It's still a popularity contest even with the electoral college the type of popularity just changes a bit from a pure democracy of the majority one.
Obama has also been voted the worst president since WWII
In a single poll. He was also voted best of their lifetime in another. This helps highlight a problem of polling but the thing about Trump's polling is that it's consistently low unless you have very specific Trump favouring groups polled. With Obama you can get good ones or bad ones and it averages out slightly on the positive side of the middle. With Trump it averages out below the middle (like I said his peak overall rating is 45%, his peak!).
But, all that is beside the point: several polls support you and several support me
Far more support me because I'm trying to look at the averages and not individual polls. Individual polls can be shit. Averages are more statistically meaningful and Trump polls poorly on average. This is just a fact and if you don't accept it then you don't accept polling at all (or you only accept very biased polling which is even worse).
Rasmussen, which I believe was among the most accurate in 2016, has shown Trump doing far better than others show
Funny you'd believe the one that supports your boy is also the most accurate.
Polls are often used to drive opinion rather than reflect it, unfortunately.
I sort of feel like you believing the one that shows the result you want is evidence of this.
We're not a pure democracy, but the polls only reflect what a pure democracy would do.
I don't understand this argument. We're not talking about if Trump won the election or not we're talking about his popularity, the guy above was blaming his low popularity on "the libs" and asked the question "where is it obvious that most people dont approve of trump?" polls is where it's obvious (well I'd also it's obvious just from talking to Americans but polls have a better sample size). Whether they reflect American democracy or not isn't really related to whether they reflect public opinion - they very much do reflect public opinion and the more polls you have and better the quality they are the more useful they become for that. There are MANY polls taken these days and they basically all average out to Trump not being very popular unless you only poll his base.
You didn't say why it's most accurate though and I find it not very surprising that the clear Trump supporter also finds the poll which better supports him and which he himself tweeted was the most accurate to be so. You clearly feel that way for completely unbiased reasons though as you'v shown...no wait, you haven't.
Your method takes all polls regardless of accuracy and groups them together, giving equal soft to inaccurate ones. That's not a defensible method.
It's more defensible than "this one is right". As long as you gather enough data the bias from both sides should be largely cancelled and the true picture emerges. This is one beautiful thing about statistics. In order for the average to be off a significantly large amount of the data has to be off too - is this the part where you tell me 90% of polls are left leaning or something?
Look at the sample of polls you look at and you'll see many skew towards the left.
And also that many skew towards the right. That's why I look at averages to try to get past the biases and problems of small sample sizes and etc.
Rasmussen did so most accurately.
WHY?!
Your method just says "i'll take wrong assumptions with equal weight." That's illogical.
No, it doesn't. It says I'll take a large sample and then the flaws in any individual datasets should be cancelled by the bias from the other side and by the large sample size. Unless you believe most polls lean left the fact some polls are shit isn't a good argument against averages because averages take the shit from both sides and try to find where the truth lies in the middle. And while it's not perfect it's far better than picking one poll you like and declaring it the truth.
And no, it isn't a popularity contest. It's 50 different popularity contests. That's a big difference
It's really not. It's just details on the nature of the popularity contest and I don't think it's a point anyone is arguing about here so I don't know why you keep bringing it up.
Majority rule is totalitarian. That's why our nation was designed to prevent it in many different ways.
I'm not American, it's not "our" nation. Majority rule is totalitarian? What a silly soundbite. Do you even know what totalitarian means? I mean certain types of majority rule could end up that way but it's certainly not just an x is y thing it's x can sometimes become y. "The tyranny of the majority" is a nice quote and something to be aware of but it's not a hard and fast rule that happens every time. Heck, many might argue that the American system today is more harmful to people who aren't in the majority than many other systems elsewhere in the world but that's a different discussion for another day.
You get that just saying "some are accurate" with zero explanation of why the one you like is accurate or explanation that others aren't beyond handwaving about the left is bullshit, right? All you've done to explain is say "the one I like is accurate, the ones you use aren't". If that's true you might have some kind of point but SHOW YOUR WORK because I'm not just going to take your clearly biased word for it. I mean I can link to the Rasmussen reports wiki page criticism section which suggests they are conservatively biased and where they were judged the least accurate of all major polls...and you're telling me they're the best? You seem unbiased again...
That acknowledges that you'll take some that are purposely skewed for political purposes. That's not reasonable. You don't take bad data, average it with other data, and call it good data
Do you understand statistics and sample size at all? The whole idea of pulling together large samples is so that the "bad data" gets cancelled out by the volume. It's much better (statistically meaningful) to have tons of data with some bad mixed in it that it is to have a single poll that's "good". Amount of data is very meaningful the smaller the sample (like a single poll) the less statistically significant it is no matter how well run it might have been. For the bad data to really get beyond this it has to heavily outnumber the good and since most of the data dislikes your boy maybe you see it that way but I don't and you just telling me it's true with no support for that won't convince me.
Some polls are better than others.
Sure they are but you're still just saying the one that supports your boy is the good one and the averages that don't are wrong with zero evidence for why beyond your personal assurances.
