It's like someone went to AI and gave it the command "write me a Substack comment based on a fluff article that will get me deleted immediately from the Hopium Chronicles by Simon Rosenberg but without being a bigot" and this is what popped out.
I am removing this comment for 1) we don't bring our freak outs in here. 2) Feel free to return with a link to the article and a far more measured discussion of it. Thank you.
Matt Bai's op-ed was a little much for me today in WAPO. Apparently Harris is an empty suit with unclear policies but at least she is a good ( somewhat ) retail politician for California state office. I mean, come on. People like what they are seeing of her. That matters.
Wow! It is almost as if a powerful woman of color is being held to an unattainable set of double standards designed to shortchange her intellect and achievements by a wealthy and disconnected men who has no idea how grassroots change actually works. /s
I've been thinking about the Harris/Walz potential vote total in Nov. I'm reaching out across Substack readers to get your thoughts.
From fund raising, grassroots activity, new voter registrations to national polls, many key activities have moving in the right direction for Harris/Walz.
To forecast the range of their potential victory, I'm trying to assess the degree to which Harris/Walz are likely to receive the vast majority of the 2020 Biden/Harris voter coalition which totaled +81 million votes.
In my cloistered world of hundreds of Democrats, I don't know a single voter who voted for Biden in 2020 who isn't voting for Harris in Nov.
I'm really interested in hearing your impression of how Biden voters will vote in Nov.
I responded to this same post yesterday. MSM is transfixed by polling using a consensus in the polling community that it is better to report 'likely' voters than 'registered' voters."
My sense is that our big advantage in new registrations is under the radar. I recommend FT 6, but several other organizations have the same goal. Hoping for a blue tsunami. Maybe Bonior can comment.
Meanwhile There may be huge defections. During the Sept. 10 debate Trump twice refused to say whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war against Russia. He suggested, "Negotiate a deal," which Harris countered by saying if Trump had been president during the invasion, "Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe."
Vance has been anti Ukraine. Over a million Ukrainians in Pa. Approximately 784,000 Polish Americans in Michigan, 758,000 in Pennsylvania, and 481,000 in Wisconsin. Latvians, Estonians, Litvaks, Fins, etc know that if Ukraine falls, they are next.
Last week, the DNC organized a national call with Polish American supporters. The goal was to rally local networks to host events and spread the campaign's message. This strategic move is aimed at mobilizing Polish American voters who could be crucial in tight races.
Betting odds today: RCP Average Harris 53.1 Trump 45.4
Not sure how meaningful any of this is but you asked. What I see: vast majority of Biden voters are voting for Harris. Only problematic pockets I see: Some middle age men Biden voters are hesitant to or won't vote for a woman, either have disengaged or will stealth vote for Trump. Some young men Biden voters are no longer afraid of COVID (this is why they voted for Biden in the first place) now don't seem to know much about Harris so open to opinions from all sides. They will either not vote or land where various male online influencers tell them to be, mass media/traditional media have no influence on them, they are 100% online for info.
I.. I... I truly have no way to be gentle about this. This is a gobsmackingly, dumbfloundingly, flabbergastingly incorrect view of the thought process of young male voters. Like, I don't even know where to begin. I'd ask you to source me some reputable analysis or data to back up what you have to say, but I won't because I know it doesn't exist.
Look, only about half of young men (or young people in general) voted in '20, and that was a record. Young women are more progressive than young men, but BOTH genders of Gen Z and the youngest millennials are very progressive, especially those who are registered voters. The sort of college guy who made enough of an effort to register for the first time in order to vote for the old, calm, un-revolutionary moderate that was Joe Biden did it because they were actually motivated and aware enough of the issues in general to get involved. There has been nothing in the past few years to make us *less* involved, only more. There has been nothing Cheeto von Tweeto has done in the past few years to make him more appealing to us, only less. There is nothing in Harris's attitude and policies that make her less exciting than Biden to the sort of young guy who cares enough to vote.
I don't know if you remember this, but an unfortunate number of people of all ages and genders did not take Covid seriously. The sort of guy who was "afraid of Covid" (a phrase I heard no man my age use during Covid, at any point, ever) is also the sort of guy who is concerned about gun violence, climate change, income inequality, etc. and those things haven't gone away. Oh, and abortion. Nothing concerns a prime sexual/reproductive age man *less* than the threat of unwanted pregnancy, amirite? So UNmotivating!
