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Thank you for sharing. From my two months of non-professional research, it looked like Trump was going to win by a big margin. The major media outlets were look

by pcunite 10y ago

Thank you for sharing. From my two months of non-professional research, it looked like Trump was going to win by a big margin. The major media outlets were looking outright deceptive from my perspective.

mrlatinos 10y ago
The irony is that the same network is now questioning how all the pollsters got it wrong... Frustrating.
- SiVal 10y ago
  Interesting, isn't it? Filtering out facts that they didn't believe, not because they were trying to lie, but because those who demand that we "celebrate diversity" have so little actual diversity themselves that they all truly believed the same, standard narratives they consistently tell each other, resulted in a situation where one of their beliefs could be objectively tested, and they were all wildly wrong in exactly the same way. What does this suggest about all the other stories the mainstream media (CBS exec: "How could Nixon have won? I don't know a single person who voted for him!") tells every day, in exactly the same way, about all sorts of issues that can't be so easily measured? And what does it suggest about the academic institutions that enforce conformity to exactly the same set of opinions and narratives and not only filters information but fires and otherwise silences dissenters? And anyone who suggests that a system so utterly lacking in diversity of thought that there is no one left on campus who will tell them if they're wrong can't be trusted is called "anti-intellectual" and "anti-science". It doesn't tell me that they are wrong about everything, just that they are likely to be just as wrong about some other issues they are adamant about as they were about this one, but that promoting their dogma, not working to find the truth, is what they really care about, which doesn't make them wrong about any particular thing, just not reliable.
sshumaker 10y ago
pcunite - we've discussed in another thread, but the election was actually quite close. HRC had more of the popular vote, and a 1% shift from Trump to Clinton would have resulted in her victory. Here's an excellent analysis from five-thirty-eight: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-percentage-points-makes/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-perc...
- pcunite 10y ago
  I understand what is being reported now. I'm referring to my sense of awareness before the election. It looked like a big win - to me at least.
- fixxer 10y ago
  Sure, but the polls being published and "marketed" had her with an insurmountable lead. Silver had her at 70% and that was generous to Trump compared to many. This isn't about the polls being wrong because the race was tight. Many misrepresented likely turnout (because many are incompetent and thought the 2016 electorate was going to be the 2012 electorate) and the media pumped up those same HRC favorable polls while the pundits attacked the validity of what turned out to be better polls (LA Times). It sure looked like a propaganda machine to me, but I'm just one of those deplorables.
  - grzm 10y ago
    Some honest questions: Do you think it's worth polling at all? Do you think it's possible they made honest mistakes in their models? If you're voting in the election, you're going to have an opinion. Is it possible to work on polling honestly while being an eligible voter? Personally, I think polling is worthwhile. I think it's possible they made honest (and sometimes incompetent, but not malicious) mistakes, and acknowledge that attempting to predict the outcome of a future event is inherently difficult. I think it is possible to do honest work while still voting.
    - fixxer 10y ago
      Polls are useful for the campaign as part of media optimization and field strategy. In terms of value to the electorate, I think polls are anti-value: they are presented to generate response, be it entertainment or motivation. The electorate needs to held accountable for turnout, not tricked into it. I don't believe in requiring voting, but I despise the methods used to GOTV. Either you possess civic engagement or you don't
      - 10y ago
mikeash 10y ago
It's amusing to see all the people coming out of the woodwork to claim that they knew all along that Trump would win big. The vote was almost dead even. If you though Trump was going to win big then you were just as wrong as the places that predicted a big Clinton win.
- hga 10y ago
  Quibble: since this is done by Electoral College adjusted voting, it wasn't "almost dead even" by that accounting, as of right now the AP called Arizona for Trump, making it 290-228. Michigan leans him, New Hampshire leans Hillary, if those two break in those ways, it'll be 316-232, which is fairly big as these things go, close to Obama's 2012 win. About as big as I expected, although not quite as big as I hoped, then again, there are always surprises in Presidential elections. I didn't expect Trump to get Pennsylvania (or Toomey to win), I expected Russ Feingold to win (yesterday saw a report on the general issue of Team Hillary ignoring/taking for granted the Rust Belt, including ignoring a plea for help from Feingold), and one of the biggest surprises is that Minnesota truly was in play (margin looks to have gone from ~200K in 2012 to ~40K).
  - mikeash 10y ago
    The electoral college margin doesn't mean a whole lot. Tiny swings in the vote can result in huge swings in the electoral college. If you lose your balance on top of a mountain, teeter both ways, then fall to the right, the fact that you might come to rest miles from the peak doesn't mean it wasn't a near thing.
    - NhanH 10y ago
      If Clinton has lost only one of her firewall states, your comment would have applied. The fact that Trump flipped quite a few of them makes it no longer a close one. If two countries play a best-of-5 soccer games, and one beat the other 3-0 with three consecutive 1-0 games in the last minute. It would have been hard to claim that one team isn't obviously better and the margin of winning is small.
PhantomGremlin 10y ago
The major media outlets were looking outright deceptive from my perspective. I had some CNBC shows saved on my Tivo and I recently went back to look at what they were saying. Here's an extreme example of the deception. Just the day before the election CNBC was showing states such as Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota as "leaning" GOP, not "likely" GOP. But here are the results for those states: Montana Trump 57% Clinton 36% North Dakota Trump 64% Clinton 28% South Dakota Trump 61% Clinton 32% From this one could easily conclude that the mainstream media deliberately chose to deceive about the expected outcome in those states. Why? Perhaps to not show as much dark red on the national map? Yes there were true battlegrounds or toss-ups. E.g. Florida only went for Trump by about 1.3%. But there were more than 2x as many Trump voters than Clinton voters in North Dakota. It was a bald-faced brazen lie to call that "leaning".

by pcunite 10y ago

mrlatinos 10y ago

The irony is that the same network is now questioning how all the pollsters got it wrong... Frustrating.

