Daily Kos: Nate Cohn just put asterisks by every NYT poll of late showing Trump leading

[DemocraticPatriot]

For much of this year, we, like most of Team Blue, have swallowed hard at The New York Times/Siena national polls showing Trump ahead of Biden. But early Friday morning, NYT chief election analyst Nate Cohn penned something that amounted to putting big, fat asterisks by all those polls. He noted that when he crunched the numbers, Trump’s advantage in the NYT/Siena polls is built on voters who aren’t paying much attention to this election cycle.

"The polls have shown Donald Trump with an edge for eight straight months, but there’s a sign his advantage might not be quite as stable as it looks: His lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote."

Disengaged voters on the periphery of the electorate are driving the polling results — and the story line — about the election.

This is just staggering. We’re well before the point where most legitimate pollsters turn on the likely voter screen, and Cohn is effectively saying that much of Trump’s lead is built on disengaged voters.

Specifically, Cohn noticed that in the last three NYT/Siena polls, Biden leads among those who voted in 2020. He has near-unanimous support among “high-turnout Democratic-leaning voters,” but holds only three-fourths of Democratic-leaning voters who stayed home in 2020. Cohn has been remarkably silent on Twitter, given that—and it bears repeating—he just put huge asterisks by almost all of the NYT/Siena polls from this year.

Read more:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/5/24/2242572/-Nate-Cohn-just-put-asterisks-by-every-NYT-poll-of-late-showing-Trump-leading?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

[RainCaster]

1. The *real* question is- when a pollee has their rock lifted, do they go back under the rock?

So the NYT likes asking the Truly Ignorant how they feel about the coming election. Are these people so stupid they they do indeed go back under their rock? Aren't any of them the least bit curious about that thing that some pollster keeps asking them about?

[anciano]

2. National presidential polls are meaningless....

due to the electoral college system, presidential elections are decided in a handful of swing states by a relatively small number of voters. National polls are a waste of time, money and energy because they simply don't matter.

[unblock]

3. I don't think that's the case at all.

First, your premise seems to be that the only value in a poll is its ability to predict the outcome of the election in November. I think there's great value in understanding how the people feel about the candidates aside from who wins. In fact it's especially noteworthy and important when the less popular candidate wins.

Second, a series of battleground state polls is much more expensive and complicated than a single, national polls. And then to analyze the results with respect to the electoral college, the margin of errors from multiple states can become effectively large enough so it's still unclear who's ahead, or by how much,

Third, national polls remain highly correlated with the electoral outcome. Yes, technically only the electoral college matters, but still, the popular vote leader wins more than 90% of the time 54 times out of 59).

Finally, the national popular vote often helps direct fundraising and endorsements, which can then impact the battleground states.

[FBaggins]

5. It's also not particularly comforting

Because there have been plenty of polls in those swing states - and they're some of the most concerning data of the entire cycle.

[unblock]

20. Yeah. But I think a lot of people will only start paying attention in October.

Hoping that a lottttt of people will be horrified at what they wake up to....

[Indykatie]

6. National Polls Serve No Purpose Other Than Providing Media Fodder to Grab Eyeballs

Even left leaning Media fail in reminding/educating their readers and audience about our EC system that determines POTUS. In our current political environment it's damn hard to get 270 EV and I can't think of anyone but Biden who can do it. I get really pissed when anyone calls for Biden to step away b/c of his age. These idiots never have the name of a better choice who should replace him. That's because one doesn't exist.

[anciano]

8. Thank you.

[FBaggins]

4. The new Cook Political "Swing State Project" polls rebut this theory

They are all LV polls.

This is just staggering. We’re well before the point where most legitimate pollsters turn on the likely voter screen, and Cohn is effectively saying that much of Trump’s lead is built on disengaged voters.

The NYT/Siena poll they're talking about is also an LV poll. They're also 538's top-ranking polling team. The "most legitimate" comment seems to fall flat there

[BumRushDaShow]

9. You do realize how 538 f'ed up in 2022

and at least one guy was willing to admit it (after which Nate Silver was pink-slipped as a "cost-cutting move" ) - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/2022-predictions-i-got-wrong/

What I Got Wrong In 2022

By Nathaniel Rakich

Dec. 28, 2022, at 6:00 AM


Here’s a prediction that 100 percent, absolutely, positively will come true: I will get something wrong in 2023. Here at FiveThirtyEight, we make a lot of predictions every year; some of them work out, but we can’t get every single one right.  We can, however, learn from our mistakes. That’s why I like to write about everything I got wrong in the previous 12 months.1 I do this for two reasons: First, they’re often unintentionally hilarious (and when you’re a politics reporter, sometimes you need a laugh); second, identifying my blind spots has helped me become a better analyst.

