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3volver ,

If Biden wins the popular vote and the convicted felon orange man ends up winning we’re so fucked. This entire system is shaking.

randon31415 ,

This right here -> “Joe Biden: Nothing would fundamentally change if he’s (re)elected”.

Yes, things would get worse with Trump, but you got to verbalize your plan to MAKE THINGS BETTER.

Drunemeton ,
@Drunemeton@lemmy.world avatar

Business Insider is utter crap. Please ignore those idiots.

MartianRecon ,

So the biggest issue on polling is that it’s a broken system. It relies on all people to answer when asked, and what we’re seeing is people flat out aren’t doing it. Think about it. When’s the last time you answered an unknown number, and if that number wasn’t something you were expecting (like your car repair person telling you your vehicle was ready) did you stay on the line?

This same kind of thing is popping up when we look at polling for the primaries and then see the actual voter data. They haven’t been lining up for a while.

Think back to 2022. The media, for months, was saying there was going to be a red wave election. Polling was supporting this as well. And… they had a measly 5 seat majority.

I think people are putting way too much faith in polling the past few cycles, because something fundamentally changed in how people interact with them.

half_built_pyramids ,

Right? Just a few days ago reported that Biden was winning battleground states because of felon.

MartianRecon ,

Precisely.

If you look at the underlying metrics for this election, it shouldn’t be anywhere near to being close. Multiple state republican parties are literally bankrupt, the primary demographic of the GOP is dying due to old age, and they are running a convicted felon.

You also have stuff like trump paying for biased polls. Are we really going to think that other people; didn’t know about this and are now doing it as well?

It just doesn’t make any sense, and of course our corporate owned media flat out refuses to be the 4th wall and be objective in their reporting. It’s infuriating.

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@fedia.io avatar

The media doesn't get clicks when the race isn't close. So they do everything they can to portray it as close.

MartianRecon ,

Without a doubt. It’s very frustrating isn’t it?

Zaktor ,

Approval is not the same as “won’t vote for”, and even if it was, if enough of the other guy’s base won’t vote for him an unpopular person can still win. There’s nothing incompatible about an unpopular candidate leading in polls. Whoever wins this election will have a net-negative approval rating.

Blackbeard ,
@Blackbeard@lemmy.world avatar

I also question whether or not we’ll ever see significant, sustained net approval of a President in the internet/social media age. Information is so decentralized and echo chambered now that there will simply never be a shortage of media describing why President ______ is bad and everyone is poor and in mortal danger.

TropicalDingdong ,

Obama was pretty firmly in the internet age, and left office in his second term with an approval rating of 55%.

Ghostalmedia ,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

I mean you can still have a low ass approval rating and best an opponent who has an even lower approval rating. Two things can be true at once. People people can dislike Biden, and dislike the other guy more.

pezmaker ,
@pezmaker@programming.dev avatar

Yeah, I was texted the other day to fill out a survey and didn’t even reply with the “stop to opt out”. Just, leave me alone. I’m not excited for Biden but I’m going to do what I need to do. That won’t show in any polls.

MartianRecon ,

Yeah like, most people have shit to do. I’m excited to vote for Biden again actually (he did get a lot of good stuff done with an extremely tight congress), and sure there are things he 100% did that I’m not on board with, but that’s everything. You’re never going to get 100% of what you want, but he’s the closest I’ll get so lets do it!

It’s just very frustrating how they’re framing the race this cycle. They completely ignore trumps many disqualifiers while talking about polling that, by all rights, he’s paying for bad results again.

Ghostalmedia ,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

IMHO, I think the bigger issue is that people don’t understand statistics. They see a poll that says Trump has a 25% of winning, then when Trump wins, they think the poll is wrong. That’s not how statistics works.

That means if you held the same close election four times, Trump would win one.

People mock the polls, but I wonder how many of those people actually took a basic GE statistics 101 glass.

MartianRecon ,

I’m not mocking polls here. I’m saying that if you have a sizeable population of people that refuse to participate in them, even if you get to a statistically significant number of people, the poll will be off. trump was also found to have been paying for polls that were slanted towards him to be put out there.

So, if a candidate is using bad polls to flood the zone with bad results, and then on top of that you have a statistically significant number of people who refuse to participate in said polling, your data is corrupted, is it not? This is exactly how people can use statistics to lie to people.

catloaf ,

For random events, that’s true. But we are able to poll people before the event to see how it will turn out. With a big enough sample size, you’re able to get pretty close to actual results. After all, the election itself is just one big poll, not a die roll.

