• @TropicalDingdong
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    46 months ago

    I mean if we’re stepping off the data into editorialism, Trump out performed all other Republicans in 2020, like he also did in 2016. As well, Trump endorsed candidates struggled in 2018, and 2022, and special elections. My read of this evidence and I’ve seen it suggested elsewhere, is that whatever property it is that causes Trump to consistently over perform isn’t transitive. So evaluating how well Trump will perform against how well Republicans are performing is misguided. You should evaluate candidates individually, and that would agree with their performance.

    Also, this is one poll. The aggregate of polling agrees with this one poll. The minor methodological changes they make from year to year are infact extremely minor and they are doing the appropriate statistical accounting afaict. There is nothing weird or wonky about these polls: Biden is just performing very very poorly. I’ve been saying this for months to an onslaught of downvotes from people who simply don’t want to believe this to be the case.

    Finally, I’ll argue that the ‘right’ outlook is always the one that aligns most closely with the data. We should believe stories we tell about data less than data itself. There is nothing to suggest that this election will really be anything that different than the 3 previous, and in terms of landscapes, the best proxy appears to be 2016 in terms of contested states. You should believe the data that is telling you that Joe Biden is losing this election. Biden has been setting up to lose the upper Midwest since December. These are the same states Hillary lost.

    maybe I’m just letting optimism bleed into my better judgement

    I agree. It’s also what the political pundit class did when they completely wiffed on 2016, and it’s what they’re doing right now. 90% of Lemmy also agrees with your sentiment, and in both Lemmy’s and the punditry’s refusal to be critical of Biden, to drag him towards more popular policies, they’re setting Trump up for victory.

    • @assassin_aragorn
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      36 months ago

      I don’t really disagree with anything you’ve said, it’s a very valid take – and you’re spot on about underestimating Trump but overestimating Republican cohorts in polls. My only qualifier there is that we don’t know if 2022 models were overtuned for only Republicans, or also Trump support.

      I don’t know if we can take 2016 as representative of our current dynamic. I think it’s certainly more representative than 2020 however, but shifting populations and world/domestic events have had massive impacts.

      In short? I don’t know which outlook is more accurate. What I can reasonably assert though is that the reality will be somewhere between the less optimistic and the more optimistic outlooks. Taking these poll results at face value is probably the better strategic option anyway to create pressure to go vote and campaign.

      I agree though, we shouldn’t be totally dismissive of these polls. It’s fine to scrutinize and question them like I’ve said, but it shouldn’t take away from the very real possibility that these are correct. Oddities don’t create impossibilities.