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  • Null User Object@programming.dev
    0·
    2 months ago

    I’d like to remind everyone that 8 years ago, the polls showed Hillary was going to trounce Trump pretty handedly. There was tons of discussion after the election about how the polls could be so wrong.

    I think Fivethityeight’s explanation went something like…

    If a candidate is only polling 40% to their opponents’s 60%, and you were to run the election 10 times with a different sampling of voters each time, it doesn’t mean that the candidate will lose by 60% every time. It means they’re going to win four times out of ten.

    Don’t let polls lull you into either complacency or despair. The only thing polls are really good for is giving pundits something to talk about in the 24 hour news cycle. Polls don’t decide the election. Only actual votes on actual ballots that are actually submitted in time decide the election.

    • SSJMarx@lemm.eeEnglish
      01·
      2 months ago

      I count cards in blackjack, and let me tell ya, when your winning chance is 52% that means you’re lose chance is 48% and 48% to lose feels like 90%.

        • Rhaedas@fedia.io
          0·
          2 months ago

          What state could claim he did something for them? That this once again is a close race constantly boggled my mind.

          • Phenomephrene@thebrainbin.org
            0·
            2 months ago

            Ask Wisconsin how that Foxconn contract he helped secure for them turned out.

            (For those not familiar, and disinclined to investigate further, the answer is “Not great.”)

            • FatCrab@lemmy.one
              0·
              2 months ago

              I am one of the many Wisconsin expats that has abandoned the state until it gets its shit back together. The thing you have to understand about the Wisconsin electorate, is that, in the aggregate, it’s fucking dumb, mean, entitled, and will never reconsider its beliefs. The tea party movement really thoroughly fucked the state for the foreseeable future.

              • Phenomephrene@thebrainbin.org
                0·
                2 months ago

                That lines up pretty well with my experience. I lived in Wisconsin for about 2-1/2 years. It’s not a state that has nothing going for it. The structure is absolutely there for it to be a successful and enjoyable place that residents could have right to be proud of. With what I encountered though the phrase Wississippi was very apt. And yeah, it’s because too many people there choose for it to be that way.

                • FatCrab@lemmy.one
                  0·
                  2 months ago

                  WI used to be heavily pro-labor, relatively progressive, and on a positive track, although it certainly was struggling to come to terms with its historical blemishes that persisted into deep systemic issues (racism and segregation have always been a massive issue in the state, but have only worsened in the last couple decades). When the right overtook almost the entirety of governor for a long stretch, it utterly broke the state though. The upside is that WI and MN were functionally identical until one went hard right and the other soft left and the result makes a wonderful case study for how vapid and destructive the entirety of the US right and Republicans are.