this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
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[–] [email protected] 104 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

EDIT: I am wrong about the sample size. Yes, the sample is a little small, but not too far off. They're registered voters rather than likely voters, which is not quite as good, but, again, no terrible.

The poll surveyed 892 registered voters and has a margin of error of 3.2%.

As FiveThirtyEight would say, that's a bad use of polling. That's a very small sample size, and there's no indication that it's representative in any meaningful way.

Even more important, Obama has said she has no interest in being the president; she's not willing to run.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

It is most certainly not a small sample size. It's what allows for a margin of error of ±3.5%* at the 95% confidence level. Here's a graph of the margin of error vs sample size for 95% confidence interval.

With an 11 point margin, there's a clear separation of the upper limit bar for Trump and lower limit bar for Obama. For a single poll, assuming the rest of it was well designed and executed, this is an important spread. And the reasons are obvious if you look at the report. She's able to get 10% more Democratic support and 20% more independent voter support.

Ipsos is a high quality polling company. They don't make rookie mistakes like sample size. There may be other reasons beyond my reasoning that make this a bad use of polling, but sample size is not it.

* The source incorrectly reported the margin of error for the full survey, both registered and unregistered participants.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

A fancy guess is still a guess.

892 out of 160,000,000+ is a small sample size.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

do you consider yourself pro-science

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yes, and I appreciate the scientific method, but applying it with statistics such a singular market research sampling can be dubious because it requires assumptions that aren't actually validated.

The more you learn, the more you realize we all have blindspots all overr the place. This result of the provided sample size statistics cannot be proven without iterations, which have not been done.

The politics of it are chess, while the statistics are just playing tic tac toe while discarding considerations of nuance with a wave of 'but science' hand.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Isn't 1,000 usually the benchmark?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I depends on the size of the population you’re attempting to represent.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What's the formula/ratio? Didn't know there was one like this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

There are multiple ways. Statistical significance is largely used to determine whether a sample size is representative but it’s flawed on its own for some sample sizes as small effects can get exaggerated the larger the sample gets. Look up the methods for determining effect sizes and confidence intervals to determine the best route to go to see what minimum sample size is necessary to both have high confidence in the accuracy of the hypothesis and to ensure that the results have enough statistical power to detect the effect in question.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Anyone that doesn't want to be President should automatically win. If you want it, you should be locked in a cold, dark room until the election is over. And maybe slapped a few times for good measure.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Can we draft her? Can we run a candidate against their will? I'm just kidding. Idk there's a lot of crazy shit happening.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It’s kind of possible, yes. Basically it would have to be a coordinated effort at the convention to elect her as the party’s candidate. That makes it incredibly unlikely. Also, the person elected at the convention still has to accept it.

Since she was FLOTUS, she hasn’t shown much interest in participating in the dirty politics of governing. Instead, she quickly said she wanted to focus on social issues. That made me kind of sad because she’s incredibly intelligent and I think she would be a talented political leader. She just doesn’t seem interested in that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

After seeing all the shit that Barack had to go through, is it really surprising that Michelle wants nothing to do with it? I wish she would, but she's simply not been interested in politics in that way.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Please stop dragging her into this.

She'd never want to be President. I'd argue we wouldn't like her very much if she was the kind of person that did.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

She’d never want to be President.

Paraphrasing Douglas Adams, that would make her the best candidate. But in real life, perhaps not so much.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 8 months ago

I like Obama but this is a shit article for wankers.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Just stop with this GOP-astroturf "replace Biden" campaign.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I've been slamming Russian/tankie "both are bad" commenters for a while here; check my comment history before you judge my response here:

I don't know about a campaign but the sentiment is hardly astroturfed. A lot of leftist (not liberal or tankie, actual leftist) pundits and influencers think Biden is a bad look for normies and certainly doesn't energize voters. This includes people from all varieties, who are not always in agreement otherwise; like Emma Vigeland from Majority Report (and probably more people from that show), Hasan Piker, Vaush, Cenk from TYT... Whatever you may think about any or all of them, they're all in agreement on Biden being replaced.

