The working class in the hospitality sector are also being hit, probably the safest at the moment are workers in the public sector on average or only slightly above average incomes who can wfh
Safest in which sense? I’m a worker in the public sector with a slightly above average income but I’m not sure how safe teaching is at the moment. OTOH I don’t expect to be made redundant any time soon...
Teaching is pretty safe, there will always be schools and most of them with guaranteed taxpayer funding and even as we go to stricter lockdowns in the highest tiered areas schools remain open (and some private schools are also doing teaching remotely as well).
You may not earn the big bucks in teaching unless you are the Head but you are also safer than the average worker in a recession
Never underestimate "Wisconsin Nice". They'll tell you want they think you want to hear.
Here's the thing, though. That's not why the pollsters got Wisconsin wrong.
Trump got fewer votes in the State than Romney did.
It was the Democrats did not turn out, rather that Trump did particularly well.
I don't think those things are as mutually exclusive as you seem to imagine, if people were saying they'll vote Democrat when they didn't, or more likely didn't bother to vote at all.
Early-adopter Shy Trumpkyites? Methinks you & some others are GREATLY overestimating degree to which people lie to pollsters. As opposed to changing their minds, including on whether or not to vote.
And the phrase is "Minnesota Nice" though of course there ARE many nice people in Wisconsin - though many Minnesotans would dispute that!
Once again, COVID is speeding up what would have happened anyway. In this case the emptying of the middle management pyramid.
Where I work now, nearly no managers - in the sense of people who spend the whole day telling other people to do stuff.
Team leads are a team member who spends about half their time on managerial stuff in the team. A manager manages 5-10 teams. Then a head of dept. Then the board. A very flat, shallow pyramid.
I compare that to Citi - at one point they had levels where it was just managers aggregating information from the managers who reported to them. To the managers above them. Some people were 3+ reports away *both* from anyone who did the actual work, or ran the company.
It's also clearing out the executive assistant/admin level as well.
That's a mistake, lose that and quite often the administration goes to pot as decision makers are crap at it, or they have to spend time on it which would be more productive on other things. Worth their wait in gold, a good assistant, even though many places have had too much admin.
One of the worst arguments against climate change is that Siberia might, unfortunately, become "nicer".
It is an upside. Large swathes of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, Russia, Mongolia, will become warmer, kinder, more cultivatable. Richer. Better. Sweeter.
This is no small thing. These are huge tracts of Planet Earth
There will be many many downsides to global warming, potentially calamitous in the medium term, but denying the advantages undermines the whole debate
The Swedes have been completely vindicated. This is a grim marathon, not a sweaty "exciting" sprint. They prepared accordingly.
They will have a tough time, because marathons are a bitch. But eager sprints where you collapse in exhaustion and elation at the end, only to realise you have to spring sixty eight thousand times in a row, are considerably worse.
Yes, this is the sense in which Sweden has been vindicated. It will be a grim winter for everyone.
The upside to London being under the sea is that High Wycombe will have an ocean view. There are admittedly some downsides to London being under water, but denying the upsides undermines the whole debate.
Funnily RCP haven’t put up any of the last few Gravis polls which show Trump support collapsing in the mid west. It’s only a C rated pollster and used to be viewed as right leaning but they’re very quick to put up the latest garbage from Trafalgar and Rasmussen . The latter even though showing today a small Biden lead has unbelievable levels of support for each candidate from their own party . Trump 82 , Biden 78 . No other poll in this cycle shows such low levels , not even close .
The Swedes have been completely vindicated. This is a grim marathon, not a sweaty "exciting" sprint. They prepared accordingly.
They will have a tough time, because marathons are a bitch. But eager sprints where you collapse in exhaustion and elation at the end, only to realise you have to spring sixty eight thousand times in a row, are considerably worse.
South Korea even more so as they have a lower death rate than Sweden and have also largely avoided mass lockdown through mass mask wearing
Suggests, with extraordinary sleight of hand, that one pollster, and one only, routinely polls samples of 1,000+ and all the rest stick in the 400-600 range.
Can anyone guess, without peeking, who that one pollster is?