When you posit that we may "land where various male online influencers tell them to be," please understand how insulting that sounds. Flip the genders and see how ridiculous it is. "I'm concerned about young women voters. They aren't afraid of COVID anymore, so they will just listen to the Kardashians and other rich fashion models they follow!" No one on this forum would say that, for it would be rightly branded as sexist. I'm trying to visualize the Venn diagram of dudes who are intellectually lazy enough to shape their personality off a Twitch streamer, but also rational and involved enough to have voted for Biden in 2020, but also now "open to opinions from all sides," and I'm comin' up with three separate circles, y'all.
Please consider the stories you are telling about certain groups of voters, whether you actually have any proof beyond personal anecdote, and how hurtful and inaccurate those stories can be. This goes for everyone here, because lordy I'm gettin' tired.
I raise my morning coffee in a silent toast to the incompetence of Charlie Kirk, Elon Musk, Lara Trump and the rest of Trump’s acolytes and campaign staffers. "Thank you for your witless and unwitting service to American democracy!"
I doubt Olivia Nuzzi made just “one mistake.” She’s always seemed a bit full of herself to me. I was shocked but not totally surprised by her recently revealed and quite inappropriate shenanigans.
Like a lot of people leading extremist groups, they are more grifters than anything else. It's hard to figure out what Elon is thinking, but Kirk and Trump are grifters.
Musk has a few issues with Dems/Biden and many of them track back to COVID:
He had a son that transitioned to a daughter during COVID. He felt his child was duped into this by trans propaganda and he couldn't do anything about it due to quarantines. This was personally embarrassing for him.
Biden administration economic policies to fight and recover from COVID required raising interest rates which starved his companies of cheap borrowing and increased scrutiny on actual performance.
California (democratic stronghold) forced Tesla to adhere to COVID policies and aggressively pursued whistleblower complaints when they didn't. This led to other Tesla employees feeling emboldened to file other non COVID related complaints as well.
He was trolling Twitter management for enforcing COVID fact checking policies by pretending to want to buy them. Either he or his legal team (or both) did not understand the ramifications of their actions and ultimately were forced (by SEC regulations, i.e. the Biden administration in his mind) to buy Twitter with the help of other investors or pay a $1 billion fine alone (just Musk). He managed to convince other billionaires to help with the purchase after several attempts to back out and certainly did not actually want to do so.
All of the above items he feels Republicans would have bailed him out of or supported his opinions on by not treating COVID as the global emergency that it was.
Let’s see... Donald put Lara Trump in charge of the RNC. One of their first decisions was to close lots of campaign offices and operations in multiple states. GOTV and the ground game was outsourced to Charlie Kirk and his Turning Point USA, and to Elon Musk. Multiple reports indicate... a stunning lack of ground-game activities, doors not getting knocked on, etc.
A few other names worthy of attention, some mentioned by Stephen: Tulsi Gabbard helped prepare Trump for the debate; Laura Loomer gave him some great talking points about cats and dogs; RFK Jr keeps generating eye-catching headlines about roadkill, brain worms and decapitated whale cadavers; Mark Robinson is accomplishing the seemingly-impossible task of making JD Vance seem almost normal...
I have little doubt that the NYT editor or editors in charge of polling issue an order to gerrymander our polling (who to poll and where to poll) to show a tight race or even large swings, like Arizona. It is their agenda. They have become anti-democracy.
I am disturbed by how many "likes" this has gotten. This is a really paranoid sentiment (there is no such thing as "gerrymandering our polling"). Has everyone here forgotten when the NYT/Siena polls were some of the BEST for Dems last year?
Guys, the NYT polling outfit has no nefarious agenda, and saying so is just reactionary and embarrassing. What they DO have is an old-fashioned method which this year is proving to be unreliable and erratic. I mean, their results for Harris/Walz in the Rust Belt have been pulling the polling average UP recently, as have their results for many of our Senate candidates.
The problem with their data is not that it is biased, but that it is INCONSISTENT. Any reasonable person can tell that there is no way Kamala is doing NINE points better in PA than AZ, or Gallego is outperforming her by double digits in the same state. Those margins are just too wide, and the swing back and forth between polls each time they take them is too wide as well. (Remember when they said earlier this year that Biden was doing 15 points better in WI than NV? Yeah, that was impossible then too.) Frankly, if they had her doing poorly everywhere (or vice versa), I would take it seriously, but any amateur can tell this is just a hot mess. What they need to fix is above my pay grade, but it is never wise to assume malice where incompetence is more likely.
Some NYT polls have been outliers. But it is pointless to focus on or criticize individual polls. If the pollster is credible, even outlier polls contribute to a helpful poll average, and the average (of state-specific polls limited to likely voters) is all that polling can helpfully contribute to our understanding.
