
- KSP training slideshow quotes Hitler, advocates ‘ruthless’ violence.
- Absolutely deranged: CDC lifts ban on cruises and paves way for return to sailing.
- White men are doing mostly fine without more economic relief from Washington, but just about everyone else is suffering.
- Scientism, the coronavirus, and the death of the humanities.
- Can a Video Game Express Modernist Values?
- Respectfully disagree.
- Thish ish shuch schad newsh, Pusshy. But maybe not as sad as I first thought.
- Dibs.
- How Long Can Gyms Survive?
- And I’m listening…
The Day After, A Reading List
* What we need to focus on now is the obvious question: what the hell went wrong? What species of cluelessness guided our Democratic leaders as they went about losing what they told us was the most important election of our lifetimes?
* Why did Clinton lose? Blame the National Democrats.
* Wisconsin Election Turnout Near 20-Year Low.
*Everything We Thought We Knew About Politics Was Wrong. The Republic Repeals Itself. The Coming White Identity Politics. President Trump’s First Term.
* Political cartooning at the end of the world.
* From the archives, a key insight about Trump’s rhetoric that Democrats have consistently failed to understand.
* Sarah Kendzior seems to be one of only a few people who have gotten Trumpism right so far.
* A Storify of the things I’ve been tweeting since this morning.
* And/but/so at least we’ve learned something from all this: Obama To Push For TPP In Last Days Of Term.
2010
As hopes for 2010 Democratic landslide seem to fade, Nate Silver says all is not lost.
The Polls
Above is a chart from Chris Bowers by way of Matt Yglesias charting the comparative advantages of Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Al Gore over the course of the campaign season. This is an important charts for Democrats who are about to be confronted with something that has long seemed impossible: not just a victory but what looks to be a blowout. For the last fifty days of election 2004, we were never ahead, according to the polls—we just thought we were, having mystified the polls and made faulty assumptions about turnout and the undecided break.
Obama’s situation is quite different, with a nine-point lead in the final NBC/WSJ poll and between nine and eleven points in Gallup. Those numbers would have McCain underperforming Dukakis, and if you believe in Nate Silver’s cellphone effect, the margin could be even larger. This same movement is reflected in the tracking polls—despite persistent claims that “the polls are narrowing,” there’s no real evidence of this.
And Obama has already locked down good margins in the early vote, to all appearances: over 2.5 million people have already voted in North Carolina, including almost half of the state’s African-American population and 44% of registered Democrats. In Colorado and New Mexico in particular, the margins may already be too great to overcome.
What I’m saying is, though there’s still work to be done, this time I really think we actually win.
Landslide Watch, Georgia Edition
Landslide watch: InsiderAdvantage puts Obama up by a point in Georgia.
Landslide Watch
The Electoral College map is starting to look a lot like my obscene fantasy blowout, with OpenLeft’s most recent presidential forecast looking exactly like it. Obama—perhaps capitalizing on my hoped-for Ron Paul effect—has now taken a four-point lead in Montana, and CNN/Time polls from other swing states continue to look bad from Johnny Mc.
As reported and then strenuously denied earlier in the week, he’s now shifting advertising to Bush states, signaling he’s trying to play defense and possibly just avoid a blowout. Colorado in particular seems to have been abandoned. Pennsylvania remains McCain’s Last Stand, and I remain unconvinced he really has any sort of shot there.
More importantly the circular firing squad in the GOP has begun in earnest, most notably symbolized an NRSC Liddy Dole ad put out today that takes as its premise a McCain loss. Republicans are scrambling to be heirs to the throne: witness JoinRudy2012 and Marc Ambinder’s argument that Sarah Palin is positioning herself to be next in line in 2012.
All I can say to that is “Yes, please.”
We Can’t Really Be This Far Ahead, Can We?
The Quinnipiac and Big 10 Battleground polls have terrible news for McCaniacs. We can’t really be this far ahead, can we? Via Daily Kos.
The highlights:
Florida (Quinnipiac)
Obama 49
McCain 44
Indiana (Big 10)
Obama 51
McCain 41
Ohio (Big 10)
Obama 53
McCain 41
Ohio (Quinnippiac):
Obama 52
McCain 38
Pennsylvania (Big 10)
Obama 52
McCain 41
Pennsylvania (Quinnippiac)
Obama 53
McCain 40
Gerry Canavan 