Yeah, this isn't a BSDI post... I think it's good policy for the US to update what's clearly a voting system that is eroding legitimacy owing to 50 different polities using different methods and processes and timelines to determine Federal elections.
Much of that is a Constitutional artifact; but Congress has limited authority to mandate certain standards; but more importantly, taking what seems to work... let's say VBM in some Western States and Electric counting in FL and providing additional (bi-partisan) funding/standards is the goal here.
It really would be more of a Political Capital project than a one-party 'fixes' the systems sort of thing.
This is veering off topic a bit... but I have an emerging concern that the Polling/Vibes situation is going to cause grief if Harris wins.
Right now the Polling says it's a toss-up; but the 'vibes' are all... [whispers] probably Trump.
If Trump wins, then people go... yeah, I was afraid of that, but whatch'a gonna do?
If Harris wins with Trump vibing? Ugh, worst case scenario.
I don't think there will be a 'coup' ... just all sorts of lawfare and a further erosion of legitimacy. The point isn't that this particular election will be fraudulent, its that we need election processes to be bullet proof from a perception point of view. Having 50 different election processes worked when the 50 states had higher internal trust (very high trust in Chicago, I might add) but like a lot of things that worked one way with lower tech, and a different way with mid-tech, we're falling behind with high-tech. We should invest in the voting process.
I low-key thought Biden should have spent capital on Voting Process Legitimacy efforts -- which would've likely required a concession on Voter ID in exchange for unified agreement on Mail-in voting/counting/processes with restrictions on who can VBM, bans on States discussing early voting demographics, a National holiday for election day, etc. etc. All designed to shore up the *legitimacy* of the process, not the usual slap fights over turn-out suppression real or imagined.
I'm glad that congress spend *some* capital on reforming the Electoral Count Act, so that's something... but now I wish we'd spent more on Congress establishing baseline requirements -- which I believe they can do constitutionally -- for the States to follow.
Finally, I know folks here are very pro-VBM... I'm not against it, entirely, I just have qualms that it works well as trust erodes. Like, it's a high-trust/high-collaboration method of voting. And we're not high-trust/high-collaboration anymore.
To whit, I find it amusing that the DNC is running ads showing Women exchanging knowing glances *at a polling place* and voting for Harris to 'betray' their husbands' expectations; but as I've written here (humorously) VBM was awesome for me and my patriarchy because we all voted together and I know exactly how all four of us (3 women) voted! I now have 6 voters whose ballots come to my house. Big win for the patriarchy! No knowing glances under the stern gaze of the Pater Familias. But we did have cookies and cocoa.
Oh well, water, bridges, milk, spills, eggs, baskets etc.
Basically, a lot (millions?) of people will vote for Harris thinking she's unqualified. Maybe that will be enough.
But I'm not sure that the appeal to historical inevitability is particularly helpful ... we were already treated to the impossibility an early debate exposing Biden; then of replacing Biden, a sitting president; then of Biden the winner of the primaries; then we replaced Biden.
Every bit of this final three months has been a series of we can't do X because it will tear the party apart; then doing X.
I think it's silly to positively vote for Trump.
I don't think it's silly to think Harris isn't qualified.
Some people will vote for Harris thinking she's not qualified.
Some people will simply not vote for Harris thinking she's not qualified.
Not voting for Harris could mean voting for Trump; OR it could mean staying home or maybe voting third party.
I think there are a lot of people voting for Harris who don't think she's qualified...I don't know how many, and I don't know if they live in the right states. Maybe enough, though.
At this point I'm just plain old curious about how the election unfolds.
There's rather more evidence that we'll get more Berlusconi than Mussolini. But I suppose campaigning against Trump as a corrupt Berlusconi comp would've taken too much 'splaining to pull off.
"I have no doubt Kamala Harris is qualified to the do the job"
Honestly, if she loses, I'd point to this being an issue; more people than the rabid partisan fringes hold this in doubt.
I'm not doubting that you've arrived at that conclusion reasonably; I'm just not sure it's as generalizable as one might think... I think she's done rather a poor job of closing the deal on being qualified.
She's running on comparative merit and negative partisanship -- and that might just be enough.
