*** The Official MAGAposting thread ***

[MadMojoMonkey]

It's dumb how the Reps bar for what counts as a Democratic scandal has nothing to do with their bar for a Republican scandal.

Porn on the computer? What we all wouldn't give for the worst scandal of the past 4 years to be a sex scandal.

[MadMojoMonkey]

The only way tomorrow ends without an open question seems to be if Florida can count enough mail in ballots on the day to call their election results for Biden.

If Biden takes FL, Trump has a very slim path to victory.

So there's a slim chance that it doesn't go full shitshow, but its slim.

[OngBonga]

I don't think anyone gives a shit about regular porn. Maybe a handful of nutjob Christians, but they vote Trump anyway. I'm very surprised that's all there is to it. It's not out of the question that dirt has been swept under the carpet, but that's probably just me being cynical.

The best thing that can happen imo now is a landslide. Doesn't matter who wins, so long as it's comprehensive. If it's close, this will drag on longer than fucking Brexit.

[oskar]

My bet is on: Trump will declare victory pretty much no matter what happens. I really think he'll take it to the supreme court. Isn't Kavanaugh already on record saying something about a "Bush V Gore precedent" xD
This won't be pretty.

In other news: do all Trump supporters drive oversized pickup trucks? What the hell is going on? What are they hauling?

[Poopadoop]

How else are they supposed to run Biden's bus off the road?

Also, a pickup truck is a perfect metaphor for a Trump supporter: A lot of empty space behind a loud engine.

[MadMojoMonkey]

[boost]

what are the odds on wuf reappearing in the next week? Are they higher or lower if Trump wins?

[oskar]

I wonder if wuf drives a pickup truck.

[oskar]

The intro to this is perfection.

[Poopadoop]

what are the odds on wuf reappearing in the next week? Are they higher or lower if Trump wins?

I think he'd be here if he thought Trump was going to win and still supported him. The former doesn't seem likely, and the latter is an open question. I think regardless, his days of shouting #MAGA to people who aren't buying it are behind him.

The election is still scary though. I know the 538 guys are saying something like 90% Biden wins, but as someone with a pretty good grasp of probability theory the idea of applying it to an election outcome seems pretty nonsensical. It's not like you some random events are going to impact the outcome.

More reasonable to me seems to be there will be a systematic error in the polling that will tend to repeat across multiple states. There's no way to know the size or direction of that error in advance, it likely depends on a lot of unknowns, and it only takes the polls to be systematically off by ~2.5% nationwide for Trump to be able to squeak out a win.

[boost]

Polls, not the ultimate results are the randomness in the equation. Since you're (obviously) not polling 100% of the group, your results will always have a sampling margin of error.

A few other entries into the system for randomness I can think of:

Voter's propensity to change their vote/stay home in the face of a negative October surprise for their candidate, or a positive revelation about the opposing candidate.

In the case of the USA, the structure of the electoral college can make for situations where one candidate has many more paths to victory than the other. More paths, more probable they'll win.

[MadMojoMonkey]

If the party divide in the US was in line with state populations, the electoral college would see to it that less than 25% of the popular vote is enough to win the election.

I mean, if you add up the electors from the least populated states and keep adding a state until you get more than half the electors, then see how much of the US population is in those states, it's less than 25%.

***
Texas has slowly been turning more Dem over past years. If Texas flips to a blue state, it's likely the electoral college will prevent another republican win until another state with as many electoral votes flips red.

***
The electoral college is stupid, antiquated and it was designed because the founders feared that people wouldn't care about elections that happened on a level so far removed from their daily lives. So the notion was that people would really be invested and care about who's the city mayor, less so about the state governor, and barely at all about the nation's president. The fear was that citizens wouldn't care enough to be informed enough to make a good decision, and the electors were meant to ensure that something stupid didn't happen.

That's just not the case, and historically has never been the case. So the electoral college fixes a problem that never existed.