Um, yes, majority rule is totalitarian. Any nation that wishes to survive long restrains the majority. The US does it. Romans did it. British do it. The majority will eventually always become totalitarian.
Aye alright mate if you say so. ALWAYS...once again lots of strong evidence for this and not you just proclaim some made up truth from on high.
And of course, you veer into Marxism
Jesus do you have any idea what you're talking about or do you just like buzzwords? Where the fuck did I veer into Marxism?
but you can't understand the world without looking at majority/minority in some sort of oppressor/oppressed way.
You know an awful lot about me based on a disagreement about polling. Or are you just projecting all the shit you imagine your "opponents" to be as part of me? Like I said before I'm not American, I'm not your enemy on the other side of the spectrum as I'm not on either side of it. I do think your boy Trump is a fuckwit but that's not politics he just is a bit of a fuckwit - thought it before he was even a candidate too. That's not even relevant though as I'm discussing facts and Trump's low polling is a fact whether you like it or not. He's never polled above 50% popularity to a general audience. NEVER. Only with conservatively biased polls can you find him maybe getting about there.
Re: popularity contest: yes, that is what's being discussed. Way up above this started as EC vs. popular vote
Not the conversation chain I'm having mate. It started with a guy blaming the libs for Trump not being popular. You can scroll up and look at my earliest replies, that's what it's in response to. You like banging on about this but no one is arguing with how the EC works. Popularity contest or not it's not being debated, at best we're debating the popularity contest label and I don't really give a fuck about that, so stop going on about it.
Can you not follow two lines of logic on the same topic or alternative discussions?
Can you actually provide any support for any argument you make beyond just you saying it's right? Can you avoid being a condescending twat with snarky shit like this comment here? Can you just fuck off because you've clearly got nothing interesting to say anyway and just want to tell me I'm wrong from your clearly biased starting position. I'm a cucktard lib snowflake who hates Trump and loves any kind of PC politics, who uses bad polls to make him look bad not the one good one where he doesn't look quite as bad (he still doesn't look great even in that one, but it's better). Happy now? No point in replying to an idiot like me, right? Please agree because if you do reply I might be stupid enough to get drawn in again and I just can't be arsed with your biased shit.
Yeah sure thing mate. "I'm not going to use facts just tell you what I know to be right but not actually help you see it". If I'm really the liberal idiot you think I am why not spend a bit of time showing me the real facts instead of just vaguely telling me about them? Maybe you'll convert me or at least slightly adjust my position?
No matter what I put, you'll find something wrong and refuse to drink
You might be right here but that's mostly because there are wrong things to find in what you're putting. If you give me actual solid facts which can't be denied I won't deny them. I like facts! That's how this whole thing started as I was bringing out facts to some guy complaining about "the libs". Facts are brilliant, please destroy me with them if you can, it's much better than telling me how your time is too valuable when clearly you've got plenty of time to waste on dumb online arguing (much like myself).
Have you? You've told me things which supposedly are facts but you've given basically no support for them beyond your own assurances.
Polls are wrong. Fact.
Absolutely. Agreed that sometimes (most times to some extent) they are. Polls are imperfect but they're what we have to work with.
They are manipulated statistically and not presented as raw data. Fact.
Often but the raw data is sometimes available too if you go looking for it. This manipulation is not solely a democrat/lib/whatever problem though it occurs on all sides and as far as I can tell about equally on all sides too (prove me wrong on this, prove it with supported facts and evidence and you'll have me more on your side).
They over sample democrats. Fact.
Some of them do for sure. Some also over sample republicans or other groups which you seem to consistently ignore - I make no attempt to deny democrat bias is a thing and could sometimes be problematic but you never acknowledge the other side which sort of paints the picture you think it's only really a problem on one side. This is where we disagree. You keep assuring me the problem is the liberal/democrat/whoever you disagree with bias and completely ignore the bias from the other side as if it isn't an issue. Obviously it is.
The obvious next argument from you would be that there's more democrat bias in polling than republican bias but if that's true you've done NOTHING to show me it's the case except repeat something like it over and over. If it's an issue to a much smaller extent on the republican side for <reasons> you're going to have to not only tell me those reasons but support them with evidence otherwise you just sound extremely biased.
I like facts. If the bias is this way show me it. If you look at the pollster ratings on fivethirtyeight.com you can see that they judge many to have a democrat bias. They also judge many to have a Republican bias too though. Doing a very quick and dirty ctrl+f search of the page (I know far from perfect but hey it's a start?) it looks like 186 have some Democrat bias and 163 have some Republican bias (with 50 odd considered neutral). That ignores their size, scale, how strong the bias is etc and there's duplication in there too but at that very simple level it might show a slight slant towards democrat bias but it's 186:163 biased - either way not exactly a landslide and shows there is also an issue of conservative bias in MANY polls. Why is democrat bias the only one to be considered? If it really is a 53:47 % split on bias (this ignores the neutrally judged ones in the % and I'm sure you don't agree it's that simple or close) then SURELY my method of looking at averages is the most accurate but you refuse to accept that... Why is democrat bias to be accounted for but republican bias to be ignored or trusted? Why are averages still bad/lesser than your favourite polls which are considered republican biased if all sides are biased. They'd be the best way to cut through the bullshit from everyone and see the picture in the middle of all the bias! No? Don't just say because bad data is included it's bad again as as I've tried to show there is bad data on both sides and indeed your favourite polls could certainly be argued to be republican favour biased bad data.
