So, what about those polls?
I finally gave up on ascribing any meaning to the polls this election cycle. The only thing they seemed to be saying with any consistency was that the race was balanced on a razor’s edge, but that even that could be wrong and either candidate actually could win decisively.
Well, thanks a lot; that’s very helpful.
But before I gave up on polls altogether, I noticed that a pollster for Rasmussen named Mark Mitchell, who frequently put out videos on YouTube, was saying something very different, and he was consistent too. He was saying (1) Trump would win not only the Electoral College but the popular vote as well, and (2) the other pollsters who said it was close weren’t just mistaken, they were lying.
I watched him for several weeks and he kept saying the same thing. But I finally stopped watching because I had no way to know if he was correct or way off, and I didn’t want to give myself false hope.
Well, now he gets bragging rights, big time:
So although it’s true that most pollsters were wrong – Mark Mitchell says purposely so, in what amounted to a psyop designed to bring in more money to Harris from donors and to keep her voters from becoming apathetic – they weren’t all wrong.
And take a look at this graphic:
Related:
“Polymarket Vindicated After Trump Landslide As France Moves To Ban Betting Platform“—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/polymarket-vindicated-after-trump-landslide-france-moves-ban-betting-platform
+ Bonus:
“Opinion | Donald Trump is going to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Here are three reasons why”—
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2024/11/07/i-predicted-donald-trumps-win-heres-why-so-many-got-it-wrong/
H/T Blazingcatfur blog.
The Obama/“Biden” master plan of fomenting divisiveness, division and despair at every level—racial, judicial, social, family, education, economic, energy, military, medical, scientific, international relations ALONG WITH the Media’s enthusiastic collusion with this poisonous and destructive strategy continues to bear its toxic fruit, accelerated exponentially to insane levels by the election results.
Gosh! Who’da thunk it?
“The Women’s Wave Fell Short For Kamala Harris. What Happened?“—
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2024/11/07/the-womens-wave-fell-short-for-kamala-harris-what-happened/
H/T Blazingcatfur blog.
In spite of all the animus and hysteria, it’s now up to the sane, the optimistic, the hopeful and the energetic, encouraged by new leaders—and, one hopes, a chastened media—to start to turn things around.
The problem is that without unpacking the methodology of each poll and somehow deciding which was the correct one, all we have is hindsight to say which poll “got it right”. And because we’re using hindsight we have no way to know if that same poll will be right next time, even if nothing else changes.
Imagine if I put 100 people in a room and asked them to call a fair coin flip. 99% of the time, somewhere between 37 and 63 people call it correctly. I dismiss the ones who didn’t, they are bad coin callers.
I take my remaining 37 to 63 people and ask them to call another one. Somewhere between 11 and 42 get it right. I dismiss the remainder, clearly they did not know what they were doing.
I take my remaining 11 to 42 people and ask them to call another one. Somewhere between 1 and 29 get it right. They get to stay. What’s their secret for calling these coin flips?
If I do this 5 times I get somewhere between 0 and 8 people who correctly called all five. But there’s still not strong evidence these guys are somehow psychic. It is exactly what is predicted by a 50/50 coin toss assuming that people guess randomly.
If I flip long enough they will eventually all fail, though some may keep getting it right a surprising number of times–there’s a 9% chance that at least 1 of those 100 people will call ten in a row. That’s even assuming nothing changes.
That guy who gets 10 in a row may have told you he uses the same method every time, he may even have said every time it’s coming up heads, but there’s still no better than 50% that he’ll be right on the next one.
Pollster who nailed AGAIN! Richard Baris (Peoples’ Pundit I think?)explains how and why pollsters gave propaganda results. 8m
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfCvZjByzcw
I keep seeing the map showing that Harris did not outperform Biden in any county in the country. I think everyone is reading that wrong. Of course she didn’t outperform him–they added 15 million votes to his total in 2020 that have magically just disappeared this time. Subtract those 15 million votes from the obvious places where those ballots somehow don’t exist this time around, and you might have some counties here and there where she did outperform Biden. Gosh, it’s hard to understand why 15 million apparent Democrat voters didn’t vote this time, even though they were told the opponent was another Hitler….mystifying, isn’t it?
DBrooks, yes. Your explanation is SIMPLY brilliant!
(To be sure, the Democratic Party’s decision to “fortify” an Old White Guy but NOT for a word-salad-spouting Woman of Color smacks of RACISM and SEXISM (and anti-vegetarianism) is obvious evidence that the Democrats are both racist and sexist.
As such, all those outraged maniacs tearing their hair out because of Trump’s ascendancy really ought to redirect their anger, angst and ire…
The only thing they seemed to be saying with any consistency was that the race was balanced on a razor’s edge…
Well, you know what they say; if it ain’t close, they can’t cheat.