[Poopadoop]

Polls, not the ultimate results are the randomness in the equation. Since you're (obviously) not polling 100% of the group, your results will always have a sampling margin of error.

A few other entries into the system for randomness I can think of:

Voter's propensity to change their vote/stay home in the face of a negative October surprise for their candidate, or a positive revelation about the opposing candidate.

In the case of the USA, the structure of the electoral college can make for situations where one candidate has many more paths to victory than the other. More paths, more probable they'll win.

I think I didn't explain myself properly. You're right that the polls are a source of random error. The problem with election forecasting is the modelling can never be complete. There is a difference between random error and epistemic error - i.e., the fact that you can't model what you don't know about.

Silver and his ilk do this kind of forecasting mostly for sports afaik. And in those cases you have reams of data and the outcome is largely predictable based on those data- ie. epistemic error is low because you have nearly all the possible information. That's not the case with elections.

The Biden wins 90% is a number I'd be thrilled to take at this point. However, the idea of being 90% certain based on polls where about 1/3 of the states are between 45-55% in favour of one or the other candidate is not warranted imo. It's too easy for the polls to be off by 3-5% one way or the other in nearly every state because they don't accurately capture voter behaviour.

Further, you can't assume the error in each state is independent - if it were it would tend to be self-cancelling and tend towards an "average" outcome. It's just as possible the error is that every poll underestimates one candidates chances by a given %, iow that the error in the polling is not random, but systematic. That's the epistemic uncertainty you get with forecasting events like elections.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Not to mention that the specific grammar used to ask the poll questions will cause the answers to fluctuate.

[boost]

Do you know that their models don't take these things into account?

[MadMojoMonkey]

I know the polling agencies do micro-polls on the grammar before conducting the full-scale poll.

Gonzo journalism is unavoidable.

You don't want to ask a shit question, but that means you have to tweak your question based on the answers.
Good polling agencies do this well, but it doesn't change the nature of the problem.

Sometimes you will see a polling result that shows difference in answers based on the subtle change in the way the question is asked. That is presented when the difference is more interesting than either result on its own.

[MadMojoMonkey]

BTW. Today is the day to go and vote.

I voted this morning, and I encourage all my 'Murican compatriots to make the time and go vote today.
I won't say I don't care who you vote for, but I care more that you go and vote - on the non-POTUS issues especially.

The electoral college will do its thing, and your vote for POTUS isn't irrelevant, but it's not on the same scale as voting for the other issues on the ballot.

I regret that I didn't take the time to familiarize myself with all the judges on the ballot, and had to leave about half of my ballot blank because of it. If you're in a similar position as me, maybe take an hour to do some looking into who those judges are.

But either way, please go vote.

[Poopadoop]

Do you know that their models don't take these things into account?

My understanding is that they try to, but given those adjustments involve previous elections that aren't under identical conditions, then how successfully they can possibly do so is hard to guage until the event in question has already happened.

Even then these modelling methods have an issue with being unfalsifiable, at least until they predict "X has 100% chance of winnng election". In every other case where the favourite loses, they can say they didn't say it was impossible, just unlikely.

The farthest I would be willing to go as one of these guys would be to say "If the polls accurately capture voter behaviour, based on our simulations X has Y % chance of winning." But then no-one would visit my site because I admit I'm not actually omniscient and that my assumptions are potentially fragile, and so I wouldn't make any money as an honest election modeller.

[Poopadoop]

I voted this morning,

How long did you have to stand in line?

[MadMojoMonkey]

How long did you have to stand in line?

No line at all. It was a 0.6 mi (~1 km) walk to the place. There were more voting booths than people voting, and not even a line to pickup my paper ballot. Including the 2km walk, we spent maybe 45 minutes out of the house. The walk took longer than filling out the ballot, and filling out the ballot took longer than checking in and getting the ballot.

I know there are a lot of people around the country who are having a polar opposite experience, but mine couldn't have been easier.

