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[mainiac]

Oh hey remember this http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/287951-cnn-reporter-trump-tried-to-back-off-pence-pick

So, if the two candidates were replaced by those two squid aliens from the Simpsons, how improved is the election?

That was the joke in 2000 geez get it right

[Neonivek]

DANG IT DANG IT DANG IT!

Whhhhhy!!! I was sooo close to being confident Donald Trump wasn't going to win... he lost steam and people were starting to sober up...

But apparently if the votes went by the poling results after the speeches (which is... less than accurate) Trump would have won.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There is literally no meaningful correlation between speech polls and real polls.

[Loud Whispers]

Polls are pretty much bullshit anyways

[Baffler]

Even if we do take it at face value, it still makes sense. Having an ideologically sympathetic but ineffective person in charge is still vastly preferable to having someone whose philosophy runs counter to your own and is able to implement those ideas.

[RedKing]

Oh hey remember this http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/287951-cnn-reporter-trump-tried-to-back-off-pence-pick

So, if the two candidates were replaced by those two squid aliens from the Simpsons, how improved is the election?

That was the joke in 2000 geez get it right

No, no, this was the joke in 2000.
Kang and Kodos were so 1996.

[smirk]

DANG IT DANG IT DANG IT!

Whhhhhy!!! I was sooo close to being confident Donald Trump wasn't going to win... he lost steam and people were starting to sober up...

But apparently if the votes went by the poling results after the speeches (which is... less than accurate) Trump would have won.

Reminder: this race has in fact been incredibly stable.

Despite all the venom and extremeness, actual voter sentiment is more stable than it’s ever been.

...

Measured in terms of polling margins, this year’s campaign is the most stable of any race in the era of modern polling, going back 65 years. I estimate that 2016 has been slightly more stable than 2012, though not by much. Really, those two elections are basically the record-setters when it comes to stability.

It does not seem to be a coincidence that just as campaign rhetoric has left civility far behind, opinion has become more stable than ever. For example, lots of people know how they feel about white nationalism. Their preference is pretty well set at this point.

(Usual caveat: confidence in win probability aside, it only matters if folks actually go out and vote. So go vote.)

[mainiac]

Sam Wang's model is inherently stable. It regresses to the mean.

[smirk]

Yup. It's a simple and well-explained design, and his track record is as good if not better than noted Statomancer Nate Silver. Silver lost me when he started trying to over-complicate his model.

[PTTG??]

The more I think about it, the more I realize that LCS needs an update.

[Reelya]

Oh hey remember this http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/287951-cnn-reporter-trump-tried-to-back-off-pence-pick

So, if the two candidates were replaced by those two squid aliens from the Simpsons, how improved is the election?

That was the joke in 2000 geez get it right

No, no, this was the joke in 2000.
Kang and Kodos were so 1996.

It's funny, those "there's absolutely no difference between voting Democrat or Republican" jokes were so 1990s (e.g Bill Hicks made a similar joke in the '92 election). Those jokes basically don't exist anymore. Partly Because of Bush, but also because the internet made it easier to document Nixon/Reagan/Bush Snr dirty wars, and current events made it more plausible to the general public. If you'd mentioned any of Reagan's genocides to most people up to the 1990s they'd react like you're completely insane, because the mainstream media just didn't report anything like that.

[mainiac]

Yup. It's a simple and well-explained design, and his track record is as good if not better than noted Statomancer Nate Silver. Silver lost me when he started trying to over-complicate his model.

I think his model stinks.  And accuracy?  Accuracy is easy.  Anyone with a week of free time could accurately predict every state in the election with terrific accuracy.  That part is easy.  The hard part is forecasting the margin of error in advance of the election.  That's what all this "complicated and simple stuff gets at".  It's about two things:

1) The extent to which you assume the future will look like the past (Sam Wang is at one extreme, Nate Silver is at the other)
2) The extent to which you assume the results across states will correlate (Sam Wang is at one extreme, Nate Silver is middle of the pack)

Sam Wang is way outside the consensus AFAIK.  And all those complications that 538 does are using empirical evidence to tackle these two very difficult questions.

[BFEL]

(Usual caveat: confidence in win probability aside, it only matters if folks actually go out and vote. So go vote.)

From what I understand it kinda...doesn't? Because the electoral college is a thing and can instantly cast aside the popular vote like a sack of bricks? Like what happened with George W?

So yeah. US is literally an Oligarchy.

[Max™]

Yeah, it's always worth noting that in most years, if literally anybody else had chosen Pence as their VP, if PALIN had chosen Pence, people would be wondering what's with the kooky VP choice after a couple minutes of checking into him.

This year he's the straight man somehow.

In other terrifying news, I recall hearing about this before, and I actually bitched about it specifically though I figured it was just something that happened in TN: http://www.vox.com/conversations/2016/10/5/13097066/gerrymandering-redistricting-republican-party-david-daley-karl-rove-barack-obama but no, apparently the 2010 census and election gave an opportunity to completely block off a huge number of seats?

How is that not a major story, and how has it not been one for every election since 2010? Screw Pence 2020, we need Gerry Manderbane 2020.

[mainiac]

So yeah. US is literally an Oligarchy.

And the Canada is literally a monarchy.