For the first time since 538 published our presidential election forecast for Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, Trump has taken the lead (if a very small one) over Harris. As of 3 p.m. Eastern on Oct. 18, our model gives Trump a 52-in-100 chance of winning the majority of Electoral College votes. The model gives Harris a 48-in-100 chance.

    • surge_1@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      It’s because right-wing pollsters are flooding the landscape with fudged polls. They’re literally all liars, why do we trust their polling methodologies. Seems to me they’re just setting up for the eventual loss so they can point to this polling during the Steal 2.0.

        • AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today
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          18 days ago

          Nate Silver IS a right winger, though, so I don’t believe anything on his site, and I especially don’t believe him on this topic. Even if he wasn’t outright a right winger, polls do not matter and are frequently incorrect for various reasons.

          Plus, he’s no longer affiliated with 538.

          • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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            18 days ago

            Calling Silver a right winger is more than a bit silly. He’s not as far left as some but damn, to call hin right wing, that’s just some kind of ridiculous.

            And no, he’s not affiliated with 538 but he is explaining how polling aggregation, which 538 and others do, works.

            • AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today
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              18 days ago

              Again, even if he isn’t an outright right winger, that’s fine. I’m willing to back off on that. But polls do not matter, and in fact the only thing they seem to do is reduce turnout. I really don’t care about Nate’s thoughts, and never have since 2016. I think a lot of people stopped trusting polls and definitely stopped trusting him back then.

              • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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                18 days ago

                All they do is predict the future.

                Here’s 538 going over the 2020 predictions (in a historically difficult polling year):

                Even in a year when the polls were mediocre to poor, our forecasts largely identified the right outcomes. They correctly identified the winners of the presidency (Joe Biden), the U.S. Senate (Democrats, after the Georgia runoffs) and the U.S. House (Democrats, although by a narrower-than-expected margin). They were also largely accurate in identifying the winners in individual states and races, identifying the outcome correctly in 48 of 50 presidential states (we also missed the 2nd Congressional District in Maine), 32 of 35 Senate races1 and 417 of 435 House races.

                • AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today
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                  18 days ago

                  They sure didn’t get 2016 right, which is what I referenced and what caused distrust. Just because they got 2020 right doesn’t mean they’ll get 2024 correct. It’s meaningless and only serves to make people feel like they don’t have to turn out. They definitely don’t just “predict the future”.

                  Also, I’m not sure if quoting the very pollsters that got 2016 wrong will make people trust them now. It’s certainly not working for me.

                  • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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                    18 days ago

                    Goodness gracious.

                    In 2016, 538 argued trump had a 1/4 chance of winning. And the thing about 1/4 changes is that they happen every so often, about, oh. 1/4 times.

                    And meanwhile, if you actually read what I quoted, you’ll note how astoundingly accurate they were in 2020.

                    And if you or anyone else is dumb enough to see “trump has a 51% chance of winning” and that somehow makes you not want to vote, damn, how many tries does it take you to put your shoes on the correct feet? Three?