Hillary Clinton Had a 99% Chance of Becoming President

Well, at least that was according to the Princeton Election Consortium (1). This poll came out days before Election Day 2016. Please keep this in mind whenever one of these leftists come out with these Mickey Mouse polls about Trump losing to the tottery Biden in November, especially months before it.

1: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ry-clinton-donald-trump-victory-a7399671.html

 

LOL

how could that be when she barely campaigned and didn't do the important legwork...

 

Precisely. Anyone in possession of logic knew that blatantly corrupt to the core Hillary Clinton wasn't capable of beating Trump and now the same polling companies are SHRIEKING that basement huddling Dementia Joe Biden is absolutely whipping Trump and is the inevitable next president . . . just like they did with Hillary.

 

Ah, I misread the intent of your post. Sorry.

 

Polls mean what the pollsters want them to mean. They get their revenue from the people who have an interest in poll results, hint hint.

 

A bit of skepticism is good, but the world isn't as conspiratorial as some believe. Polls are big business, and nobody is throwing away money for unreliable results.

All polls aren't created equal. Nate Silver is respected, and he rates pollsters at his 538 site. The top rated poll is Monmouth University, and they just released a new poll today. It's very comprehensive, and not at all good for Trump. Might be a good thread starter.

https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_US_070220/

 

Thanks for then tip but I still take media polls with 1000 grains of salt. Especially ones about Trump.

 

They are what they are, which isn't perfect, but they are reliable enough that money is spent commissioning them and decisions are made based on the results. Dismiss them at your peril.

And Monmouth isn't a media poll.

 

Whats funny is we know from wiki leaks that dems very much expected to lose, but the media presented the opposite as a narrative.

And then Hillary cancelled her fireworks and victory celebration right near the end of the race.

 

I don't know about dismissing polls but I'll laugh just as hard as I did when they were wrong in 2016.

 

What happened in 2016 is irrelevant, and the polling wasn't as inaccurate as some would have us believe. The polls correctly predicted the popular vote and were well within the margin of error in the three states which gave Trump the victory.

If we look at 2008, at this point in the campaign, Biden has a bigger lead than Obama did. Biden's lead is much larger than Clinton's was at this point.

 

First off, 538 admitted that they did not act in good faith during the 2016 election. They stated that 538 acted like pundits: "Unlike virtually every other forecast we publish at FiveThirtyEight — including the primary and caucus projections I just mentioned — our early estimates of Trump’s chances weren’t based on a statistical model. Instead, they were what we “subjective odds” — which is to say, educated guesses. In other words, we were basically acting like pundits." (1) Thus, they admitted that they allowed subjectivity to creep into what was supposed to be an objective analysis. To me that makes them disreputable.

Second, polls this early are irrelevant. Their publication is to shape public opinion, not to reflect it. A recent case in point on the irrelevancy of polls this early would be that Elizabeth Warren was leading in the polls for the Democrat presidential nominee in October 2019, yet Plugs is currently running against Trump. (2)

Third, in October 2016, a month before the 2016 election, Monmouth had Clinton at 50% and Trump at 38% among "likely" voters. (3) And that was a month before the election, and yet you want us to believe a poll by them months away from the 2020 presidential election, considering their lackluster prognostication for an event a month away?

What a joke! Thank you for making the point of my thread.

1: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-pundit-and-screwed-up-on-donald-trump/
2: https://www.vox.com/2019/10/8/20905274/elizabeth-warren-frontrunner-democratic-nomination-2020
3: https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_101716/

 

I don't think the polls were wrong. RCP had Clinton winning the popular vote by 3.3 points, she won it by 2.1 points. Consider the margin of error was plus or minus 3 points, which means the polls were saying Hillary would win the popular somewhere between 0.3 points to 6.3 points. The 2.1 points was well within that margin of error which makes them correct. In fact all 11 of the last polls taken fell within the margin of error, making them correct.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/e...rump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html

Now how the pundits, the reporters and prognosticators report on those polls and what they mean is their problem. Perhaps they didn't want to admit that 2016 was a very close race. I don't know. Perhaps they didn't want to admit the popular vote doesn't elect the president, the electoral college does.

But stating the polls were wrong is false. They were correct as far as the nationwide popular vote goes.

