Per this NYT article, there was a 2.7% swing from a Trump ad on the topic:
About a week after the September debate, Mr. Trump started spending heavily on a television ad that hammered Ms. Harris for her position on a seemingly obscure topic: the use of taxpayer funds to fund surgeries for transgender inmates. “Every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access,” Ms. Harris said in a 2019 clip used in the ad.
It was a big bet: Mr. Trump was leading on the two most salient issues in the race — the economy and immigration — yet here he was, intentionally changing the subject.
But the ad, with its vivid tagline — “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you” — broke through in Mr. Trump’s testing to an extent that stunned some of his aides.
So they poured still more money into the ads, running them during football games, which prompted Charlamagne Tha God, the host of the Breakfast Club, a popular show among Black listeners, to express exasperation — and his on-air complaints gave the Trump team fodder for yet another commercial. The Charlamagne ad ranked as one of the Trump team’s most effective 30-second spots, according to an analysis by Future Forward, Ms. Harris’s leading super PAC. It shifted the race 2.7 percentage points in Mr. Trump’s favor after viewers watched it.
Fracking was a PA-specific gambit. Re immigration, did she actually say she would do anything different than before or did she just tweak her messaging? Here's a quote from September: “I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose either between securing our border and creating a system that is orderly, safe and humane,” Harris said. “We can and we must do both.” Doesn't read as a denial of an old position to me, just the typical "all good stuff and no bad stuff!" rhetoric. But I certainly don't have encyclopedic knowledge of all her statements, so feel free to post cases where she specifically said she was moving away from something she had said/done.
Even more than this, she didn't even actually try to make the trek -- she never even offered an example of something that she advocated in 2020 that she no longer believed. In terms of policy, she didn't run to the center, or anywhere definite at all -- she just tried to hover vaguely across the whole space, turn down the "Trump is a fascist!!" volume and hope that enough people would decide that was good enough.
Wow, the needle has been going steadily redder since you posted this. I was too chicken to make a prediction but I was mostly buying the last-minute Harris vibes -- not looking that way at the moment.
Yeah i had to go to the other town district's voting location, but for me it wasn't much less convenient than the usual spot. I'll be curious to see the numbers for our town specifically -- word of mouth from today's voters is no one yet has seen a line longer than 4 people.
In my state, a third of registered voters took advantage of early voting. I've heard from a few people who ran out this morning, and they all said it was amazingly uncrowded. Might be a different situation in your neck of the woods, but I don't think the election day polling station vibes are as reliable this year as they were in the past.
I see what he's trying to say here but I don't think it's a fair statement if the polls are being manipulated -- the whole point of doing polls is that we don't actually know what the right answer is, and a manipulated poll is definitionally not a measurement and so doesn't really have any amount of "accuracy" as a characteristic.
It's like if I have a stopped clock, and based on the last time I looked at my watch I figure it's about 10:30, so I put the hands to say that, and then I say "my clock is accurate" -- in fact my clock is not providing any new information at all, so "accuracy" doesn't enter into it.
I don't play often enough to feel like playing the probabilities will win out in the long run, so I prefer to abstractly calculate them rather than put real money on them.
The funny thing is that most people actually can understand at least the basics of uncertainty and probabilities in poker or sports, but that all goes out the window with election polling.
This guy's experience is mine across all these social media platforms:
"My random Substack is just a never ending back and forth of democrat and republican voters wishcasting some twisted bit of data or another to loudly claim certainty for an election that is a coin flip. The human mind just cannot handle uncertainty it literally breaks it apart. And it’s easy for people to do because no one ever pays any price for being wrong, but when they are right they can crow about it.
“HEADS!”
comes up tails
“HEADS!”
comes up heads
“I TOLD YOU ALL SO!”
Trump has pocket nines and Harris has suited AK. Just gonna have to sweat it out."
I've seen several pollsters say that just because the win probabilities are close doesn't mean the results will be -- if the misses are all in the same direction, it could still be a substantial margin, especially in the EC.
Yep this definitely looks like a “heat maps look cool!” decision rather than a “this best presents the data” decision. And hey, maybe having it look cool better serves Nature’s interests.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Ain’t It a Grand and Glorious Feeling?”
You should train an AI to select an appropriate one each day based on the topics we’ve been discussing.
"
So you’re expecting us to believe this was just a random accident? How gullible do you think we are??
