US Midterm Elections Megathread III: Hitting The Wall

[Uiiop]

The point was about the polls and nothing to do with her.

I thought the context was pretty obviously so...yeah this does seem like a knee-jerk response.

Eh. Moving from the topic anyway.

How much the election forecasts are accurate and what their percentage means makes as much sense as narrowing it down to a state's election IMHO. Bringing up past events to demonstrate this can't really derail it.
But what do i know?

[Luminesa]

Eh. Moving from the topic anyway.

How much the election forecasts are accurate and what their percentage means makes as much sense as narrowing it down to a state's election IMHO. Bringing up past events to demonstrate this can't really derail it.
But what do i know?

That’s fair.

[Telconi]

I know the source is liberally biased but this is exactly why I'm voting for the carbon tax.

Big Oil Is Spending an Outrageous Amount of Money to Kill a Carbon Tax

Oil companies have spent a record-breaking amount to stop Initiative 1631, which would put a $15-a-ton fee on carbon in Washington state. The No campaign has raised a total of $31 million, mainly from donors tied to the fossil-fuel industry, setting a new Washington state record for a ballot initiative. BP America, Phillips 66, and Andeavor (formerly Tesoro) are the top backers.

This is hardly unexpected though, Mt issue with bills like this is their intellectual dishonesty, I don't believe that there is true environmental concern here, it seems like this is a situation where a special interest is using environmental issues to whitewash a separate political agenda.

I haven't looked much into it, but if what WRA said was true, and this bill exempts Boeing, who is also one of the largest polluters in the state, I'd want to know why.

[Valrifell]

Conservatives keep talking like the polls predicted a 100% probability of a Clinton victory.

Some came close, IIRC the CNN election website predicted ">99%" chance of a Clinton victory.

Now, that doesn't mean it's impossible, CNN could have been accurate and we're just living in that less than one percent time line where Trump won in a miracle victory. But it's probably more likely that CNN was full of shit. As for other polls, who knows, there's no way to go back and run the damned election over and over to generate a verifable average,.

The probability of victory is not a poll. Those are two different things and I think the confusion lies there.

Polls were mostly correct, they underestimated Trump by about a point or two on average (with the exception being WI which was a major underestimation an account of unforeseen and new circumstances surrounding the state). That you didn't look beyond what pundits were reporting is not the issue of polls, it's an issue with pundits and you.

[Telconi]

Some came close, IIRC the CNN election website predicted ">99%" chance of a Clinton victory.

Now, that doesn't mean it's impossible, CNN could have been accurate and we're just living in that less than one percent time line where Trump won in a miracle victory. But it's probably more likely that CNN was full of shit. As for other polls, who knows, there's no way to go back and run the damned election over and over to generate a verifable average,.

The probability of victory is not a poll. Those are two different things and I think the confusion lies there.

Polls were mostly correct, they underestimated Trump by about a point or two on average (with the exception being WI which was a major underestimation an account of unforeseen and new circumstances surrounding the state). That you didn't look beyond what pundits were reporting is not the issue of polls, it's an issue with pundits and you.

The expectation that the average layman is going to gather various polling information and compile his own analysis is preposterous. CNN said a thing, that thing was almost certainly misleading. Entities people trust to report the news saying misleading things is bad. That is the functional point here.

[Uiiop]

How much the election forecasts are accurate and what their percentage means makes as much sense as narrowing it down to a state's election IMHO. Bringing up past events to demonstrate this can't really derail it.
But what do i know?

That’s fair.

As for your question: I'm not well versed on it but have you checked ballotpedia andvotesmart?
They should have files on at least the Congressional candidates if not more.

[Valrifell]

The probability of victory is not a poll. Those are two different things and I think the confusion lies there.

Polls were mostly correct, they underestimated Trump by about a point or two on average (with the exception being WI which was a major underestimation an account of unforeseen and new circumstances surrounding the state). That you didn't look beyond what pundits were reporting is not the issue of polls, it's an issue with pundits and you.

The expectation that the average layman is going to gather various polling information and compile his own analysis is preposterous. CNN said a thing, that thing was almost certainly misleading. Entities people trust to report the news saying misleading things is bad. That is the functional point here.

Then you are correct, but it's always worth noting there were other polling aggregates available that helped people come to their own conclusions. Even without the misleading percentages, RCP does a really good job of this. The layman may not aggregate their own data, but I would expect (or naively hope) that they would, bear minimum, seek out other models and aggregates to inform their opinion.

[Telconi]

The expectation that the average layman is going to gather various polling information and compile his own analysis is preposterous. CNN said a thing, that thing was almost certainly misleading. Entities people trust to report the news saying misleading things is bad. That is the functional point here.

Then you are correct, but it's always worth noting there were other polling aggregates available that helped people come to their own conclusions. Even without the misleading percentages, RCP does a really good job of this. The layman may not aggregate their own data, but I would expect (or naively hope) that they would, bear minimum, seek out other models and aggregates to inform their opinion.

