WTW65: A Coin Flip from Fascism - Are the Polls Rigged?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:03 Clip: What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming.

0:00:11 Clip: Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism, and you see woke principles being pushed.

0:00:19 Clip: Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down. The woke monster is here, and it's coming for everything, everything, everything, and everything. Instead of go -go boots, the seductress green M &M will now wear sneakers.

0:00:42 Thomas: Well, hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke. Thomas. That's Lydia. How you doing?

0:00:47 Lydia: Hi. It's been a while.

0:00:48 Thomas: I'm also in constant state of anxiety until the election day, and then probably thereafter. About you?

0:00:56 Lydia: It's a little worrisome, I would say. I

0:00:59 Thomas: Look, what I'm trying to do is finally get rid of the last couple of people who listen to this show who don't have ADHD. PhD. They're finally going to be like, God, I was hanging on for a while, but I just can't do it anymore. Again putting a pause on the project just because the election is mere days away and there's too much we want to talk about.

0:01:18 Lydia: Imminent. Yeah?

0:01:20 Thomas: And obviously it won't make any sense to do after the election. Think that I've benefited a little bit from being so busy that I hadn't been thinking about it as much. It hadn't been a constant stressor. And then what happened was I was keeping a general eye on the polling and the models and all that. Um, I know people have different thoughts on, on that, but all of a sudden it took a really Trumpian turn. Don't want to say a couple of weeks ago. Ever since then, I've been very worried and realizing that I don'T, I DON'T know how people people out there are feeling, but I just want to express like how dire this is according to current polling.

0:01:56 Thomas: Now, I also want to talk about a bunch of reasons why maybe we shouldn't necessarily trust that. I know that there's there's, plenty of reasons. There's that I'm sure people have heard, but there's also a lot of stuff that probably people haven't heard that I've done a little research on that's It's interesting. To I also just want to talk about the reality we might be facing because I just I know. I feel like I need to express it. And. And. Think that if things go badly, I feel like I you have been kind of mentally prepared and help to maybe mentally prepare the listeners. And yeah, and if they go well, then we can all just forget this ever happened. It'll be great. I would love to forget that I had this level of concern or at least feel like it was not warranted. So would be great to be wrong. And there's I'm a lot to talk about here and then we because how dire this looks there's also a lot we want to talk About in terms of um and the clowns around him it's people we already cover for the show uh we want To cover the New York rally after this uh

0:02:24 Lydia: Avoid Avoid 2016? Yeah, yeah, it be great to be wrong. Hours.

0:02:53 Thomas: All six out we're all gonna sit through it Lydia did watch the entire six hours and if I I know you you don't really do much plus speed I mean you do some right oh man that's one oh my not since Charlie's in the chocolate factory or Willy Wonka I never remember which he's like two he cares you know whatever is you opened one chocolate there's no you can't have watched it at one I'm sorry I don't accept that that's not a possible why would you all

0:02:53 Lydia: I watched it. No, no, not on this. No. I watched it one. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I did. Yeah I'm sorry. I don't I told you I had to do with the timestamps. I was worried I would get them wrong. But I I didn't know that.

0:03:28 Thomas: Right it's YouTube YouTube. They won't be wrong. I hear you. When it's a podcast, that is a problem with YouTube. It's not, but who would, like, that's such a high stakes thing to just like, ah, I'm a little worried. So I'm going to put myself through the worst possible experience.

0:03:31 Lydia: We're going to save this argument for later and potentially be indoctrinated.

0:03:40 Thomas: Yeah. No, just having to sit through six hours of bullshit.

0:03:44 Lydia: Yeah, it was pretty bad.

0:03:45 Thomas: Oh my God. Okay. Just don't be afraid to ask next time. No, I don't know. You tend to not like stuff on high speed as much as I do anyway, but But point lots to talk about. And we're getting it out ASAP right immediately as you're hearing this, obviously. So there may be the usual end of the month deluge. But don't this, know. I guess some people might not want to hear doom and gloom. And I don'T know. Thing has never been doom and doom. And my thing has ever been optimism for no reason.

0:03:55 Lydia: Hard to process.

0:04:12 Thomas: It's been I to just be in reality. I sort of don't how other people do things in this way. I It's just want to, as best I can be in reality and some people, if, if the reality is going to be negative, then some people are like, oh, let's do, let's don't focus on too dooming. It's like, no, if reality is gonna be a bad thing, I want to know about it. I wanna be thinking about it, I want to know, you people I think are maybe not going to want to listen to this and that's obviously up to them, but it's not doom and gloom for no reason. Really want to get a handle on what is happening with polling. Are we? Like, what is going on? Really alarming, actually. It's more alarming. The more I think about it, the more alarming it is. The possibility is scary. Gary. So I guess we'll take our usual little break and please support the show at patreon .com slash where there's woke. A few short months, it may be helping to pay for our legal fees for the gulag we're in. We'll see. .com slash wherethere'swoke. Please turn off the ads and support us. Uh, otherwise here's some ads. OK, one thing that gets really frustrating for me is and noticed this with a lot of people that I otherwise, you know, to that once the polls turned, which middle of September. Was rosy as could be. Using 538, not that they're the be all end all. And if people don't know, Nate Silver's not with 538 anymore. So Nate Silver has his own thing going on. So this is a separate different thing with

0:04:12 Lydia: Mm hmm. With ABC.

0:05:35 Thomas: Yeah, ABC bought it.

0:05:35 Lydia: Bought it.

