• Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Okay. And here’s a PA specific trend line. And just so you don’t think I’m cherry picking, here’s NYT and The Hill.

    Polling isn’t great for minutia but these trend lines are consistent with modern losses. The only thing I’m aware of that could drastically change this now is some focus groups saying they would stay home and not vote for Trump; or vote for RFK instead if Trump is sentenced to prison. That was supposed to be a known factor now but it got pushed to after the convention and after the ballots are locked. Are we really going to hang this election on one judge doing the right thing? or are we going to do what we have to in order to actually fight?

    • mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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      2 months ago

      Yeah, polling is garbage in general but using it to see relative change is actually like the one thing that it’s good for.

      So, your assertion is that Biden is slipping lower and lower and lower in the polls the more he does. You picked the one state where he’s slipped the most, to make that point. If I did the opposite, I could pick North Carolina, and say that gaining 1.7 points since before he did his press conference means he’s killing it, and that press conference restored the confidence of the voters.

      Probably a fairly accurate metric – since you’re going to ignore, for reasons which will be obvious to anyone who knows what the national polls show, the national polls – could be to add up all the swing states and see how things have changed.

      In the last week, Biden’s gained an average of 0.56 points in all the swing states. If you saying him losing 0.4 points in PA since the press conference means he’s losing ground, then I have demonstrated that zooming out to a non-cherry-picked-to-the-single-worst-state view shows the exact opposite happening.

      Similarly, in the last month, Biden’s lost an average of 0.8 percentage points in all the swing states averaged together. You could write an article about how even in the face of an objectively catastrophic debate performance, less than 1% of the voters abandoned him, pointing to the resilience of his support because most of the voters (unlike the media) are smart enough to realize that one bad debate doesn’t all of a sudden mean that etc etc you get the idea. Oh, also, that means he’s been gaining ground back since the debate, after dipping lower than 0.8 points initially, which kind of makes sense since the debate was such a horrifying fuck-up.

      See? Primary sources are fun. That’s all based on the Nate Silver chart of all swing states that you sent me.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I chose PA because it’s the one state we really need to win. Without PA we basically need everything on offer and a tough pick up like GA. And the national polling is a great topline, but it doesn’t predict the Electoral college very well.

        And this isn’t just about the press conference. It’s about the debate, the spin afterwards, and the press conference. None of that has managed to bring his numbers back. And Nate Silver’s actual prediction, (which I’m not sure if the page will show without a subscription) is bad for democrats. If you want to go with his analysis we should already have switched to Harris.

        • mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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          2 months ago

          If you want to go with his analysis we should already have switched to Harris.

          Oh! If you’re saying that switching to Harris would be a good idea, that would be a totally logical and honestly not really that crazy thing that we could have talked about.

          Some guy was coming in here talking about how every time Biden opens his mouth, his poll numbers get worse, and just kind of emphasizing this wild counterfactual in service of creating a narrative that didn’t exist. I was talking with that guy. If you see him, tell him I looked at the polls you sent me and he’s wrong.