 

I think we can trust the polls this time and it's only going to get worse for DJT.As an old baseball guy I know that occasionally a weak hitting pitcher will hit a homerun to win a game, but it is foolish to expect him to ever do it again. Trump has had his rare homerun and now he has to run on his abominable record.

 

This election is a bit different. Hillary was a lot less likable than Biden. She struggled in what should have been an easy election to get the election and Bernie got almost as many electors as she did, and he also got 40% support. Biden beat a very competative field even when at times it looked like he wasn't going to win. He will beat Bernie with three times as many electors and Bernie with only 30% support.

Biden is a lot more popular than Hillary and has a 15% advantage. Hillary on the other hand was the most unpopular democratic candidate in modern history. She was weighed down by scandal after scandal that greatly contributed to her losing.

Another factor is that Trump taking the rust belt was a big surprise. This time democrats are aware of this and will focus on them. At this point in the election Hillary was leading Trump but that lead jumped between 0% and 6% with the average around 3-4%. Biden is leading Trump by 10%.

Back in 2016 Trump was new and shiny and very charismatic. Trump went through a big Russia investigation, several controvercies, an impeachment, and people are really hurting from the coronavirus and hate how he handled it. Because of this, his approval has dropped to 40% and if we have a second wave, it will likely dip lower.

There are two things that can give Trump a chance: A vaccine approved in record time and distributed in record time, followed by record job gains, a bit unlikely. Or that democrats will observe social distancing more, and not go out to vote. But they really hate him and Black Lives Matter proves they are willing to turn out.

 

The poll I cited said that "Hillary Clinton has ‘more than 99% chance’ of winning election over Donald Trump." So will Biden have more than "more than 99% chance of winning election over Donald Trump"?

 

538's methodology in 2016, in this particular case, is irrelevant to current rankings of pollsters, which is based on reliability. That Monmouth didn't predict the 2016 election correctly is irrelevant to its overall performance.

Polls are never irrelevant. What they are is limited, and those limitations vary from election to election. While this particular Monmouth poll can't necessarily tell us who will win, it does show vast differences between 2016 and now, and it shows a negative trend for Trump. Whatever Biden is doing, it's working, and whatever Trump is doing, it isn't working. That's what this and other polls tell us.

 

Its best not to rely on a single poll but to look at polls from multiple sources. If you looked at these other polls, you would find that the election was actually close. But the polls in general totally missed Trump's surge in the rust belt. That was quite a twist.

 

Even though 538's methodology was subjective, and their subjectivity ran counter to unreliable forecasting, and they admit this, it does not tarnish their reputation as a reliable source? That's a convenient snippet of logic.

Polls this early are irrelevant to prognosticating the outcome of an election that is months away. Their purpose is to shape public opinion, not mirror it. The poll cited in the OP was conducted days prior to the general election, and it should be a reminder to everyone to not put much stock in polls.

 

So very "abominable"....


The Trump Administration Accomplishments - FRC Action
www.frcaction.org › accomplishments
To date, the administration of President Donald Trump has taken significant action on issues of concern to social conservatives -- life, family, and religious liberty:.

 

You're right. Other polls had the Trump-Clinton race a little more closer. For example, the New York Times only gave Clinton a 91% chance of winning the presidency 21 days before the election. (1)

1: http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2016/10/18/presidential-forecast-updates/newsletter.html

 

Rating pollsters is a simple matter of arithmetic. It's not subjective. Kinda like rating sports teams. The team that's 10-0 will always be rated higher than the 5-5 teams.

The purpose of polls is a snapshot in time. That's it. How they are used can certainly be biased, but the polls themselves are generally unbiased and professional.

The poll in the OP does not indicate anything regarding the industry as a whole.

 

Probability and polling are two different things. Polling tells us how close an election is. Probability tells us how to bet.

That Trump pulled a one-in-ten chance out of thin air means he was lucky. It certainly doesn't mean Joe Biden isn't ahead by an average of 10 points.

 

That prediction as almost a month before the election. A lot can happen in a single month. Trump made this huge surge in the last few weeks of the election. As of election day, I would have given Hillary a 65% chance of winning based on just the polls.

 

Yes, and an even a lot more can happen months before this election. Thank you for making my point.