0:05:36 Thomas: And just using them as a, as indicator for the moment to talk about this polling shift more than anything, it middle of September, it couldn't have looked better. Could have, but it was, you know, 64, 36 was what they had it at for probability of Harris winning 64 ,36 felt pretty great. Then not going to lie. It felt good, good, made sense, comported with my view of the world. You know, I was like, well, yeah, Kamala's great. And And, by the way, Tim Waltz too, he's great, like you would hope that would factor in to people's decision, you But as time went on, it kind of started shrinking a little bit, shrinking a Little bit, until all of a sudden, like it was 54, 53, 47. And then almost like, did switch kind of on a dime to Trump 53 ,47 in October 20th. Then it went as high as 55, 45 Trump four days ago, 55, 45 Trump all of a sudden. I'm just like, what, what is happening now? The first time I was alarmed was actually a lot earlier than this. And I mentioned it on Facebook. I might, I might mention just like on, uh, something, the New York times poll that came

0:06:02 Lydia: Love him. Yeah. Yeah,

0:06:36 Thomas: Out that really just was very shocking. Was extremely shocking because it was a real, pollster and it was it York Times Sienna. A major one that showed Trump with a national lead. Which is like, here's the complicated thing going on that I'm sure everybody knows by now. Because we have the stupidest fucking system in the world, we can't just look at who's the more popular candidate. Can't just be like, who's a better candidate? Who do more people like? Oh, it's Harris. Great. Looking good. Awesome. Awesome the it's popular vote number that the overall like who's more popular number basically barely matters like it it does in a sense but it also can totally not matter because obviously the swing states are what matters the stupid electoral college is what matters yeah

0:06:37 Lydia: Well regarded. Yeah yeah. The rest of us don't.

0:07:21 Thomas: Pretty much and yeah

0:07:21 Lydia: Except for local races. Please vote.

0:07:24 Thomas: Yeah definitely definitely about everybody but the message of this I I hope is clear is vote and get everybody you know to vote if you haven't already please Please, this is not a doomer, like, this isn't inevitable. This is something that there's still time to change. I'm hoping everyone who listens to this would already have done everything they can. So for now, it's sort of like, I feel like we're a bit in a huddle now, me, you, and the listeners who all done everything we can and we're sort of just waiting. And some people process that waiting differently. I want to talk about it. And also think there may be people who are sleepwalking into this who might not be aware of like how bad the polls have gotten in this. And it doesn't mean they're showing Trump landslide, but it does mean they'RE showing Trump's going to win. Anyway, that New York Times times Santa college poll showed Trump with a, plus you one nationally, which is just like, in order to win at all, odds are that Harris has to be up by like, I don't know what to nationally minimum, like in the popular vote. That, that felt rough and that was big news. And a lot of people were like, what is the New York Times doing? A lot of People had theories about, you know, I, cause I have a strong critiques of the New York times and their coverage of certain things, especially trans issues. A lot Of people said, ah, they're just in the bag for Trump, blah, blah.

0:08:32 Thomas: It's like, that doesn't actually maybe, but that doesn' t make sense to me. That's that's I, so right around then I started to notice something that bothered me, which is that a lot Of People right when the polls switch, we're like, well, you Know, polls, you can't listen to polls. You can't Listen to. But they were fine with it when Harris was on top. And then once it switched, then they can't listen to polls.

0:08:32 Lydia: Well, just trying to keep people like enticed through the election and like readership. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Yeah yeah.

0:08:56 Thomas: And it's not like they're wrong per se. There may be reasons that we shouldn't be listening to polls broadly, it was just the convenience of the argument that bothered me. And every time I had like four people that I was like, actually, I was like, well, I don't really like this because nobody said this a week ago or whatever it was a month ago, whatever at the time. And now everybody's like, yeah, but you can't trust polls. Like nobody, look, all these reasons. And it's like, I did, that feels too convenient for me.

0:09:20 Lydia: It's like psychological protection really

0:09:21 Thomas: It is. And that's something that I don't do. And so therefore I've always been depressed in my life. I don'T do that. And I can't, Lydia knows this about me. I can'T do it. Like I have to be in reality. It's really hard. And so one I am really good at being in the reality as I see it. That Like could be wrong, but I donT delude myself. Like if I've made a mistake, I made a mistake. I don 'T sit around looking for reasons why the thing I want to believe is true. I just don'T do that. I almost do the opposite. I look for reasons that it's not true and can be tempting to be like, all right, what are the reasons why now the polls are wrong? And it's really tempting to do that and I almost want to do that just because it's so comforting in this moment where we can't really do anything about it. I guess I'll pull back and just say, if step one, I want to tell you what the polls are showing, step

0:09:22 Lydia: Is what it is. Exactly. Again okay

0:10:04 Thomas: 1. And then we can get into like why we should or shouldn't listen to them.

0:10:07 Lydia: Me too because I have not been looking at them

0:10:10 Thomas: Right now, just for funsies, 538 is at 52 -48 for Trump. So it's come back a little since the high earlier of 55 -45. But here's the more important thing. Senate, it has an 89 -11 Republican. Yeah, and be expected because the map is terrible.

0:10:26 Lydia: Feel like the map is terrible every single time okay well it feels that way oh

0:10:28 Thomas: It's not. It was, so here's why it feels that way. It was good in 2016. we did so badly that it was bad. So that wiped out one of the good times. Where it was like oh that was actually a good map for us and it wasn't good because we didn't do well uh you know it was kind of a a wave election for republicans really in a they had all three I always want to say all three what's the better word the presidency and congress but it's not all three branches although they do because they also have the supreme court an absolute stranglehold on the supreme cort which is something we do need to talk about it is very important when it comes to all this um that's the that's unknown known or, unknown being just how much they can fuck with us and will fuck with us. It's not unknown that they are, gonna you help Trump, but it's more like in what way and what way will they be able to, um, and that depends on, you know, how close things are and where, but anyway, um. Is we have very little chance of winning the Senate. It's possible. Here's the thing. Impossible, but I'll get to that. So just as the, as the polls are, it's not looking good. Like there each each year, two years, 33 are up. On that cycle. And it just so happens that this time more Democratic seats are out than Republican. So that just by numbers makes it harder for us to hang on. Badly needed my friend, Joe Manchin. We're going to badly miss Joe Manchin. I won't go too hard on this because, you know, I said it on OA already, but Joe Manchen is a big loss, a big lost. Know people don't want to hear it, but that's massive. Massive. Mean, if we end up losing by one seat, it's because Joe Manchin retired, you know? And if we had that one seat. Hey, you knows what we wouldn't get? A whole bunch of stuff. We wouldn't get the filibuster gone. We would get a bunch of reforms. Yeah, we're so mad. Oh, fucking Joe Manchin, blah, blah. You know, we would get Supreme Court justices, federal bench, you know, all that stuff. That's what we would