Ghostalmedia ,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

I say this as someone who went to school for this stuff and does a lot of surveying and statistics daily.

This doesn’t work when you’re comparing things that are going to be neck and neck. In order forecast with very high confidence, with something that is neck and neck, you need a huuuuge sample size and absolutely perfect surveying conditions.

The reason polls have been a toss up lately isn’t because the polling is bad. The problem is that the big races were also ways going to be nail biters, and we’re looking at the odds that a race will be 1% one way or another.

The good polls have been pretty damn close to the final vote percentages numbers. The problem is that the variance needed to swing a win right or left is absolutely minuscule. We’re often talking about percentages that are less than 2%, or less than 1%.

catloaf ,

Calls, rarely. Texts and Facebook polls, every chance I get (though I don’t use Facebook that much any more).

Humanius ,
@Humanius@lemmy.world avatar

Please please please don’t vote the orange man into office… good God.

lambalicious ,

Genocide “Not a Felon” Joe finds out being pro genocide, not-a-felon, are not enough to get votes. Oh if there was something he could do about that.

partial_accumen ,

"The felon"s lowest approval was still more than 3% lower than Joe’s new low. That ain’t sayin’ much though.

TropicalDingdong ,

I think that tells you everything you need to know about Biden as a candidate.

Non-viable. If you can’t out approval a 34-count convicted felon, we shouldn’t be running you as candidate.

partial_accumen ,

I think that tells you everything you need to know about Biden as a candidate.

It absolutely does. Biden is the right pick over Trump.

Non-viable. If you can’t out approval a 34-count convicted felon, we shouldn’t be running you as candidate.

Did you have reading comprehension error? Trump was more than 3% LOWER in approval. Than this new low for Biden. As in, even Biden as his worst approval rating is better than Trump (at his worst).

TropicalDingdong ,

It absolutely does. Biden is the right pick over Trump.

I mean that’s an editorial or moral opinion. Which is fine, but not relevant.

Trump was more than 3% LOWER in approval.

Was. Not is. Trumps approval was also much higher then Bidens ever has been at some points. Do those times not count?

What should matter is that right now. Trumps approval is 5 points higher than Biden. Not at some other time. Not cherry picking one time for one and a different time for the other. Just the facts ma’am.

Living in exacerbated disbelief of reality or in a heighten state of moral panic over the fact that, apparently, the country approves of Trump more than they do Biden does nothing to change the political reality we find ourselves in.

There is no moral comment being made when we show through data that Biden is losing this election. Living in a constant state of outrage because reality doesn’t meet your expectations and other people obviously don’t share them is delusional to the point of exhaustion.

partial_accumen ,

Was. Not is.

Was, when President. Which is the equal measure.

Trumps approval was also much higher then Bidens ever has been at some points. Do those times not count?

Not cherry picking one time for one and a different time for the other. Just the facts ma’am.

Now who’s cherry picking? Biden’s highest approval is above Trumps highest approval, during both of their Presidencies. With Biden at 59% and Trump only reaching 47%.

Living in a constant state of outrage because reality doesn’t meet your expectations and other people obviously don’t share them is delusional to the point of exhaustion.

You brought your whole army of strawmen didn’t you? Did you even see how I started this thread?

Feel free to respond to the void. I won’t be wasting more time on you and your bad faith arguments.

TropicalDingdong ,

Biden, 37%

Trump, 43%

All that matters.

jwt ,

I’m not American so it shouldn’t concern me, but fuck you’re a bunch of idiots.

meco03211 ,

Well I am an American and it does concern me!.. and your analysis is spot on.

Soup ,

And it’s stressful as hell because they keep shaping the world around them to be worse, too. Canada’s got too many wannabe republicans and it’s starting to really piss me off.

Ashyr ,

Well I wonder what could be the Gaza that.

TropicalDingdong ,

Unlikely to improve. The Biden team is making it clear that they intend to move to the right to get the voters they think they need this election cycle.

Its also pretty clear to any one with eyes that he’s not going to find the voters he needs there, but it is what it is.

For context, no incumbent has ever won a second term with an approval of less than 51%.

OneStepAhead ,

No convicted felon has been elected. I don’t think anyone has ever had a second term with someone between either…

TropicalDingdong ,

has ever had a second term with someone between either…

Once. Grover Cleveland. His party basically blew the 4th year election, and his second term was a pretty strong showing.

