One thing about US elections nowadays is that the polling numbers can be way off the mark. Must admit at this distance I have no gut feeling whatsoever about the "real" sentiments of turnout and preference.

    Burnwinter i dont think polling is inherently bad, i think people just do not understand the basics of polling, and more specifically, probability and things like margin of error. a poll that has a margin of error of 5% that shows trump +1 could be anything from trump +6 to harris +4. thats a really broad range of outcomes. too many people only look at the top line number and dont understand the specifics. polling also is not really "scientific" when the core of your sample is derived from people answering a phone call from an unknown number in the year 2024

        mdgoonah41 Sure people are illiterate concerning estimation, but I think polling is also generally less accurate since the advent of the internet and especially social media. Sentiment is more volatile and less uniform than it was once.

          Actually (at least in the US) sentiment has hardened. 49% of the vote will be democratic. 45% of the vote will be republican. So pollsters are trying to figure out what that remaining 6% will do. And these people are not "centrists." They're low information, low engagement, low probability voters. Who don't answer the phone and who don't tell the truth. But everyone else's mind was made up a long time ago.

            RowJimmy agree with this. people are only undecided in the sense that they havent decided whether or not they are actually going to vote.

              Obsessively trying to understand how my country can be about to reelect a sociopath whose fascism is only tempered by his short attention span.
              I read a lot of "how to understand the polling" stuff. I like Nate Cohn in the NYT. It's not my field, and my technical abilities in statistics are weak. But I think I've developed a better sense than most people of the fact that a 60% probability only differs from a coin flip if you get to repeat the exercise fifty times.

                hoegan just ends up agreeing with his guests.

                RowJimmy Fair enough. Of course polling numbers (eg "57 to 43 with a 5% margin of error") can't be transformed without further modelling into reliable election victory odds at all, and especially not in the US due to the madness that is the college system.

                  Qwiss yep. peter thiel was on his show recently and he just nodded along with everything
                  , despite thiel being a conspiracy-tards wet dream. no questions about palantir or its CIA connections, nothing about his connections to JD Vance. he nibbled at Epstein stuff but seemed to back off once thiels sweat levels spiked. he doesn't really hammer his guests often

                      Gazza M why would Joe Rogan hammer a right wing nut job like Thiel.

                        JazzG this woman made a career of putting black men in prison for life for peddling weed now she wants to encourage it. No wonder her family has disowned her.

                            Meatwad why, you gotta be on team KamALa if you're anti Trump? Which part of what I said is untrue?

                              9 days later

                              based on all the polls over the last week or so, and the scary reports about early voting in places like nevada, it looks like we are getting 4 more years of trump. not sure what will be left of this country after that, but i can virtually guarantee that dems will learn zero lessons, and they will actually move even further to the right than they already are. truly bleak, soul crushing stuff.