You'd think I'd learn by now to stop betting against Trump. The other day I wrote: "There is zero chance that Trump can win the general election." Now Reuters is reporting "Trump surges in support, almost even with Clinton in national U.S. poll." This is in line with a Quinnipiac and PPP poll earlier this week.
Look, I don't like the guy. But there are a lot of disaffected voters who don't care: he's their guy. Back in February, I took note of a guy on NPR who said that if he can't vote for Bernie Sanders, he was going to vote for Trump. Then on Tuesday, the Hill had this headline: "Nearly half of W.Va. Sanders backers would vote Trump."
This is not a conventional election year, not by a long shot.
19 comments:
I'm not a fan of his either, so it'll come down to what it comes down to in every Presidential election I've voted in since 1984 - who's going to screw me the least?
Follow the money. The betting lines here and overseas are not reacting to Trump's purported surge. They still offer very different odds for the two candidates.
Also, the Reuters poll found that Trump has “surged” all the way to 40%, which is exactly where he’s been in poll after poll after poll, for months. A less dramatic way of putting it is that Clinton has led in 23 of the last 25 national polls, with one tie and one showing Trump +2. Both of the latter polls are from Rasmussen.
In the long run, Donald Trump needs to double his current support among women voters to rise to the same level where Romney and McCain didn't come close to winning.
Yup, it's all about the omniscient prediction markets, precognitive polls, and destiny demographics.
Your attitude reminds me of someone.
Again, Trump was at 40% in that Reuters poll, as he is in many polls. What an incredible “surge” to sub-Dukakis levels!
Reuters says that Clinton had had a 13% lead in its polling one week earlier, but seven days later it was 1%. What’s the numerical premise here, that Trump was at 28% nationally before his double-digit rocket ride?
But “surges in support” will always make for a snappier headline than “our last poll came out a little unlikely, so rather than assign much weight to a probable outlier result, we did a followup poll which shows losing numbers for Trump that are right in sync with the dozens of other polls throughout 2016, the previous twenty of which had Trump at 41, 41, 41, 40, 38, 39, 43, 41, 39, 40, 41, 35, 41, 38, 36, 40, 40, 41, 38 and 41 percent for an average of 39.7%.”
Whom are you trying to convince - yourself?
I wasn't the one "unskewing" the polls like a pie-eyed chump in 2012.
So now you want your turn to do it in 2016.
Don't look now, but there's a new NBC poll you'll have to toss on the "doesn't count" pile.
You'll find that gets a little harder to do each time.
And a little more entertaining for others.
The NBC poll counts as much as any poll in May (*). Who's winning it?
(*Except for last week's Gravis poll that has Trump winning the Latino vote by 10%. Might be a sampling kink there.)
How come Trump only went up 1% in the NBC poll? I read somewhere that he's surging.
Old line: Trump can't exceed 40%.
New line: His 45% still has him trailing.
That's not my old line, professor. And it has nothing to do with November. It's a leftover meme from the overbooked Republican primary race. Obviously any GOP candidate is going to get more than 40%. You're punching at vapor.
As your line in the sand dissolves in real time, it's "what 40%?"
M'aaaand the polls that can be discarded as outliers keep coming fast and furious.
More vapor? Honestly, WHO are you arguing with? Even if I were a voice inside somebody's head, I wouldn't live in yours.
Again, dummy, I've never said 40% was a ceiling, or a line in the sand. The people saying that were mostly Republicans futilely touting Rubio and Cruz. I said 40% doesn't represent a surge, and it doesn't. But Trump's never going to lose to Hillary by 60% to 40%.
Real Clear Politics lists the 71 national Clinton-Trump polls to date. The one you’ve just linked is the seventh of the 71 that have shown Trump leading. And four of those seven Trump leads are from the same pollster: Fox News. No other pollster has two.
Ignore that it's Fox; that’s not important. What matters is that thus far, they’re largely alone.
Free advice: Don’t ignore the bruising “unskewed” lesson you received by wishcasting Romney in 2012. Or, do. And when you end up with the same shocked, dangle-jawed look of pain on your face again, don't be stingy. Promise you’ll post a November selfie.
And four of those seven Trump leads are from the same pollster: Fox News.
Ah, there it is - the discard.
