No matter what Nate says and how many times you link his website, polls do not matter.

ETA: maybe, just maybe, you’re being downvoted because you keep linking the same article from the same pollster to defend polling.

They’re already getting ready with the same excuses they used for Hillary. If Kamala loses, it definitely can’t be a result of the fact that Dems seem to actively despise the left.

I was a big Bernie fan :( you make some great points though. The big problem I see is it’s not just a difference of ideology, you literally have one candidate calling himself a day 1 dictator and shitting on poor and brown people and women, and the other not doing that. How can you go for ketchup steak Hitler? I guess if the Old Testament gives you a boner for all the slaves and genocide and stuff, then that’s your answer.

I don’t think you’re entirely wrong there. I think you describe the human condition in a lot of ways. I’ve felt for a long time the biggest problems are socioeconomic and classist rather than purely political- and those issues are only indirectly addressed by the currently political spectrum (at best).

My reading of Nate Silver’s article suggests that the OC (original commenter’s) comment is right though. Quote from the article:

the movement could just be random variation in the polls — if Harris really is ahead nationally by 3 points and in the Blue Wall states by about 1 point we’d expect her to have better and worse weeks that vary around that average.

Sounds like phantom momentum to me. And Nate also agrees with the part about there being Republican bias in the polls,

First, are polls from Republican-aligned firms more favorable to Trump this cycle? Yes, … Harris is ahead by 3.0 points nationally in this simple average. But when you look at only Republican-aligned firms, she’s up by only 2.0 points. Removing those polls from the average brings Harris up to a 3.4 point national lead. These aren’t huge differences, but they’re not nothing. Combined with a similar pattern in state-level averages, polls from Republican-leaning firms could push polling averages — and by extension forecasts — rightward.

This last sentence is important so I’ll repeat it,

Combined with a similar pattern in state-level averages, polls from Republican-leaning firms could push polling averages — and by extension forecasts — rightward.

Of course Nate believes, as you state, that he’s able to account for it by adjusting for the house effects and such. Which would overcome the flood.

He then seems to go on and justify that his house effects are accurate by comparing with pollsters whose averages are excluding Republican polls (thus avoiding the bias completely) and saying that he winds up with the same result as them.

However, it’s really interesting to note that most of the polling averages he compares with don’t include as many GOP polls.

In fact it’s Nate’s own average that is the lowest in favor of Harris. In fact I think 538 is the only other one that does even include those GOP polls.

And somehow these are the ones that show the GOP candidate with a lead.

In fact, VoteHub - the one using only high quality nonpartisan polls - actually has Harris winning the Electoral College currently., 270 vs 268: https://polls.votehub.com/

Electoral College average
Harris 270, Trump 268
National Average
Harris +2.3
Tipping Point (MI)
Harris +0.1
Electoral College Bias
R +2.2

Now Nate can easily justify this as a tiny difference within the margin of error. And he’s be right, of course. But I feel that this shows, even after all the hard and brilliant work by Nate and folks, the flooding by the GOP polls seem to be off by just enough to push things over the edge. Ignore them for more accurate data, and the picture looks different.

I’ve seen the reports. I highly doubt any of the arm chair statisticians (who have never taken a day of mathematical or proof-level stats) have a clue what they are talking about. The polls’ histories and lean are factored into 538’s averages. They are not new to this.

And how many polls are left leaning? The graph posted a couple of days ago on midwest claims 35% are right leaning, and a correlation with the drop in support for Harris. What it doesn’t say is the proportion of democratic polls, and there really isn’t a correlation over the length of history shown.

Hard to make informed decisions when half the information is hidden. (But arm chair statisticians don’t recognize the issue do they?)

Bingo!

Ehhhhhh, yes they are putting out more polls but all reputable polling aggregators, including 538, account for them and their biases.

You can read about it here:

https://www.natesilver.net/p/are-republican-pollsters-flooding

This article is pure silliness but extrapolating from it.to say all polls are useless is to miss even the point of the article!

Yes, national polls aren’t particularly helpful because of the electoral college. Which means state level polling is what matters. And polls 6 months out, are not helpful. This is why no polling aggregator is still including them.

Meanwhile, in reality, the polling aggregators pretty much called every 2022 midterm race. In 2020, 538 “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.”

I think you’ll find the same number of people saying that polls are meaningless and to just vote in any of these “poll says” threads.