I read the article and on first reading it sounds plausible then Mr Cahalys name popped up as the 'shining light' in polling correctly. Now thats not to say Trafalagar won't be right again but this article could just as easily have been headed, 'why Trafalgar are right and the rest are wrong'
Lol - polls suggest people don't answer polls truthfully...
"In fact, a recent poll by the Cato Institute suggests that nearly two-thirds of Americans say that the political climate is sufficiently harsh that they don’t want to give their genuine opinion about politics."
Never underestimate "Wisconsin Nice". They'll tell you want they think you want to hear.
Here's the thing, though. That's not why the pollsters got Wisconsin wrong.
Trump got fewer votes in the State than Romney did.
It was the Democrats did not turn out, rather that Trump did particularly well.
I don't think those things are as mutually exclusive as you seem to imagine, if people were saying they'll vote Democrat when they didn't, or more likely didn't bother to vote at all.
Early-adopter Shy Trumpkyites? Methinks you & some others are GREATLY overestimating degree to which people lie to pollsters. As opposed to changing their minds, including on whether or not to vote.
And the phrase is "Minnesota Nice" though of course there ARE many nice people in Wisconsin - though many Minnesotans would dispute that!
Actually I'm very familiar with private polling on the issue, and it clearly does happen.
Yeah I know the phrase, but there's a very similar culture in parts of Wisconsin. Oh and Minnesotan's might dispute that...but they wouldn't say it to their face.
"But here’s the thing: Yes, Biden and Democrats should be nervous that he has only about a 5-point lead in Pennsylvania, the most likely tipping point state. Five points is more than a normal-sized polling error, but not that much more. And Biden does have some backup plans. A regional polling error in the Midwest or the Northeast wouldn’t necessarily doom his chances in states like Arizona, for instance. It wouldn’t be the blowout that Democrats hope for, but Biden would still retain an edge in the Electoral College even without winning his birth state."
A 5 point lead in Pennysylvania is understating it. It's currently 5.3% on 538, but that doesn't tell the full picture.
11 different polling companies have published polls in Penn with fieldwork being concluded within the past week, so presumably they feature in that 538 average. 10 out of 11 give Biden a lead of 5% or more, in the range 5% to 10%. Then there's 1 remaining poll with a tiny sample commissioned by this outfit ( https://amgreatness.com/ ) whose website is promoting the outlandish conspiracy theories that Trump is using to undermine the integrity of the entire electoral process. It gives Trump a lead of 3%, a difference of 8% or more in Trump's favour compared to the findings of all those other 10 polling companies.
By all means believe that one poll if you trust Trump to tell the truth. Personally, I think that Trump's trying to take people for a ride with the polling his people have commissioned, just as he's trying to do with everything else he does. And because that one rogue poll that's off the scale must be pulling the average down, I think the average is slightly understating the strength of Biden's position.
Is it factually incorrect? Looks similar to worldometer graph for Sweden so I don’t know.
Swedish death data lags by up to 14 days.
After Neil's pathetic attempt at using laged case numbers in Sweden to claim cases weren't growing significantly anything he says on the topic should be treated as a deliberate attempt to lie.
Luzerne County in PA has requested that Coney Barrett recuse herself from the PA GOP's bid to have the US Supreme Court overturn PA's Supreme Court's decision to permit the counting of mail in votes received within 3 days of the election even if they don't have a legible postmark.
One of the worst arguments against climate change is that Siberia might, unfortunately, become "nicer".
It is an upside. Large swathes of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, Russia, Mongolia, will become warmer, kinder, more cultivatable. Richer. Better. Sweeter.
This is no small thing. These are huge tracts of Planet Earth
There will be many many downsides to global warming, potentially calamitous in the medium term, but denying the advantages undermines the whole debate
Luzerne County in PA has requested that Coney Barrett recuse herself from the PA GOP's bid to have the US Supreme Court overturn PA's Supreme Court's decision to permit the counting of mail in votes received within 3 days of the election even if they don't have a legible postmark.
And that is before AI starts to really start to be deployed....
I had a play around with GPT-3 which is OpenAI's language generator the other day.
To say it was impressive is an understatement, it was mind blowing. You can create scenarios with a few lines of text and it writes stories or answers questions entirely in context within the scenario.
