Posted on 09/16/2016 3:56:40 PM PDT by mandaladon
Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls has been declining for several weeks, and now we’re at the point where it’s not much of a lead at all. National polls show Clinton only 1 or 2 percentage points ahead of Donald Trump, on average. And the state polling situation isn’t really any better for her. On Thursday alone, polls were released showing Clinton behind in Ohio, Iowa and Colorado — and with narrow, 3-point leads in Michigan and Virginia, two states once thought to be relatively safe for her.
It’s also become clearer that Clinton’s “bad weekend” — which included describing half of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” on Friday, and a health scare (followed by news that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia) on Sunday — has affected the polls. Prior to the weekend, Clinton’s decline had appeared to be levelling off, with the race settling into a Clinton lead of 3 or 4 percentage points. But over the past seven days, Clinton’s win probability has declined from 70 percent to 60 percent in our polls-only forecast and by a similar amount, from 68 percent to 59 percent, in our polls-plus forecast.
(Excerpt) Read more at fivethirtyeight.com ...
Hitlery’s polls won’t look like this in a week.
They will look worse.
They might as well all book their flights to safe havens right now!!!
(for her brother to exploit their gold mining).
No, no, no. Reuters has come to Hitlery’s rescue. She has a 4 point lead.
Polls will not be the same in a week.
Trump will gain 2-3 more points.
I’d be on the lookout for one more set of cooked polls soon that are designed to demoralize Trump voters.
I thought 270towin is the worst
Aw now, Red Skelton was a good guy
“He is liberal, but seems to be earnest in his attempt to assess polling data.”
I seriously doubt that. Numbnuts Nate gave Trump a 2% chance of taking the Republican nomination.
He was going on the basis of the polls, which were almost all inaccurate.
I still think he is biased, but it is more subtle than screwing with the data as 270towin and the NYT do.
Nate Silver’s problem is like that of 99% of media/pundits. For simplicity, poll results show the midpoint of the result. If a poll says Clinton has 42% with a 3% MOE, it does not mean that 42% is more likely than any other point in the 6 point range. ALL POINTS IN THE RANGE ARE EQUALLY LIKELY TO BE THE “REAL” ANSWER.
Try redrawing the graph of poll results over time that Silver presents to show the rough sine wave. There would be so much overlap that your eye would tell you there’s very little pattern there.
You can’t use a yardstick as a micrometer. Polls are more like the former than the latter - even when honestly performed.
And then they moved on to blaming Jimmy Fallon.
Please don’t encourage the DemocRATS to panic .. they’re already crazy enough.
“For example, for the other aggregator sites such as NYT, the distribution of expected outcomes appears to be normally distributed.”
FWIW: I agree with you. I’m dyslexic and screw the math up unless I go really slowly but I understand the concepts involved and you are correct.
Basically what you are saying is that because Trump is leading in Ohio and Indiana he will pull Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois toward his column because mid westerners share similar cultural biases.
This is sort of why I think NJ may be in play if Pennsylvania is. If NY goes for Trump expect it to be closer than demodogs would like in Connecticut and Massachusetts. I think Trump has a chance in NY State. He is only down by 2 in New Jersey in the last poll I saw that covered that state.
Bingo. That is what I have been saying. If Trump gets NJ and NY it is over before bedtime on election day. Hell, it may be over before dinner.
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