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

If, after two years, he moves on and lets some other firm take over the lease, it will be a nice "with a whimper" button on this shitty adventure

From Nate Silver's Twitter today:

"In USC/LATimes poll, Trump supporters' likelihood of voting has fallen a bunch over past week. His "rigged" message may depress his turnout."

Not to fixate on this, but doesn't the now-cast at least have some historical value, giving a good idea of how the election progressed over the summer? When we look back at the way Bush came back in '88, or at Truman-Dewey, those polls have historical value. But they also had the limitations of their day--Truman/Dewey, I assume, was Gallup only, and Bush/Dukakis polling, even if it wasn't a single poll, was probably an average of a few polls only. (Don't know how widespread polling was in '88.) 538 is drawing from numerous polls, and also weighting them for reliability and currency. So when you look at their now-cast line graph through the summer, won't that be an accurate illustration 20 years from now of how this election progressed?

SUre, but that would also be true of the "polls-only" graph over time, and that doesn't involve the seductive/misleading "if the election were held today" angle.

Will be interesting/revealing whether any Republicans join the too-little-too-late repudiation of Trump over the "rigged" stuff specifically - IMHO it's as dangerous and fascistic as anything else he's said, and even more up the alley of the party that's supposed to be obsessed with the Constitution and the smooth functioning of our heroic one-of-a-kind republic etc.

(xpost) But the way I understand it, the polls-only doesn't track the election day-to-day; it's tracking what would happen in November based on day-to-day polling. In other words, the now-cast for today tells us what would happen if the election literally were held today; the polls-only tells us what will happen Nov. 8 based on all the polls to date and based on historical polling trends (i.e., the way the gap inevitably narrows as the election gets closer). And, of the two, it's the now-cast that is aligned with the polling done in 1988 and 1948, it's just a better--much more input--version.

Am I misunderstanding? I could be!

From what I remember of 1988, Bush came back after the GOP convention and never lost his lead again (Steve Kornacki mentioned it too, I think).

it was all over after he bent over to shake Dukakis's hand

clemenza: No, that's correct... I guess I just mean that they might as well just call it "unadjusted non-predictive poll-averager" and get the same "track the polls across the campaign" kinda deal, like the graphs at RCP. That might take away some of the annoyance but basically if you make a whole career out of saying "it doesn't make sense to talk about what would happen if the election were held today, the polls grow more meaningful with time, how they're behaving versus longer trends is more interesting than where they are right this second" then to have any tool that slaps up "where they are right this second" is kinda dumb. Maybe if it were just kinda shuffled off by itself or with another group of "fun toys" rather than put right alongside the predictive ones. I dunno, it's just lame is all.

Polls only and Polls plus seems a little like bet-hedging to a degree too.

Differences between polls-only and now-cast

The now-cast is basically the polls-only model, except that we lie to our computer and tell it the election is today.
As a result, the now-cast is very aggressive. It’s much more confident than polls-plus or polls-only; it weights recent polls more heavily and is more aggressive in calculating a trend line.
There could be some big differences around the conventions. The polls-only and polls-plus models discount polls taken just after the conventions, whereas the now-cast will work to quickly capture the convention bounce.

the only model of theirs i trust this season, considering the weird lack of historical precedent for this year, their failure to capture the republican side of the primaries, etc, is the polls-only.

That's right about '88: the big lead that Dukakis (supposedly) held was gone by the time the conventions were over. As I posted a few days ago, Guiliani was on CNN last week pretending that Dukakis still had an eight-point lead in September (and that therefore Trump's collapse means nothing historically).

What Silver really needs is some kind of Crazy Stuff Trump Has Yet to Say adjustment built into all three models.

I got PEC on my phone with StatX. Sweeeeet

Wang actually was critical of 538's methodology in a recent article.

re: bet-hedging, yes it is.

https://twitter.com/DavMicRot/status/762338039855255552

for those worried NDAs will affect the post election autopsy journalism, worry not http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/us/politics/donald-trump-campaign-gop.html?_r=0&referer=

"He broods about his souring relationship with the news media, calling Mr. Manafort several times a day to talk about specific stories. Occasionally, Mr. Trump blows off steam in bursts of boyish exuberance: At the end of a fund-raiser on Long Island last week, he playfully buzzed the crowd twice with his helicopter."

