Risk-averse pollsters release the same results as their peers

I normally watch a movie of some sort on a Sunday evening. I’m not tonight because: (1) I did see The Wild Robot earlier this week. (2) I did have viewing time this afternoon watching and listening to the livestream of a Detroit Symphony Orchestra concert. Former music director Leonard Slatkin directed and featured a piece by his son Daniel Slatkin, who is doing quite well as a video game composer. There was also music by Rachmaninoff and Prokoviev. And (3) I’ve got a couple articles (and will include more as time permits) that are more appropriate before the election than after (and I won’t be able to write tomorrow or Tuesday). Kos of Daily Kos reported the Des Moines Register released a poll by Ann Selzer showing that Harris is ahead by three points in Iowa. Yeah, it is one poll, and an outlier at that. But... Selzer is one of the most accurate pollsters. The poll found white, older, rural women are a big reason for Harris being on top. They’re the most reliable voters. Kos wrote:

So the polling aggregators? Throw them out. Even Nate Silver admits that the data inputs for them—public polls—are garbage, with “herding” driving risk-averse pollsters into releasing the exact same numbers as their peers. “Specifically, the odds are 1 in 9.5 trillion against at least this many polls showing such a close margin,” Silver wrote. Yet somehow he refuses to make the next leap—if the data is quite literally impossible, then how can his model still be of any insight given that it is based on that garbage data? That goes for 538 and all the other aggregators. Throw them out. This is a different kind of election.

This is saying the polling numbers we’ve been obsessing over throughout the last year and certainly over the last three months are not accurate predictors of who will win. This is not saying Harris will win, so vote, if you haven’t yet. Kos followed that up with polls in Kansas, which show a big swing towards Harris, but maybe not enough to win the state. And Omaha’s blue dot in Nebraska, which can allocate its Electoral College vote according to the Congressional district and not the statewide vote, is looking quite blue.

There is something happening in rural America, in exactly the kind of districts that Trump and Republicans are depending as the foundation of their electoral chances. And it all comes down to women.

Yesterday, Scott Detrow and Miles Parks of NPR debunked election disinformation. The nasty guy claims that if he loses it is because of Democrats encouraging immigrants to vote. The facts: Voting by immigrants – non citizens – is illegal. It can risk a path to citizenship, possibly also deportation, a powerful deterrent. It is also quite rare. Georgia recently showed 20 confirmed cases of non citizens voting out of 8 million votes. Some states do not require proof of citizenship to register to vote. But, through drivers license and Social Security numbers they do have access to citizenship data. Parks said:

I think the sense from election officials I've talked to is that the election narratives of 2020 were starting to get a little bit stale. And so when you look ahead of 2024, what is the major political point on the right right now? It is immigration. And so what experts see is basically a marrying of these two narratives. You've got an issue that is very politically salient, and you've got Trump trying to kind of activate people on that. The other thing I'll note in terms of why this is a successful election conspiracy theory is, like I mentioned, it does happen occasionally. Every election cycle, you'll see this - a few people get arrested for this. And so it's much harder to bunk a narrative like that that actually has a little bit of truth to it as opposed to voting machines are being controlled by a satellite or something.

Elon Musk is claiming that mail in ballots don’t require proof of citizenship. But returned ballots go through rigorous checks. Mail in ballots might be slightly more vulnerable to fraud. But there has been no evidence of widespread fraud. Parks talks about what I’ve written about before. The nasty guy might claim fraud when mail-in ballots show Harris pulling ahead. That’s because mail-in ballots take longer to count. Yes, Republicans have already been filing suits against the election results. A bit of verifying only legal votes are counted happens every year.

What's interesting this cycle, when you talk to election experts - it seems like the Trump campaign and Republicans more broadly are kind of already setting the stage for things, kind of giving breadcrumbs to issues that they might bring up to try to challenge the election results should Trump lose after the election.

