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anyone who “knew” Trump was going to win having cleaned up at the bookies

I was pretty certain that Trump was going to win and did put my money where my mouth was, so made a few £ on betfair.

I set out my reasoning a few pages up on here a day or two before the election - that the polls always have underestimated trump's vote and that there was no reason to believe - other than faith - that it would be different this time. And that it wouldn't be as close as the polls were saying. I set it out here partly to see if anyone came up with anything I might have missed. There was one point someone made but I didn't think it was enough to change the whole hypothesis.

I believed that Harris was only going to win it if she was at least 3-4 points ahead in the polls and she just wasn't.

I didn't have a firm view on why she wasn't, as it wasn't necessary for my conclusion, but I did believe she was not a great candidate, and that genocide was probably a red line for a small but not negligible segment of the US population.

Trump is broadly flat (72.7m votes versus 74.2m in 2020), while Biden got 81m in 2020, versus Harris getting 68m.

The only explanation I've seen so far is from the people who believe there was fraud in 2020. I'm sure there will be other explanations along soon and I hope they are better as I wouldn't like that to be the most credible one.

Had she had more time, then could she have distanced herself and come up with some better lines of defense?

I'd say the opposite, if anything she had too much time. She started quite well, distancing herself a bit from Biden on some areas, not turning up to an event with netanyahu, etc. But then she caved in, presumably under lots of pressure, and fell in as continuity Biden.

Her initial bounce was quite strong but it subsided as she had more time.

I don't think it was meant to be her turn either, she was only ever meant to be a VP.

Yes, I get the feeling the dems could have won it if they could have been bothered.

Biden did a job for them in 2020 and they could have immediately gone for succession planning. But they didn't, and the family - apparently - wanted to keep him in place. But the time the party realised how cooked he was, they couped him, but they'd left it too late, which meant they couldn't run a primary, so they were stuck with Harris, who they knew was a weak candidate.

But they could have run a primary earlier, if they believed in democracy. They didn't because they knew that Kennedy, or most likely anyone else, would absolutely shred Biden in the debates.

But that was a reason to get a new candidate, not prevent the contest. Their aversion to democracy backfired big time.

the Democratic Party is allergic to democracy.

I thought it was quite a good analysis. This bit particularly rings true, and ties in with what I've heard first hand from people who have been involved in politics in the US.

Depends on who he appoints to his government. If he overlooks the neocons, says he wants to reform the cia, etc, then I wouldn't rule it out!

If you're going to push your current candidate to their death, maybe have someone lined up who isn't a shoo-in for the same kind of hiding you got 4 years prior. Getting rid of Biden was an act of blind panic with zero strategy behind it. Not saying that retaining Biden would have been any better, but maybe someone in the party should have thought about this shit in advance given the stakes involved.

I think this is an important point. They massively blundered on trying to keep Biden strapped to his horse, El Cid style, when it was increasingly obvious to everyone that he was a decade past his sell by date.

What I read was that the family were keen to keep him going for the prestige and the brown envelopes, they kept the party away from him, and there wasn't a process for getting him to stand down.

That meant they were 6-12 months too late in switching, didn't have time to run a primary process, so were stuck with a weak candidate - who some people say Biden picked deliberately as his insurance policy against getting ousted.

It was still hers to lose. If she had had the courage or vision to disavow just a couple of Genocide Joe's policies, she probably could have done it. She said a few words early on, but most likely crumbled - in the face of what tbf was probably extreme pressure - to be continuity Biden, and sealed her fate.

Anyone who made an enemy of Trump, better watch their backs. He'll be out for revenge.

Starmer's decision to send loads of people to help the dems has probably not gone down well

Looks like the end for the credibility of the pollsters.

It never was close but they just said it was because they had no idea.

This, and that the Democrats were not an attractive alternative.

For all that we love them over here, they haven't done anything to fix healthcare, the housing crisis, homelessness and massive inequality, or international relations.

Their only solution ever seems to be to start another war.

And just because I think the Democrats are cunts does not mean I think Trump is any better

If you hate Vance more than you hate Trump, then shooting Trump is an own goal as you get Vance

What's this Trumps lacky like?

Trump appointed him after they tried to shoot him. As an insurance policy so he doesn't get shot again...

He's got more intellectual heft and ideology than Trump, could potentially take things in a new direction if he gets a turn. Not interested in Europe.