I'm not saying they shouldn't, but should or should not, many won't. I mean, to me, excusing CNN's misleading analysis, or any other pundit's because people should have checked elsewhere i's silly, people, I feel, have a reasonable expectation that when they turn on the news they're getting correct information. Granted said information may be presented in a biased fashion, but the root information should be correct.

[Corrian]

I know the source is liberally biased but this is exactly why I'm voting for the carbon tax.

Big Oil Is Spending an Outrageous Amount of Money to Kill a Carbon Tax

This is hardly unexpected though, Mt issue with bills like this is their intellectual dishonesty, I don't believe that there is true environmental concern here, it seems like this is a situation where a special interest is using environmental issues to whitewash a separate political agenda.

I haven't looked much into it, but if what WRA said was true, and this bill exempts Boeing, who is also one of the largest polluters in the state, I'd want to know why.

The Boeing thing bothers me. But oil companies throwing $31,000,000 at it bothers me even more. But also one of the staples of their "push" against it is that it exempts a coal plant...that's already been slated to shut down in like 7 years anyway. So I don't entirely trust their opinions on the other exemptions either, though I'm not saying they're false, I just haven't looked enough into it, because I'm for it enough as is even if it feels like it isn't as good as it should be.

[Valrifell]

Then you are correct, but it's always worth noting there were other polling aggregates available that helped people come to their own conclusions. Even without the misleading percentages, RCP does a really good job of this. The layman may not aggregate their own data, but I would expect (or naively hope) that they would, bear minimum, seek out other models and aggregates to inform their opinion.

I'm not saying they shouldn't, but should or should not, many won't. I mean, to me, excusing CNN's misleading analysis, or any other pundit's because people should have checked elsewhere i's silly, people, I feel, have a reasonable expectation that when they turn on the news they're getting correct information. Granted said information may be presented in a biased fashion, but the root information should be correct.

It's likely the root information was correct, but since election forecasts are really new and elections by their nature are really hard to predict, you're going to get a massive amount of the data left to interpretation. Like forecasting the weather or sports outcomes, a lot can go terribly wrong and there are too many variables to consider. How you deal with this problem varies heavily from model-to-model, which is prone to the biases of people feeding information into them and creating them.

So, CNN's model isn't derived from wrong information, it just produces the result you'd expect from a CNN-build model fed info from CNN-acquired polls, a massive overstatement of Democratic prowess.

[Telconi]

This is hardly unexpected though, Mt issue with bills like this is their intellectual dishonesty, I don't believe that there is true environmental concern here, it seems like this is a situation where a special interest is using environmental issues to whitewash a separate political agenda.

I haven't looked much into it, but if what WRA said was true, and this bill exempts Boeing, who is also one of the largest polluters in the state, I'd want to know why.

The Boeing thing bothers me. But oil companies throwing $31,000,000 at it bothers me even more. But also one of the staples of their "push" against it is that it exempts a coal plant...that's already been slated to shut down in like 7 years anyway. So I don't entirely trust their opinions on the other exemptions either, though I'm not saying they're false, I just haven't looked enough into it, because I'm for it enough as is even if it feels like it isn't as good as it should be.

I dislike supporting bills that are "good, but not as good as they should be" because I believe it encourages half assed solutions.

[Shrillland]

The Boeing thing bothers me. But oil companies throwing $31,000,000 at it bothers me even more. But also one of the staples of their "push" against it is that it exempts a coal plant...that's already been slated to shut down in like 7 years anyway. So I don't entirely trust their opinions on the other exemptions either, though I'm not saying they're false, I just haven't looked enough into it, because I'm for it enough as is even if it feels like it isn't as good as it should be.

I dislike supporting bills that are "good, but not as good as they should be" because I believe it encourages half assed solutions.

They can do that, yes. If done right, however, they can alternatively be the gateway to the bill that you want.

[Telconi]

I dislike supporting bills that are "good, but not as good as they should be" because I believe it encourages half assed solutions.

They can do that, yes. If done right, however, they can alternatively be the gateway to the bill that you want.

I find that never really happens, not when there's any significant opposition.

Party passes shitty bill, shitty bill gets attacked by opposition, party has to defend shitty bill, party begins to hype shitty bill as totally not shitty, party defends shitty bill as if it's a shitty hill to the death, staking their reputation and electoral success on a bill that was half assed hot garbage from the get go.

[San Lumen]

They can do that, yes. If done right, however, they can alternatively be the gateway to the bill that you want.

I find that never really happens, not when there's any significant opposition.

Party passes shitty bill, shitty bill gets attacked by opposition, party has to defend shitty bill, party begins to hype shitty bill as totally not shitty, party defends shitty bill as if it's a shitty hill to the death, staking their reputation and electoral success on a bill that was half assed hot garbage from the get go.

What makes it a bad bill? Because a majority of legislators voted for it?

[Shrillland]

I find that never really happens, not when there's any significant opposition.