My friend showed me a few conversations he had with it and I thought he was winding me up and had written it himself, but after trying it I realise that it really is that good.
It's not just our jobs we should worry about with this technology.
"But here’s the thing: Yes, Biden and Democrats should be nervous that he has only about a 5-point lead in Pennsylvania, the most likely tipping point state. Five points is more than a normal-sized polling error, but not that much more. And Biden does have some backup plans. A regional polling error in the Midwest or the Northeast wouldn’t necessarily doom his chances in states like Arizona, for instance. It wouldn’t be the blowout that Democrats hope for, but Biden would still retain an edge in the Electoral College even without winning his birth state."
A 5 point lead in Pennysylvania is understating it. It's currently 5.3% on 538, but that doesn't tell the full picture.
11 different polling companies have published polls in Penn with fieldwork being concluded within the past week, so presumably they feature in that 538 average. 10 out of 11 give Biden a lead of 5% or more, in the range 5% to 10%. Then there's 1 remaining poll with a tiny sample commissioned by this outfit ( https://amgreatness.com/ ) whose website is promoting the outlandish conspiracy theories that Trump is using to undermine the integrity of the entire electoral process. It gives Trump a lead of 3%, a difference of 8% or more in Trump's favour compared to the findings of all those other 10 polling companies.
By all means believe that one poll if you trust Trump to tell the truth. Personally, I think that Trump's trying to take people for a ride with the polling his people have commissioned, just as he's trying to do with everything else he does. And because that one rogue poll that's off the scale must be pulling the average down, I think the average is slightly understating the strength of Biden's position.
It could be noted that the 538 model doesn't rely entirely on polls. Varying percentages of its forecasts contain a certain degree of demographic linked historical information, and i believe makes allowances for the electoral practices in certain states. So it is likely in general that it's forecasts are closer than the polling averages.
And that is before AI starts to really start to be deployed....
And if it does then a UBI funded by a robot tax is inevitable
As I posted early, there are some really serious questions here that need some clear thinking and long term planning. At the moment, there isn't any evidence that major political parties really understand them, let alone are formulating a range of policies for the 21st Century ahead.
The working class in the hospitality sector are also being hit, probably the safest at the moment are workers in the public sector on average or only slightly above average incomes who can wfh
Safest in which sense? I’m a worker in the public sector with a slightly above average income but I’m not sure how safe teaching is at the moment. OTOH I don’t expect to be made redundant any time soon...
Teaching is pretty safe, there will always be schools and most of them with guaranteed taxpayer funding and even as we go to stricter lockdowns in the highest tiered areas schools remain open (and some private schools are also doing teaching remotely as well).
You may not earn the big bucks in teaching unless you are the Head but you are also safer than the average worker in a recession
It doesn’t feel that safe: I normally spend most of the winter suffering from one respiratory infection or another (indeed I ended up in hospital last year with pneumonia). Social distancing and masks can only go so far.
It is amazing how many people seem to be under the impression that the purpose of trade deals is to make imports cheaper. When offering the prospect of cheap imports is actually the bargaining chip you use to get what you want. You don't need a trade deal to reduce the cost of imports!
Once again, COVID is speeding up what would have happened anyway. In this case the emptying of the middle management pyramid.
Where I work now, nearly no managers - in the sense of people who spend the whole day telling other people to do stuff.
Team leads are a team member who spends about half their time on managerial stuff in the team. A manager manages 5-10 teams. Then a head of dept. Then the board. A very flat, shallow pyramid.
I compare that to Citi - at one point they had levels where it was just managers aggregating information from the managers who reported to them. To the managers above them. Some people were 3+ reports away *both* from anyone who did the actual work, or ran the company.
On the other hand it creates every enormous gaps between the "elite" managerial levels and the rest of the workforce. Which creates a circle of ever higher paid people in senior management devoid of knowledge of what happens on the ground (because traditional routes of working your way up via the shop floor are basically extinct) and a merry go round between companies of people whose main qualification is that they have worked at a senior level elsewhere, regardless of their level of actual performance. (You see a similar thing with Chief Executives and the like in local government).