Fondots ,

no incumbent has ever won a second term with an approval of less than 51%.

Sigh Relevant XKCD

TropicalDingdong ,

You are misinterpretting the XKCD.

Its not as if incumbents with approvals this low haven’t competed. They have.

We have the data on it. You don’t win the presidency with an approval this low.

SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

They aren’t misinterpretting the XKCD.

Even though Biden is not very popular a lot of people will be thinking twice about voting in a man convicted of thirty-four felonies to the white house.

This might make Biden the guy who breaks that record and that’s what the comic is about.

TropicalDingdong ,

My (parent) comment didn’t mention Te-felon Don.

So I’m sticking with them not understanding the XKCD or the parent.

SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

But the whole idea is so-and-so can’t win if so-and-so.

Until they do.

TropicalDingdong ,

No, its not. Again, a misunderstanding of what was said.

The point isn’t that it hasn’t been attempted. It has, repeatedly. The XKCD is all examples of things that haven’t happened.

The example provided is something specific that has been attempted, repeatedly, where we know the answer (not the felonious aspect, but the low approval. Don being a felon was never a point of discussion).

Its both a misunderstanding of the XKCD and the statement.

Plenty of incumbents with low approval have run. They don’t win their elections. We’ve got lots of data on this.

SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

Plenty of incumbents with low approval have run. They don’t win their elections.

Until they do and that’s the point of the comic.

TropicalDingdong ,

Sure, but its still a misinterpretation.

Consider why the comic cites categorical reasons, not continuous ones.

Specifically, I can put a mean and a standard error down on polling, approval, and using a factor like incumbency calculate a probability of re-election based on a given approval or polling metric.

Polling and approval data, is something at least hypothetically ‘exists’ for all candidates, ever, even if it went unmeasured.

And it does exist for these candidates. Don’s felony would fall within the bounds the premise of this comic, but not polling or approval. The relationship between polling, approval, and incumbancy doesn’t because we do actually have those information on those things. We can look at all presidents prior to now that we have data for, we can divide them into ‘re-elected’ and not ‘re-elected’, calculate a mean and standard error of their polling, and their approval, anything we can measure, and look at the probability of occurrence for the thing given their polling. We couldn’t actually do that with any of the factors in the XKCD because we’d be dividing by zero. We literally couldn’t create the statistic to get a probability distribution from because there are no examples of President running has parameter “thing B”, which is the actual point of the comic. “thing B” gets more and more ridiculous as the comic goes along.

Why the current example isn’t that case is that we do have examples of incumbents with low approval trying to be elected. The “thing B” about the incumbent exists and has been tested, so we can calculate the probability distribution.

SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

We couldn’t actually do that with any of the factors in the XKCD because we’d be dividing by zero.

A lot of the comic’s statistics were height differences and that’s where you argument falls apart.

TropicalDingdong ,

All presidents have a ‘height’ measurement, so we can make a probability distribution and look at the likelihood of an incumbent winning based on their height.

…osu.edu/…/does-height-make-right-u-s-presidents-…

And because its continuous, we can extend that to Presidents whose heights haven’t previously been observed.

otp ,

Its not as if incumbents with approvals this low haven’t competed. They have.

And he’s up against a convicted felon. And we have the data on it. You don’t win the presidency with a felony conviction.

TropicalDingdong ,

against a convicted felon. And we have the data on it. You don’t win the presidency with a felony conviction.

…

I mean the felon part actually would be in bounds of the logic of the comic. We can’t observe the probability of a felon getting elected because it hasn’t occurred before, and therefore we can’t calculate a statistic.

otp ,

Are the “probabilities” of both, based on historical data, not currently 0%?

TropicalDingdong ,

Its a divide by 0. We can absolutely put down a probability of Bidens likelihood to win based on current polling or approval, because we have an N to divide by.

We don’t have an N to divide by in the felony issue (or any of the issues cited in the comic), and so can’t calculate a probability.

otp ,

“X has never happened (until it happened)” is literally the point of the comic.

It’s not a divide by zero problem because we’re looking at all the presidents for a given criteria. N is the number of presidents elected.

Every one of those blurbs, and the two additional ones suggested here, are a situation where N equals the number of prior presidential elections. And all of them are 0%, because the listed criteria were always 0/N.