0:10:57 Lydia: I yeah yeah appointments

0:12:06 Thomas: Get. Lifetime appointments. And, and, the man some fucking credit. Give the devil is due he biden to pass some pretty progressive stuff major covid funding other stuff the uh the fucking what's a face act you know that did all the shit I don't know I'm tired the his major signature legislation biden actually accomplished a with exactly what the fucking wet a face ac you know well the one who remembers names of things you tell me reduction act maybe of but anyway allowed we had exactly enough with joe uh mansion that everyone hates um wanted to like cast cast into the sun he was good that we had him the replacement for joe mention was the literal literal fucking devil. We would have had nothing. We wouldn't have had the majority. So at least we got those two years. It's nice that we got those too. Good things were done. Lives were probably saved. Lots of them, you programs were saved. Funding was saved. Lots of stuff was saved, in uh, that time. Now we don't have that. And guess what? The person replacing that asshole who I don't, it's not like I like him. He's not a fan of Joe Manchin. I'm just realistic about what's going on. The person embracing him is going to be the literal fucking double is going going to be horrible. Going to be absolutely horrible. He's going to vote Trump all the way and the race is not close. It is not close. Manchin might have lost anyway. It is possible. It is by no means a thing. He might have hung on to it. Incumbency

0:12:24 Lydia: Fucking -His -Face Act. Yeah, I know. Inflation Reduction Act. Yeah. Incumbent.

0:13:23 Thomas: Is a big thing. Let's see. What is our chances that our Democratic candidate will win in West Virginia? It is 99 to 1 one against. So I think what we're getting is somebody who is exactly Trump, but that's what happens now. Only reason I'm just so upset about it is because I've just get tired of people not fucking thinking critically about things like so much spent ink or, or yelling or, um, anger on the left was mad about Joe Manchin. How could we shouldn't even let him be a Democrat? Insane. Anyway. Okay. I'll stop talking about that. So that's a big reason we're losing that one. So that's, that's lost. Um, go into too much detail, it is still possible. We could win. We can get pretty lucky in a bunch of seats. We would have to do quite well, actually. I mean, I mean it's, Ohio. It's We got to win and that's very close. We would have to win. We'd have to beat Ted Cruz, which I would love to.

0:13:35 Lydia: Republican. Only.

0:14:13 Thomas: That'd be, that'd be super cool.

0:14:13 Lydia: Only. Only.

0:14:15 Thomas: Uh, and then does that get us 50 based on where I'm looking at in order, it would be great. The next one is Florida, you know, Rick Scott. And, and like, that's not, that'S not that close. You know, it's right now polling showing 51, 46. That's just not that Close. Like it just isn't. I mean, it'S within possibility if there's something wrong with polls. Like if there'S a reason why, you Democrats show up a lot and Republicans don't as much like it's within reach. Believe to get to the exactly 50, we at least have to beat Ted Cruz. And Ted Cruz, the cockroach that he is just somehow always keep surviving. I don't you know, he just somehow I don'T

0:14:54 Lydia: Don't get it.

0:14:55 Thomas: Understand it. I just not I'm not betting on Ted Cruz on beating Ted Cruz I'm just not like super confident on that. And, you know the models show they've got about a 90 % chance of winning the Senate. It. Now, that's bad enough. Right now, the modeling is showing they're 53 -47 to win the House.

0:15:12 Lydia: That's crazy.

0:15:13 Thomas: They are right now just going by modeling. And again, we'll talk about whether or not we can trust this. But just to know what it is that we may or may not trust, are favored to win everything. A coin flip, but it's a slightly unfair coin. They are, by the odds, very overwhelmingly favorites to win the Senate. They are a little bit favorites to winning the House and a little bit favorites for Trump to beat Harris. That's what we're looking at. We are looking at, you're just betting by the numbers, by the information we have available by polling, would be betting for Republicans to control the presidency, the House, Congress, oh yeah, and six of nine Supreme Court justices. Is what's killing me. I just have to talk about it. And I don't know, you know, what to do per se, but like, there's a possibility we are, how many, right now, full disclosure, it's Wednesday night. There's a probability we go to sleep one, two, three, four, five, six, seven nights, like basically exactly seven nights sleep and wake up to a entirely Republican dominated government at every step. In this day and age where Trump is who he is and he has the people around him he has

0:16:23 Lydia: Blind loyalists.

0:16:24 Thomas: Yeah not this is not 2016 well I know people probably know this but like I just want to emphasize this is what we're looking at right now and yeah it's I guess it's not helpful to like panic but I I guess I'm just maybe preparing myself and everybody else for what may be happening Tuesday night. I am genuinely scared. Was less scared when I thought it was going to be, oh, probably Harris and probably the house, but they'll probably win the Senate. That sucks. It's not great. It'S bad.

0:16:49 Thomas: It' s a bad outcome and things will stay the same. And everyone who's an idiot who doesn't know anything will blame Harris and the Democrat. They promised this blah, blah, yeah. And we have to go through this every fucking in four years, whatever it is, because nobody understands how anything works, that was bad enough. Now we're looking at catastrophe. Like, I don't know what the limit of how scared we should be is on this.

0:16:54 Lydia: Going to blame Harris and then we'll lose the next one. Yeah.