SiVal 10y ago
Interesting, isn't it? Filtering out facts that they didn't believe, not because they were trying to lie, but because those who demand that we "celebrate diversity" have so little actual diversity themselves that they all truly believed the same, standard narratives they consistently tell each other, resulted in a situation where one of their beliefs could be objectively tested, and they were all wildly wrong in exactly the same way. What does this suggest about all the other stories the mainstream media (CBS exec: "How could Nixon have won? I don't know a single person who voted for him!") tells every day, in exactly the same way, about all sorts of issues that can't be so easily measured? And what does it suggest about the academic institutions that enforce conformity to exactly the same set of opinions and narratives and not only filters information but fires and otherwise silences dissenters? And anyone who suggests that a system so utterly lacking in diversity of thought that there is no one left on campus who will tell them if they're wrong can't be trusted is called "anti-intellectual" and "anti-science". It doesn't tell me that they are wrong about everything, just that they are likely to be just as wrong about some other issues they are adamant about as they were about this one, but that promoting their dogma, not working to find the truth, is what they really care about, which doesn't make them wrong about any particular thing, just not reliable.

sshumaker 10y ago

pcunite - we've discussed in another thread, but the election was actually quite close. HRC had more of the popular vote, and a 1% shift from Trump to Clinton would have resulted in her victory. Here's an excellent analysis from five-thirty-eight: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-percentage-points-makes/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-perc...

pcunite 10y ago
I understand what is being reported now. I'm referring to my sense of awareness before the election. It looked like a big win - to me at least.
fixxer 10y ago
Sure, but the polls being published and "marketed" had her with an insurmountable lead. Silver had her at 70% and that was generous to Trump compared to many. This isn't about the polls being wrong because the race was tight. Many misrepresented likely turnout (because many are incompetent and thought the 2016 electorate was going to be the 2012 electorate) and the media pumped up those same HRC favorable polls while the pundits attacked the validity of what turned out to be better polls (LA Times). It sure looked like a propaganda machine to me, but I'm just one of those deplorables.
- grzm 10y ago
  Some honest questions: Do you think it's worth polling at all? Do you think it's possible they made honest mistakes in their models? If you're voting in the election, you're going to have an opinion. Is it possible to work on polling honestly while being an eligible voter? Personally, I think polling is worthwhile. I think it's possible they made honest (and sometimes incompetent, but not malicious) mistakes, and acknowledge that attempting to predict the outcome of a future event is inherently difficult. I think it is possible to do honest work while still voting.
  - fixxer 10y ago
    Polls are useful for the campaign as part of media optimization and field strategy. In terms of value to the electorate, I think polls are anti-value: they are presented to generate response, be it entertainment or motivation. The electorate needs to held accountable for turnout, not tricked into it. I don't believe in requiring voting, but I despise the methods used to GOTV. Either you possess civic engagement or you don't
    - 10y ago

mikeash 10y ago

It's amusing to see all the people coming out of the woodwork to claim that they knew all along that Trump would win big. The vote was almost dead even. If you though Trump was going to win big then you were just as wrong as the places that predicted a big Clinton win.

hga 10y ago
Quibble: since this is done by Electoral College adjusted voting, it wasn't "almost dead even" by that accounting, as of right now the AP called Arizona for Trump, making it 290-228. Michigan leans him, New Hampshire leans Hillary, if those two break in those ways, it'll be 316-232, which is fairly big as these things go, close to Obama's 2012 win. About as big as I expected, although not quite as big as I hoped, then again, there are always surprises in Presidential elections. I didn't expect Trump to get Pennsylvania (or Toomey to win), I expected Russ Feingold to win (yesterday saw a report on the general issue of Team Hillary ignoring/taking for granted the Rust Belt, including ignoring a plea for help from Feingold), and one of the biggest surprises is that Minnesota truly was in play (margin looks to have gone from ~200K in 2012 to ~40K).
- mikeash 10y ago
  The electoral college margin doesn't mean a whole lot. Tiny swings in the vote can result in huge swings in the electoral college. If you lose your balance on top of a mountain, teeter both ways, then fall to the right, the fact that you might come to rest miles from the peak doesn't mean it wasn't a near thing.
  - NhanH 10y ago
    If Clinton has lost only one of her firewall states, your comment would have applied. The fact that Trump flipped quite a few of them makes it no longer a close one. If two countries play a best-of-5 soccer games, and one beat the other 3-0 with three consecutive 1-0 games in the last minute. It would have been hard to claim that one team isn't obviously better and the margin of winning is small.

PhantomGremlin 10y ago

The major media outlets were looking outright deceptive from my perspective. I had some CNBC shows saved on my Tivo and I recently went back to look at what they were saying. Here's an extreme example of the deception. Just the day before the election CNBC was showing states such as Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota as "leaning" GOP, not "likely" GOP. But here are the results for those states: Montana Trump 57% Clinton 36% North Dakota Trump 64% Clinton 28% South Dakota Trump 61% Clinton 32% From this one could easily conclude that the mainstream media deliberately chose to deceive about the expected outcome in those states. Why? Perhaps to not show as much dark red on the national map? Yes there were true battlegrounds or toss-ups. E.g. Florida only went for Trump by about 1.3%. But there were more than 2x as many Trump voters than Clinton voters in North Dakota. It was a bald-faced brazen lie to call that "leaning".