Important article (H/T Powerline blog):
“Nov. 7: Did Obama Have a Plan?:
“The Big Story”—
https://thedailyscroll.substack.com/p/nov-7-did-obama-have-a-plan
…wherein we learn:
and…
Continued…
[Emphasis mine; Barry M.]
Related…
“ After Trump’s Massive Victory, Why Should We Bother Listening to Pollsters Again?
“One leading political scientist admitted “We’re too Democratic” as pollsters again underestimated support among working-class voters”—
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/after-trumps-massive-victory-why-should-we-bother-listening-to-pollsters-again/
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party’s friends in the U.K. continues at a rapid pace:
“ The UK Government’s Thoughtcrime Division;
“ Britain’s Home Office has worked with the College of Policing to criminalise private thoughts and conversations.”—
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/analysis/the-uk-governments-thoughtcrime-division/
“UK’s National Weather and Climate Service Caught “Inventing” Data”—
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/uks-national-weather-and-climate-service-caught-inventing-data/
The just CANNOT stop themselves from lying blatantly…. None of them.
Oops. Should be:
“…Meanwhile, the destruction of the U.K. by the Democratic Party’s friends THERE continues at a rapid pace…
@ Barry > links to “Nov. 7: Did Obama Have a Plan?:”
An excellent post from The Scroll, and the short pieces that follow the main feature have some fascinating insights into “what went wrong in the Harris campaign.”
IOW, RTWT
About those polls —
https://notthebee.com/article/the-election-betting-market-polymarket-takes-a-victory-lap-for-being-more-accurate-than-the-polls
Some more explanations of what went wrong (embrace the power of “and” for the Harris campaign).
https://notthebee.com/article/kamala-campaign-had-1-billion-just-12-weeks-ago-they-finished-20-million-in-debt
Who needs polls when you can have baby hippos?
https://notthebee.com/article/stop-the-count-moo-deng-picks-donald-trump-to-win-the-election
“The adorable animal chose a watermelon with the local spelling of Donald Trump carved into the surface over the fruit adorned with the name of Kamala Harris.”
If you didn’t learn in 2016 that polls were a psy-ops you hopefully learned the lesson again.
And it’s as obvious as day 2020 should have been Trump’s victory.
This is from Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt yesterday but still relevant to that ’20 million missing votes’ garbage
“ADDENDUM: If you see that “there are 20 million missing voters” meme or argument going around, keep in mind that a bunch of the western states take an unforgivably long time to count the vote, and if they weren’t safe Democratic states, this would be a much bigger issue. As of this writing, Thursday morning, California has just 60 percent of the vote counted. There will probably be around 6 or 7 million more votes to be counted, and I’d expect a roughly 60–40 split in favor of Harris. Oregon has only 78 percent of the vote counted, and Washington State has just 71 percent of the vote counted. Arizona has just 70 percent of the vote counted, Colorado has 81 percent, Mississippi has 81 percent, New Jersey has 91 percent, Maryland has 82 percent, and Maine has 93 percent. So the total votes will increase, and either come closer to the 2020 vote total or perhaps even surpass it.”
Let’s shut this down right now before it becomes the “Going to release the Kraken!” for 2024. Once it’s debunked (and it will be by Thanksgiving) it’s going to be used to obscure *real* vote fraud like the stuff that Barry Meslin noted above.
On the topic of publicly available polling, I think 2024 shows that it’s not methodology or the inability to reach Trump voters. The manipulation is deliberate. Nate Silver went on a rant about a week ago on the virtual impossibility of the number of polls that showed almost identical results in the swing states and nationally (https://www.natesilver.net/p/theres-more-herding-in-swing-state) and all within the margin of error. Then you had the case of that Iowa Poll dropping with Harris suddenly shooting to a +3 lead while on the same day Emerson released a poll with Trump +10. His actual margin in Iowa will be around +13.
Christopher B is correct about the vote totals. In 2020 it was around 155 million votes. This time it will end up at around 150 million, but that’s out of a voter pool that’s probably 10 million larger than in 2020.
That doesn’t make the 2020 count legitimate. I could speculate there were around 10 million fake votes in 2020, and probably millions in this election too. The differences are, first, that the Republicans were more prepared and were able to prevent some fraud, and, second, that there was much more of a gap between Trump and Harris, too much to overcome.
So it would be a mistake to think that fraud isn’t still a big problem, and that the Democrats won’t keep trying to take advantage of mail-in voting, vote harvesting, and other trickery. We really need to get back to in-person voting on election day, and to require ID.
The UK (continued)…is in deep, deep doodoo.
