The Economist Magazine has a feature that calculates the likely outcome of the American presidential election. After a week of theTrump Convention, studded with lies and boasts, this was a quick picker-upper.
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This type of information needs to go away. This is exactly what happened in 2016. HRC was going to win by all the #’s….until she didn’t. People stayed home on election day because they didn’t really like her but the data showed that she would win….until she didn’t. People need a reason TO vote…… not a reason NOT to vote.
Lisa,
I truly believe that in 2016 the election was determined by James Comey’s sudden announcement that the FBI was reopening its investigation of Hillary’s emails. The big investigation was eventually dismissed because there was nothing in her emails. But the announcement was enough to tip the election to Trump.
You can truly believe what you want, but what I heard in my neck of the woods (DC suburbs….blue MD……gov’t worker mecca) had NOTHING to do with emails.
If you accept polling as accurate, you have to accede that the Comey announcement affected the race. My memory is that HRC went from a 9% to a 4% very quickly. I was struck back then at the unprecedented action taken by the FBI director. I recalled that even under JEdgar Hoover, when the FBI was actively involved in fighting the civil rights movement, no such entry into politics ever happened in a public way that I ever studied.
I also thought it was remarkable that Comey go a pass from the press when he was victimized by the president. What a tangled web.
Roy,
I worked for the federal government under Bush 1. We were told as the election drew near to stay far away from politics. Do nothing to affect the outcome. That was then. Comey did wrong.
Diane,
It’s sometimes a fine line between offering facts that are doom and gloom, which discourages people to be participatory AND offering quick-pick-me-ups, like the article from The Economist, which may give people too much confidence to the point where they weaken their zeal and participation on all levels. Not an easy decision make when you make a posting. I have seen many feel-good articles about the low possibilities of Trump being elected. I choose to ignore them. I think they do a disservice, but that’s strictly my own opinion.
I, for one, am supporting Biden – and you know how I feel about the DNC – but I will not put it past the stupidity and fangs bared of too may Americans to get Trump reelected. This is a very realistic possibility.
My point is that we must ALL keep on advocating, protesting, signing petitions, donating money, making sure we vote, etc. . . . Hillary was far too confident and NO ONE can assume anything about any voter. You have to keep on going at it like your life depends on it. I put credence into neither doomsday nor optimistic literature. I pay attention tot he pulse of the country, which tells more and tells it in depth. And either I’ve gotten to learn so much about this vast country as I had not been paying enough attention to it before . . .
Cx: I’ve gotten to learn so much about this vast country, as . . . .
I didn’t mean to spread complacency.
Since I have been watching The Economist predictions, Trump’s chances have improved.
I also watch Real Clear Politics, a conservative website that is useful because it posts ALL the political polls, national and by state. Rasmussen is the best poll for Trump, but others too see the race tightening to a spread of only 4-7 points. That’s too close for comfort.
I sincerely believe that Trump will destroy the federal government and democracy if he has four more years.
I agree.
Somehow I missed something here. Was I supposed to tie the Carter school thing to the elections? I could not find it on the Economist article.
Considering the track record of most economists, we have good reason to question their prediction. What I will say is that Biden is more likeable than Hillary, and he is far more likable than Trump. Regular people can identify with Biden. Hillary came across as an elitist, but not Biden, Biden has his crime bill baggage, but people seem to be willing to overlook it. In fact, due to the civil unrest support for BLM is in decline. Biden gave a very good speech yesterday, and Trump failed to get any bump from the “chamber of horrors” RNC Convention. Things seem to be moving in a positive direction for Biden.
My husband looked at the prediction and immediately noticed that a 1 in 20 chance for Trump is not 1%, but 5%.
Cx: likeable
Biden is like someone’s Grandpa. He has an Andy Griffith kind of demeanor about him. We need a little calm and Biden is the man for the job. I’ll forget/forgive the few things that I don’t like about hime since the man has had a long political career and everyone makes mistakes.
People may also change views over time. We are now seeing the problems with laws like three strikes. It results in mass incarceration.
Grandfatherly vs. machismo. Thats concerns me.
For a given collection of economists, for every economist who predicts one thing, there exist at least two who predict exactly the opposite.
This is true even if you have just two economists.
Every poll I read that gives me hope, I remember that Trump cheats and that throws everything off. But we should also remember that the models for these polling conclusions anticipate likely voters will actually vote. I hope they will.