These people are hardly part of an echo chamber, they regularly come at odds with one another, and none of them are part of an astroturf, and definitely not from GOP.

Note that all of these people would still advocate for voting Biden as long as he's the candidate. But their concern is about voter turnout after his horrible performance in that debate. This is a country who elected W. Bush, because they'd like to have a beer with him. How they look and come off unfortunately matters, sometimes more than the content of their messages and even accomplishments.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

This is what many don’t understand. JFK won his election because he was handsome and Nixon tanked that debate he was sick. This is a similar scenario in that Biden looks like shit and everyone can tell except Biden. He needs to accept that his age has caught up to him.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I am always skeptical when I hear leftists echoing the same talking points as far right hacks. These are folks I would expect to be in unison on this point. They are ideologues. That's fine, that's their job.

Ideologically, the points are well taken. I too wish for a more progressive president. I'm not excited about Biden, either. I can live through four more years of Biden if that's what's to come.

Beating Trump is most important.

I'm of the firm belief that Biden can do that (he's already done it once), and that he is the best situated to do it. That's based on the conventional wisdom. Yes, it's the same conventional wisdom that lost the election for Hillary in 2016, but also won it for Biden in 2020. Biden's campaign apparatus is in place and switched on. He's on the ballot. He's got the backing. To try and change that now seems insurmountable.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

i think you missed the point of my comment:

this is not about how progressive he has or hasn't been. he's actually been more progressive than a lot of presidents; honestly i thought the stuff he did for unions was impossible in the US.

unfortunately that's not necessarily a great force for voting in the US. again, people voted for W, and it was not for his policies. plus things like that aren't very widely or consistently publicized. and people have a short memory and attention span.

this is about how he looks and presents himself. and the reality is that he doesn't look old. he looks dead. there are people older than him that look and act like they might have been his children.

and also: beating TFG is most important. but that's why people on the left think he should step down. you may be of the firm belief that he can do it, but polls don't reflect the same confidence. you might believe the polls or not, but that's what we have.

also he's not officially the candidate until the convention. so he's not on the ballot yet. that's why people are asking for a switch.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Is the GOP actually the ones wanting us to replace Biden at the moment? If anything, there's a very good reason to believe the GOP would want Biden to remain: he's a quite unpopular president for whom the overwhelming majority of Americans have concerns about his age and mental fitness. Further, he has a ton of political baggage, and is highly contentious amongst Democrats.

Personally, I genuinely think Gretchen Whitmer (with Pete Buttigieg as running mate) would be much more likely to win in November, at least according to post-debate polling from this leaked internal memo: https://puck.news/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/SUNDAY_Post-Debate_Landscape_2024_06_30__1_-1.pdf

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 8 months ago

A spouse of a former president running against Trump? That can't possibly go wrong.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That would be one hell of a thing.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I can see the "actually we still havent had a woman president" "jokes" from here (through time)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

In polling there's a piece of wisdom that journalists don't listen to. Ignore the outlier polls. If there's multiple polls saying one thing and one poll saying something else then there's far more likely to be something wrong with the one outlier. But clickbait machine goes brrrrt.

https://am11.mediaite.com/med/cnt/uploads/2024/07/Screen-Shot-2024-07-02-at-5.06.44-PM.jpg

Okay looks like Clickbait Machine goes brrrt for a different reason here. The upshot is that many respondents skipped the follow on questions. So assuming any amount of campaigning is competently done then the 12% Don't know/skip category is likely to shrink closer to the 4% of the Biden-Trump match up. Then you can see that 40% of the respondents just answered Trump no matter what. In fact the Democrats percentage goes down nearly in lockstep with, Don't Know/Skipped. So, in my opinion, there's a really good chance the Democrats could actually pick up most of that column for Beshear or Pritzker.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

~~Are there raw results published anywhere? The most recent IPSOS I can find is from May 2024 and based on this, it seems Biden and Trump are unchanged at 40% each between surveys.~~

EDIT, nevermind the July 2024 raw survey is here

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Time to put in Big Mike, coach!

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