0:17:11 Thomas: Like, camps are not out of the question. That I'm sure most of us remember, but maybe not everybody, I don't it's been a while, I guess, that first year or two of Trump, I kept having having the feeling that surely there's a line. Then what I saw was no matter what awful thing happened, whether it was him saying something or whether it Was migrants dying, trying to cross a river to get to us.

0:17:10 Lydia: Yeah mm hmm.

0:17:38 Thomas: Horrible things that I'll never forget, burned into my memory. Matter how bad, there are people cheering it. There are people not caring. There Are people joking about it and there's just feel no line I fast forward to january 6th and recently watched a few documentaries on that kind of finally I finally felt like okay I can do this now because it genuinely is a disturbing thing and and I think that people we know that people don't care enough about it we know that polling shows people don t care which is great it's awesome we can't like well don't talk about the coup that the guy tried to do that, you know, resulted in the death of people and officers killed themselves. And this was horrible. Like don't talk about it. Cause nobody cares. I guess it's just the fucking insane world we live in. That was erased so quickly. That was another level of just death. Like that was just like, okay, we know Biden won back then. Like, you know let's say in the first couple of days after January 6th, it was like Biden won. We did did this. Only that, we were hunting for the Senate. It was amazing. Georgia, I'll never forget it. Like we won the Senate because of winning two Georgia races that were runoffs after that.

0:18:42 Thomas: Really cool. We but we contributed fundraising to that. And it felt great to, do that. It fell like now finally Republicans are the combination of Trump losing and being a loser. And the thing that happened being so extreme, it really did seem like, all right, finally, it's over. We've done it. It's done. It took mere days for that to not be the feeling anymore, at least for me, because people like the House leader back then, McCarthy, yeah, he's in our fucking state, right, was so mad at Trump, was yelling at Trump. Was, was so mad on that day. And then instantly because of convenience, because of where the party is, just didn't seem to care anymore that his life was threatened and he felt in danger. And, and yeah, I, it's feels impossible every time. It's that feeling that is no bottom seemingly. I can be justified. That's the scary thing. That is the fascism or is the thing because the minute Trump wants it and does it, in this fascist machine is incentivized to just be happy with it and go along with it. And either lie about it or say it's great every single thing there's no fucking line and if we're looking at a 2024 or 2025 I guess rather where not only is trump back but they have all three thingies all three branches supreme court everything and instead of sort of normal people who are republicans obviously around trump who now all are against him pretty much and and

0:19:08 Lydia: Kevin McCarthy. Coward. Mm -hm. Yeah. Minimized everything that he and his colleagues went through. Yeah.

0:20:15 Thomas: Come out and say like hey that guy's is a fucking fascist everyone nobody cares apparently nobody nobody seems to listen to them not there instead we have stephen miller we have truly the scum of the earth who have had years or whatever how many years you want to say not anywhere from four to eight years to do nothing but think about how to get it right this And how to get all the non -white immigrants out and how to, you know, just stuff that's truly could chilling. Just don't know what stops it. I I don't Know what stops It. There's the only limiting factor is really just Trump. Like Trump isn't Hitler, you in so many ways, but he mostly just wants to be worshiped in golf. You think he's a little bit more of a, you don't want to be a, I don't think he wants to do a whole lot of things that are horrible. Um he does but like he's he not out there like when you look at you and other awful horrible genocidal maniacs every day hitler got up and ate and drank and fucking breathed in grievance against the jews and hated them explicitly wanted to kill all like there

0:21:14 Thomas: Was no ifs ands or buts about that

0:21:16 Lydia: Yeah. I don't think Trump has a dog in the fight except for whatever's going to make him feel loved, and that's it.

0:21:24 Thomas: He has like run -of -the -mill white old boomer republican racism which is awful but like it's run of the mill for that group to be honest with you for republican old white men uh want immigrants honestly view when you look at what's happening around the world is probably more in line with the average than my view on that the things they want to do are kick the immigrants out not let at the very least not let anymore in I think it's evil I think it's horrible I don't see him as somebody who's wanting to make death camps or some shit but if he did I don'T KNOW WHAT WOULD STOP HIM LIKE I DON'T KNOW IN THIS WORLD WHERE HE CONTROLS EVERYTHING I DON't KNOW WHAT STOPS HIM IF HE DOES DECIDE OR SOMEBODY IN THE ADMINISTRATION DECIDES TO DO SOMETHING HORRIBLE

0:22:09 Lydia: I think he's very... unpredictable or maybe it's even predictable about like signing things, right? Like if it's someone who is loyal to him, I'm pretty sure he's just going to rubber stamp most things that they ask for as long as it still makes him look good. If they can like demonstrate, no, no no, people will love you if you do this, then I think he'll just do it.

0:22:26 Thomas: Think There's a Lot He Doesn't Care About. I think he picks things to care about at certain times. Miller may be in charge of a lot of this stuff. And God, guy is the fucking devil and how the fuck did we get here I don't know what to do like how did we get to a point I knew it was gonna it was always gonna be close but like I'll be honest I thought how could trump possibly win again how could he beat Harris, somebody who's a good candidate, Waltz, who's amazing.

0:22:40 Lydia: He Yeah, and

0:22:55 Thomas: After everything, after being a loser, after a debate that was horrible, after, you know, like just, yeah, really wonder like what, what's it going to take to fix this fucking thing? Like really wonder. And, to not go too broad on that, Let's talk about polling. So I think the first response to people might have on our side is like, yeah, but OK, there's been a deluge of right wing polls. There's been there's a concerted effort to make it look like Trump has momentum. Well, for one, I don't entirely entirely know if that does that. Like I meant to mention this with the New York Times poll. The goal is helping Trump, you'd want it to show a landslide for Harris because. It just stops us from voting. That's what happened with Hillary. Everyone thought

0:22:54 Lydia: And after everything, being convicted of 34. Yeah. Hmm.

