Pages

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Kevin: How Did They Get It So Wrong?


According to the polls, and the media, the US election was too close to call. Harris was going to win, but only just. All the swing states were 50/50. There was no way Trump was going win every swing state.

The election was going to go down to the wire, according to Shane Te Pou, writing for the Herald.

The great Sir Bob Jones was certain that Trump was going to lose:

A Kamala victory will see Trump and his mindless followers run amok. Best of all, as I've repeatedly said in this blog, it will also culminate with Trump achieving his ultimate destination, namely a prison cell. That will be a great day for the civilised world.

Website FiveThirtyEight, which averages the data from polls, put Harris ahead of Trump by 48.2 per cent to 46.4 per cent.

The New York Times: “For all purposes the race is tied.” Actually to be fair though the New York Times wasn’t that far off. Wait, what?
 
The Times’ Cohn looks at several scenarios for how the election might play out.

[…] On the other hand, if Trump won all the seven states the Times is focusing on, he would get a healthy 312 seats.

So the Times kind of, sort of, got it right, by hedging their bets. But I digress.

Why did the polls get it so wrong?

Polls are based on sound mathematical principles. This means that if you do a random poll, then go back in time and do the same poll again, you will get the same or almost the same result, even though you’ve polled different people. You will only get a different result if you choose to poll on a different date, using a different methodology…or if your methodology is faulty.

If you tell someone they’re deplorable, uneducated, misogynistic and garbage, just because they support a particular candidate, they’re going to end up not telling anyone they support that particular candidate, including when someone from a polling company asks which candidate they’re voting for.

Is it any surprise then that the polls got it so wrong?

And then there’s this:


Click to view

Gee, I wonder where those 20 million votes went? I mean, damn. If only those 20 million had voted. Then Kamala would have won by a whisker, just like all the polls said she would.

And every state that Harris won did not require voter ID.

I wonder why?

Kevin is a Libertarian and pragmatic anarchist. His favourite saying: “There but for the grace of God go I.” This article was first published HERE

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Woke journalists believe, not what is true, but what they want to believe. Hence all the false narratives about Maori "science", that Maori had their land stolen off them, that NZ did better than any other country to prevent covid deaths, that cycleways save the planet etc. In some cases, undeputable facts arise to bring these "journalists" to reality, such as the US elections. In other cases, they just continue to peddle their fantasies.

Rob Beechey said...

If you believed that the 2020 election wasn’t rigged by the Democrats you have rocks in your head. The voters knew that the election was stolen and that’s why they marched on Capital Hill.

Anonymous said...

Agree with the thoughts, but please note with the graph that it was done a while back with many of the votes not counted. As of now California still has another 19% worth to come in. So, although there might be a few missing million voters on last time it will not be anywhere near so large as the graph is indicating. Also the up to date vote count sees Trump with many more votes than last time too.

Anonymous said...

It’s called wilful blindness, or just plain idiocy - take your pick.

Trump was clearly appealing to the majority - the average voter, while Harris was only appealing to money & the elite.

As one of Trumps’ campaign ads said:

‘Harris is for they/them, Trump is for you’

When you spend $1b on campaigning but know you can’t slogan out common sense, you always know you’re going to lose.

Ellen said...

I think about half of the votes were 'for' Trump, but the other half were to prevent Harris. Poor DEI victim was manifestly unable to run a cake stall, let alone a country.