And there’s no shortage of material for this year’s installment. Let’s start with a tweet I wrote on Nov. 6, 2020, shortly after it became clear that Joe Biden had won the presidential race: “Congratulations to Republicans on their victory in the 2022 midterms!” This was obviously meant to be snarky but also to communicate a political tenet: that the president’s party almost always has a bad midterm election. Of course, that tweet wasn’t from 2022, but I also made this argument in January of this year. And for several months thereafter, my analysis was colored by my expectation that 2022 would be a good election year for Republicans. As everyone knows by now, the midterms were a disappointment for Republicans. They won the House — but only barely (they gained just nine seats on net). Meanwhile, Democrats gained a seat in the Senate.

Clearly, I was overly confident in my early prediction. While it is true that the president’s party almost always has a poor midterm, there have been exceptions. And the 2022 midterms turned out to be one of these “asterisk elections,” thanks in no small part to the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn the constitutional right to abortion. This year I should have been more prepared for the possibility that the ruling could throw a wrench into the election, especially after a draft of the decision was leaked in May. And even after the decision, it took me a while to become convinced that voter anger over Dobbs would prove durable enough to last until Election Day.

It wasn’t until the fall that I revised my expectations from a “red wave” to a “red ripple.” My biggest mistake here was not realizing just how common an “asterisk election” actually is. I often quoted one key stat: that the president’s party had gained House seats in only two of the previous 19 midterm elections. But there were four other midterms where the president’s party lost fewer than 10 House seats — so what happened in 2022 isn’t that rare. I also neglected to remember that the president’s party had lost Senate seats in only 13 of the last 19 midterms. In other words, midterms like 2022 happen about a third of the time — way too frequently to count them out.

(snip)

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/2022-predictions-i-got-wrong/

[FBaggins]

14. You've confused polling (and evaluations of pollsters)...

… with political predictions based on those polls (and - in 2022 - on historical trends in midterm elections).

IOW - the 2022 polls weren’t off. The analysts’ predictions were.

[BumRushDaShow]

15. And as I have endlessly argued over and over

these "polls" help to form a "NARRATIVE" that takes on a life of its own.

Perhaps a better way to put it (as a retired scientist who had to deal with stats), noting the old saying - "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics".

People can manipulate numbers to get the outcome that they want and will interpret them to further that outlook.

Another way to illustrate is the disparate take on "the glass half empty" vs "the glass half full".

[FBaggins]

16. Then feel free to come up with a narrative of your own

But “ignore all polls” isn’t a useful one.

The problem is that the polls are showing a fairly consistent 6-8 point shift against the president compared to 2020 when we barely won.

The glass isn’t half full/empty. It’s 40% full / 60% empty. Adjusting the narrative doesn’t add liquid to the glass.

[BumRushDaShow]

17. When you have "push polling" going on

where a those being polled are asked questions about a candidate but then circumstances about someone other than the candidate are slid in (e.g., CNN's SSRS poll with questions that introduce Hunter Biden into the polling about Joe Biden, including the allegations about him), you have now added a bias to the poll with content that the average "likely voter" might not have been aware of or even cared about, but that gets reflected "in the numbers", and the narrative is born.

When you have aggregators like 538 that included poll results from not one, but TWO sets of high school student polling outfits (one is here and the other here), and then couple that with a series of GOP-commissioned "polls" that "flood the zone" with their crap, that get reported and rolled in, now you have lost all credibility.

For 538 in 2022, the arrogance is simply breathtaking.

Link to tweet

Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
·
Follow
I'd rather gouge my eyes out than debate the merits of individual election polls or pollsters. Take the average and trust the process.
2:21 PM · Sep 10, 2022

"Trusting the process" meant accepting that he was going to load up on GOP-leaning pollsters in his aggregates (and try to compete with Rasmussen in that respect), and even give voice to 2 sets of high school student polling firms (one of them local to here in the Philly area) -

Link to tweet

David Brauer
·
Dec 31, 2022
@dbrauer
·
Follow
“The skewed red-wave surveys polluted polling averages, which are relied upon by campaigns, donors, voters & the news media. It fed the home-team boosterism of right-wing media outlets … And it spilled over into coverage by mainstream news organizations, including The Times …”
jimrutenberg
@jimrutenberg
About That Red Wave
W/⁦@kenbensinger⁩ ⁦@SteveEder⁩ https://nytimes.com/2022/12/31/us/politics/polling-election-2022-red-wave.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
David Brauer
@dbrauer
·
Follow
“Other pollsters lacked experience, like two high-school juniors in Pennsylvania who started Patriot Polling and quickly found their surveys included on the statistical analysis website 538 — as did another high school concern based at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.”
9:34 AM · Dec 31, 2022

This serves to falsely force candidates that are generally doing well, to end up SPENDING more time, money, and other resources to address what was a FAKE issue, which then diverts those resources from other candidates that needed the help.

