GoblinCampFollower
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2018
- Messages
- 3,333
- SL Rez
- 2007
Yes, it's razor thin... Trump could win within the margin of error. I consider that razor thin. Hillary was supposed to have almost a 2/3rds chance of winning and still lost. So yes, I say the current polls are showing a very very thin margin...Is it "razor thin," though? Polls generally come with a health warning that they are 95% confident that the results for each candidate are accurate to within 3% either way. So a poll that shows Harris at 50.5% and Trump at 49.5% (or vice versa) could, in fact, mean that Harris is at 53% and Trump at 47% (or vice versa), or anywhere in between. Furthermore, as I understand it, despite this 95% confidence, historically polls reflect the actual vote, within the stated margins of error, only about 60% of the time, not 95%, and that's only counting polls conducted in the last month before polling day.
All we know is that neither candidate is likely to win by a landslide.
Yet again,
Hidden Margins of Error OR the Fallible Uncertainty of Nate Silver
A lot of very smart people are trying to get polling right. Here's why they might still be wrong. Plus: I offer my foolhardy prediction for the winner of the US presidential election.substack.com
Evernote Link
Question: Do people think that Biden's remark will have a greater or a lesser effect on the outcome of the election than wll the weather on election day in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania? If so, why?
MY HOPE is that some pollsters are overcorrecting for what went wrong in 2016. Many Trumpers might be very loud when a pollster calls them so they might be slightly over estimating the Trump vote. Meanwhile there are people like me who won't answer polls but are voting Harris.
Probably not... but that's not the point. Harris is predicted to win by such a tiny margin that all kinds of things could fuck it up. Every small thing counts.Question: Do people think that Biden's remark will have a greater or a lesser effect on the outcome of the election than wll the weather on election day in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania? If so, why?
I agree. Harris has been great.... but as I said to Innula, the polls are close enough so that I worry about every minor detail.It's more painful for Democrats to see Biden make an unforced error that makes everyone cringe. Harris has run a flawless campaign and this incident just drives home that Biden could not have done as well. It will not change any minds, it will not throw the election.