NYT/Sienna is a credible pollster, despite the fact that we don’t like some of their outlier results. I haven’t seen any other reason here to question their credibility. The whole thing is an unhelpful distraction.
Michael Podhorzer made powerful arguments in his Substack a while back that polls well in advance of the election (today is still well in advance) contribute nothing helpful to our understanding. Simon’s discussion of how Dobbs has produced a series of election results inconsistent with polling is also instructive. I’m always curious what Simon means when he says NYT/Sienna finds more Republicans than other pollsters (which could be good or bad). But whatever that means, it is a mistake to dwell on individual polls, as we too often do.
Thanks Teresa, I'm with ya! In our house these days we are all postcards, all the time! Current batch is NC, last batch was OH, before that it was AZ, CA, etc... Roughly 2100 out the door to date.
On it! Joining 3 phone banks this week and 2 post card writing sessions, reaching out to tens of thousands of Harris voters to VOTE ON DAY ONE, will be posting and reaching out every day, LFG Team, NOW IS THE TIME!
If you know of any Broadway “Hamilton” fans, enjoy and share this awesome VoteRiders video made by the current Broadway cast members to encourage voter registration and participation! https://youtu.be/sJayRSyTsDc?feature=shared
Tammy Baldwin’s opponent is a billionaire carpetbagger from Laguna Beach, CA. Here is a good investigative piece on him from endcitizensunited.org “New bombshell reporting shows that Eric Hovde’s bank flew $26 million in cash from Mexico to California as a part of a deal with Banco Azteca, a Mexican-based bank with a history of being utilized by drug cartels. This story follows previous reporting on Hovde’s shady finances and his refusal to divest from his bank if elected to the Senate—which has been accepting money from foreign governments for years.” Great to learn Tammy is up significantly without the polls even reflecting new and young voter registrations.
Local Republicans are leaving door hangers with sample ballots that say, "Vote policy; not the person. It's not WHO but rather what we are voting for!" That's what you say when your candidate is unappealing. They're also leaving door hangers asking people to vote early.
The hilarious thing about the "our guy's personality sucks, so vote policy!" argument is that the strong majority of their individual policies poll terribly as well. When you ask them to defend their policies they end up having to change the subject PDQ. They truly got nuthin.
I saw a very encouraging interview today, with someone from Voto Latino (hope I got that right). They have seen extraordinary numbers of new registrations and consider this very optimistic for Harris/Walz. Also, I wonder if anything damaging might land on Thursday with Jack Smith's filing in the Election Interference case overseen by Judge Chutkan?
This new NYT/Sienna poll is absurd on its face. It makes no sense that those states would swing so heavily toward Trump during a month when economic news was consistently positive, Harris/Walz were kicking ass on the campaign trail and getting positive coverage, and Trump/Vance were wallowing in their pig slop and disgusting even some in their MAGA cult. Even Nate Cohn spends most of his NYT column today throwing cold water on these new results (which polled only 700-800 voters).
Absurd, but we ain't seen nothing yet! The NYT will put out more and more crap in October. Ignore it all. Kamala's much closer in her share of the vote to that of Gallego, I have to believe, with Lake and MAGA so closely identified. But does anyone remember how close Biden's percentage of the vote was to the winning Democratic governors in swing states in 2020?
A strong incumbent can definitely overperform a Presidential candidate (sometimes by quite a lot), but an open seat almost never splits with the top of the ticket. The notion that, in this polarized country, Gallego is doing FIFTEEN points better than Harris in a state that not only narrowly voted for her as VP but also recently elected a Dem Senator, Governor, AG, AND Sec of State less than two years ago is... um... uh... dubious at best.
This seems absolutely correct to me. In fact, our guy in Arizona is as far from being an incumbent as he can be? coming in as late as he did and replacing who he did on the ticket. I would be amazed if their totals were even three points apart.
YUP. I actually feel bad for Cohn & company trying to put some sort of a spin on this. These are smart people who have to know that these numbers are borderline-impossible. Neither candidate is going to be winning any of these states by 5-point margins, and I don't think even the campaigns themselves are claiming they can. If the results were consistently bad for Dems, then any griping among our crowd would be sour grapes, but there is no consistency even among their own numbers from weeks ago, let alone the numbers of any other reputable outfit, all of which paint a decisively different picture. Bewildering.
Simon and Team Hopium: In the video on polls today, I believe the announcer misuses the phrase "WITHIN the margin of error," using it to describe EVERYTHING he is seeing. But shouldn't he make the distinction when needed, "these poll results are OUTSIDE the margin of error"? Meaning, this lead is real for Kamala, it isn't a statistical mirage.
