I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE BOTTOM IS • US presidential elections part VIII

Where the bottom is.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-clinton-landslide-would-look-like/

Catherine Martinez, New Jersey state director for the Trump campaign, did not return a call to her cell phone or a Twitter message.

Martinez was paid just over $10,000 by the Trump campaign on May 31, but did not receive any payments in June (aside from a travel reimbursement).

Two other staffers were also paid within a few days of the June 7 primary.

Spencer Silverman, a Franklin & Marshall student who served as an intern for Chris Christie until March, but now lists himself as the New Jersey field director for the Trump campaign, according to his LinkedIn page, was paid just over $5,000 on June 8.

Leonel Cantiolo, who also lists himself as the campaign's New Jersey field director, was paid $3,261 on June 10. Neither received additional payments in June. Spending data for July is not yet available.

gf's little niece (also 9 i think?) said she was for trump the other day but not cuz of parents -- just because she's a kid and trump is the crazy one. gf was immediately like YOU KNOW WHAT BEING FOR TRUMP MEANS RIGHT?

― le Histoire du Edgy Miley (difficult listening hour),

smug fucking liberals imo

I saw a guy in a Trump t-shirt in downtown SF this morning. that was a first.

Out on the road today I saw a Trump/Pence sticker a cadillac

lil voice inside your head said bring Bush back
bring Bush back

there is more presence for Gary Johnson lately than Trump in this area - doesn't really make me feel a lot better. there was a Gary Johnson 'rally' at the local brewery which was just 5-6 people acting smug while sipping craft beer and dressed in preppy suits and talking about 401ks and bullshit

Bill Kristol: well, yeah

xp

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2013-12/enhanced/webdr01/9/12/anigif_enhanced-buzz-29279-1386611777-21.gif

I saw a guy in a Trump t-shirt in downtown SF this morning. that was a first.

They're around but minimal. Closest I saw to a full-throated endorsement in the Bay Area in general was months back -- some dude in his late 20s driving a pickup south of San Jose on the freeway with the obligatory bumper sticker. Both he and the vehicle looked dishevelled.

there was a Gary Johnson 'rally' at the local brewery

I am a fan of local breweries in general, but they are definitely hubs of hipster libertarianism.

guys I posted a Bill Kristol gif can we stare at it

hypnotic wattle

I've only seen one Trump shirt so far, on a tourist inside National Museum of American History. I'm out on the National Mall all the time, where there are throngs of bussed-in tourists and I expected to encounter at least one of the iconic hats.

I've only seen a couple Trump bumper stickers. Have seen more cars that still have Romney/Ryan stickers on back from 4 years ago.

(Attenborough voice) Notice how the mature male billkristol uses his neck pouch to perform a mating display, even in the absence of female billkristols. (/Attenborough voice)

xpost I thought that was a turkey in mating season?

I guess he is sort of a turkey in mating season, if you think about it.

The male turkey enacts this exotic display to attract a mate, but should non appear to his liking, he will stubbornly continue this futile mating dance for the next four years, hoping time will bring someone more to his tastes.

roflz

i saw a faded kerry/edwards sticker on someone's bumper a few weeks ago

man i see those all the time #lolbluedistrict

guys I posted a Bill Kristol gif can we stare at it

i haven't done anything else for 15 minutes

i saw a mcgovern/shriver sticker on a bumper a few weeks ago!

wanted to excoriate the driver for abandoning eagleton

Scott Adams, of course, thinks the "Obama founded ISIS" comment is all-time brilliant:

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/148844611656/the-greatest-cognitive-dissonance-trap-of-all-time

I wonder what this dude's limit is. "Hillary did 9/11?" "Well, it made you think about it, didn't it??"

As recently as 2009 there were still Perot '96 stickers on lamp posts in the town I was living in

there are Spiro T Agnew stickers at the local library but you have to steam them in order for the letters to appear

the national polls seem to be tightening as expected after the convention, close enough that we may even see one or two outliers in which trump leads. important thing to remember: this is not a national race, which is why 538, PW, etc. are all remaining confident in their forecasts.

p.s 538 sucks

There's a Carson sticker on a car in my neighborhood. Not sure if it's a campy joke or sincere.

Also I have a high school friend with a Mondale/Ferraro sticker on his Prius. Unfortunately he undercuts whatever value it might have by constantly pointing it out to people, like hey, do you realize I have a genuine vintage Mondale/Ferraro sticker and like I totes put it on a modern car? Aren't I just the most high larious member of the Wacky Club that you ever did see?

(Of course that's the implicit message of like 65% of all bumper stickers anyway, so.)

538 is really bad this year it's true xp

Also I have a high school friend with a Mondale/Ferraro sticker on his Prius. Unfortunately he undercuts whatever value it might have by constantly pointing it out to people, like hey, do you realize I have a genuine vintage Mondale/Ferraro sticker and like I totes put it on a modern car? Aren't I just the most high larious member of the Wacky Club that you ever did see?

idk what's sadder: this sticker or a Dole sticker. Do those exist? I gotta imagine they've gotta be worth a few hundred bucks in mint condition.

I don't really look at 538 much beyond their general polling updates and that one time I played with their state-map-tool thing - why are ppl so down on them this cycle?

Volatile modeling and dumb articles. The podcast has been not terrible but not amazing either.

I trust Steve Kornacki more tbh

Princeton Election Consortium win probability increased to 74% random drift, 86% Bayesian for Hildawg today

1) the nowcast is so bad it's professionally negligent
2) https://twitter.com/FiveThirtyEight/status/763717850238480384 <- answer, you built a bad model
3) all the non nate silver pundity is awful

Their prediction models are pretty good but it's tough to account for one candidate basically not trying

until the election it's impossible to say definitively if their predictions are "good" but one of the basic requirements is they shouldn't swing all over the place in response to individual polls

they were also the only people that had trump in the lead during the RNC, during which they went mysteriously quiet and stopped talking about updates to the models, because they clearly didn't believe them

right, and their models were supposed to have the convention bump built in so it was a huge fuck-up. i think they tried to explain it by saying that it was trending towards trump before the conventions so i guess the model forgot about the convention bump and just assumed any more movement towards trump was legitimate.

I have a Mondale/Ferarro bumper sticker somewhere (unstuck).

one of my neighbors has a quiet little Gary Johnson sticker on his car.

and they don't write about burritos anymore

I don't understand the nowcast criticism - for the '538 experience' there's no reason to look at anything but the Polls-Plus model, which has been fairly steady

The problem with the nowcast is that it's irresponsible to have it on the website at all

Only if people looking at it are too dumb to read all the disclaimers about how all the nowcast means is that the latest polls would lead to X and that it's irrelevant.

the nowcast is not a prediction about an event that is going to take place. it's not like the other two. it's a diagnostic tool that is next to impossible to interpret for anyone except NS. it shouldn't be up there. it's up there for obvious reasons though.

if the disclaimers say "don't use this" (which they should), then maybe just don't put it up there. interpreting probabilistic predictions is a hard enough task for their audience without bullshit like that.

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 8h8 hours ago
I love watching these poor, pathetic people (pundits) on television working so hard and so seriously to try and figure me out. They can't!

puttering pundbobs of patheticity

my main criteria in choosing who to vote for is "does this person love watching things they hold in contempt on television?"