We're gonna need another polling methodology 'tweak'...
Having seen her poll numbers suddenly explode higher (and Trump's collapse) following Reuters' decision to tweak its polling methodology, it appears we just witnessed 'Peak Hillary' as Reuters reports Clinton's lead over Trump has tumbled back to just 3 points (the poll had a credibility interval of plus or minus 3 percentage points) meaning, as Reuters is forced to admit, that the results suggest the race is roughly even...
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's lead over Republican rival Donald Trump narrowed to less than 3 percentage points, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Friday, down from nearly eight points on Monday.
About 42 percent of likely voters favored Clinton, to Trump's 39 percent, according to the July 31-Aug. 4 online poll of 1,154 likely voters. The poll had a credibility interval of plus or minus 3 percentage points, meaning that the results suggest the race is roughly even. Among registered voters over the same period, Clinton held a lead of five percentage points, down from eight percentage points on Monday, according to the poll.
Reuters tweaked data shows Hillary's lead has peaked...
Reuters subtly points out the folly of their survey respondents...
Clinton had pulled well ahead of Trump on the heels of the Democratic National Convention last week, where she became the first woman to accept the U.S. presidential nomination from a major political party.
Since then, Trump has engaged in a days-long feud with the family of an American soldier killed in Iraq and squabbled with the Republican leadership over his comments and leadership turmoil within his campaign.
But as RealClearPolitics' aggregated data shows, the swings are dramatic to say the least...
The noise in these polling numbers is incredible and prompted MishTalk's Mike Shedlock to take a caustic look at the prognostications of the web's forecasters... Peter Atwater, President of Financial Insyghts and Author of Moods and Markets asked an interesting question today: “Have we reached peak Hillary yet?”
In Atwater’s tweet, he posted a flashback to this January 2014 Time Magazine cover.
The answer to the question “Can anyone stop Hillary?” is pretty obvious: Yes, Trump can easily win if he can ever learn to control his mouth (a recession hits or some dirt that matters comes out on Hillary that matters).
Ridiculous Forecasts
I watch with amusement as Nate Silver posts his ridiculous forecasts on the Presidential Election Odds.
Rest assured, Hillary does not have a 79% chance of winning.
Pure Idiocy
- Supposedly, Hillary has a 79.9% chance of winning in November as of today.
- Supposedly, Trump had a 50.1% chance of winning in November on July 31, just four days ago!
- Supposedly, Hillary had a 77.4% chance of winning in November on July 12.
This is pure idiocy.
Silver is clearly taking the news of the day and projecting it out to November when voters clearly have a time span of about three days.
How Silver can look himself in a mirror and make such widely varying off the wall predictions is a mystery.
Social Mood
Atwater had a second tweet today that is quite interesting...
Social Mood is clearly in control here.
Silver is totally clueless about what social mood will be in November, just as he was totally clueless about social mood the entire Republican nomination process.
* * *
We leave it to Reuters themselves to conclude with their thoughts on the drop in Hillary's support and revival of Trump...
The reasons behind the shift were unclear.
Unclear indeed.
“I would suggest going back to 1976 and comparing what happened to Jimmy Carter-enthusiasm in 1980. The general enthusiasm after four years just wasn’t there (polls didn’t matter, if people won’t show up to vote).”
Special Report
How Carter Beat Reagan
Washington Post admits polling was “in-kind contribution”; New York Times agenda polling.
By Jeffrey Lord – 9.25.12
Dick Morris is right.
Here’s something Dick Morris doesn’t mention. And he’s charitable.
Remember when Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan in 1980?
That’s right. Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan in 1980.
In a series of nine stories in 1980 on “Crucial States” — battleground states as they are known today — the New York Times repeatedly told readers then-President Carter was in a close and decidedly winnable race with the former California governor. And used polling data from the New York Times/CBS polls to back up its stories.
Four years later, it was the Washington Post that played the polling game — and when called out by Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins a famous Post executive called his paper’s polling an “in-kind contribution to the Mondale campaign.” Mondale, of course, being then-President Reagan’s 1984 opponent and Carter’s vice president.
All of which will doubtless serve as a reminder of just how blatantly polling data is manipulated by liberal media — used essentially as a political weapon to support the liberal of the moment, whether Jimmy Carter in 1980, Walter Mondale in 1984 — or Barack Obama in 2012.
First the Times in 1980 and how it played the polling game.
The states involved, and the datelines for the stories:
· California — October 6, 1980
· Texas — October 8, 1980
· Pennsylvania — October 10, 1980
· Illinois — October 13, 1980
· Ohio — October 15, 1980
· New Jersey — October 16, 1980
· Florida — October 19, 1980
· New York — October 21, 1980
· Michigan — October 23, 1980
Of these nine only one was depicted as “likely” for Reagan: Reagan’s own California. A second — New Jersey — was presented as a state that “appears to support” Reagan.
The Times led their readers to believe that each of the remaining seven states were “close” — or the Times had Carter leading outright.
In every single case the Times was proven grossly wrong on election day. Reagan in fact carried every one of the nine states.
Here is how the Times played the game with the seven of the nine states in question.
• Texas: In a story datelined October 8 from Houston, the Times headlined:
Texas Looming as a Close Battle Between President and Reagan
The Reagan-Carter race in Texas, the paper claimed, had “suddenly tightened and now shapes up as a close, bruising battle to the finish.” The paper said “a New York Times/CBS News Poll, the second of seven in crucial big states, showing the Reagan-Carter race now a virtual dead heat despite a string of earlier polls on both sides that had shown the state leaning toward Mr. Reagan.”
The narrative? It was like the famous scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and her friends stare in astonishment as dog Toto pulls back the curtain in the wizard’s lair to reveal merely a man bellowing through a microphone. Causing the startled “wizard” caught in the act to frantically start yelling, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” In the case of the Times in its look at Texas in October of 1980 the paper dismissed “a string of earlier polls on both sides” that repeatedly showed Texas going for Reagan.
Instead, the Times presented this data:
A survey of 1,050 registered voters, weighted to form a probable electorate, gave Mr. Carter 40 percent support, Mr. Reagan 39 percent, John. B. Anderson, the independent candidate, 3 percent, and 18 percent were undecided. The survey, conducted by telephone from Oct. 1 to Oct. 6, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
In other words, the race in Texas is close, assures the Times, with Carter actually in the lead.
What happened? Reagan beat Carter by over 13 points. It wasn’t even close to close.
http://spectator.org/articles/34732/how-carter-beat-reagan