'Those that lead are simply unqualified for anything else' Dido's Razor?
According to King Co Elections here in WA State, number of returned ballots in the building as of now = 800k
Which is 57% of all active registered voters in the state's largest county (29% of WA).
NOTE that IF final voter turnout = 90% (it was 81% in 2016) then 800k is 63% of projected ballots cast; if turnout is lower, then percent returned so far is of course higher.
Further note that King County is a Democratic stronghold - indeed THE Democratic stronghold - in WA State, and that its return rate is higher than the statewide rate.
AND that Seattle - which is Democratic Mother Lode in King Co, and home to 10% of state voters - has a higher rate of early returns than King County as a whole OR the State of WA. Despite the fact that traditional pattern is for Seattle early returns to LAG the rest of the county until just before EDay.
One of the worst arguments against climate change is that Siberia might, unfortunately, become "nicer".
It is an upside. Large swathes of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, Russia, Mongolia, will become warmer, kinder, more cultivatable. Richer. Better. Sweeter.
This is no small thing. These are huge tracts of Planet Earth
There will be many many downsides to global warming, potentially calamitous in the medium term, but denying the advantages undermines the whole debate
It is amazing how many people seem to be under the impression that the purpose of trade deals is to make imports cheaper. When offering the prospect of cheap imports is actually the bargaining chip you use to get what you want. You don't need a trade deal to reduce the cost of imports!
Suggests, with extraordinary sleight of hand, that one pollster, and one only, routinely polls samples of 1,000+ and all the rest stick in the 400-600 range.
Can anyone guess, without peeking, who that one pollster is?
I read the article and on first reading it sounds plausible then Mr Cahalys name popped up as the 'shining light' in polling correctly. Now thats not to say Trafalagar won't be right again but this article could just as easily have been headed, 'why Trafalgar are right and the rest are wrong'
Lol - polls suggest people don't answer polls truthfully...
"In fact, a recent poll by the Cato Institute suggests that nearly two-thirds of Americans say that the political climate is sufficiently harsh that they don’t want to give their genuine opinion about politics."
So does that mean that those who said they don't respond to polls honestly were not being honest? Sounds quite the paradox.
Interesting suggestion just out on CNN that after his defeat, Donald Trump will found a new cable television network: a Trump network. They back up the suggestion with some interesting quotes from Trump. And I note he took another swipe at Fox News again today.
And that is before AI starts to really start to be deployed....
I had a play around with GPT-3 which is OpenAI's language generator the other day.
To say it was impressive is an understatement, it was mind blowing. You can create scenarios with a few lines of text and it writes stories or answers questions entirely in context within the scenario.
My friend showed me a few conversations he had with it and I thought he was winding me up and had written it himself, but after trying it I realise that it really is that good.
It's not just our jobs we should worry about with this technology.
I think the immediate future is a bit more mudane. A little bit like we used to have to have 1000s of people to make a car, now we have 10s of people to control / maintain the robots and a small number of highly skilled individuals to do detail work, I believe we will similar rip through lots of middle class professions, where the AI does a lot of grunt work and ML teasing out lots of analysis which currently requires teams of people.
Even creative industries won't be safe from this. I have seen various tech for enhancing video ads, where again a lot of the grunt work is done by humans, instead the computer can be trained to go through touching things up, providing focus / highlighting to shots etc. Basically getting into a state where one person can then just finish it off.
"Governmental restrictions of civil liberties must be a last resort in a democratic society. To justify such radical measures, both the Government, their scientific advisors and the NHS must be more honest and transparent with the public in respect of the data driving lockdown decisions."
(NHS hospital doctor writing on Lockdownsceptics today).
Suggests, with extraordinary sleight of hand, that one pollster, and one only, routinely polls samples of 1,000+ and all the rest stick in the 400-600 range.
Can anyone guess, without peeking, who that one pollster is?
I read the article and on first reading it sounds plausible then Mr Cahalys name popped up as the 'shining light' in polling correctly. Now thats not to say Trafalagar won't be right again but this article could just as easily have been headed, 'why Trafalgar are right and the rest are wrong'
I was also amused by the idea that "all the other pollsters" could not be trusted both because they were biased in their questioning and methodology, but also that their small sample sizes gave them huge margins of error. Of course if all their polls had large margins of error then this would lead to potentially more favourable Trump polling than biased polls with smaller margins of error. For some reason the margins of error only seem to form in a pro-Biden direction.