No, not too wonky. And he clearly misspoke. The margins of error are even included in the graphic. The context of the whole paragraph he reads is how she experienced a surge in those states. He said "out" when he meant "in." It happens.
I like the consistent and very strong WI results. It's seemed pretty clear that Baldwin will beat Hovde for some time now. See her number come in close to Harris, with a very strong +6 to +8 number, is very encouraging I would say. Both the consistency of the numbers, and the very strong showing. Hopefully these strong numbers translate to strength in MI and PA especially.
So many of us are writing postcards and calling voters. We are not even doing this for the Harris campaign. Just in our own or with the our communities like the Hopium community.
I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem like the other side has as much grass roots voter outreach like the Blue team. Am I missing something?
I don’t hear anyone talking about this, but it seems important. Are there these GOP aligned groups meeting and sending postcards? Is there an equivalent to Bluewavepostards.com?
Seems to me, their side is just watching Fox or Newsmax, going to rallies and forwarding weird social media memes to own the libs.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I haven’t heard anyone talk about the grassroots efforts on the other side.
Me? I’m doing more and trying to worry less. Have sent out 300 postcards this month and enrolled three friends to do the same.
@Jerry, related to this if you do a search engine for "postcards to voters" you get like the top 10 results are all groups for our side, so I think it speaks to the greater enthusiasm on our side. We got this, we are jamming with the postcards here too! GO TEAM HOPIUM!
I just read this morning that GOP “outsourced” their canvassing to a group and just fired them after receiving reports from their voters bc no GOP canvassers have been seen. And Elon Musk picked up another area for GOP. I think what you’re seeing/ hearing is correct. It was also mentioned GOP offices had been shut down in key states and not reopened. AND Simon has mentioned several times about “their lack of a party infrastructure for GOTV” MAGA unorganized? Low sign volumes,etc,etc
Can we consider the NYT to be a "red wave" pollster like AtlasIntel, RMG and the others? I mean, my gosh. They come in to swing states and push the averages around. It up pushing the overall forecast 5 points in Trumps favor. No other credible outlet has found that level of movement among LVs at this stage in the cycle. And to boot, they have Ruben Gallego up 8 in the same state.
No. They are not at all a "red wave" pollster. They have been one of the most rigorous and transparent outfits in recent years. If they are a "red wave" pollster, then everyone is.
However, the results they have been getting are so out of whack with the numbers of most other outfits, as well as their OWN numbers on a month-over-month basis that they will need a reckoning over their methodology when this cycle is over if they want their reputation to be maintained.
I must politely decline this suggestion. I don't think it would work out because - as I am sure you have noticed - I can be a rather annoying know-it-all. Plus I have time management issues. I think I'll stick to popping up here at random intervals on my days off to leave a deluge of bemused/outraged and detail-heavy replies, only to disappear afterwards into the ether of ye olde World Wide Web. Thanks for the encouragement, though!
The polls, especially in states like Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, do not reflect the surge in voter registrations among young voters, women voters, and voters of color. Thankfully, Tom Bonier (with his TargetSmart) and Simon keep us aware and up to date on this critical factor.
No. This is not what we do here.
It's like someone went to AI and gave it the command "write me a Substack comment based on a fluff article that will get me deleted immediately from the Hopium Chronicles by Simon Rosenberg but without being a bigot" and this is what popped out.
It’s ridiculous.
I am removing this comment for 1) we don't bring our freak outs in here. 2) Feel free to return with a link to the article and a far more measured discussion of it. Thank you.
This is truly beyond parody.
Said it before & I'll say it again - don't let em' fuck with your head!
Matt Bai's op-ed was a little much for me today in WAPO. Apparently Harris is an empty suit with unclear policies but at least she is a good ( somewhat ) retail politician for California state office. I mean, come on. People like what they are seeing of her. That matters.
Wow! It is almost as if a powerful woman of color is being held to an unattainable set of double standards designed to shortchange her intellect and achievements by a wealthy and disconnected men who has no idea how grassroots change actually works. /s
I've been thinking about the Harris/Walz potential vote total in Nov. I'm reaching out across Substack readers to get your thoughts.
From fund raising, grassroots activity, new voter registrations to national polls, many key activities have moving in the right direction for Harris/Walz.
To forecast the range of their potential victory, I'm trying to assess the degree to which Harris/Walz are likely to receive the vast majority of the 2020 Biden/Harris voter coalition which totaled +81 million votes.