0:23:36 Thomas: Hillary was going to win. Polls showed a landslide. 538 showed 90 % or whatever. I guess they eventually showed 78 % or Whatever. But it was, it was for a while, it Was just like 999, you know, it wasn't even close. And a bunch of people on the left took it for granted, didn't bother, didn' t organize. So if you're trying to just help Trump, that' s kind of what you would do. Now, there's certain arguments to be made for like momentum, maybe, or like making races seem close where they weren't, you know, so maybe. But like, I don't know, showing Trump a plus one nationally rather than, let's say, hypothetically, if they were fucking with a poll, it was, let'S say it was plus three Harris. And they're like, no, we want to show it plus one Trump, which is what that CNN poll showed. Like that doesn't, I dunno, that doesn'T really do anything. Thing. Like there's, no reason. There's no like smoke filled room reason why that makes any sense to me. Like it just doesn't. Um, I, especially like Nate Cohn and some of the people involved in this, like they seem like reasonable people to me, um, methodology they talk about, like pretty reasonable. Like, it just, doesn't, I don't, I don'T think it's a deliberate thing. It now, it could be problems with waiting and response response bias, of course, like sure. But in terms of just like smoke filled room, let's rig the polls. I don't think that's it. And now here's the, something I didn't really remember is this happened in 2022. I So don'T know if you remember this or might not have been covered that much, but in 2022, I even have the article up by Nate Cohn from like right, like election Eve, 2022 essentially. And it was like, Hey, you may have noticed our average seems to be just skewing way red for the last couple of days. And he's saying this is the New York Times. Nate Cohen is in charge of the, you know, their polling average and stuff, essentially. And he's like, yeah, there's these weird Republican low quality polls that just they everybody put out right at the end. And so we've kind of like stopped our thing and we're not really. So like that did happen and they flooded the zone with those. And that's part of the reason why my memory of why 2022 polls were so wrong was because, oh, it's It's Roe v. Wade. Like to that is what I thought.

0:25:35 Lydia: To Dobbs. Yeah.

0:25:37 Thomas: Exactly. But it might've also been this. It might've been that like they put out a bunch of these right -wing polls that, juiced you up Republican numbers. If you look at the polling error in 2020, it was once again, the polling error was essentially, I It inflated Biden and in 2020. Biden still won and Democrats still won, but nowhere near what we thought. Was way closer than we thought, way closer.

0:26:02 Thomas: The final 538 prediction was basically 89 % for Biden. And he, Biden won by just the skin of his teeth. I mean, he really did. When you look at the actual numbers of the states and the electoral college, he did not win by much. It was very slim. And so it was another polling miss in favor of Trump. Or yeah, again, I don't know how to say that. Another polling miss that didn't capture enough of Trump support, I guess. And then in 2022, we had the opposite problem. So there are people who are saying, well, maybe that's happening. For one, two theories. For one maybe it's happening again. And there are, they do seem to be some right -wing polls coming out now. And that could explain the shift. There does seem to be something about like right -wingers, you manipulating betting markets because the betting markets show a big Trump win. I don't really care about that because betting markets don't matter with this. Like people on this outcome don't have access to any information that we don't. Like it's not the same as like, oh, well there's professionals who bet on stuff like sports or whatever and they're just way more informed and then blah, blah, blah. This is like, no, we all have the same polls. Like we all have the exact same stuff. And so the betting market, in my opinion, is more a reflection of who has money and wants to do a betting market thingy and which direction does that skew? And it's not just like many people, it's how many people dollars. And I think there are some rich assholes who want Trump to win, who have made that market skew toward Trump quite a lot. So it's, don't care about the betting market data. So, that is, I mean, the betting market's kind of scary. It's like, oh, Trump's going to win, but I don' really care about that because I, I just don't think that has access to information that you and I don'T really, like if we want to, that main problem with polling. And there's so many, just aren't that many polls. There's less, fewer than, I won't say ever, but fewer than the last, you know, it keeps getting less every 20 election for the past 20 years. Are fewer polls, there are fewer good polls. I but I did some scientific papers here that I think is really interesting about, you one is election polls are 95 confident, % confident, but only 60 % accurate and you know this better than I do because I've just never been great with stats but like the 95 confidence is a thing you strive for and that's

0:28:15 Thomas: The range and so it did a study this thing did a steady and it showed that the confidence rating is too high and the margins in the polls actually should be about double what they are so the plus or minus is basically the margin of error um should be according to this paper anyway that should be roughly double what it is but if we did that polls would be meaning nobody would care about polls I mean they probably just ignore it honestly but nobody who looked at the error margin would like it'd be useless it's already a coin flip anyway to say well it's 51 49 plus or minus 8 am I doing with that? You know, like that's nothing.

0:28:56 Lydia: Speak about in the paper like why any theories about like why there is such a discrepancy between the confidence rating and the accuracy?

0:29:04 Thomas: Think there's just more error than they know how to handle. And I key about this paper was just comparing actual results. And so I I don' I think that maybe the methodology that the pollsters are doing, it's It's not like they are doing anything fraudulent. I think it might be the case where they're accuracy that isn't there. You what this paper says is they did an actual collection of real data and they found an analysis of polls for more than 6 ,000 contests. We have found that the actual vote total for a given candidate fell within the 95 % confidence interval for just 60 % of the polls.