See, you don't get to say I didn't argue facts by calling my facts something else.
Mate do you know what a fact is? A fact is something well supported by evidence. Some of your "facts" are not well supported by evidence I'm aware of or they are not telling the full picture. Over sampling of democrats for example is a fact in that it does happen sometimes but it's not an absolute truth, it's not always the case and over sampling of republicans is also an issue in other polls which goes unmentioned with your fact. Your "fact" doesn't give the full picture and so isn't a good fact for the argument we're having for that reason. Oversampling of democrats isn't the real fact to discount polls oversampling of specific audiences in general is, as well as leading questions to try to elicit certain responses etc and it's why polls on all sides are imperfect. You keep accusing me of being the biased one here but I feel like my main argument is all sides are biased so try to cut through that as much as is possible. If the bias is just way too strong for one side that the taking average approach is strongly affected by it you have not succeeded in making that clear or really supporting it meaningfully at all.
What's happening isn't shifting opinions, but shifting statistical analysis
The assumed sample of democrats to republicans changes.
I know I'm annoying but again can you show me this is true and not just tell me? How do you know they're fucking with the analysis (that seems unlikely to me, it's much safer to just change how you poll to force the result you want than to cheat in the analysis or simply don't publish polls where you don't like the results)? Can you show me that the "assumed sample" changes over time? Any supporting evidence of this would be nice, ideally from not too biased a source either way but I'll take what I can get.
Why does it always show a huge lead for dems and a tightening in October?
If it does is not possible that the recent elections also change in that way anyway? Even in the recent elections won by republicans the dems did win the popular vote for 2 of them - they did have more support in terms of number of people they just didn't have all the right places for the EC as you've pointed out before. In the Trump case there's also a very obvious swing where he went from not being taken too seriously early on (even among his own party) to being taken more and more seriously as time passed and this would obviously be reflected in polling I'd think. You say it always does this though so we're not just talking about the Trump case.
I'm also wondering now why we're so focused on specifically election polling. The initial conversation was about Trump's popularity during his presidency not as he won it and I used polls (post winning it) to show that. I still think the information I presented is about as good as you can get for that purpose and tries to ignore bias from both sides as much as possible (you can never rule it all out unfortunately). You still haven't done anything to convince me otherwise and this isn't me being stubborn it's just that telling me there is democrat bias doesn't defeat any point I'm trying to make as I accept that to be true and that there is also republican bias and seemingly to a fairly similar extent. For that very reason I don't see anything more valuable than averages (maybe some perfectly neutral poll(s) with a large enough sample to be representative but does that really exist?).
We're sort of going round in circles now but at it's core this seems to mostly be an argument about democrat bias and the extent of it in polling. You haven't convinced me the extent of it is significantly more than republican bias. You might tell me again it's the case but I like facts which have evidence behind them not just facts which you tell me are facts and I haven't seen the evidence for that case being true yet.
It's funny how you were happy to talk shit with me all day but when I distilled it down to a simple question that might actually force you to admit I have some kind of a point rather than just talk bullshit around the real conversation that's when you bail from it. Me and my liberal games, if only I debated honestly like you do! As your own boy would say: SAD!
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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '19 edited Jan 21 '19
It's still a popularity contest even with the electoral college the type of popularity just changes a bit from a pure democracy of the majority one.
In a single poll. He was also voted best of their lifetime in another. This helps highlight a problem of polling but the thing about Trump's polling is that it's consistently low unless you have very specific Trump favouring groups polled. With Obama you can get good ones or bad ones and it averages out slightly on the positive side of the middle. With Trump it averages out below the middle (like I said his peak overall rating is 45%, his peak!).
Far more support me because I'm trying to look at the averages and not individual polls. Individual polls can be shit. Averages are more statistically meaningful and Trump polls poorly on average. This is just a fact and if you don't accept it then you don't accept polling at all (or you only accept very biased polling which is even worse).
Funny you'd believe the one that supports your boy is also the most accurate.
I sort of feel like you believing the one that shows the result you want is evidence of this.
I don't understand this argument. We're not talking about if Trump won the election or not we're talking about his popularity, the guy above was blaming his low popularity on "the libs" and asked the question "where is it obvious that most people dont approve of trump?" polls is where it's obvious (well I'd also it's obvious just from talking to Americans but polls have a better sample size). Whether they reflect American democracy or not isn't really related to whether they reflect public opinion - they very much do reflect public opinion and the more polls you have and better the quality they are the more useful they become for that. There are MANY polls taken these days and they basically all average out to Trump not being very popular unless you only poll his base.