TropicalDingdong ,

Thats just not how probabilities work.

otp ,

It seems like you’re purposely ignoring the point of the comic (highlighting the fallacy pertaining to things that never happened before) so that you can continue to believe that the probability of something that never happened before is greater than the probability of something that never happened before.

TropicalDingdong ,

Oh my good clam-baking mullet wearing jesus my dude.

Why is it always projection with you people?

The thing that has never happened: a felon is a candidate. We have no information on this or how it will impact the results of a presidential campaign.

You want to interpret this as a result, but you shouldn’t. We have no data here.

catloaf ,

Based on historical data, no, they are undefined. It’s expressed as the number of historical wins divided by the total number of historical felons running. There have been zero historical felons running, and dividing by zero is undefined.

otp ,

I’d rather express it as the number of federally-elected felons over the total number of historical presidential elects… which seems to be what the comic is using.

TropicalDingdong ,

The comic is highlighting the absurdity of taking something that is technically undefined, and thinking that you’ve got a counter-factual (with is, like, exactly what is happening for most people in this thread).

If no felons have ever previously run for president, you have no data on how felons perform. You have an N of 0 because the event hasn’t occurred. Its a null result. NA. Undefined. You have no information. Its untested.

Even further, it highlights the very exact point of the comic, which is that when you rely on currently has an N of zero as a counter factual, you are going beyond the scope of what your data is capable of speaking to.

To assess the impact of a candidate with a felony on their chances of winning a presidential election, we need to know how many felons have run and how many have won. However, if no felon has ever run for president, we have zero data points for both felons running and winning. This means our calculation for the probability of a felon winning would involve dividing by zero, which is mathematically undefined and impossible. Without any previous instances to examine, we simply cannot make a statistically grounded prediction about the impact of a felony on a candidate’s electoral prospects; we lack any empirical evidence to base such an assessment on.

otp ,

Refer to the title panel of the comic, which says the problematic statement is…

No president has ever been re-elected under <circumstances>.

What you said was,

no incumbent has ever won a second term with an approval of less than 51%.

Or to summarize…

no incumbent has ever won a second term with [circumstances]

So is it sounding familiar?

TropicalDingdong ,

Except that we actually have approval ratings and polls for about 90 years of elections. From which we can build the appropriate counter-factuals to actually create a statistic because an approval rating is a continuous variable, not a discrete variable. An approval rating of 51% is directly comparable to an approval rating of 31%, and all Presidents ‘have’ this condition, even if it went unmeasured. I also have a sufficient range of variation to build the negative case example because I have presidents and candidates across the range of variation observed in the condition, and variation in the outcome: winning an election.

Being a felon is also a condition, but 100% of the data we have is “not a felon”. And we have no variation in the observed outcome. Some non-felons won, some non-felons lost. We’re not testing if they are a felon or not, we’re testing if they win the election or not.

Look I get that this is beyond you, but you really aren’t making the point you think you are here. Also, you are on the wrong side of the fallacy the comic is presenting. I’m not trying to interpret being a felon has on becoming president, you are. I’m interested in what the polling data has to say about the probability of winning, which is a statistically and scientifically grounded thing to do.

You mostly seem like you have an axe to grind because Biden is losing the election for you. I’m sorry for that.

catloaf ,

No convicted felon had ever won a presidency before… but no convicted felon has ever lost a presidency before, either. If you want to study that variable, you have to have the data.

The comic might be doing that, but the entire point of the comment is to show that it’s illogical. It’s literally titled “The problem with statements like…”

otp ,

Yeah, both are “This has never happened before, [until?..]”

Zaktor ,

And no challenger has ever won with an approval rating as bad as Trump’s. One way or another a historically unpopular candidate is going to get their second term.

TropicalDingdong ,

Yeah, I mean, its super interesting in an academic way.

And, you know… panic inducing in almost every other way.

If Cornell West hadn’t clustered the fuck out of his candidacy, we could have been seeing a Green party & Independent coalition representing a viable third party threat this year. The Green party is the only third party that had the infrastructure in place to get onto the ballot in all 50 states. But West screwed the pooch. I think he with Stein as running mate might have actually been able to make it happen, purely based on how hated the two extant candidates are.

Weirdmusic ,
@Weirdmusic@lemmy.world avatar

Don’t forget that Drump has NEVER WON the popular vote. Not in 2016 and certainly not in 2020

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