{"id":5856,"date":"2016-10-13T00:03:47","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T05:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=5856"},"modified":"2016-10-13T00:03:47","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T05:03:47","slug":"poll-sitting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/10\/13\/poll-sitting\/","title":{"rendered":"Poll Sitting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight<\/strong><\/em>, and renowned analyst of polls, gives his analysis<\/a> of the polls since the second Presidential debate:<\/p>\n

We\u2019re spending a lot of time these days<\/a> diagnosing whether Donald Trump\u2019s position in the polls is merely bad or still getting worse. Most of the evidence on Wednesday \u2014 which included the first dusting<\/a> of state polls since the second presidential debate, on Sunday night \u2014 fell into the \u201cstill getting worse\u201d bucket. Trump\u2019s chances are down to 14 percent<\/a> in our polls-only forecast (against an 86 percent chance for Hillary Clinton) and to 17 percent<\/a>, a record low for Trump, in our polls-plus forecast. …<\/p>\n

Trump now trails Clinton by 6.5 percentage points in our popular vote forecast<\/a> \u2014 by comparison, he was 4.6 points back of Clinton a week ago, on Oct. 5, before the videotape or the second debate. So he\u2019s moving in the wrong direction as time is running out. While a Trump comeback is still mathematically feasible \u2014 Trump\u2019s 17 percent chance in the polls-plus model, as we\u2019ve pointed out before, is the same as your chances of losing a \u201cgame\u201d of Russian roulette \u2014 it wouldn\u2019t really have any good precedent<\/a> in recent American presidential elections.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sam Wang of the\u00a0Princeton Election Consortium<\/strong><\/em> has been forecasting a Clinton win<\/a> for quite some time:<\/p>\n

\"clinton_win_probability\"<\/a>
\nYesterday, Hillary Clinton\u2019s PEC win probability hit 95%.<\/p>\n

In last night\u2019s debate, the 2005 candid video of Donald Trump saying what he does with women was still on everyone\u2019s mind. In response, he brought up many topics beloved by Republican rank-and-file voters: Bill Clinton, Benghazi, emails\u2026it was a veritable Greatest Hits of 1996-2016. The likely consequence of this scorched-earth strategy is that Republican leaders are trapped. All their base (R) belong to Trump. This will reverberate downticket.<\/p>\n

This seems like a good time to reveal one of the Princeton Election Consortium\u2019s own secrets. Thankfully, it does not involve an Access Hollywood video.<\/p>\n

Here it is: poll-based Presidential prediction is not very hard.<\/p>\n

I guess that is a pretty boring secret. Sorry.<\/p>\n

It is an interesting irony that poll aggregation got popular in 2008, a year when there was not that much suspense in the Presidential race. That year, Barack Obama led John McCain for almost the entire campaign season, with the possible exception of the week after the Republican Convention, where Sarah Palin stole the show. That ended up with a 7-percentage-point popular win, and an electoral outcome of 365-173.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And if you want some of that winning progressive-style cheerleading, floridageorge on The Daily Kos<\/strong><\/em> provides a roundup of the polls since the second Presidential debate here<\/a>, which follows individual states.<\/p>\n

And what does it mean to Donald Trump? Courtesy<\/a> CNN<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n

With Hillary Clinton extending her lead nationwide and in key battleground states, Trump is toying with what might be called “poll denialism,” giving his supporters license to dismiss the discouraging data.<\/p>\n

“Even the polls are crooked,” he said<\/a> at a Monday night rally, expressing disbelief that he is losing to Clinton in Pennsylvania. “Look, we’re in a rigged system.”<\/p>\n

Trump has only topped Clinton in one scientifically conducted poll in Pennsylvania since it became clear he would be the GOP’s nominee back in April, while Clinton has been in the lead in 18 of them. In the most recent polls, Clinton holds a double-digit lead there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His campaign has already been caught distributing<\/a> a FiveThirtyEight<\/strong><\/em> map showing he’d be winning – if suffragism<\/a> had failed back in 1919. Problem is, they had stripped the context from the map so the donors they were soliciting would think they’re winning.<\/p>\n

If he gets blown out in a landslide, what’s he going to do? Claim every state but Alaska has somehow been corrupted? Or just sell the TV rights to the campaign’s retrospective for a ridiculous sum?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, and renowned analyst of polls, gives his analysis of the polls since the second Presidential debate: We\u2019re spending a lot of time these days diagnosing whether Donald Trump\u2019s position in the polls is merely bad or still getting worse. Most of the evidence on Wednesday \u2014 \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5856"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5860,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5856\/revisions\/5860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}