It's not an outcome that could result from any of the swing state combinations. Would need an exchange of 'safe' states.

They have a written constitution so they came up with process for it over 200 years ago.

"According to the 12th Amendment, enacted in the wake of that divisive 1800 election, if no candidate gets a majority of the Electoral College votes, the new Congress, which would have just been sworn in on January 3, chooses the president. The Senate would choose the vice president."
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/04/politics/tie-presidential-election-what-matters/index.html

50% chance that American democracy (such as it is) ends today then

I think that ship sailed some time ago, probably in 1963, if not sooner!

Yes, I think that's the biggest part of the problem - that the 1% who take the call, sign up for the panel, etc are not representative of the 100%. Not for the population as a whole, but of their demographic segment - so they can't correct using the tools available to them.

Lying is then a second order of error laid on top of that.

I don't envy their job and can see why they all end up herding.

That's not what I'm saying. My understanding, based on stuff I've read including the twitter thread I linked above, is not that they're not good at correcting for this, but that they don't try to do it. Because they can't with the range of tools they have available, such as sample weighting. If they did try to correct for it they would not be doing polling, they would be doing forecasting, and that's not what they get paid to do.

I'm not trying to correct for it either, just noting that there was a significant systematic error in the past between what polls said and outcome. In the absence of any reason to believe things are different this time, my default would be to assume a similar systematic error will most likely apply.

Of course some things might be different, such as @Lebowski 's point above, and that could lead to a different polling error and outcome. I'm not close enough to know what will / won't be different. Some things undoubtedly will be, but will they be big enough to make a difference, will they cancel out...? I'm very open to being convinced by a plausible answer to that.

It looks like it pretty much depends on who wins Pennsylvania.

Six swing states:
Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina - look like Trump is ahead
Michigan and Wisconsin - Harris may be ahead.
Pennsylvania - Trump a whisker ahead but well within error margins.

https://www.270towin.com/

Of course it most likely won't be that close (my expectation is that Trump will win most or all of the 6 swing states) but it looks pretty likely that whoever wins Pennsylvania will win overall.

You have the first part of the problem: Trump supporters not agreeing to take part. But the pollster doesn't know they are trump supporters when they tell them to fuck off. They can correct for demographics but not for this variation within any and every demographic segment.

it seems to me genuinely unlikely that's what a large number of respondents do.

I first came across the phenomenon of poll respondents being unwilling to admit to antisocial behaviour way back in 1992, when it was used to explain how the polls missed John Major's victory.
The argument was that the desire to be liked is a powerful one in human interaction and most of us tend to say things that we think will make the person we're talking to like us, or respect us, a bit more, rather than less. So if you ask people questions where one answer doesn't reflect well on them they're less likely to admit it even if it is true.

Eg, do you drop litter? Do you pick your nose, how often do you drive above the speed limit, have you ever driven after having alcohol? Or the doctors' one: 'how many units do you drink per week'? Which they are alleged to double the answer to, to compensate for systematic lying.

what's to be gained from lying to a pollster?

Approval. People lying to avoid admitting to what they think might be seen as antisocial behaviour is a well known thing in polling, no?

One theory is that there's no reason to be shy about voting for him anymore. He's an ex-president, he's mainstream now and supporting him is a lot more accepted among all demographics than it was 8 years ago.

Interesting idea. Maybe - it's plausible.

What the guy says in the thread I linked in the previous post is that there are two reasons:

1. Trump supporters are much less likely to engage with perceived authority / government related discussions like polls.
   
2. 'my wife would kill me' guys.
   

Some refuse to take part and some lie. As a pollster, you can try to model to take into account people who don't want to take part, but you can't do anything with systematic / non-random lying.

This twitter thread explains it well:

https://x.com/philippilk/status/1853365463629131940?t=Fko3d-hp8sJ4HodbXTfWBw&s=19

I'm sure plenty do, but the evidence is that plenty do not.

Thanks, these were interesting articles and, inevitably, the more you get into it, the more complex it gets. But I see lots of discussion of herding, sample weighting and segment turnout assumption tweaking, but nothing that looks to me like it is trying to correct for systematic lying on the part of a chunk of respondents, eg shy Trump voters.

Any links? I'm trying to get to the bottom of it.

What I heard was that there was one poll which asked 'who are people like you voting for?' or 'who are your friends voting for?' and that was more accurate.