I think it's addressed; at the simplest level if Ukraine is offering a 1 and Russia is offering a 9, then it isn't that neither side would take any deal, its that the deals on offer are too far apart.
Of course, publicly both sides will take maximal positions; we don't have a good idea of where their 'real' positions are... or what additional considerations would be required to accept a territorial number less than a 'preferred' territorial number.
Not only that, but there are considerations that China/US might trade that could impact Russia/Ukraine.
The US can afford to let Ukraine/Russia grind it out; I just don't think Ukraine can.
I'd guess that the primary reason is there's no guaranty that LRM will be used for interdiction and there's a reasonable assumption that Ukraine will use them to broaden the theatre and an understandable recognition that retaliation against (Russian) cities would be 'justified'.
It depends on what Team Biden (State, Intel, Def) think it would do to the conflict and whatever non-public negotiations they are having w/Russia and it's patron.
On the specifics of this or that weapon, I agree that increasing capabilities to make the invasion more and more costly is useful; upto the point of triggering a regional war or an asymmetrical escalation by Russia.
Not privy to any further non-public information than the rest of us have, I can't say what exactly that line should be on any given weapons system... but my sense is that Team Biden is acting under those constraints -- and they aren't unreasonable constraints.
I don't think it's useful to talk about the war in Ukraine in terms of Team Red and Team Blue... I get why people do it during an election cycle, but I'm not seeing good commentary or assessments when done that way.
If we drop 'scoring points' for one team or another, we're left with the primary definition of success. What is success in Ukraine?
Ukrainian Maximal Success
1. Expulsion of *Russians* and Russian Forces from Ukraine, esp. Donbas region (i.e. de-Russification)
2. Expulsion of Russian forces from Ukraine including Crimea
3. Expulsion of Russian forces from Donbas
4. Expulsion of Russian forces from post-2014 borders - status quo ante.
5. Recognition of post-2014 borders
6. Expansion into Luhansk and all SE Ukraine
7. Expansion into Odessa and 'landbridge' to Moldova
8. Domination of a 'rump' Ukrainian polity based in Kiev or maybe Lviv.
9. Annexation of Ukraine.
Russian Maximal Success
In terms of diplomacy, Biden has played a pretty good hand supporting Ukraine... Ukraine has successfully defended against annexation, has held off Russian advances west towards Kiev, but lost territory SE along the coast up to and around Kherson. While inflicting significant casualties to Russians and exposing Russian readiness for operations; and thereby making Russia's invasion costly and unsuccessful of primary objectives. That's a win.
But whither hence?
I think some of the jejune predictions I saw here and various other parts of the internet of smashing Ukrainian offensives leading to Putin's fall and the implosion of post-Soviet Russia (talk about Maximal...) have been tempered for all but the most die-hard Neo-Cons and Lib-Ints.
It would be foolish to cut-off aid to Ukraine; it would be foolish to expand the war; and it is foolish to encourage Ukraine to go on the offensive. It was ok to test Ukrainian offensive options last year in a somewhat optimistic hope that something might 'break'. But that hypothesis has been tested and Ukraine doesn't have the manpower to punch and counterpunch; at best it can maintain an opportunistic reserve to exploit a mistake. And/or maybe the occasional raid. (On the raid... raids can be good; they are best when they know that they are raids and not misinterpreted as strategic manoeuvres).
It is smart to continue to make any Russian movement costly... to keep increasing the costs and even to spread the costs to Russian infrastructure where reasonable.
But realistically, this means we're in a stalemate that Ukraine is going to lose slowly. We can fund that loss so that it is costly for the Russians... and we should do that as long as the Russians won't negotiate. And, war is risky and unpredictable... so maybe something will break Ukraine's way. But the asymmetrical interest in Ukraine means that Russia will outlast everyone but Ukraine. And Ukraine is losing.
The best thing the US can do is emphasize the Ukrainian success in repelling the Russian invasion; pledge continued support, pledge compensation to Ukraine for rebuilding and to offset the inevitable loss of territory, and work with China to negotiate a settlement. Time is not on Ukraine's side. On the chart above; realistically it means a settlement range between 4-6 with 5 being best case and 5.5 most likely (some southern buffer between Kherson and Crimea... ideally including Melitopol east as far as possible, possibly at the expense of land in Luhansk)
Russia claims victory and gets some territorial expansion and official recognition of a 2014+ borders.