Last Tuesday Kos of Kos reported that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man (according to Forbes) has been talking about economic hardship – for us, not him. One cause of the hardship would be the mass deportations the nasty guy has been talking about. Another would be the chainsaw Musk wants to take to the federal government (there’s been talk of the nasty guy appointing him to reduce the deficit and he has his eye on two trillion). Together, the two would cause the markets to “tumble,” triggering an economic “storm.” That’s because the economy is supposedly propped up with debt and illegal immigration is artificially suppressing wages. But after that storm passes and people see we’re on sounder footing there will be rapid recovery. Kos explains what is really going on. This is the economy that is the envy of the world and Musk wants to crash it. To keep our economy humming we could use more immigrants. The undocumented workers we do have subsidize programs such as Social Security and Medicare they must pay into but are ineligible to receive benefits from. To reduce the deficit Musk wants to cut every program for the poor and middle class, plus programs for veterans and farmers (the nasty guy’s base).

And the thing is, Musk and Trump aren’t hiding their agenda. People are just too captivated by the Republican campaign’s racism and misogyny to care. People are being promised that they will lose their jobs and prosperity, and this election is still close.

Oliver Willis of Kos discussed what Musk gets out of crashing the economy. At the top of the list is more tax breaks. Kos reviewed the “closing argument” speech Harris gave at the Ellipse in Washington. She intentionally chose the spot where the nasty guy encouraged his minions to attack the Capitol. The crowd was estimated to be about 75K – almost four times the capacity of Madison Square Garden where the nasty guy held his Nazi rally. Harris talked about the nasty guy’s inability to campaign for anyone but himself. She said the fact that “someone disagrees with us does not make them the enemy within.” She said he has an enemies list, she has a to-do list. She defended immigrants. She promised to restore federal abortion rights. She won’t denigrate and will care for the men and women in the military. She will strengthen America’s global leadership. She promises calm instead of chaos and says she will listen even to people who didn’t vote for her. Kos wrote:

Unlike Trump’s closing statement at Madison Square Garden, she kept things short and sweet. No one left early. No one was insulted in the most vulgar terms. And in the end, she made people feel good about supporting her, about heading out to do all the GOTV work we need to do to bring this one home. She’s kind, hopeful, unifying, composed, and coherent. The contrast couldn’t be starker.

A week ago Detrow visited the Cross Assembly Church in Raleigh, North Carolina to speak to its lead pastor Chad Harvey. The sanctuary holds nearly 1,700 people and about 3,000 hear his sermon every week. Then it is put on social media. His words are heard by a lot of people. And, yes, he is evangelical. Harvey’s most important issues are the sanctity of life (translation: anti-abortion), religious liberty (which I usually hear as the liberty to discriminate), and the transgender thing. This is what caught my attention in this 12 minute segment – Harvey speaking:

What I've told our congregation is we look at the platform, not the person. And so you can have some people with some pretty deep moral struggles who are upholding a platform that we support. And I tell our people, don't pay as much attention to the struggles. Pay attention to the platform because here's what the Bible says. There's none righteous - no, not one. We're all messed-up people. This core message that we have of the Gospel - it's the good news. The bad news of the good news is we're all messed-up people.

That’s his way of saying he doesn’t care how morally awful the nasty guy’s character might be. If that nasty guy upholds what he wants he’ll vote for him.

I keep going back to the - we're all messed up people. Trump is messed up. Kamala Harris is messed up. Joe Biden has had accusations thrown at him. We're all messed-up individuals.

While true, Harris is significantly less messed up than the nasty guy. Detrow asks if that means his vote provides for no personal accountability. Harvey responded if a candidate did something you can’t support, fine. But use the same standard for all candidate. Harvey doesn’t describe that standard, but it sounds like it is “has that candidate ever sinned?” Of course, we have all done something wrong. Harvey’s description allows him to excuse a great number of quite large sins. Detrow asks about God commanding us to show justice and love mercy. Harvey replied that the nasty guy shows more justice and mercy to the unborn and post-born than the left. Perhaps, but that justice and mercy to the unborn is at the expense of women, who are not shown justice and mercy.