(They’re not alone in this, certainly—Trudeau, for example, is trying his hardest to sink Canada—but the UK may not be able to extricate itself from this race to the bottom for some time, given the recent election’s dismal, and perhaps fatal, results.)
“The Biggest Transatlantic Loser from Trump’s Election: Britain’s Labour Government“—
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/biggest-transatlantic-loser-trumps-election-britains-labour-government
Been reading articles about how the Dems were blown out of the water.
But the actual numbers tell a slightly different story.
(Yes, I realize that it is the Electoral Vote count that really matters and that went big time for Trump).
About 136.6 million votes were cast, of which Trump got about 70.66 million and the Cackler got about 66 million votes.
The actual vote differential was about 4.67 million votes in Trump’s favor.
Trump got 50.9% of the vote and the Cackler got 47.6% of the vote.
I would hesitate to label a win margin of 3.3% as a blow out.
Maybe a “win margin” of, say, 10% or more could be considered a blow out, but not 3.3%.
The Cackler got 66 million votes; a candidate with ZERO accomplishments – ZERO !! – and one who could not (as opposed to refused) elucidate where she stood on any issue nor could she cite one thing – just ONE – that she would have done differently than Biden over the last 4 years (not even the border mess ??)
And the republicans had better not get too arrogant. In two years there will be elections for ALL 435 house seats for 33 senate seats.
Been reading about the death of the main stream media and how they are becoming irrelevant.
Really?
The NY Times, CNN, etc., have been “dying” for the last 10 to 15 years and they never die.
And they won’t.
The liberal progressives and their propaganda arms will simply double down and ramp up their Trump is a Nazi, a Hitler, a Putin/ Russian stooge, etc.
Liberal progressives never, ever give up; they are a metastasized cancer that keep popping up. They have been doing this since the days of Woodrow Wilson, FDR and barry HUSSEIN ocommie.
Trump and the Republicans had better show real results once they get into office or otherwise they will lose congressional seats in 2026 and Trump will be neutralized .
Bill O’Reilly opined that if Michelle Obama had been the candidate, she would easily have prevailed.
IMHO he is probably correct, but this is not encouraging at all.
After all what has she ever accomplished? What qualifications or experience does she bring to the table? Yet, she would have a very very good chance of being elected president.
The USA is literally one presidential election away from a real disaster. When “actors” playing the role of an accomplished, qualified, experienced candidate have a good chance of becoming president, well………. see Venezuela
More on that “Biden”-UK nexus, a PERVERSE, “Through the Looking Glass” incarnation—temporary, one hopes—of the “Special Relationship”:
https://instapundit.com/683043/
And for some optimistic “balance”…
“Alex Soros Shocked That the Incumbent Political Order Is Being Crushed Around The Globe“—
Here’s the link to the above:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/alex-soros-shocked-incumbent-political-order-being-crushed-around-globe
Anytime a Soros is “crushed” is fabulous news.
their lips were moving, hence they were lying,
Michelle was the same sort of America hating entitled apparatchik, I think her popularity was overrated,
what she was going to win over white suburban women, or latinos, or black men, or the amish,american indians, her bubble is of the dyson sphere variety, at the kerfuffle over puerto rico flipped the state red,
it was a guerilla campaign,asymmetrical warfare of the sort, Sun Tzu would probably agree
I think the circumstances played big into the deal,
again I posit this was a simulacrum of a campaign not a real one,
An anonymous French trader has made an estimated $48 million betting on Trump at Polymarket.
The French trader, who calls himself Théo, suspected that the polls were skewed towards Harris, primarily due to the “shy Trump voter effect.”
After analyzing the polls, and concluding that they were defective, Théo commisioned his own polls, which accounted for shy Trump voters by asking them how they thought their neighbors would vote. It turned out that Trump voters would readily admit that their neighbors supported Trump, even though they were reluctant to reveal their own preference. Théo was thus able to indirectly obtain much more accurate data for the upcoming election. That data showed overwhelming support for Trump, and Théo bet accordingly.
Bits and pieces of this story have now been widely reported. Here’s a link to one example:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/how-trump-whale-theo-made-48-million-neighbor-effect/482539
Agreed the missing voters graph is too stark to reflect reality. Sort of.
Still, there’s a big difference between earlier elections, about whose “issues” less has been said.
Precincts with a much higher turnout than previously might be suspicious, once you account for additional population, and put your suspicion meter at maybe 75% over the last POTUS election. People weren’t sitting around yawning that time, either.
And precincts with turnouts exceeding their number of registered voters are so obviously a problem that nobody even bothers with them.
The republican strike teams at the local level prevented a number of shenanigan–Bucks County and their curtailed voting lines, so forth. And I suspect their mere existence caused local officials to (I”m being charitable here) pay more attention to the legalities.