Ukraine claims victory for punching the Russian bear and standing its ground; and gets portions of land it no longer controls returned; new international borders; engages is some 'light ethnic and cultural cleansing' in eastern Ukraine - no Russian schools/language/churches; recognizes the Autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church and severs ties with Russian Orthodoxy; builds regional (non-NATO) alliance w/Poland and Baltics that enables western arms sharing and integration. And retools for whatever Russia may plan in the next 10-yrs, and watches like the rest of us what happens when Putin expires.
If we must, this is closer to the Democratic position under Biden -- despite the over-the-top rhetoric of total Ukrainian victory -- than it is to Trump -- despite the over-the-top rhetoric of magically ending the war. The 'problem' is that it is most in our and Ukraine's interest to end the war with some territorial concessions than it is to continue it indefinitely as Russia grinds Ukraine into dust... which means the current rhetoric for both Team Red and Team Blue is wrong for reasons that are easily understood as long as you aren't blindly supporting Team Red or Team Blue at Ukraine's expense.
That's not what flooding the zone is or does, though.
It doesn't impact the people building models.
Flooding the Zone is - by definition - unreliable polling by polling companies that are unreliable or new or obviously biased.
The polls themselves are the zone flooders, and generally don't have credibility to lose.
Among the 'weird' people I mention in the first post is an obsessive fixation on only using 'favorable' polls to their outcome... that's sort of an obverse of flooding the zone -- and another thing that modelers manage when building their models.
... what exactly would you have a modeler bet eating a bug on in a 50/50 prediction?
FWIW, I *don't* think that this kind of modelling will always yield a 50/50 result; it can and will show a candidate winning in a preponderance of scenarios a'la 2016. I'd be curious to see what a historical forecast of 1980 election would have shown using this kind of model. Would you get 99% bug eating forecast? or 85%? or what?
As long as it keeps to that time table, we should be ok -- we should be somewhere south of Cuba by that time. Of course, they're also saying there's a low probability for a tropical storm in the western Caribbean week after next... The Ocean is a fickle...beast.
Good point; that and the simplification of the National Aggregation of who's 'winning' the polls... we have 50 variables that can confound the National Aggregation.
Heh, anyone can build a model -- as far as I can tell all the modelers are working with published data with various flavors of how they do the Data Science on top of the published data. The Data Science is proprietary with various degrees of skirt lifting to show a bit of ankle here or there.
538 (now that it's got it's shit together(?)) has a fun graphic that I assume(?) is regularly updated... as of today, there's a scenario where Harris wins 519 to 19. So... take heart, Saul and Chip... they're sayin' there's a chance.
I think you're trying to make a meta-critique that the published Polls are not measuring voter sentiment correctly? That could be. That's part of the Data Science as well... which includes historical analysis of previous polls by the same company vs. actual results vs. corrections. But that's why the 'Flooding the Zone' nonsense isn't really an issue for the 'serious' modelers because they aren't using those polls and/or are applying adjustments.
Flooding the Zone is a Media play (to get the horserace people to talk about it) not a thing that influences the 'serious' modelers.
I don't think that that's what the people with 'models' vs. simple aggregators are doing.
Modeling is a Data Science project on top of an aggregation project. People are getting mad about the 'modeling' aspect but they are getting mad about the wrong things.
The models aren't predicting the vote percentage of 49.2%, they are saying that the models running multiple cycles show candidate #1 winning 49.2% of the time and therefore candidate #2 winning 50.8% of the time (technically most models are showing ~.2% chance of tie).
The models have, in fact, been on different sides of the 50% divide both among other models and the same model itself at different points of time. A quick google search showed Harris a month ago was favored 58% down to 52% *chance to win* among the modelers. Now the models are even more variable with some showing *Trump* has 51% to win with others showing *Harris* 52% chance to win. Which is why all of them are basically saying the outcome can't be statistically differentiated from 50/50 (with a very small chance of a tie).
What's dumb, IMO, is 'preferring' a model that favors your candidate *as if* it's giving you a better chance to win -- that model has in fact predicted that the OTHER candidate will win in with it's own 'biases' nearly 50% of the time. Sometimes that very model will 'predict' a blow-out win for the candidate who will ultimately lose.