SDP–Thanks for posting the link to the Cathy O’Neil interview. Very interesting.
Huh? This has nothing to do with November’s election.
I’m having deja vue all over again, sickening flashbacks to 2016. Please, just vote straight Democratic. At least, thanks to Diane, we don’t have hyper progressive rigid ideologues haranguing us with bogus arguments that the Democrats are just a as bad as the GOP and we should vote Green. NO, don’t vote 3rd party vote Democratic, Biden on his worst day would be a million times better than Trump, a wannabe authoritarian. I have no idea what will happen in November.
Agreed!
Most Charter Schools are small businesses. Therefore, I think the following facts apply.
“About two-thirds of businesses with employees survive at least 2 years and about half survive at least 5 years.”
“Survival paths have not changed much over the years.”
“Survival rates are familiar across industries.”
If you look at the two charts, after 15 years, about 40 percent have survived.
Regarding t.he ones which close: maybe I read something incorrectly, but of the charter schools which close often turn out to be financially well for those who opened them?
I wish there was a correction feature..Regarding the ones which close: maybe I read something incorrectly, but of the charter schools which close, do a lot of them of them turn out financially well for those who opened them?
Read the report.
sometimes one encounters a feeling that one is missing a lot.I tried reading the report, putting charter in the search..I will try reading it again..Maybe I don’t know how to react.
The gerrymander built into the electoral system is an obstacle Trump will attempt to game. Misleading voters in Democrat states a certain tactic. Tell everyone to vote.
This election is also crucial because political boundaries will be redrawn after the US Census. This may actually be the time to use an algorithm instead of people that want to gerrymander.
Algorithms can be just as biased as the people who designed them.
And at least when people draw the lines, you know whom to blame.
We rarely if ever are made privy to who designed the algorithms that are used on a daily basis (eg, by credit card companies, banks, employers, to grant or deny credit, loans, jobs, etc)
Cathy O’Neil has a lot to say about the subject of algorithms.
The key thing she highlights is that the people who build the algorithms define “success” . Do if success to them means Republicans (or Democrats) elected to office, that’s a bias built in to the algorithm.
Many people have the unwarranted view that because they seem mathematical, algorithms are unbiased. That’s simply not true.
It was not true in the case of VAM (algorithms used to “evaluate” teachers) and it is also not true for any algorithm used to draw lines for election districts.
The sorts of algorithms we are talking about would be much better called “valgorithms” because their basic purpose is to decide how to “value” a certain thing (or person).
All of these predictions have a great deal of voodoo built in and one would be wise to take them all with a big block of salt (particularly over two months before the election)
Nearly every pollster predicted the outcome of the 2016 election wrong.
But here is something that is just as sobering.
Nate Silver, who actually got it “less wrong” than most, (Silver gave Trump a better chance of winning, but still predicted he would likely lose) was giving the odds of a Clinton win just before the election at about 70 % to 30% .
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
Guess what. Those are also the odds Silver is now giving for a Biden win: 70 to 30 (albeit still well before election day in this case
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/
Maybe Silver just changed the name on his graphs from Clinton to Biden?
SomeDAM Poet Thanks for the You Tube on Kathy O’Neal’s work. I highly recommend her book and her web-site, math-babe. At about the 25 minute mark in this You Tube she refers to the sham of teacher evaluations and successful legal defenses in at lear two cases.
She is sooooo good, not only at the math (she has a phD from one of Harvard’s legitimate departments — mathematics), but also at explaining it in a way that people understand it.
I love her explanation for the way people who don’t know much math respond to stuff like VAM. She says VAM has the same effect on them as the ” flasher” in Men in Black that makes a person forget everything and not ask any questions.
People are so intimidated by mathy sounding stuff (even fraudulent math like VAM) that they feel unqualified to even question it and therefore generally don’t.
Cathy is an diamond embedded in a seam of coal.
And I suspect she makes a lot of corporate types like Mark Zuckerberg very nervous.
Not least of all because she is so much smarter than they are.
I have friends who are diehard Berners & are once again angry w/the DNC, but they are ALL voting for Biden, every, single.one who’d said they’d NEVER vote for him.
I hope that’s the case with every diehard Berner I don’t know, as well. It is the young people & the suburban progressives in MA who voted for Markey, making him the Dem primary winner over a Kennedy (historically, no Kennedy has ever lost in MA).
Keep telling your friends to vote as if their lives depended upon it.
Because they really do.