0:29:39 Thomas: So that's sort of comparing. Don't think that's anything you can do on like a one -to -one basis because for any given poll, you can always say like, well, I guess it was the 5 % or I get, You know, it's like hard, but like as a taken as a whole, they can see like all these different polls. Tend to just 60 % of them hit that 95 % confidence interval, which tells you that they shouldn't be 95 % confident of it. And what this paper says, again, I'm not the scientist, but it does say like either you'd need to adjust your confidence or you need to ajust your error margin. And if, and if, if instead of plus or minus three or whatever we have now, if it was plus or minus six or plus minus eight, like that would be so meaningless. Like if if you said, well, either Harris is ahead 58, 42 or whatever, or Trump is ahead 58, 52, it's like that's nothing. And so they're not going to do that because there's isn't useful at we're stuck where it may just not be useful. And so we're we're using a thing that isn'T useful. The other one I found really interesting was the was a paper I read about how since Nate Silver did his thing in after Obama elections and shifted the whole industry to instead of kind of these predictions, they would do this like percentage or like probability sort of thing. And that was looked at as this like sensible adjustment. Instead of saying, well, we think Trump's going to win. We're saying, well, six and 10 for Trump and four and 10 for Kamala or whatever. That's looked at as like, well, that's the more reasonable, sensible thing. And this one paper I looked at was like, well, actually that's even worse because like if you do the calculations of what it would take to know which model is getting that right, it would Take like a thousand years of data. Because the problem is it's so few observations. You know, when you talk about any of this stuff, it's you're setting up expectations or whatever, and then ideally you have observations and those can help bring whatever your predictions are, to it reality. Like the more observations you have, the easier it is to like actually gear your model toward reality. That's just how things work. Was saying there's also a further problem that people don't realize, which is that it samples only only happen every two years or every four years for presidential elections. Every two year, but it's all these state contests. It's all of these other contests like that. Like some people might think that, OK, but there's a bunch OF different contests, you know, like those are a bunch Of different observations. And they do some math that I don't totally understand, that but show that like, well, yeah, but because these errors are systematic, because like when the polls are off, they tend to be off in the same ways in

0:32:17 Thomas: A given year. Mostly that means it reduces the value of those observations. So instead of like, oh, well there's 3000 observations. Cause we look at all these counties and we look, you know, whatever, like there's, there's so many chances to actually observe, you and to try to train our models on reality. Actually, it's, it counts essentially for way less than that because the errors are related.

0:32:34 Lydia: That makes sense. I mean, like, instead of being able to count every single individual race as a distinct, you you're basically saying, no, the ballot that goes out is your N.

0:32:47 Thomas: Yeah. And it's is like, more like they are not independent. It is not like the people especially because everything is national now, you now, like it might be one thing you had two individual universes of populations and you are trying to evaluate Just, just what are the variables involved in voting in this way? You know, because what models are trying to do. They're trying to say some amount of fundamentals, some amount of polling, you know, they're trying to weight these different things. Could go crazy and be like, what's the weather? You know? Who's the candidate? Like you could find all these variables you want to find. And then there's going to be some amount of it that's just random, you know, cause like maybe someone meant to vote, but they lost their ballot. It maybe you know like there's just chaos theory stuff and in an ideal setting where you had like access to in completely independent populations that you not like lockstep voting they're for different reasons for different people and you get to observe kind of that process a bunch bunch of times. That's one thing. But when the people in Ohio vote and the people in Pennsylvania vote, and like a lot of that is in common. Like all of the reasons, but a lot of the reasons are the same. And so anyway therefore it was interesting because they did all the math in their mind and showed that like they set for fun they set 538 is like okay we'll set this as our Oracle they call it where it's not like it's doing these simulations and they said okay for this one we're gonna just assume that 538 is gospel. Like that's just correct. And they ran simulations that were based on the assumptions of 538. They're still going to have the randomness, but it's within the constraints of that specific model. So essentially what that's saying is you if were trying to pick the best election model in this simulation, they're running 538 should be it because it's a hundred percent roughly, again, it doesn't mean it predicts it every time, it means that its confidence intervals are right. And it's, you know, it mean that it's like setting the correct parameters, essentially, if

0:34:33 Lydia: Mm-huh.

0:34:33 Thomas: That makes sense. To make that clear, 538 might say 80% Trump, 20% Kamala, let's say. Kamala winning doesn't mean the model was wrong per se. It could mean that the 20 percent happened or that the model is wrong and what this simulation did was it set whatever parameters that 538 said it set that as like that's the realm of possibilities that's going to happen meaning that that model is as good as you could get in this fake universe we're doing and then what it did is it took other models and it like set some different accuracy parameters for them. Essentially the point of the experiment, the point of this simulation is to say, if one model was way better than another, how long would it take for us to be able to tell? And the answer is hundreds of years. It makes sense when you think about it, because every single time, if model says 60, 40, and the 40 % happens, you cannot know by a sample of one there, whether the model was wrong or whether the 40% happened. It's just really hard. Like you need a bunch of observations. And because these elections, especially for president, happen every four years, it's like at a minimum. And this was, they set a pretty extreme one. They set one where 538 is 100% perfect and other models are like 64, And even to tell the difference between like a perfect model and a terrible model just a random chance model. Actually, that's what it was. Yeah, that's usually what they do. To tell the different, because it would actually be as hard to be perfectly wrong as it would be to be perfectly right. It was. So just to tell the difference between a perfect 100% model based on their simulation, like they're setting the constraints here and like a 50-50 coin toss takes, that one was at least like 24 years or something. And obviously we're not dealing with that level of accuracy. We're not doing with a 100% to 50-50. We're dealing with shades of accuracy with these models. And so knowing which of these models is right that are doing this four and 10, six and ten that kind of thing is basically impossible with our current level of understanding of the universe like it just it would take hundreds of years of data and and in that time assumptions would probably change like you probably couldn't even do that because like think of how much would change in that time about how elections work about how voting works about how much you know there's just no way to know which model is more accurate there's absolutely no way to know. And it's very interesting. Does any of that mean that once the polls all switch for, you know, kind of favoring Trump, that there's some reason we can then and only then think they're wrong?

0:34:46 Lydia: Right. Right. Right.