Was it Tarrant County where the machines printed “Harris” when the button for “Trump” was pushed? If you need, which they didn’t have, signs telling voters to check their ballots to see if the machine is trying to screw them, there’s a problem. But some folks got on top of that. This time.
I agree with what John Tyler said on November 8, 2024, at 9:17 am.
This was a solid win, but not a blowout and not a Red Wave. The resistance is already gearing up. Enjoy the moment but realize that there will be much more to do. We’ve won a battle. Many more remain to be fought.
Hey Chris B–
Yes, there are outstanding votes.
Not twenty million–but maybe you should do the math.
You’ll see there is till going to be a eight-ten million vote shortage 2024 /excess in 2020.
He “won” by 43,000 votes in five states.
Easily folded in to that nine million ghost votes.
Trump won due to two things–HUGE GOTV effort by NON RNC entities (Charlie Kirk’s TurningPoint being one; Scott Presler’s impressive PA efforts another) which due to a Marc Elias law suit, can now be legally coordinated with the RNC, AND getting rid of Ronna McDonnell, replacing her with Lara Trump and Michael Whatley, thus having pollwatchers and lawyers EVERYWHERE–and addressing every single complaint of fraud immediately and forcefully.
TOO BIG TO RIG–
and
They Only Win If They Cheat. (and they couldn’t)
Good job, Patriots!
“win” versus “blowout”. I’d submit that a republican winning the electoral college portion of the election without also winning the national numbers is possible and, iirc, has happened,
And the reverse, losing the EC portion while, at least theoretically, getting the popular vote is possible. That would require some unlikelihoods piled one atop another. But constitutionally possible.
Getting both is a Big Deal. To win the popular vote, you need unprecedented numbers in blue or blue-is areas, and very strong GOTV in red areas. I would suggest the former is fodder for, at least, discussion. The origin as well as the numbers. The same, of course, for various demographics. If a republican won due to massive straight, male turnout and other sectors remained the same (maybe theoretically possible), that would mean a lot less going forward.
However, that’s not what happened. Some blue went from prussian blue to robins egg blue, and some demographics cut loose from the commanded vote. And of those groups, if things improve for them, the change in hue and independent thinking may be permanent.
So, relative numbers notwithstanding, this could be called a blowout.
Getting both [popular vote and Electoral College] is a Big Deal.
–Richard Aubrey
It wasn’t a Nixon or Reagan blow-out, but it is a Big Deal. Especially the popular vote.
That’s why our cities aren’t burning at the moment.
Democrats didn’t expect the Orange Hitler to win the EC and popular vote. Now they don’t know what to do.
@ huxley > “Democrats didn’t expect the Orange Hitler to win the EC and popular vote. Now they don’t know what to do.”
Agreed.
The rationale for riots would have been that Trump didn’t win the popular vote so clearly his victory was illegitimate and Russia, Russia, Russia.
The PV win undercut all their excuses.
@ Skip > “And it’s as obvious as day 2020 should have been Trump’s victory.”
https://babylonbee.com/news/4d-chess-democrats-admit-trump-actually-won-in-2020-and-is-now-unable-to-serve-third-term
I’m amused by ads saying a product can produce a numerical result of “up to X or greater,” which pretty much covers the waterfront. Similarly, it’s hard to be proved wrong on a prediction that either side might win, and it might be by either a large margin or small. Thanks, experts!
@ John Tyler– Perhaps “voted for Harris” has a bit of inaccuracy to it. Not that it is your fault. If one were to factor out all the votes that landed on Harris were votes “against Trump” we might know how many actually voted *for* Harris. The against Trump crowd doesn’t need to know about Harris’ “accomplishments” or proposed policies to vote against Trump.
I’m going to stick this link here and on the 11/08 open thread.
I can’t speak to the author’s citation of the resurgence of the band Creed, but he’s spot on with the rest of his evidence.
https://thefederalist.com/2024/11/08/culture-did-a-way-better-job-of-signaling-trumps-win-than-broken-polls/
Agree with Miguel that Michelle is overrated. She’s popular so long as people don’t see much of her.
Keeping in mind one might do well betting against my intuition, back at the end of September I was pretty sure Trump would win going away. I watched Mark Helperin and Rasmussen Reports. Both said campaign internals showed Kamala’s bounce wasn’t real. Both predicted pollsters would show the race tightening as the election got closer.
Kari Lake is wicked smart. She’s a tiny thing, and men do not fear her. But when she turns that steely glare at women, they break out in cold sweats. She does not suffer fools. And the McCainiacs have not forgotten her insult. Make her press secretary. Or get her some diplomatic experience and make her ambassador to the UN.