Sometimes the model will even predict the Trumwill 'inside straight' victory for Harris where she loses PA, but wins 7 other toss-up states. This scenario happens for *all* the models... Therefore, if Trumwill is correct, it will have been predicted even by a model that says Trump had a 51% chance to win.
In the end, one candidate will win and vindicate 50% a certain sort of person's assumptions about the models.
The 'weird' thing about the poll wars, at least to me, is the obvious desire for confirmation that your preferred candidate is going to win.
And the 'weirder' thing about this cycle vs. 2016 is that calling the election a statistical dead heat has driven that sort of poll watcher completely mad.
And the 'weirdest' thing of all is that 50% of those sorts of persons will be 100% validated in their unhinged understanding of what polling models do.
I could only see a preview clip, not the full episode, but Cass is an interesting figure to follow; he's deceptively clever and people underestimate his positions and ability to speak on them.
Ultimately, I don't think he's the 'future' of the Republican Party because he's just one guy (ok I think now 4 or 5) at a think tank... but I do think some future right of center faction will pick up his work. And, by and large, that would be a better correction to the Libertarian / Tech-bro right economics that I think we're going to see come after (and in some form during) Trump.
p.s. the small clip isn't a great clip since it's mostly Stewart saying that Trump doesn't follow Cass's policies -- which, yes, but that's not why you have Cass on your show.
On “What If Kamala Wins?”
Yeah, this isn't a BSDI post... I think it's good policy for the US to update what's clearly a voting system that is eroding legitimacy owing to 50 different polities using different methods and processes and timelines to determine Federal elections.
Much of that is a Constitutional artifact; but Congress has limited authority to mandate certain standards; but more importantly, taking what seems to work... let's say VBM in some Western States and Electric counting in FL and providing additional (bi-partisan) funding/standards is the goal here.
It really would be more of a Political Capital project than a one-party 'fixes' the systems sort of thing.
Regarding husbands... unpossible.
"
This is veering off topic a bit... but I have an emerging concern that the Polling/Vibes situation is going to cause grief if Harris wins.
Right now the Polling says it's a toss-up; but the 'vibes' are all... [whispers] probably Trump.
If Trump wins, then people go... yeah, I was afraid of that, but whatch'a gonna do?
If Harris wins with Trump vibing? Ugh, worst case scenario.
I don't think there will be a 'coup' ... just all sorts of lawfare and a further erosion of legitimacy. The point isn't that this particular election will be fraudulent, its that we need election processes to be bullet proof from a perception point of view. Having 50 different election processes worked when the 50 states had higher internal trust (very high trust in Chicago, I might add) but like a lot of things that worked one way with lower tech, and a different way with mid-tech, we're falling behind with high-tech. We should invest in the voting process.
I low-key thought Biden should have spent capital on Voting Process Legitimacy efforts -- which would've likely required a concession on Voter ID in exchange for unified agreement on Mail-in voting/counting/processes with restrictions on who can VBM, bans on States discussing early voting demographics, a National holiday for election day, etc. etc. All designed to shore up the *legitimacy* of the process, not the usual slap fights over turn-out suppression real or imagined.
I'm glad that congress spend *some* capital on reforming the Electoral Count Act, so that's something... but now I wish we'd spent more on Congress establishing baseline requirements -- which I believe they can do constitutionally -- for the States to follow.
Finally, I know folks here are very pro-VBM... I'm not against it, entirely, I just have qualms that it works well as trust erodes. Like, it's a high-trust/high-collaboration method of voting. And we're not high-trust/high-collaboration anymore.
To whit, I find it amusing that the DNC is running ads showing Women exchanging knowing glances *at a polling place* and voting for Harris to 'betray' their husbands' expectations; but as I've written here (humorously) VBM was awesome for me and my patriarchy because we all voted together and I know exactly how all four of us (3 women) voted! I now have 6 voters whose ballots come to my house. Big win for the patriarchy! No knowing glances under the stern gaze of the Pater Familias. But we did have cookies and cocoa.
Oh well, water, bridges, milk, spills, eggs, baskets etc.
On “The Way Through is Donald Trump for President”
Or Greenland... try to lower the asking price.
On “How Times Have Changed”
Bears fan here. Ugh.