In my cloistered world of hundreds of Democrats, I don't know a single voter who voted for Biden in 2020 who isn't voting for Harris in Nov.
I'm really interested in hearing your impression of how Biden voters will vote in Nov.
Thanks,
Merrill
I responded to this same post yesterday. MSM is transfixed by polling using a consensus in the polling community that it is better to report 'likely' voters than 'registered' voters."
My sense is that our big advantage in new registrations is under the radar. I recommend FT 6, but several other organizations have the same goal. Hoping for a blue tsunami. Maybe Bonior can comment.
Meanwhile There may be huge defections. During the Sept. 10 debate Trump twice refused to say whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war against Russia. He suggested, "Negotiate a deal," which Harris countered by saying if Trump had been president during the invasion, "Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe."
Vance has been anti Ukraine. Over a million Ukrainians in Pa. Approximately 784,000 Polish Americans in Michigan, 758,000 in Pennsylvania, and 481,000 in Wisconsin. Latvians, Estonians, Litvaks, Fins, etc know that if Ukraine falls, they are next.
Last week, the DNC organized a national call with Polish American supporters. The goal was to rally local networks to host events and spread the campaign's message. This strategic move is aimed at mobilizing Polish American voters who could be crucial in tight races.
Betting odds today: RCP Average Harris 53.1 Trump 45.4
Great news. Terrific summary!
Not sure how meaningful any of this is but you asked. What I see: vast majority of Biden voters are voting for Harris. Only problematic pockets I see: Some middle age men Biden voters are hesitant to or won't vote for a woman, either have disengaged or will stealth vote for Trump. Some young men Biden voters are no longer afraid of COVID (this is why they voted for Biden in the first place) now don't seem to know much about Harris so open to opinions from all sides. They will either not vote or land where various male online influencers tell them to be, mass media/traditional media have no influence on them, they are 100% online for info.
I.. I... I truly have no way to be gentle about this. This is a gobsmackingly, dumbfloundingly, flabbergastingly incorrect view of the thought process of young male voters. Like, I don't even know where to begin. I'd ask you to source me some reputable analysis or data to back up what you have to say, but I won't because I know it doesn't exist.
Look, only about half of young men (or young people in general) voted in '20, and that was a record. Young women are more progressive than young men, but BOTH genders of Gen Z and the youngest millennials are very progressive, especially those who are registered voters. The sort of college guy who made enough of an effort to register for the first time in order to vote for the old, calm, un-revolutionary moderate that was Joe Biden did it because they were actually motivated and aware enough of the issues in general to get involved. There has been nothing in the past few years to make us *less* involved, only more. There has been nothing Cheeto von Tweeto has done in the past few years to make him more appealing to us, only less. There is nothing in Harris's attitude and policies that make her less exciting than Biden to the sort of young guy who cares enough to vote.
I don't know if you remember this, but an unfortunate number of people of all ages and genders did not take Covid seriously. The sort of guy who was "afraid of Covid" (a phrase I heard no man my age use during Covid, at any point, ever) is also the sort of guy who is concerned about gun violence, climate change, income inequality, etc. and those things haven't gone away. Oh, and abortion. Nothing concerns a prime sexual/reproductive age man *less* than the threat of unwanted pregnancy, amirite? So UNmotivating!
When you posit that we may "land where various male online influencers tell them to be," please understand how insulting that sounds. Flip the genders and see how ridiculous it is. "I'm concerned about young women voters. They aren't afraid of COVID anymore, so they will just listen to the Kardashians and other rich fashion models they follow!" No one on this forum would say that, for it would be rightly branded as sexist. I'm trying to visualize the Venn diagram of dudes who are intellectually lazy enough to shape their personality off a Twitch streamer, but also rational and involved enough to have voted for Biden in 2020, but also now "open to opinions from all sides," and I'm comin' up with three separate circles, y'all.
Please consider the stories you are telling about certain groups of voters, whether you actually have any proof beyond personal anecdote, and how hurtful and inaccurate those stories can be. This goes for everyone here, because lordy I'm gettin' tired.
I was responding to someone here specifically asking for personal anecdotes of former Biden voters. Of course that's what it was.
Simon addresses that in this Hopium issue today.
I raise my morning coffee in a silent toast to the incompetence of Charlie Kirk, Elon Musk, Lara Trump and the rest of Trump’s acolytes and campaign staffers. "Thank you for your witless and unwitting service to American democracy!"
New theory: all these weirdos—Kirk, Musk, Loomer, RFK Jr., Robinson, Nuzzi, Guilfoyle—they’re all Andy Kaufman, and this is all a bit.