0:37:00 Thomas: The answer are some theories about how these polls might be wrong. I've already talked about right-wing polls kind of flooding the zone a little bit. And might seem comforting for the moment. There's some people who posted on my Facebook. They posted a few people who are doing something like one guy is on threads adjusting polls because he thinks there's like some sort of bias that's being thrown in there from 2022 being off in Democrats favor. They're like, hey, here's the polls if you look for it non -adjusted. And I think they have some plausible reasoning. It looks more like what I would expect reality to be, like Harris plus three nationally, Harris up in Pennsylvania, which is huge. Pennsylvania is massive. That really matters a lot. Up three in Pennsylvania. Up 3 in Michigan. 1.5 in Wisconsin. Constant. It shows like roughly what I would hope was true, but I just, I don't know. Like I, I don't know.

0:37:52 Lydia: You'd have to be making some assumptions to accept something like that, yeah.

0:37:56 Thomas: The thing is, I, worry that like polling company might be making that mistake or maybe a couple, but. Don't think that I, or this person on threads is necessarily that much smarter than Nate Cohn and the people doing it in the New York times. And I think that, may all be wrong, but I don't know if I can confidently sit here and think like, no, I and this guy in threads is right. And the New York times is wrong. I just don't, I don't feel like I have that kind of information. I just don't, especially because, you know, the trend is when Trump is on the ballot, he's always under estimated. He's always has to underestimate on the polls. Now, when he's not on the ballot, Republicans have been overestimated in the past on the on 2018, 2022. weirdly the midterms is when Democrats have been underperforming for various reasons. When Trump's on the ballot, he is overperformed even in 2020 when he lost, he overperform his polls by a lot. So, it comes to the modeling, Cohn wrote about this right-wing problem where he's like, hey, look, all these polls have come in in 2022. And just the other day, some people were saying, hey is this happening again? In. And my, let read this part. This just a red polling wave is what he says. To some, it's starting to feel as if the polls might err in the same way they did in 2022. Over the last few weeks, there's been a deluge of polls from Republican-leaning firms, including firms polling for the Trump campaign. And this was interesting. Actually, sorry, I want to pull away. Pretty crazy. This isn't a crazy theory. I want it to be very clear. This is not a crazy theory. This is a thing that is happening. It's about what it's actually doing to the models. Because here's a different article I read, New Republic. Sorry to go in and out here. But this said, last month, a GOP-friendly polling firm presented itself and its data in a highly unusual way. Rather than maintain a nominally neutral public -facing profile, this pollster acted more like the cavalry brigade Donald Trump's campaign. And the firm did so explicitly, openly, and proudly. It all went down in mid-September at a time when the 538 polling averages showed the slightest of leads for Kamala Harris in North Carolina, a must-win state for Trump. Her edge was short -lived. The averages moved back to favoring Trump and Qantas Insights, a GOP-friendly polling firm, took credit for this development. When a MAGA influencer celebrated the pro-Trump shift on X, formerly Twitter, Qantas' account responded, you're welcome. Implication was clear. Qantas poll had not only pushed the averages back to Trump, this was nakedly the whole point of releasing the poll in the first place. That right there would be like, ah, okay, maybe this bullshit is happening. And then a reminder, this is from this election, not 2022. This, this did just happen. To that Nate Cohn, New York times article, uh, so far the Republican polling wave isn't responsible for any major movement in the polling averages. One simple test, what our our polling averages would look like if we excluded every poll sponsored by Republicans or conducted by Republican polling firms, along with surveys by any pollsters that I've seen being accused of trying to flood the zone for Republicans. Here's how times polling averages would change without just taking all those polls out and at all. Like nothing that changes with this. Michigan changes from like slightly ahead to 1 % ahead, you know, one point ahead for Harris. Um, with Wisconsin. So virtually no change that scares me. Nate Cohn is here saying here, I went into the the fucking back end of the system here took out all anything that could possibly be looked at as Republicans flooding

0:41:10 Thomas: The zone poll. And yeah, it's just not changing his model. His model, their model doesn't, it not that it looks terrible for Harris. It actually looks okay. That's still scary. Like it, like, I don't want it to just be okay. It's a a 51-49 that we don't descend into fascism you know and unfortunately it's just honestly it's it's a coin toss for fascism it really is right now I mean these states like I did my own map just for fun like the thing you know the 270 to win kind of stuff and I filled out based on what I was thinking based on polling oh had Trump winning like 283 or something. Was that what he got to?

0:41:11 Lydia: Did a what if. Yeah.

0:41:47 Thomas: Because on how the polling is, like if he wins, it's basically Pennsylvania is very significant right now. It looks like Trump's going to win Arizona, which sucks like that. Is just 50, 50. Now that's a small state, but Arizona 11 electoral votes matters quite a bit. Um if we give Harris, you know, Wisconsin, uh, Minnesota, like those states, the problem is Georgia is looking pretty bad and Georgia is Georgia's 16 votes that's bad North Carolina not yeah that's not really that close it's also 16 but like losing Georgia Pennsylvania I mean it's just that's just murder like it's gonna be really hard to come back from that and a lot of these states are within one and it just comes down to like well we have to hope either that there's a systematic reason which there could be that the polls are wrong in our favor favor I guess and I think it's important to note that that's where we are like are at the point where if if we'RE super lucky something's seriously wrong with all these polls which is which will be very significant and actually Actually, Kamala is going to win easily and all that stuff. If we're lucky,

0:41:57 Lydia: I That Yeah the Carolina. Yeah but line with that study right. I mean that's not completely unrealistic.

0:42:59 Thomas: That's true. Well, it's not. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But that's another thing I wanted to say. Polls are so close that within the margin of error is a landslide in either direction. And I mean that literally like that's mathematically true. So for the polling and the and the plus or minus, you know, the margin margin of error, look, when when you do the electoral math of the electoral college votes, either way, like if the polls are within their own margins for error, but you know, they slightly go one way versus the other. Those differences are landslide in either direction. It could, we are 50-50 meaning it could be a landslide for Trump. It could be a landslide for Kamala or it could be very, very, very close. And I know that's basically useless, but

0:43:42 Lydia: Going

0:43:42 Thomas: It, it's important to know that that's where we are because like if the polls were slightly better then we wouldn't necessarily be there we'd be like well a big miss would be a narrow win for trump but most likely it'll be either a narrow one for kamala or a big one for come you know what I mean like we polls could still be pretty close but be shifted enough to where like you're more confident of a win for kamla you know so like there's shades of a difference there.