So you don't think cherry-picking of polls is a problem? NOT by HYUFD or other commentators, but instead by groups who commission batches of polls them release the results ONLY of the ones most favorable to their point of view.
The working class in the hospitality sector are also being hit, probably the safest at the moment are workers in the public sector on average or only slightly above average incomes who can wfh
Safest in which sense? I’m a worker in the public sector with a slightly above average income but I’m not sure how safe teaching is at the moment. OTOH I don’t expect to be made redundant any time soon...
Teaching is pretty safe, there will always be schools and most of them with guaranteed taxpayer funding and even as we go to stricter lockdowns in the highest tiered areas schools remain open (and some private schools are also doing teaching remotely as well).
You may not earn the big bucks in teaching unless you are the Head but you are also safer than the average worker in a recession
It doesn’t feel that safe: I normally spend most of the winter suffering from one respiratory infection or another (indeed I ended up in hospital last year with pneumonia). Social distancing and masks can only go so far.
In the medium term, I am not at all sure that teaching is safe. Knowledge has become commoditized with the internet. The role of teaching is no longer to transfer knowledge, but to help students develop the skills needed to identify the right questions and how to go about answering them. This will require a 'teacher'-type role, but the bulk of what is now teaching will become asynchronous, self-directed learning off internet resources.
Never underestimate "Wisconsin Nice". They'll tell you want they think you want to hear.
Here's the thing, though. That's not why the pollsters got Wisconsin wrong.
Trump got fewer votes in the State than Romney did.
It was the Democrats did not turn out, rather that Trump did particularly well.
I don't think those things are as mutually exclusive as you seem to imagine, if people were saying they'll vote Democrat when they didn't, or more likely didn't bother to vote at all.
Early-adopter Shy Trumpkyites? Methinks you & some others are GREATLY overestimating degree to which people lie to pollsters. As opposed to changing their minds, including on whether or not to vote.
And the phrase is "Minnesota Nice" though of course there ARE many nice people in Wisconsin - though many Minnesotans would dispute that!
Actually I'm very familiar with private polling on the issue, and it clearly does happen.
Yeah I know the phrase, but there's a very similar culture in parts of Wisconsin. Oh and Minnesotan's might dispute that...but they wouldn't say it to their face.
Of course there are shy Trump supporters.
But we can usually work out approximately how many by looking at polling responses by type.
So with Brexit, you saw big leads for Remain with in person telephone calls, small leads with automated phone response, and small Leave leads with on-line pollsters. Simply, people tell the truth more to machines than to nice ladies on the phone.
The problem is that we're not seeing that in US. On-line pollsters are giving similar results to in person phone ones.
The place where I work seems to be totally inverted in structure. You have two managers to every analyst. Managers who manage managers who manage managers. It's utterly bizarre. Of course, this means insufficient numbers of people who actually do work and too many people saying what work should be done.
Pre-covid they'd plug a lot of the gaps with contractors or consultants (no offence to people who do that, but a pet hate of mine - people who come in, get the great projects, leave on a moment's notice before it is properly finished taking all their skills and knowledge with them and leaving the far less well paid regular workforce grunts to pick up the pieces). But travel bans and budget cuts means contracting has entirely dried up, at least in our organisation.
One of the worst arguments against climate change is that Siberia might, unfortunately, become "nicer".
It is an upside. Large swathes of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, Russia, Mongolia, will become warmer, kinder, more cultivatable. Richer. Better. Sweeter.
This is no small thing. These are huge tracts of Planet Earth
There will be many many downsides to global warming, potentially calamitous in the medium term, but denying the advantages undermines the whole debate
Interesting suggestion just out on CNN that after his defeat, Donald Trump will found a new cable television network: a Trump network. They back up the suggestion with some interesting quotes from Trump. And I note he took another swipe at Fox News again today.