Oh, please don't lump Nuzzi in with the others. She made one (admittedly big) mistake, from which I hope she recovers. The others, well...point taken.
I was reminded of some of her comments about Obama and Biden, and I’m fine with her career going down in flames.
I doubt Olivia Nuzzi made just “one mistake.” She’s always seemed a bit full of herself to me. I was shocked but not totally surprised by her recently revealed and quite inappropriate shenanigans.
Yes!
Like a lot of people leading extremist groups, they are more grifters than anything else. It's hard to figure out what Elon is thinking, but Kirk and Trump are grifters.
Isn’t it high time Elon commence his Mars expedition?
Ground control to Major Tom....
Musk has a few issues with Dems/Biden and many of them track back to COVID:
He had a son that transitioned to a daughter during COVID. He felt his child was duped into this by trans propaganda and he couldn't do anything about it due to quarantines. This was personally embarrassing for him.
Biden administration economic policies to fight and recover from COVID required raising interest rates which starved his companies of cheap borrowing and increased scrutiny on actual performance.
California (democratic stronghold) forced Tesla to adhere to COVID policies and aggressively pursued whistleblower complaints when they didn't. This led to other Tesla employees feeling emboldened to file other non COVID related complaints as well.
He was trolling Twitter management for enforcing COVID fact checking policies by pretending to want to buy them. Either he or his legal team (or both) did not understand the ramifications of their actions and ultimately were forced (by SEC regulations, i.e. the Biden administration in his mind) to buy Twitter with the help of other investors or pay a $1 billion fine alone (just Musk). He managed to convince other billionaires to help with the purchase after several attempts to back out and certainly did not actually want to do so.
All of the above items he feels Republicans would have bailed him out of or supported his opinions on by not treating COVID as the global emergency that it was.
Is there anything specific that happened that brings this sentiment about?
Let’s see... Donald put Lara Trump in charge of the RNC. One of their first decisions was to close lots of campaign offices and operations in multiple states. GOTV and the ground game was outsourced to Charlie Kirk and his Turning Point USA, and to Elon Musk. Multiple reports indicate... a stunning lack of ground-game activities, doors not getting knocked on, etc.
A few other names worthy of attention, some mentioned by Stephen: Tulsi Gabbard helped prepare Trump for the debate; Laura Loomer gave him some great talking points about cats and dogs; RFK Jr keeps generating eye-catching headlines about roadkill, brain worms and decapitated whale cadavers; Mark Robinson is accomplishing the seemingly-impossible task of making JD Vance seem almost normal...
Ha! Thanks for that list.
I threw a chunk of change to the New 4 (sounds like a team of superheroes) and drew this comic encouraging people to go to iwillvote.com: http://www.smallpeculiar.com/comic/the-dead-cat-strategy/
😆 🤣 😂 thanks for a good laugh!!
BTW: I think the Haitian story was to distract from the debate results he got clobbered by, especially nighttime comedians!🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
I agree with you.
I have little doubt that the NYT editor or editors in charge of polling issue an order to gerrymander our polling (who to poll and where to poll) to show a tight race or even large swings, like Arizona. It is their agenda. They have become anti-democracy.
Pro profit
I am disturbed by how many "likes" this has gotten. This is a really paranoid sentiment (there is no such thing as "gerrymandering our polling"). Has everyone here forgotten when the NYT/Siena polls were some of the BEST for Dems last year?
Guys, the NYT polling outfit has no nefarious agenda, and saying so is just reactionary and embarrassing. What they DO have is an old-fashioned method which this year is proving to be unreliable and erratic. I mean, their results for Harris/Walz in the Rust Belt have been pulling the polling average UP recently, as have their results for many of our Senate candidates.
The problem with their data is not that it is biased, but that it is INCONSISTENT. Any reasonable person can tell that there is no way Kamala is doing NINE points better in PA than AZ, or Gallego is outperforming her by double digits in the same state. Those margins are just too wide, and the swing back and forth between polls each time they take them is too wide as well. (Remember when they said earlier this year that Biden was doing 15 points better in WI than NV? Yeah, that was impossible then too.) Frankly, if they had her doing poorly everywhere (or vice versa), I would take it seriously, but any amateur can tell this is just a hot mess. What they need to fix is above my pay grade, but it is never wise to assume malice where incompetence is more likely.
Will is correct here.
Some NYT polls have been outliers. But it is pointless to focus on or criticize individual polls. If the pollster is credible, even outlier polls contribute to a helpful poll average, and the average (of state-specific polls limited to likely voters) is all that polling can helpfully contribute to our understanding.