Then I saw the social media clip of Stevenson and what seemed like merely poor execution and bad luck got even worse.
On “What If Trump Wins?”
I've already covered this in my response.
Basically, a lot (millions?) of people will vote for Harris thinking she's unqualified. Maybe that will be enough.
But I'm not sure that the appeal to historical inevitability is particularly helpful ... we were already treated to the impossibility an early debate exposing Biden; then of replacing Biden, a sitting president; then of Biden the winner of the primaries; then we replaced Biden.
Every bit of this final three months has been a series of we can't do X because it will tear the party apart; then doing X.
"
Heh, dozens of us are perplexed.
"
I think it's silly to positively vote for Trump.
I don't think it's silly to think Harris isn't qualified.
Some people will vote for Harris thinking she's not qualified.
Some people will simply not vote for Harris thinking she's not qualified.
Not voting for Harris could mean voting for Trump; OR it could mean staying home or maybe voting third party.
I think there are a lot of people voting for Harris who don't think she's qualified...I don't know how many, and I don't know if they live in the right states. Maybe enough, though.
At this point I'm just plain old curious about how the election unfolds.
"
There's rather more evidence that we'll get more Berlusconi than Mussolini. But I suppose campaigning against Trump as a corrupt Berlusconi comp would've taken too much 'splaining to pull off.
"
"I have no doubt Kamala Harris is qualified to the do the job"
Honestly, if she loses, I'd point to this being an issue; more people than the rabid partisan fringes hold this in doubt.
I'm not doubting that you've arrived at that conclusion reasonably; I'm just not sure it's as generalizable as one might think... I think she's done rather a poor job of closing the deal on being qualified.
She's running on comparative merit and negative partisanship -- and that might just be enough.
"
In the end, the wolf eats the boy's sheep.
On “Ukraine and the Axis of Evil”
I think it's addressed; at the simplest level if Ukraine is offering a 1 and Russia is offering a 9, then it isn't that neither side would take any deal, its that the deals on offer are too far apart.
Of course, publicly both sides will take maximal positions; we don't have a good idea of where their 'real' positions are... or what additional considerations would be required to accept a territorial number less than a 'preferred' territorial number.
Not only that, but there are considerations that China/US might trade that could impact Russia/Ukraine.
The US can afford to let Ukraine/Russia grind it out; I just don't think Ukraine can.
"
I'd guess that the primary reason is there's no guaranty that LRM will be used for interdiction and there's a reasonable assumption that Ukraine will use them to broaden the theatre and an understandable recognition that retaliation against (Russian) cities would be 'justified'.
It depends on what Team Biden (State, Intel, Def) think it would do to the conflict and whatever non-public negotiations they are having w/Russia and it's patron.
On the specifics of this or that weapon, I agree that increasing capabilities to make the invasion more and more costly is useful; upto the point of triggering a regional war or an asymmetrical escalation by Russia.
Not privy to any further non-public information than the rest of us have, I can't say what exactly that line should be on any given weapons system... but my sense is that Team Biden is acting under those constraints -- and they aren't unreasonable constraints.
"
I don't think it's useful to talk about the war in Ukraine in terms of Team Red and Team Blue... I get why people do it during an election cycle, but I'm not seeing good commentary or assessments when done that way.
If we drop 'scoring points' for one team or another, we're left with the primary definition of success. What is success in Ukraine?
Ukrainian Maximal Success
1. Expulsion of *Russians* and Russian Forces from Ukraine, esp. Donbas region (i.e. de-Russification)
2. Expulsion of Russian forces from Ukraine including Crimea
3. Expulsion of Russian forces from Donbas
4. Expulsion of Russian forces from post-2014 borders - status quo ante.
5. Recognition of post-2014 borders
6. Expansion into Luhansk and all SE Ukraine
7. Expansion into Odessa and 'landbridge' to Moldova
8. Domination of a 'rump' Ukrainian polity based in Kiev or maybe Lviv.
9. Annexation of Ukraine.
Russian Maximal Success
In terms of diplomacy, Biden has played a pretty good hand supporting Ukraine... Ukraine has successfully defended against annexation, has held off Russian advances west towards Kiev, but lost territory SE along the coast up to and around Kherson. While inflicting significant casualties to Russians and exposing Russian readiness for operations; and thereby making Russia's invasion costly and unsuccessful of primary objectives. That's a win.