I don't know which of these two sentences is better.

lol

https://twitter.com/JTSantucci/status/764240592482205696

when i see trump signs in my hometown the effect is sorta lynchian. not sure if this would be true of any other candidate

There will probably be a few Harry Dean Stanton write-in votes

At the end of a fund-raiser on Long Island last week, he playfully buzzed the crowd twice with his helicopter.

does nobody remember Randy Rhoads?

i remember lonesome

Like son, like father.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/12/1559583/-Pat-Buchanan-says-if-Trump-loses-it-means-American-democracy-is-fraudulent-and-rotten?detail=facebook

Pierson at it again: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-afghanistan-trump_us_57af33d8e4b007c36e4ef660?

massive eyerolls at the Tucker Carlsons of the world critiquing the "anti-Trump media bias".

"The media that helped gain Trump the nomination through endless free press coverage excessively focuses on the completely incorrect shit he says - they should not be focusing on these things so much out of fairness!"

Rich LOLwry takes that line too.

I like that the general public wants to take the media to task for actually deciding not to give every candidate's statement equal weight at least when it comes to outright distortion.

"so it was wrong! let the people decide it was wrong! who are you to dictate what is right and wrong? Pierson says we weren't Afghanistan, and she has the right to her opinion on that!"

this is the shittiest multiplatform viral horror-themed reality show i've ever watched

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MubunsD-7g

http://www.mediaite.com/online/katrina-pierson-attributes-false-afghanistan-comment-to-audio-disruptions-and-echoes/

we heard echoes; that's all she's willing to say

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CpyMGucWEAAWI76.jpg:large

That sounds like an actual con artist routine. Acting hurt, instilling guilt...

cheers

I'll never speak to you again.

tantalizing

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/trump-connecticut-why-is-he-campaigning-there-226959

lol

https://twitter.com/marieberd/status/764650930759278592

“He can go have lunch in Connecticut and be home for supper,

riddle solved

Hillary should tell him to go get his fuckin shinebox at the first debate

Efforts still underway to get rid of Trump.

RNC Operative #1: Think Donald tells his wife everything?
RNC Operative #2: He's a nut job. He talks to everybody. He's always acting like a jerk. Nobody listens to what he says. Nobody cares what he says, he talks so much.

Speaking of which:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/donald-trump-compared-to-mentally-unstable-character-from-taxi-driver-by-robert-de-niro-a7189226.html

Rupert Pupkin, I can definitely see; Travis, no.

Agree.

Pupkin was quite likeable, though

A side effect, but I am worried that one of the effects of the race is the mainstreaming of the conspiracy theory mindset: this is the big 'cache' of 'ammo' for Donald Trump supporters on Reddit - terrible thinking all over the place.

https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4xlrtu/the_stump_cheat_sheet_updated_version_20/

Trump is campaigning like he has no concept of the electoral college and thinks it's all about the total national vote. "Ok, pull over the bus, here are a couple more voters. Ooh, let's land the plane in Connecticut, I know a couple of people we can get. What's our tally at?" Maybe that explains why he's obsessed with the size of the crowds, or convinced he should win in places like PA. It's confirmation bias. All he knows is concrete numbers, and the only concrete information he seems aware of is what's in front of his face at any given moment.

If it's any comfort, I don't think a Reddit zone for Trump enthusiasts counts as mainstream, though more generally I agree this is a problem.

Sure, the problem may be more that it's the breeding ground for more respectable sources - Sean Hannity's been banging on the "Hillary's Health" button for a while now, and based on nothing more than the bullshit listed on that link.

read some speculation (twitter, ymmv) that trump is campaigning in places like connecticut because he's not campaigning to win the election, he's campaigning for list building purposes so he can rent/sell the mailing lists after the election for $$$. probably also paying family/friends/close associates lots of $$$ for campaign work and such - sort of like the ben carson scampaign where he raised a lot of money yet spent so much in the fundraising process.. all these fundraisers made a lot of money and very little went to promote the candidate

like this http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/tea-party-pacs-ideas-death-214164

What was left of the Tea Party split for a while between Trump and, while he was still in the race, Ted Cruz, who was backed by Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots. In 2014, the Tea Party Patriots group spent just 10 percent of the $14.4 million it collected actually supporting candidates, with the rest going to consultants and vendors and Martin’s hefty salary of $15,000 per month; in all, she makes an estimated $450,000 a year from her Tea Party-related ventures.

The popularity of the "voter fraud" and "DNC staffer murdered: Clinton connection?" conspiracies among Bernie or Busters as well as right wing fringe is definitely troubling. I do think that has filtered into the mainstream quit a bit. It's genuinely scary what people believe and how they avoid doing any critical thinking. In that sense it's an underexamimed phenomenon of the election.