NYT/Sienna is a credible pollster, despite the fact that we don’t like some of their outlier results. I haven’t seen any other reason here to question their credibility. The whole thing is an unhelpful distraction.
Michael Podhorzer made powerful arguments in his Substack a while back that polls well in advance of the election (today is still well in advance) contribute nothing helpful to our understanding. Simon’s discussion of how Dobbs has produced a series of election results inconsistent with polling is also instructive. I’m always curious what Simon means when he says NYT/Sienna finds more Republicans than other pollsters (which could be good or bad). But whatever that means, it is a mistake to dwell on individual polls, as we too often do.
Wrote 100 postcards to Pennsylvania and 20 letters to voters in NC over the weekend. Doing the work for the win, with joy
Thanks Teresa, I'm with ya! In our house these days we are all postcards, all the time! Current batch is NC, last batch was OH, before that it was AZ, CA, etc... Roughly 2100 out the door to date.
GO Team Hopium foot on the gas GO GO GO!!!
On it! Joining 3 phone banks this week and 2 post card writing sessions, reaching out to tens of thousands of Harris voters to VOTE ON DAY ONE, will be posting and reaching out every day, LFG Team, NOW IS THE TIME!
If you know of any Broadway “Hamilton” fans, enjoy and share this awesome VoteRiders video made by the current Broadway cast members to encourage voter registration and participation! https://youtu.be/sJayRSyTsDc?feature=shared
Saw this last week on twitter. It is SO GOOD! Thanks for posting it. It was great to see this again.
So good! Thank you!
Love this!
Tammy Baldwin’s opponent is a billionaire carpetbagger from Laguna Beach, CA. Here is a good investigative piece on him from endcitizensunited.org “New bombshell reporting shows that Eric Hovde’s bank flew $26 million in cash from Mexico to California as a part of a deal with Banco Azteca, a Mexican-based bank with a history of being utilized by drug cartels. This story follows previous reporting on Hovde’s shady finances and his refusal to divest from his bank if elected to the Senate—which has been accepting money from foreign governments for years.” Great to learn Tammy is up significantly without the polls even reflecting new and young voter registrations.
🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Local Republicans are leaving door hangers with sample ballots that say, "Vote policy; not the person. It's not WHO but rather what we are voting for!" That's what you say when your candidate is unappealing. They're also leaving door hangers asking people to vote early.
The hilarious thing about the "our guy's personality sucks, so vote policy!" argument is that the strong majority of their individual policies poll terribly as well. When you ask them to defend their policies they end up having to change the subject PDQ. They truly got nuthin.
I saw a very encouraging interview today, with someone from Voto Latino (hope I got that right). They have seen extraordinary numbers of new registrations and consider this very optimistic for Harris/Walz. Also, I wonder if anything damaging might land on Thursday with Jack Smith's filing in the Election Interference case overseen by Judge Chutkan?
I have been donating to them, happy to hear this! Please consider tossing them a little $.
Hi Sarah, Will look into that now. Thank you.
If this was the one I saw it was on yesterday’s Ayman on MSNBC.
Regarding: Julie Chavez Rodriguez
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/us/politics/who-is-julie-chavez-rodriguez-biden-2024-campaign.html
This new NYT/Sienna poll is absurd on its face. It makes no sense that those states would swing so heavily toward Trump during a month when economic news was consistently positive, Harris/Walz were kicking ass on the campaign trail and getting positive coverage, and Trump/Vance were wallowing in their pig slop and disgusting even some in their MAGA cult. Even Nate Cohn spends most of his NYT column today throwing cold water on these new results (which polled only 700-800 voters).
Absurd, but we ain't seen nothing yet! The NYT will put out more and more crap in October. Ignore it all. Kamala's much closer in her share of the vote to that of Gallego, I have to believe, with Lake and MAGA so closely identified. But does anyone remember how close Biden's percentage of the vote was to the winning Democratic governors in swing states in 2020?
A strong incumbent can definitely overperform a Presidential candidate (sometimes by quite a lot), but an open seat almost never splits with the top of the ticket. The notion that, in this polarized country, Gallego is doing FIFTEEN points better than Harris in a state that not only narrowly voted for her as VP but also recently elected a Dem Senator, Governor, AG, AND Sec of State less than two years ago is... um... uh... dubious at best.
This seems absolutely correct to me. In fact, our guy in Arizona is as far from being an incumbent as he can be? coming in as late as he did and replacing who he did on the ticket. I would be amazed if their totals were even three points apart.