0:43:42 Lydia: To say yeah. Yeah. Hmm.

0:44:08 Thomas: That's the important thing. This isn't doom and gloom as in this is inevitable. This is not me saying we're definitely losing. It's all over. I'm not saying that. But I am saying that based the current polling averages that have been pretty consistent now for a few weeks, looking probable that Trump's going to win and Senate is looking real bad. It's looking probable that they're going to win the House. And think it's important that we all know that. If you want to have your reasons and I'm happy to hear them, please buy on me. Hey, send me your copium. I'm in, I'm excited. If you have, Oh no, I know Thomas, you're wrong. There's this systematic reason why blah, blah, Hey, I want to hear it. I really do. Thing I always say about who answers their phone and nobody answers the phone, like that actually is not as big of a deal as I had hoped. I actually want to point out a, um, comment, On Lala our OA Patreon said, I work in polling. It is a part -time job. I do because of the, and whatever. I work on polling. The talk about polling younger people is bull sugar. No, I don't know what that means, but depending on industry standards regulation, we use random digit dialing and give quotas for each age, not age group. Calling, we expressly to 32 year olds if available or possible schedules. Another vital piece of information that nobody talks about is that women are rarely available to poll. They

0:45:23 Lydia: Hm.

0:45:24 Thomas: Are always caring for children or working and too busy, busier than men to participate. Look it up if you don't believe me. That's interesting. Well, that gives me some room to hope. If your polling Polling methods are appropriately adjusted. You close the poll by eliminating by age, not age group, and you ensure you have a wide cross -section of well -defined demographics. From my limited experience, certain age or gender quotas fill faster, but a supervisor closes an age or agenda as they fill to focus our calls on others and reinstates them to fill that quota. So I guess I didn't even really think of that, you So we need X number of responses from people who are 35 and then they call until they get those, that number of response. And there's still problems with that. Like, obviously if it's still really hard to get, you year olds and like it's really, it takes forever to fill them. Still may mean you're not getting like necessarily a good random sample. Like it could be that you're, I don't know, you're getting a very particular kind of 18 year old. Yeah, like so it doesn't it doesn't cure all, but it it does make that a little bit more accurate seeming like they're it's more about filling age and gender kind they're looking for to where they say, OK, we have enough of this exact age and gender that we can say we have a sample of them and and by that method, they kind of make it so this no one answers their phone thing doesn't really have as much an effect as that. I might have thought, you yeah, a little, you in the end, they do still have to make assumptions about who's going to vote. They do still have to make assumptions about turnout. Here's another thing that I found interesting that you might find interesting. They by asking people who they voted for. And therefore if the know okay 60 of people voted for trump in this state and our responses say that like 50 of them voted for Trump they know like okay we need to control for that

0:46:22 Lydia: Weirdos. Right?

0:47:12 Thomas: But people misremember who they vote for believe it or not um called idiots no I don't somehow people mismember who they vot for or they misrepresent who they voted for like Like there, there not perfect. Like definitely are assumptions built in. There's reasons why polling is going to be wrong. And it could be, I just have to hope that maybe the youths or maybe women, my hope is in youths, or in women that they are being underrepresented or under, under or whatever, in terms of turnout. Out. I mean, it doesn't take much for that to give us a systematic kind of under polling, like I said, you know, but, but just as easily go the other way. It can just as easily be, well, actually there's that many more angry old white dudes that were motivated than we thought. And they actually turned out more like that's what happened in 2016, 2020. 20. isn't any particular reason I can find to expect that, which makes sense, because if there were, the smartest people in polling would probably factor that in to the to the extent they could. I don't know. Where we are. I'm very scared of what's going to happen. It's not looking great. Outcomes are still within our reach. It is still entirely possible that we win all three things. It's possible. I'm really fucking hoping for it. I'm really hoping there's a big polling miss. Will it be systematic or will it be kind of weird? Ones off for different reasons, but they sort of offset, you anyway, that's what's going on. I'm terrified um last words from you we're

0:48:37 Lydia: Last words are hug your loved ones. Go vote and in there and reach out if you need us. In the meantime.

0:48:46 Thomas: Too busy but yeah I'm know man send us your copium I'm I'm all ears for it I know there's stuff I meant to talk about that I didn't but that's okay I talked about a ton of of stuff um feeling of absolute dread in my mind has made me want to focus on what might be the next fascist regime coming in and for that reason next time on where there's woke um watched as as I I hope I didn't hallucinate or maybe I hope I did hallucinate about an hour ago when you said you watched the entire fucking Trump rally from New York that we didn't have to. Tracked down audio from the 1939 German Bund rally in New York in Madison Square in the same place because there's so many comparisons to that. I actually found the audio. It took me a while. It was kind of hard to find. Some very interesting stuff that we're going to do, I guess, after talking about the rally that happened in twenty twenty four. But in time where there's work, we is going to take us through the fucking ghouls that I you've you've probably seen some. Here's the thing. You've probably seeing a lot of it. You seen the guy in this bad jokes is awful racist jokes. Folks. You've probably seen a few things. Haven't seen the half of it. Like there's so much in that rally that is fucking batshit insane. And these are the people who might be in charge of us in like five seconds,

0:49:17 Lydia: Yes, it is real. Sorry. Tune in for the evil highlights.

0:50:01 Thomas: You going to get to know them a little bit. Boy. So this fucking sucks. Sorry, but that's what we're doing.

0:50:13 Thomas: And And then we can go back to just making fun of stupid college kids gone crazy stuff. Yeah.

0:50:17 Lydia: Ben Shapiro.

0:50:39 Thomas: Doesn't we're definitely losing. It's all over. I'm me your copium.