But whither hence?
I think some of the jejune predictions I saw here and various other parts of the internet of smashing Ukrainian offensives leading to Putin's fall and the implosion of post-Soviet Russia (talk about Maximal...) have been tempered for all but the most die-hard Neo-Cons and Lib-Ints.
It would be foolish to cut-off aid to Ukraine; it would be foolish to expand the war; and it is foolish to encourage Ukraine to go on the offensive. It was ok to test Ukrainian offensive options last year in a somewhat optimistic hope that something might 'break'. But that hypothesis has been tested and Ukraine doesn't have the manpower to punch and counterpunch; at best it can maintain an opportunistic reserve to exploit a mistake. And/or maybe the occasional raid. (On the raid... raids can be good; they are best when they know that they are raids and not misinterpreted as strategic manoeuvres).
It is smart to continue to make any Russian movement costly... to keep increasing the costs and even to spread the costs to Russian infrastructure where reasonable.
But realistically, this means we're in a stalemate that Ukraine is going to lose slowly. We can fund that loss so that it is costly for the Russians... and we should do that as long as the Russians won't negotiate. And, war is risky and unpredictable... so maybe something will break Ukraine's way. But the asymmetrical interest in Ukraine means that Russia will outlast everyone but Ukraine. And Ukraine is losing.
The best thing the US can do is emphasize the Ukrainian success in repelling the Russian invasion; pledge continued support, pledge compensation to Ukraine for rebuilding and to offset the inevitable loss of territory, and work with China to negotiate a settlement. Time is not on Ukraine's side. On the chart above; realistically it means a settlement range between 4-6 with 5 being best case and 5.5 most likely (some southern buffer between Kherson and Crimea... ideally including Melitopol east as far as possible, possibly at the expense of land in Luhansk)
Russia claims victory and gets some territorial expansion and official recognition of a 2014+ borders.
Ukraine claims victory for punching the Russian bear and standing its ground; and gets portions of land it no longer controls returned; new international borders; engages is some 'light ethnic and cultural cleansing' in eastern Ukraine - no Russian schools/language/churches; recognizes the Autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church and severs ties with Russian Orthodoxy; builds regional (non-NATO) alliance w/Poland and Baltics that enables western arms sharing and integration. And retools for whatever Russia may plan in the next 10-yrs, and watches like the rest of us what happens when Putin expires.
If we must, this is closer to the Democratic position under Biden -- despite the over-the-top rhetoric of total Ukrainian victory -- than it is to Trump -- despite the over-the-top rhetoric of magically ending the war. The 'problem' is that it is most in our and Ukraine's interest to end the war with some territorial concessions than it is to continue it indefinitely as Russia grinds Ukraine into dust... which means the current rhetoric for both Team Red and Team Blue is wrong for reasons that are easily understood as long as you aren't blindly supporting Team Red or Team Blue at Ukraine's expense.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/21/2024”
I have steel targets on my property; we'll practice with pistols with special frangible rounds at close range (~10 paces).
We'll sight in for hunting at 100 yds.
Would be terrified to shoot an AR-15 at less than 100yds at a steel target.
https://sssfonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Steel-Resource-Guide-Ltr.pdf
On “Campaign Scratchpad: Known Unknowns”
That's not what flooding the zone is or does, though.
It doesn't impact the people building models.
Flooding the Zone is - by definition - unreliable polling by polling companies that are unreliable or new or obviously biased.
The polls themselves are the zone flooders, and generally don't have credibility to lose.
Among the 'weird' people I mention in the first post is an obsessive fixation on only using 'favorable' polls to their outcome... that's sort of an obverse of flooding the zone -- and another thing that modelers manage when building their models.
... what exactly would you have a modeler bet eating a bug on in a 50/50 prediction?
FWIW, I *don't* think that this kind of modelling will always yield a 50/50 result; it can and will show a candidate winning in a preponderance of scenarios a'la 2016. I'd be curious to see what a historical forecast of 1980 election would have shown using this kind of model. Would you get 99% bug eating forecast? or 85%? or what?
