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Home » So, what about those polls?

So, what about those polls?

The New Neo Posted on by

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:

Comments

So, what about those polls? — 11 Comments

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  5. 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?

  6. 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…

  7. 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.

  8. 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:

    …Out of Milwaukee’s 324 wards, 160 reported more than 100% turnout relative to 2020, with more than two dozen reporting 200% turnout and four reporting at least 400% turnout (again relative to 2020). Milwaukee Ward 254 reported 600% of its 2020 turnout, despite Harris underperforming with Black voters across the country. And here’s how turnout looked in parts of the Oak Creek neighborhood…

    and…

    …Yesterday, we shared a clip from CNN with a map showing that Harris had not improved on Biden’s margin in a single county across the United States. That turned out to be slightly too good to be true; as we later learned from a Community Note on X, CNN anchor John King had pressed the wrong button on a display. But only slightly too good. As columnist Phil Kerpen observed on X, as of the vote counting on Thursday morning, Trump had improved on his 2020 vote share in 49 states and the District of Columbia, including double-digit improvements in California, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland. The only state where he did worse was Washington, which moved to the Democrats by 0.3%.

  9. Continued…

    …But considering the rhetoric that emerged from the Democratic camp in the run-up to the election—the expectation-setting about days of vote-counting, the “prebunking” of Trump’s claims to victory, and the seeding of bullshit stories of historic urban turnout—we should at least consider the possibility that there was a plan in place to “fortify” a second consecutive election—and that what prevented that outcome was a Trump victory so early and so decisive that the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.

    [Emphasis mine; Barry M.]

  10. 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.

  11. Oops. Should be:
    “…Meanwhile, the destruction of the U.K. by the Democratic Party’s friends THERE continues at a rapid pace…

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