The 'Red Wave’ Washout: How Skewed Polls Fed a False Election Narrative

By Jim Rutenberg, Ken Bensinger and Steve Eder
Dec. 31, 2022

Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, had consistently won re-election by healthy margins in her three decades representing Washington State. This year seemed no different: By midsummer, polls showed her cruising to victory over a Republican newcomer, Tiffany Smiley, by as much as 20 percentage points.

So when a survey in late September by the Republican-leaning Trafalgar Group showed Ms. Murray clinging to a lead of just two points, it seemed like an aberration. But in October, two more Republican-leaning polls put Ms. Murray barely ahead, and a third said the race was a dead heat.

(snip)

Ms. Murray’s own polling showed her with a comfortable lead, and a nonprofit regional news site, using an established local pollster, had her up by 13. Unwilling to take chances, however, she went on the defensive, scuttling her practice of lavishing some of her war chest — she amassed $20 million — on more vulnerable Democratic candidates elsewhere. Instead, she reaped financial help from the party’s national Senate committee and supportive super PACs — resources that would, as a result, be unavailable to other Democrats.

A similar sequence of events played out in battlegrounds nationwide. Surveys showing strength for Republicans, often from the same partisan pollsters, set Democratic klaxons blaring in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Colorado. Coupled with the political factors already favoring Republicans — including inflation and President Biden’s unpopularity — the skewed polls helped feed what quickly became an inescapable political narrative: A Republican wave election was about to hit the country with hurricane force. Democrats in each of those states went on to win their Senate races. Ms. Murray clobbered Ms. Smiley by nearly 15 points.

(snip)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/us/politics/polling-election-2022-red-wave.html

They need to maybe just stick with sports.

The only "poll" that needs to be followed by "the public" is the location for the nearest or assigned one where they would vote (if voting "in person" ).

[FBaggins]

18. I guess I should have said feel free to come up with your own narrative...

… that isn’t a woo conspiracy theory.

You can’t claim that hundreds of polls that were largely off in our favor in 2020 have all become pro-Trump push polls.

Ignore the Rasmussens and Traffalgars , drop the pollsters that don’t publish their methodology (and thus might be “pushing” some results)… and the story is still the same.

And your analysis of Silver’s error remains far off. His prediction of what the polls meant (in terms of seats gained/lost) was badly off… but the polls were not. Republicans outperformed 538’s generic ballot average… and RCP’s was spot on (R +2.5 vs R+2.8)

[ProfessorGAC]

7. I've Kind Of Been Saying That For Montgs

The vast middle doesn't pay a lot of attention until mid-summer, at best.
Also, Biden just started campaigning in earnest about a month ago. The other guy has been campaigning nonstop since 2015.
I didn't trust the polls because I don't think they represent how people will feel in September through November.
Let's see what happens when there's been a debate, when Biden ads start running, etc.
I will then start to have more faith in the outcomes.

[Demsrule86]

11. ProfessorGAC you are as usual correct...kudos and a rec...

[lindysalsagal]

10. I still say young women aren't represented in polls. But they will

Show up for Biden post Dobbs. Women are enraged. I think magats like to stink up polls but don't like to vote for a loser, and will stay home.

[GiqueCee]

12. Ah, conservatives...

... they pollute and pervert everything they touch. They are congenitally incapable of even conceiving of honesty or common human decency simply for their own sake. As General Kelly observed about Trump's interaction with the world, everything is transactional; everything has a price, or it has no value at all, at least, not to a conservative. Those of us who do good for the personal satisfaction of knowing we made someone else's life a teensy bit better that day, are sources of scorn and ridicule to conservatives.
As I've said, more times than I can count, I believe that conservatism is a mental disorder on the sociopathy spectrum, and those so afflicted should be engaged with caution, and never, ever trusted.
But that's just me.

[elleng]

13. * But early Friday morning, NYT chief election analyst Nate Cohn penned something

that amounted to putting big, fat asterisks by all those polls. He noted that when he crunched the numbers, Trump’s advantage in the NYT/Siena polls is built on voters who aren’t paying much attention to this election cycle.

"The polls have shown Donald Trump with an edge for eight straight months, but there’s a sign his advantage might not be quite as stable as it looks: His lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote."

Disengaged voters on the periphery of the electorate are driving the polling results — and the story line — about the election.'

[gulliver]

19. Polls are just paid content, low value, media-peddled junk food now

The legacy media needs the polls, because the polls give them something to say. Polls = Paychecks, both for the legacy media and pollsters. Therefore, both sides have to pretend that polls are valid as a way to obtain information on public thinking. I think polls boil down to just another way to monetize the posting of half-truths, promotion of bandwagons, spreading of gossip, and trolling.