[OngBonga]

I voted Trump.

[Poopadoop]

You might have wasted ur vote.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Hey, if you want Trump, you can have him, IMO.

[boost]

My understanding is that they try to, but given those adjustments involve previous elections that aren't under identical conditions, then how successfully they can possibly do so is hard to guage until the event in question has already happened.

Even then these modelling methods have an issue with being unfalsifiable, at least until they predict "X has 100% chance of winnng election". In every other case where the favourite loses, they can say they didn't say it was impossible, just unlikely.

The farthest I would be willing to go as one of these guys would be to say "If the polls accurately capture voter behaviour, based on our simulations X has Y % chance of winning." But then no-one would visit my site because I admit I'm not actually omniscient and that my assumptions are potentially fragile, and so I wouldn't make any money as an honest election modeller.

Ah, ok, yeah, I mean I think we essentially agree-- I just can't not say something when it seems like someone is claiming "the weather man is always wrong." The biggest issues seems to be that poll respondents are self selecting.

[OngBonga]

"We know socialism and communism when we see it"
A Latino Trump voter.

[OngBonga]

I was getting tired of BBC bias so I decided to watch Fox coverage. That lasted a couple of minutes.

I think I'm better off staring at the odds on betfair, observing the fluctuations.

[OngBonga]

Biden is pretty heavy favourite right now.
Biden - 1.51, Trump 2.92
(2 is evens)

[OngBonga]

I went to make a cup of tea and now it's
Biden - 1.38, Trump 3.6

I guess something happened

[OngBonga]

Biden 1.29 Trump 4.4

If this were a tennis match I'd say it was pretty much over.

[OngBonga]

Anything in the 1.0 range is pretty much game over. 1.01 is the lowest it goes to, that means you're winning 1 c for every $1, you only see that when it's a certainty. I'm sure 1.01's have lost before, but it's probably a horse that fell at the finish line or something. Super rare.

1.1 and I'm calling it.

It's now Biden 1.27 Trump 4.6 while I typed this

[OngBonga]

I think Biden is favourite because he's edging Wisconsin, which would be a gain. I don't know if that puts Trump in trouble or if he needs to lose another state, but his odds have stopped slipping, it's settled down.

I can see Wisconsin being a recount.

[oskar]

Betting sites probably aren't a bad indicator, but I would have jumped on the chance of getting 3:1 on a Biden win. We knew for months that a red mirage was a likely scenario.
That said, it's way too close for comfort. I'm still not willing to dismiss 538 and the like because they predicted 80:20 flip and it may go the other way twice. I do think they should have done a better job communicating the level of uncertainty.

... This just in: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...04491612618752
New possible outcome: the election results don't matter and they're going to test Kavanaugh's proposed "Bush v. Gore precedent".

[OngBonga]

I think Biden was around 3:1 at around 5am UK time. He's now 1:5.

The mail in vote dumps for Biden are ridiculous.

[oskar]

What are the chances dems learn anything from pushing through the conservative candidate to capture the elusive republican swing voter while simultaneously telling progressives to go fuck themselves?
Progressives won every house race while the races where they they put in the milquetoast neocon like Amy McGarth, they ate dirt. Also no senate for dems, and a majority conservative supreme court means that even if Biden wins, democrats can't do shit for the next four years.

[oskar]

I think Biden was around 3:1 at around 5am UK time. He's now 1:5.

The mail in vote dumps for Biden are ridiculous.

Trump needs to win every contested state at this point to win, which is very unlikely. They know it internally or he wouldn't run the strategy he's running with now.

[OngBonga]

Arizona isn't a foregone conclusion, I'm seeing people claim it's swung back towards Trump. Who knows what their source is.

[oskar]

[oskar]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-wins-congress
Qanon got their representative!

[OngBonga]

More people betting on Trump as rumours that he could flip AZ start to get traction.