Party passes shitty bill, shitty bill gets attacked by opposition, party has to defend shitty bill, party begins to hype shitty bill as totally not shitty, party defends shitty bill as if it's a shitty hill to the death, staking their reputation and electoral success on a bill that was half assed hot garbage from the get go.

What makes it a bad bill? Because a majority of legislators voted for it?

More often than not, I think he means bills that had to be watered down to something less than ideal to get said majority to approve them.

[San Lumen]

What makes it a bad bill? Because a majority of legislators voted for it?

More often than not, I think he means bills that had to be watered down to something less than ideal to get said majority to approve them.

Unfortunately in a democracy thats what needs to happen. We can't always get everything we want.

[Telconi]

I find that never really happens, not when there's any significant opposition.

Party passes shitty bill, shitty bill gets attacked by opposition, party has to defend shitty bill, party begins to hype shitty bill as totally not shitty, party defends shitty bill as if it's a shitty hill to the death, staking their reputation and electoral success on a bill that was half assed hot garbage from the get go.

What makes it a bad bill? Because a majority of legislators voted for it?

Here, how about I just truncate this particular ride around the merry-go-round.

You dislike that I have a different culture and value system than you, you make up stuff, birds, trees, etc. You're sorry that I am opposed to your eradication of my values, but that's okay because my values aren't important, probably because Uzbekistan.

Did I cover all the bases?

[Uiiop]

What makes it a bad bill? Because a majority of legislators voted for it?

Here, how about I just truncate this particular ride around the merry-go-round.

You dislike that I have a different culture and value system than you, you make up stuff, birds, trees, etc. You're sorry that I am opposed to your eradication of my values, but that's okay because my values aren't important, probably because Uzbekistan.

Did I cover all the bases?

"I didn't say that."

[San Lumen]

What makes it a bad bill? Because a majority of legislators voted for it?

Here, how about I just truncate this particular ride around the merry-go-round.

You dislike that I have a different culture and value system than you, you make up stuff, birds, trees, etc. You're sorry that I am opposed to your eradication of my values, but that's okay because my values aren't important, probably because Uzbekistan.

Did I cover all the bases?

What the hell more do you want?! You have representatives and you will vote for the on Tuesday! You have a seat at the table. I really dont know what it is you want to change.

[Telconi]

Here, how about I just truncate this particular ride around the merry-go-round.

You dislike that I have a different culture and value system than you, you make up stuff, birds, trees, etc. You're sorry that I am opposed to your eradication of my values, but that's okay because my values aren't important, probably because Uzbekistan.

Did I cover all the bases?

What the hell more do you want?! You have representatives and you will vote for the on Tuesday! You have a seat at the table. I really dont know what it is you want to change.

Search back in the post history, I'm sure you can locate one of the forty-thousand times I have said it.

[Shrillland]

Here, how about I just truncate this particular ride around the merry-go-round.

You dislike that I have a different culture and value system than you, you make up stuff, birds, trees, etc. You're sorry that I am opposed to your eradication of my values, but that's okay because my values aren't important, probably because Uzbekistan.

Did I cover all the bases?

What the hell more do you want?! You have representatives and you will vote for the on Tuesday! You have a seat at the table. I really dont know what it is you want to change.

Lumen, take my advice and don't engage.

To the matter at hand, here's another question for you all: With all the talk about districts changing hands, how many of us would actually see that where they live?

Here in Illinois' 18th(Peoria-Springfield), it's not happening. LaHood will remain for as long as he wants like his father before him. Our governorship's changing hands, but Pritzker won't be as effective as some think.

[Thermodolia]

Except china is a growing threat, militarily at least.

You have government proof of China actually interfering in the midterms or just praying they actually will so you can sing "NO COLLUSION"?

Doesn’t matter if they did or not. China is a threat to our nation. They must be put down by any means necessary.

China should never have been allowed to form into a single nation

[Thermodolia]

Can you word that a bit better?

Can you name me a shared feature of fascist regimes that is not covered under or implied by the accusations of "authoritarianism" and "ethnic cleansing"?

Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, most of the eastern bloc

[Kowani]

You have government proof of China actually interfering in the midterms or just praying they actually will so you can sing "NO COLLUSION"?

Doesn’t matter if they did or not. China is a threat to our nation. They must be put down by any means necessary.

China should never have been allowed to form into a single nation

You’re several thousand years too late to change that, buddy.

[Telconi]

What the hell more do you want?! You have representatives and you will vote for the on Tuesday! You have a seat at the table. I really dont know what it is you want to change.

Lumen, take my advice and don't engage.

To the matter at hand, here's another question for you all: With all the talk about districts changing hands, how many of us would actually see that where they live?

Here in Illinois' 18th(Peoria-Springfield), it's not happening. LaHood will remain for as long as he wants like his father before him. Our governorship's changing hands, but Pritzker won't be as effective as some think.

Congressional office is locked down, chance of it flipping is miniscule. State Senate and assembly are also likely to retain. I haven't paid any attention to U.S. Senate.