On “Trumped”
Per this NYT article, there was a 2.7% swing from a Trump ad on the topic:
"
Fracking was a PA-specific gambit. Re immigration, did she actually say she would do anything different than before or did she just tweak her messaging? Here's a quote from September: “I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose either between securing our border and creating a system that is orderly, safe and humane,” Harris said. “We can and we must do both.” Doesn't read as a denial of an old position to me, just the typical "all good stuff and no bad stuff!" rhetoric. But I certainly don't have encyclopedic knowledge of all her statements, so feel free to post cases where she specifically said she was moving away from something she had said/done.
"
Even more than this, she didn't even actually try to make the trek -- she never even offered an example of something that she advocated in 2020 that she no longer believed. In terms of policy, she didn't run to the center, or anywhere definite at all -- she just tried to hover vaguely across the whole space, turn down the "Trump is a fascist!!" volume and hope that enough people would decide that was good enough.
On “2024 Election Day Live Stream, Reaction, Open Thread”
made a little cocktail of a couple ounces bourbon with some Aperol and triplesec, and it's having a noticeable effect.
"
Needle now "Likely Trump", not just 'Lean" -- but other sites I've checked aren't hinting one way or the other yet.
"
Oh yeah - wow, that's pretty dramatic.
"
Wow, the needle has been going steadily redder since you posted this. I was too chicken to make a prediction but I was mostly buying the last-minute Harris vibes -- not looking that way at the moment.
On “The Joy Of Opening Time Capsules: The Night Before the 2024 Presidential Election”
Yeah i had to go to the other town district's voting location, but for me it wasn't much less convenient than the usual spot. I'll be curious to see the numbers for our town specifically -- word of mouth from today's voters is no one yet has seen a line longer than 4 people.
"
So would you say that the bedwetter caucus was actually right?
"
In my state, a third of registered voters took advantage of early voting. I've heard from a few people who ran out this morning, and they all said it was amazingly uncrowded. Might be a different situation in your neck of the woods, but I don't think the election day polling station vibes are as reliable this year as they were in the past.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/28/2024”
"herding may make individual polls more accurate"
I see what he's trying to say here but I don't think it's a fair statement if the polls are being manipulated -- the whole point of doing polls is that we don't actually know what the right answer is, and a manipulated poll is definitionally not a measurement and so doesn't really have any amount of "accuracy" as a characteristic.
It's like if I have a stopped clock, and based on the last time I looked at my watch I figure it's about 10:30, so I put the hands to say that, and then I say "my clock is accurate" -- in fact my clock is not providing any new information at all, so "accuracy" doesn't enter into it.
"
It's pretty sad that people's inability to understand poll results leads directly to polls purposely being made useless.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/21/2024”
Sounds like a fun new game idea. I hear with AI you can go from concept to delivery in a matter of days now.
"
Illustrative comic.
"
I don't play often enough to feel like playing the probabilities will win out in the long run, so I prefer to abstractly calculate them rather than put real money on them.
The funny thing is that most people actually can understand at least the basics of uncertainty and probabilities in poker or sports, but that all goes out the window with election polling.
"
This guy's experience is mine across all these social media platforms:
"My random Substack is just a never ending back and forth of democrat and republican voters wishcasting some twisted bit of data or another to loudly claim certainty for an election that is a coin flip. The human mind just cannot handle uncertainty it literally breaks it apart. And it’s easy for people to do because no one ever pays any price for being wrong, but when they are right they can crow about it.
“HEADS!”
comes up tails
“HEADS!”
comes up heads
“I TOLD YOU ALL SO!”
Trump has pocket nines and Harris has suited AK. Just gonna have to sweat it out."
On “What If Trump Wins?”
I've seen several pollsters say that just because the win probabilities are close doesn't mean the results will be -- if the misses are all in the same direction, it could still be a substantial margin, especially in the EC.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/21/2024”
Ben Dreyfuss has a suggestion for Harris -- might be too late now though.
"
Yeah that's a click-baity title. "Immigration lawyer *tried to help* too many people" would have been more accurate, but also more dog-bites-man.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/14/2024”
I suspect if you had run this post by the Harris campaign folks, they would’ve said “are you nuts?? Don’t you know who the undecided voters are?”
On “Weekend Plans Post: Thinkin’ ’bout Numbers”
A side benefit of the standard Major.Minor.Patch convention is that the second decimal point prevents the whole value from being treated as numeric.
On “Why a Trump Loss is Best for Conservatives”
Hah, I didn't even notice that -- but I'm happy to retroactively take the credit.
"
Yep this definitely looks like a “heat maps look cool!” decision rather than a “this best presents the data” decision. And hey, maybe having it look cool better serves Nature’s interests.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.