[oskar]

How exactly would Biden get less ahead as mail-in votes are counted? Democrats are 70%+ more likely to vote by mail. Expect every close race to go in Biden's favor from this point on.
What's their rationale for thinking it will flip back for Trump?

[OngBonga]

In the case of Arizona, there might be more uncounted votes from rural areas, giving Trump the edge. idk how much truth there is to this, but it's enough for some people to take 5/1 and drive his odds down closer to 4/1. He's still far from favourite. But if he does take AZ, that probably wins him the election.

[oskar]

I'd write that off as the Iraqi Dinar effect. I think this is wishful thinking from Trump supporters who want this to be true.

...Fox News called Arizona for Biden! https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/b...ona-trump.html

[oskar]

I think Biden will take it, but this should still be considered an abject failure from the democrats. The US is getting plowed in the ass by the worst pandemic in 100 years which Trump comically mismanaged. The country is in the middle of an economic downturn, record unemployment and massive civil unrest, and they're facing an infantile, monumentally stupid narcissist with clown paint on, but somehow it's a close race. Under normal circumstances Biden would have gotten obliterated.

[oskar]

https://twitter.com/dcdufour/status/...553318400?s=20 I believe this is the source for the AZ flip-flop theory.
This is pretty funny. They want the supreme court to stop the count in states where Trump is slightly ahead, but to keep counting where Biden is slightly ahead. You'd think they would try to be less transparent.

[OngBonga]

Apparently Wisconsin is above 100% turnout.

[OngBonga]

https://twitter.com/dcdufour/status/...553318400?s=20 I believe this is the source for the AZ flip-flop theory.
This is pretty funny. They want the supreme court to stop the count in states where Trump is slightly ahead, but to keep counting where Biden is slightly ahead. You'd think they would try to be less transparent.

This was one of a few tweets that I saw. I think it looks like Trump is too far behind to take AZ, but nothing would surprise me frankly.

[CoccoBill]

Apparently Wisconsin is above 100% turnout.

Huh? Currently 3.24M votes counted which is approx 97% of total. The population of Wisconsin is 5.8M.

[oskar]

https://twitter.com/LCRWnews/status/...517578241?s=20

[oskar]

[OngBonga]

Huh? Currently 3.24M votes counted which is approx 97% of total. The population of Wisconsin is 5.8M.

Population is not the correct metric. Try registered voters.

[OngBonga]

https://worldpopulationreview.com/st...oters-by-state

3,129,000 registered voters.
How many votes cast so far did you say?

[boost]

You can vote through a provisional ballot if you were unable to register in time.

[Poopadoop]

Once again Ong takes whatever he hears that sounds fun as being true.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wi...s-than-voters/

State of Wisconsin had 3,684,726 active registered voters on November 1, 2020.

On a related note, I would be careful not to assume any illegal votes are necessarily (or only) going to the eventual winner, even if there were a substantial number of them (which I would have to see the evidence for to believe).

[boost]

also this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wi...s-than-voters/

edit: ha, beat me to it.

[Poopadoop]

I think Biden will take it, but this should still be considered an abject failure from the democrats. The US is getting plowed in the ass by the worst pandemic in 100 years which Trump comically mismanaged. The country is in the middle of an economic downturn, record unemployment and massive civil unrest, and they're facing an infantile, monumentally stupid narcissist with clown paint on, but somehow it's a close race. Under normal circumstances Biden would have gotten obliterated.

I think the problem arises because most people's opinions are being created and/or strongly reinforced based on their choice of media. The Dems could do more to increase their suport if they managed to somehow shut down Fox News for a month than they could through any actual policy positions.

[OngBonga]

Well I at least found a figure to support the claim, but I'll leave the courts to decide which is accurate.

[OngBonga]

Trump's odds just got a fair bit shorter, from 6 to 4.5 in ten minutes or so.