[But you'll have to make it "four of those eight Trump leads", now. See what I meant when I said "You'll find that gets a little harder to do each time"?]
Have you succeeded in convincing yourself yet?
Yup, that wasn’t too predictable.
When you pretend to scoff at what you mockingly call “destiny demographics,” you really shouldn’t be using stupid phraseology like "the discard.” Not even incorrectly.
That new Rasmussen poll has Hillary Clinton at 37%. Only three of the previous 71 polls have shown Clinton down in the 30's. The previous poll that did was also by Rasmussen. The one before that was by Rasmussen. And the remaining one was by Rasmussen. Seriously, that's been it.
Pace yourself, junior. It's May. I won’t be crowing about today’s post-Rasmussen CBS/NYT poll, or any individual poll. There WILL be more polls with Trump in the lead, I promise you.
Maybe pour a little cold water down the front of your pants and try to remember the great 2012 unskewing. Not just that it didn't work, but why it didn't.
If you were going to complain that I drew attention to your discard of the the Fox poll, it would have probably been best to not proceed in the next breath to also discard the Rasmussen poll, lol.
My bet is you'll be a busy little discarding beaver in the coming months. But take heart. By late October, you'll have many scores of poll results stretching back many months, from which you can glean an average which will authoritatively tell you... something important to no one but you.
In which our resident troll completely bungles the difference between "discard" and "put into context." Just like in 2012.
To have your guts kicked in that hard on Victory Night, yet learn absolutely nothing from it? And come back for seconds? You're the reason casinos have ATMs.
The timing of your original ill-advised choice to restart this thread, after an lol-worthy four or five days' distractionary absence, could not have turned out more facepalming for you.
With the new WP/ABC poll confirming a Trump surge, there have now, since your re-entry, been what: 4 or 5 polls showing Trump with the lead versus 1 showing Hillary.
Oh, the ever-growing pile of polls you've got to "put into context."
Um, eek? Oh no? But then, literally one hour later, the new NBC/WSJ poll showed just the opposite. (Timing!) Er, hooray? Uhh, take that?
That you think "timing" is crucial in May polling shows how little you grasped from snatching humiliation from the jaws of defeat in the 2012 unskewing. Imagine it, a candidate enjoying a sudden uptick in the polls in the immediate wake of having sewn up the nomination. A statistical phenomenon like that hasn't happened since Mitt Romney. And before him John McCain, and before that, John Kerry.
And besides,you’re missing the big story here: Hillary Clinton's incredible 9-point surge from her undiscardable Rasmussen numbers!
Trump has improved this week, that is a fact. Another dozen or so wins and he'll have about as many first-place poll finishes as Mitt Romney had... in October and November of 2012. Mitt led in 19 polls down the stretch. He even had seven leads in May.
If only we had a photo of your trusting, happy face back when you saw this headline, which appeared just 3 weeks before the election, and not 24 weeks before:
Poll: Romney surges ahead of Obama in the dozen swing states
Mitt Romney has opened a 5-percentage-point lead over President Obama in the 12 battleground states that are critical to determining the outcome of the 2012 election, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday.
Yet another surge! Funny story there. Mitt Romney didn’t win all 12 battleground swing states. He didn’t win 11, either. Nor ten, nor nine, nor... he didn’t even win two of them. He went 1-11. And most of the races weren’t close. "Has opened a 5-percentage-point lead"? Mitt lost eight of those states by more than 5%.
The same poll also showed Romney just 1% behind with likely women voters. He lost the actual female vote by 11%. Stupid demographics. Good thing the female vote won't be a factor this time. Gosh, I pray the next poll doesn't also make that advantage instantly evaporate.
literally one hour later, the new NBC/WSJ poll showed just the opposite
Alright! There's one poll I bet you won't have to "put into context!"
Another thing I bet is that we shall hear no more from you about your vaunted "40% average."
On a separate note: what deep scars must reside in your mind that lead you to endlessly obsess about Mitt Romney. This election, and this thread (I thought) are about the 2016 race. But for you, it's all Romney! Romney! Romney!
And I can only pity your obsessive fantasy that I worked to "skew" the polls for Romney in 2012 (whatever that even means in your head). But it's obviously very important to you and, apparently, a burden that gives you no rest.
I'll leave you now to have the final word in this thread; do try to appropriately sum up your finest hour.
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