mtutiger

The much discussed Times poll from the weekend did have a crosstab that said that upwards of 30% needed to know more (versus 10% for him, believe it or not). So yeah, addition 100% is the target... She has room to grow, him not so much

Oh my God...

Her campaign has, to date, done a really good job of brushing off his trash talk and not taking the bait... (Her responses to his comments about her ethnicity is Exhibit A). Tonight will be a test to execute it with him a few feet away... Voters want to learn more about her, they don't want to see her responding to him. It may be inevitable at certain junctures, but she has to play her game, not get sucked into his If she does that, she stands a good chance of a clear win... but easier said than done

I was going to finish off the Tigers game, but they finished off the Rockies instead lol

I mostly agree with this.... I don't like it, there's a tradeoff involved, but it's probably more good than harm at this point. True story, the fact that my son had his first every active shooter drill of his K-12 career on the day of the Georgia shooting (and the fact that he started describing it in a very matter-of-fact way when I got home from work) really shook me in a way that I wasn't expecting. It doesn't really change my positioning a lot on guns in general, but it makes one think about it in a much different perspective when you are sending kids into school.

I don't know, to be honest.... it strikes me as very "online"

At a minimum, it takes getting to a post-Trump era to start getting back to that point - particularly with how no GOPers seem to be able to replicate his success.

The frequent deploying of AI by the Trump-adjacent lot in this campaign.... doesn't it come off cringey?

Two North Carolina polls (SurveyUSA and Quinnipiac) showing leads as well... To the extent that Trump's campaign appears to be prioritizing PA/GA above all other states, NC being this close throws a wrench into that strategy

Gonna go out on a limb and say that the "Haitian cat stories" will not factor into anything debate related

Conspiracies everywhere.

There have been news reports over the past couple of months about retailers cutting prices as well (ie. Walmart) as people have modified behaviors due to higher prices, some of that stuff appears to be showing up (personally noticing that when shopping).

Gas prices are a huge factor.... nationally prices have been trending way down the past few weeks, and locally to the Midwest, some of the refining capacity issues (such as Exxon Joliet Refinery being down after the Chicagoland tornado outbreak a month or two ago) have subsided. Suspect that will continue for both seasonal and just market based reasons.

My sense in day to day life is that people are talking about inflation less today than they were two years ago at this time, FWIW. It doesn't mean that it isn't still a big factor that people will consider as they vote, but I do think the environment is different as well.

It was, and that was when actual inflation was higher than it is today (upwards of like 8% YOY versus 2-3ish% today). The issue is that a combination of other issues (ie. abortion / democracy related issues) as well as just terrible candidate quality mattered a lot too I don't mean to pick on Ed, but "Dems are getting nailed on inflation" is about the most conventional wisdom take in politics today. I suspect a lot of Dem partisans wish it weren't the case, but that's different than assuming that it isn't a big challenge to Harris or her candidacy.

He hardly has any core beliefs, but tariffs are the biggest, most consistent belief he has. And it's something he can do without Congress. So I absolutely would not assume he's full of **** on that.

I don't think it's being underestimated, it seems pretty much like conventional wisdom.

Exactly.... she isn't Jesus, but it's about who she's being contrasted with. And it's stark.

When you cut through the noise of social media and everything else... The contrast between these two candidates on a human level is stark

Jan 6th does matter at some level for sure. And just anecdotally, I know a couple of Trump-Trump-Harris folks in my own life.

In Year of Our Lord 2024, there is nothing bigger than defeating Donald Trump. Nothing. At least if one believes he's a threat to our form of government and way of life. **** Cheney, I don't like the guy. But if it creates a permission structure for a certain type of Republican to defeat Donald Trump, I don't care. No matter how small that number of voters is, just ****ing win.

The mask slipped a bit with COVID... prior to, he was much more focused on the data, but he kinda veered off and became what he had previously loathed, a pundit. That continues apace today, along with the gambling (which, tbh, should instantly make people skeptical of his model for ethics reasons IMO). There's a bit of a historical parallel to a figure that comes up in engineering ethics in my field: William Mulholland. Mulholland is the man most responsible for making Los Angeles what it is today, a thriving metropolis, completing the LA Aqueduct and other public works projects that delivered water from the Sierra Nevadas down the otherwise dry and barren LA Basin. Mulholland was a self taught civil engineer, no formal schooling, and, from the ground floor, worked his ass off to climb the food chain to become Chief Engineer at the DWP. (Obviously a lot of the work he did in the early years wasn't good, such as swindling landowners in Rural California, but strictly from an engineering perspective, the body of work was impressive). At his height, he could have run for Mayor... and to this day, Mulholland Drive and other things in LA are named after the guy. But as his career went on, he got distracted. He got lazy. He became further and further resistant to criticism. And eventually his career ended: the St. Francis Dam, which he inspected hours prior, collapsed and killed over 400 people. The parallel to Silver is that he hustled and built a model that saw great success in prior election cycles, particularly in 2012. And who knows, maybe he's got it all figured out this time too.... but he seems... distracted to me. He seems like he dedicates a lot of time to other pursuits, such as sports gambling and poker, and he's incredibly resistant to any sort of criticism that he gets. Gets really defensive. And is just coasting on his reputation. That's when I start asking questions.... as adults, no matter what we do for a living, you always have to be learning, you always have to be trying to improve yourself, and you should never be getting high off of your own supply. Because that's how you lose a step, and that's when bad things can start happening career wise.

Again, still kinda ambivalent, but wow nonetheless.

Your comments re: response rates are spot on. And pollsters do try to weight and correct samples based on various factors to try to correct for the issues. Silver's model is a different discussion.... the polls show somewhere around a 3-4% nationally, and aggregate averages of the swing states, at least at this moment, show Kamala over 270 *based on polling today*... yet, unlike every other aggregator, he's showing a 62% probability that Trump wins. Ultimately, the aggregator discussion is a discussion about nothing, the difference between Kamala having a 55% win probability (what 538 and DDHQ show) and what Silver shows isn't that statistically huge. But given his reputation, a lot of people do hang off of his every pronouncement and, lo and behold, here we are talking about it.