YUP. I actually feel bad for Cohn & company trying to put some sort of a spin on this. These are smart people who have to know that these numbers are borderline-impossible. Neither candidate is going to be winning any of these states by 5-point margins, and I don't think even the campaigns themselves are claiming they can. If the results were consistently bad for Dems, then any griping among our crowd would be sour grapes, but there is no consistency even among their own numbers from weeks ago, let alone the numbers of any other reputable outfit, all of which paint a decisively different picture. Bewildering.
Inside baseball, VAT figures are more valid and prescient than the polls.
Simon and Team Hopium: In the video on polls today, I believe the announcer misuses the phrase "WITHIN the margin of error," using it to describe EVERYTHING he is seeing. But shouldn't he make the distinction when needed, "these poll results are OUTSIDE the margin of error"? Meaning, this lead is real for Kamala, it isn't a statistical mirage.
Or am I being too wonky here? (grin)
No, not too wonky. And he clearly misspoke. The margins of error are even included in the graphic. The context of the whole paragraph he reads is how she experienced a surge in those states. He said "out" when he meant "in." It happens.
I like the consistent and very strong WI results. It's seemed pretty clear that Baldwin will beat Hovde for some time now. See her number come in close to Harris, with a very strong +6 to +8 number, is very encouraging I would say. Both the consistency of the numbers, and the very strong showing. Hopefully these strong numbers translate to strength in MI and PA especially.
So many of us are writing postcards and calling voters. We are not even doing this for the Harris campaign. Just in our own or with the our communities like the Hopium community.
I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem like the other side has as much grass roots voter outreach like the Blue team. Am I missing something?
I don’t hear anyone talking about this, but it seems important. Are there these GOP aligned groups meeting and sending postcards? Is there an equivalent to Bluewavepostards.com?
Seems to me, their side is just watching Fox or Newsmax, going to rallies and forwarding weird social media memes to own the libs.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I haven’t heard anyone talk about the grassroots efforts on the other side.
Me? I’m doing more and trying to worry less. Have sent out 300 postcards this month and enrolled three friends to do the same.
I love this community!
@Jerry, related to this if you do a search engine for "postcards to voters" you get like the top 10 results are all groups for our side, so I think it speaks to the greater enthusiasm on our side. We got this, we are jamming with the postcards here too! GO TEAM HOPIUM!
I think this all the time, all the more reason for us to be working our hearts out, let's win this, Team!!!
Jerry,
I just read this morning that GOP “outsourced” their canvassing to a group and just fired them after receiving reports from their voters bc no GOP canvassers have been seen. And Elon Musk picked up another area for GOP. I think what you’re seeing/ hearing is correct. It was also mentioned GOP offices had been shut down in key states and not reopened. AND Simon has mentioned several times about “their lack of a party infrastructure for GOTV” MAGA unorganized? Low sign volumes,etc,etc
https://apnews.com/article/trump-political-action-committees-voter-canvassing-musk-0c1c095a6516b7bcbc80bf94fe0fe45a
Can we consider the NYT to be a "red wave" pollster like AtlasIntel, RMG and the others? I mean, my gosh. They come in to swing states and push the averages around. It up pushing the overall forecast 5 points in Trumps favor. No other credible outlet has found that level of movement among LVs at this stage in the cycle. And to boot, they have Ruben Gallego up 8 in the same state.
No. They are not at all a "red wave" pollster. They have been one of the most rigorous and transparent outfits in recent years. If they are a "red wave" pollster, then everyone is.
However, the results they have been getting are so out of whack with the numbers of most other outfits, as well as their OWN numbers on a month-over-month basis that they will need a reckoning over their methodology when this cycle is over if they want their reputation to be maintained.
Will, why don't you do your own substack. You seem to know everything about everything!
I must politely decline this suggestion. I don't think it would work out because - as I am sure you have noticed - I can be a rather annoying know-it-all. Plus I have time management issues. I think I'll stick to popping up here at random intervals on my days off to leave a deluge of bemused/outraged and detail-heavy replies, only to disappear afterwards into the ether of ye olde World Wide Web. Thanks for the encouragement, though!
Try and post more often so we can all be more enlightened.
Just remember NYT was pushing a electorate that's 36 rural when in 2020 it was 19-20%.
That's why so many of us feel NYT needs to be ignored.
The polls, especially in states like Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, do not reflect the surge in voter registrations among young voters, women voters, and voters of color. Thankfully, Tom Bonier (with his TargetSmart) and Simon keep us aware and up to date on this critical factor.