"
As long as it keeps to that time table, we should be ok -- we should be somewhere south of Cuba by that time. Of course, they're also saying there's a low probability for a tropical storm in the western Caribbean week after next... The Ocean is a fickle...beast.
"
Good point; that and the simplification of the National Aggregation of who's 'winning' the polls... we have 50 variables that can confound the National Aggregation.
"
Heh, anyone can build a model -- as far as I can tell all the modelers are working with published data with various flavors of how they do the Data Science on top of the published data. The Data Science is proprietary with various degrees of skirt lifting to show a bit of ankle here or there.
538 (now that it's got it's shit together(?)) has a fun graphic that I assume(?) is regularly updated... as of today, there's a scenario where Harris wins 519 to 19. So... take heart, Saul and Chip... they're sayin' there's a chance.
I think you're trying to make a meta-critique that the published Polls are not measuring voter sentiment correctly? That could be. That's part of the Data Science as well... which includes historical analysis of previous polls by the same company vs. actual results vs. corrections. But that's why the 'Flooding the Zone' nonsense isn't really an issue for the 'serious' modelers because they aren't using those polls and/or are applying adjustments.
Flooding the Zone is a Media play (to get the horserace people to talk about it) not a thing that influences the 'serious' modelers.
"
I'd probably rather not do Caribbean at this point in my life... but for various reasons simplicity of travel was a factor. So I get the sentiment.
"
I don't think that that's what the people with 'models' vs. simple aggregators are doing.
Modeling is a Data Science project on top of an aggregation project. People are getting mad about the 'modeling' aspect but they are getting mad about the wrong things.
The models aren't predicting the vote percentage of 49.2%, they are saying that the models running multiple cycles show candidate #1 winning 49.2% of the time and therefore candidate #2 winning 50.8% of the time (technically most models are showing ~.2% chance of tie).
The models have, in fact, been on different sides of the 50% divide both among other models and the same model itself at different points of time. A quick google search showed Harris a month ago was favored 58% down to 52% *chance to win* among the modelers. Now the models are even more variable with some showing *Trump* has 51% to win with others showing *Harris* 52% chance to win. Which is why all of them are basically saying the outcome can't be statistically differentiated from 50/50 (with a very small chance of a tie).
What's dumb, IMO, is 'preferring' a model that favors your candidate *as if* it's giving you a better chance to win -- that model has in fact predicted that the OTHER candidate will win in with it's own 'biases' nearly 50% of the time. Sometimes that very model will 'predict' a blow-out win for the candidate who will ultimately lose.
Sometimes the model will even predict the Trumwill 'inside straight' victory for Harris where she loses PA, but wins 7 other toss-up states. This scenario happens for *all* the models... Therefore, if Trumwill is correct, it will have been predicted even by a model that says Trump had a 51% chance to win.
In the end, one candidate will win and vindicate 50% a certain sort of person's assumptions about the models.
Or do you mean something else?
"
The 'weird' thing about the poll wars, at least to me, is the obvious desire for confirmation that your preferred candidate is going to win.
And the 'weirder' thing about this cycle vs. 2016 is that calling the election a statistical dead heat has driven that sort of poll watcher completely mad.
And the 'weirdest' thing of all is that 50% of those sorts of persons will be 100% validated in their unhinged understanding of what polling models do.
On “The Election’s Home Stretch”
I could only see a preview clip, not the full episode, but Cass is an interesting figure to follow; he's deceptively clever and people underestimate his positions and ability to speak on them.
Ultimately, I don't think he's the 'future' of the Republican Party because he's just one guy (ok I think now 4 or 5) at a think tank... but I do think some future right of center faction will pick up his work. And, by and large, that would be a better correction to the Libertarian / Tech-bro right economics that I think we're going to see come after (and in some form during) Trump.
p.s. the small clip isn't a great clip since it's mostly Stewart saying that Trump doesn't follow Cass's policies -- which, yes, but that's not why you have Cass on your show.
On “Campaign Scratchpad: Known Unknowns”
Dang, unless things go wildly astray, we'll be in the Caribbean.
"
"I’m going to be on a cruise on election day"
Hey, we are too! I'll bring my OT monocle so you can recognize me if we're on the same ship.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Thinkin’ ’bout Numbers”
April, August, December, Eleven, February and so on.