[Poopadoop]

A medically-induced coma and/or being frozen at an extremely low temperature starting to feel like optimal life choices right now.

[Poopadoop]

Well I at least found a figure to support the claim

Which figure was that? The one comparing 2018 registered voters to 2020 actual voters? 'Cause I think that's not going to hold up in the SC.

[Poopadoop]

Can someone please link me a site where I can see the actual numbers coming in and not just a stupid map with red, blue and blank states?

[CoccoBill]

https://edition.cnn.com/election/202...t#mapmode=lead

This is what I've been following.

[OngBonga]

Looks like a stupid map with red, blue and blank states to me.

[boost]

Well I at least found a figure to support the claim, but I'll leave the courts to decide which is accurate.

this is quite possibly the dumbest thing you've ever said

[OngBonga]

this is quite possibly the dumbest thing you've ever said

I very much doubt that.

[Keith]

do the american counters only work 8 hours and then leave cos noone will pay overtime?

[Poopadoop]

https://edition.cnn.com/election/202...t#mapmode=lead

This is what I've been following.

That's good thanks. If you hover over each state it give the numbers - just what i wanted!

[Poopadoop]

They just called Wisc. for Biden. Trump is losing his shit on twitter.

[Poopadoop]

A bit premature maybe, but still apt.

https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1324020849230319616

[MadMojoMonkey]

I think the problem arises because most people's opinions are being created and/or strongly reinforced based on their choice of media. The Dems could do more to increase their suport if they managed to somehow shut down Fox News for a month than they could through any actual policy positions.

I don't think you're giving appropriate respect to the fact that about half the country thinks Trump is the best thing since sliced bread.

The media sells what sells. They're barely driving the narrative so much as they know the narrative that people want to hear.
Fox News can stop going full retard, but it's not going to change the retards. There'll just be another news agency, worse than Fox that pops up in response to the open violation of the free speech and free press.

'Cause the audience is there.

[MadMojoMonkey]

I mean... the total lack of unbiased news in the US is the real problem.

It's not that there's ample political entertainment shouting shows on TV. It's the dearth of any intelligent discourse across party lines showing up literally anywhere in the public discourse.

People are savages if allowed to be. If we can't hold our news agencies and politicians up to a higher standard, they certainly wont miss the opportunity to lower their standards.

[Poopadoop]

I don't think you're giving appropriate respect to the fact that about half the country thinks Trump is the best thing since sliced bread.

It's one thing to start out tending to like a particular candidate. It's another to have that feeling hardened into concrete by 4+ years of constant propaganda.

Are those people gullible fools? No, because they've only ever heard positive things about the guy. Why should they believe anything different?

[Poopadoop]

I mean... the total lack of unbiased news in the US is the real problem.

It's not that there's ample political entertainment shouting shows on TV. It's the dearth of any intelligent discourse across party lines showing up literally anywhere in the public discourse.

People are savages if allowed to be. If we can't hold our news agencies and politicians up to a higher standard, they certainly wont miss the opportunity to lower their standards.

I think you're making a better argument here than in your previous post. The media is there to sell advertising space, which doesn't work well with the objective reporting of facts.

Over here we have the BBC, which people on the left argue is right-biased and people like Ong argue is left-biased. So it's probably pretty balanced. All the other MSM on TV at least is fairly neutral. Most newspapers are biased but not to the extremes as in the US. Overall, you can get neutral news if you want it. Doesn't seem to be true in the US.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Yeah. I guess the unsaid assumption is that 'Muricans wont look outside the US for news, which is broadly true, I think.

You can probably guess the looks I get when someone asks me for a better news agency and I site Al Jazeera.

[OngBonga]

The BBC is state TV. They're very left when it comes to "diversity", ensuring wimmin's football is just called football, and making sure we know about multi coloured transpotatoes. But they're very right when it comes to sucking Tory dick.

[Poopadoop]

Guiliani rushing to Philadelphia to try to get them to stop counting votes lol.