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

albeit unsurprisingly!

Trump's been steadily gaining over the last 2 weeks according to 538...must be doing something right

Never bet against the lead levels in American drinking water!

We still have the debates ahead of us for him to really screw the pooch.

Trump's been steadily gaining over the last 2 weeks according to 538

yeah he went from 10% likelihood of winning to 12%, it's a real horse race at last

Trump's been steadily gaining over the last 2 weeks according to 538...must be doing something right

― frogbs, Monday, August 29, 2016 3:16 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no evidence of anything causal going on. he hasn't had any good news or positive mainstream press that might change people's minds in months. simplest explanation is (1) regression to mean (2) a change in response rates to polling after conventions dying away.

xp he's at 21.2% in polls-only. higher in the other two. still kinda amazing given that the man is just one consistently bad news cycle after another, but hey

xxp (3) the implausible extreme behaviour of the polls-only and nowcast models damping down as the election nears (which is behaviour they insert into those models by hand)

http://predictwise.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/PredictWise_August28_Chart.png

oof sorry for huge

Wish I could actually put a ridiculous amount of money on Clinton at $0.80 right now, alas

All we are saying is give pleats a chance

the trump 20% chance of winning is essentially a) chance that the polls are systemically incorrect, and/or b) chance that a black swan event changes the race (like a major economic collapse discrediting democratic party)

not new news, but front-page story in NYT today details how Trump and dad actively practiced racial discrimination in their properties in the '60s and '70s

i don't think it would take a black swan event in a more typical election. a national 0.5%/week drift would do it, and that seems to be have been happening nationally for a couple of weeks. but with this particular candidate a gradual diligent winning over of voters for another 2 months seems extremely unlikely.

so yeah, otm. 20% basically reflects the fact that hillary would definitely win this election tomorrow, but the election isn't tomorrow.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cq9E3JGXgAAcld2.jpg

good luck usa journalism

i've said this before but i think that if the polls are systemically wrong it is much more likely it is in hillary's favor than donald's. re black swan, i used to think that this would be a terrorist attack or an economic collapse but it looks post-orlando like terrorist attack won't do it. and economic signs aren't amazing but they're positive enough that it's hard to believe it'll go real sour before nov. like a month or two ago i remember reading that some bearish analysts thought sluggish jobs reports could indicate a general downturn but revisions were supposedly much better and then things have looked good since then.

the cynic in me thinks all the gains against daesh in syria and mosul are not coincidentally timed with the election

oh come on

Is that really something the electorate is focused on?

"timed with the election" ... months from now

how could you suggest such a thing? clearly this war will be over in 60 years, tops

you're just spouting blank irony now, to no apparent purpose

oh, i'm not supposed to engage you. pretend that was in response to jingle berries and don't forget to take your vitamins

how could you suggest such a thing? clearly this war will be over in 60 years, tops

clearly the American military is totally capable of manipulating foreign battlefield victories for maximum domestic election impact, yup that is a thing they are good at, they are always in total control of conflicts in foreign countries, it's really incredible how totally in control they are at all times, they are just the best, it's really beautiful, you just wouldn't believe it

it looks post-orlando like terrorist attack won't do it.

yah that's what I told a couple of friends. It was my only mild concern. Also, people are becoming anesthetized to these attacks, which is worse.

Months and months ago it may have seemed to some people that a major terrorist attack on US soil would turn people to the perceived-as-strong Trump. Now that many people have been primed to understand that he's an unhinged hothead loonytunes, not so much.

Also, people are becoming anesthetized to these attacks, which is worse.

idk, these things will continue to happen - probably best to not have hysterical populace reaction each time they do.

the anesthetized factor is something that's both inevitable and troubling, not only regarding mass shootings but regarding the farce/horror show that is the GOP nominee.

when you step back a second, it's really quite alarming to realize that one of the two major parties isn't really willing to engage, in any broadly realistic way, questions of policy and their effects. "even" paul ryan, the supposed intellectual leader of the bunch, hasn't put forth a single /serious/ policy proposal in his life, one that actual looks rationally at causes and effects. the only inputs on the GOP machine, to the extent it even functions as such, are feeding it an alternate, fractured version of reality.

i know, i'm being captain obvious, but sometimes i wake up and just immediately realize how far down the rabbit hole we've all gone, and despair.

idk, these things will continue to happen - probably best to not have hysterical populace reaction each time they do.

this is maybe for another thread but I've felt for a long time that this increased level of randomized violence corresponds to the decreased impacts of actual traditional military warfare on civilian populations. whereas previous generations lived in real and constant threat of having their lives destroyed by military conflict, that has become increasingly rare (currently zero military conflicts in the western hemisphere for ex.), but there's still aggrieved and violent segments of the populace, and now their outlet is randomized violence rather than goin off to war, and as a society we are learning to cope with this change in the type and scope of violent threats.

which is not to say that terrorism is "okay" or that we should accept it and just learn to live with it, it's just that we're adapting to a different kind of violence than previous generations had to contend with, and one of those adaptations is a certain anaesthetization.

Οὖτις, that would make sense if frequent mass shootings were a western phenomenon and not limited largely to the USA

but the absence of war in, say, italy doesn't seem to have provoked the same kind of "peace time" violence.

x-post

yeah I'm not referring specifically to mass shootings (which are def a US-specific thing), was referring more to ISIS/Muslim nutjob style stuff

just ideologically driven terrorist attacks targeting innocent civilians in general

except that statistically even those attacks are insignificant, you can't draw enormous zeitgeisty conclusions from them

I can and will!

but seriously I am just spitballin I have no data or studies or whatever just my armchair sociologizin

agree that violence is now more virtualized, mobile and fragmented

After keeping him hidden for months, I've seen Lanny Davis twice on CNN in the past couple of weeks. The Kayleigh McEnany of Clinton surrogates--truly the worst.

guys

Trump will hold a question and answer session Saturday at the Great Faith Ministries in Detroit, which has a primarily black congregation.

clearly the American military is totally capable of manipulating foreign battlefield victories for maximum domestic election impact, yup that is a thing they are good at, they are always in total control of conflicts in foreign countries, it's really incredible how totally in control they are at all times, they are just the best, it's really beautiful, you just wouldn't believe it

― Οὖτις, Monday, 29 August 2016 20:33 (one hour ago)

First of these to work in months, hi 5

flippantly dismissing military influence goes hand in hand with a certain anesthetization who knew

i know one person who knew

your mom

I had a nightmare last night that I'd slept through the election and I went online to gloat and got brought to Rasmussen reporting Trump had won 390 electoral votes.

waking up was bliss.

i've said this before but i think that if the polls are systemically wrong it is much more likely it is in hillary's favor than donald's.

― Mordy, Monday, August 29, 2016 4:14 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yup. https://twitter.com/adrian_gray/status/770414474339680256

Rick Perry http://www.etonline.com/news/196777_dancing_with_the_stars_derek_hough_confirms_return_cheryl_burke_set/

Poor Marilu Henner having to associate herself with such co-star dreck

they hired the wrong calvin johnson

JAZZ HANDS

http://cache4.asset-cache.net/gc/497763498-calvin-johnson-performs-at-the-tin-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=X7WJLa88Cweo9HktRLaNXu7VaEBbPBMy0tJTkwrhIC7jHG44n9Mpbr%2BTB8ArW8PCx2Ppu2Q%2F4HPQ17dVfMQPTA%3D%3D

I'm surprised SNL didn't do some parody of the Bachelorette earlier in the campaign with some hot girl and all 17 GOP hopefuls. They could have done it on the Trump episode. BTW, isn't it insane that Trump hosted SNL? When was that, a few years ago?