Interesting suggestion just out on CNN that after his defeat, Donald Trump will found a new cable television network: a Trump network. They back up the suggestion with some interesting quotes from Trump. And I note he took another swipe at Fox News again today.
Suggests, with extraordinary sleight of hand, that one pollster, and one only, routinely polls samples of 1,000+ and all the rest stick in the 400-600 range.
Can anyone guess, without peeking, who that one pollster is?
I read the article and on first reading it sounds plausible then Mr Cahalys name popped up as the 'shining light' in polling correctly. Now thats not to say Trafalagar won't be right again but this article could just as easily have been headed, 'why Trafalgar are right and the rest are wrong'
I was also amused by the idea that "all the other pollsters" could not be trusted both because they were biased in their questioning and methodology, but also that their small sample sizes gave them huge margins of error. Of course if all their polls had large margins of error then this would lead to potentially more favourable Trump polling than biased polls with smaller margins of error. For some reason the margins of error only seem to form in a pro-Biden direction.
So you don't think cherry-picking of polls is a problem? NOT by HYUFD or other commentators, but instead by groups who commission batches of polls them release the results ONLY of the ones most favorable to their point of view.
Did you read the article? Of course cherry picking of polls is a problem. That has no bearing on the "argument" in the article or my amusement.
FYI, of the ten biggest counties in Texas, the top two in terms of early voting turnout are both Republican strongholds - Collin County where Trump won by 16.7pc and where 57.4pc of the electorate has already voted, and Denton County (Trump +20pc in 2016) at 55.6pc. Denton also looks to have the biggest increase in early voting turnout so far (up 5pc over 2016 with several days to go)
I think change in turnout is the key here, because going from 45 to 60% is more significant to the overall result than going from 62 to 64%.
True but, particularly in the more Hispanic parts of Texas, it doesn’t feel like there is a surge of interest in voting. One of the reasons I can’t see Biden taking Tx
North Carolina's turnout is going to comfortably beat 2016, and I suspect Texas is too. All the evidence is that we're going to see turnout up across the board.
That being said... remember that High School educated voters are typically lower turnout. An increase in overall turnout probably increases their turnout disproportionately. And that presumably benefits Trump.
Against that... the male-female split in early voting *really* favours women. The gap is currently 11 or 12 points rather than the 10 in 2016, and that's not to the President's advantage.
Does gender trump (pardon the pump) social status? I would say that if there is a surge in non-college educated women voting that is more of a plus for Trump than a negative
"But here’s the thing: Yes, Biden and Democrats should be nervous that he has only about a 5-point lead in Pennsylvania, the most likely tipping point state. Five points is more than a normal-sized polling error, but not that much more. And Biden does have some backup plans. A regional polling error in the Midwest or the Northeast wouldn’t necessarily doom his chances in states like Arizona, for instance. It wouldn’t be the blowout that Democrats hope for, but Biden would still retain an edge in the Electoral College even without winning his birth state."
A 5 point lead in Pennysylvania is understating it. It's currently 5.3% on 538, but that doesn't tell the full picture.
11 different polling companies have published polls in Penn with fieldwork being concluded within the past week, so presumably they feature in that 538 average. 10 out of 11 give Biden a lead of 5% or more, in the range 5% to 10%. Then there's 1 remaining poll with a tiny sample commissioned by this outfit ( https://amgreatness.com/ ) whose website is promoting the outlandish conspiracy theories that Trump is using to undermine the integrity of the entire electoral process. It gives Trump a lead of 3%, a difference of 8% or more in Trump's favour compared to the findings of all those other 10 polling companies.
By all means believe that one poll if you trust Trump to tell the truth. Personally, I think that Trump's trying to take people for a ride with the polling his people have commissioned, just as he's trying to do with everything else he does. And because that one rogue poll that's off the scale must be pulling the average down, I think the average is slightly understating the strength of Biden's position.
It could be noted that the 538 model doesn't rely entirely on polls. Varying percentages of its forecasts contain a certain degree of demographic linked historical information, and i believe makes allowances for the electoral practices in certain states. So it is likely in general that it's forecasts are closer than the polling averages.
You're right that their forecast doesn't rely entirely on polls, but the 5.3% is their polling average they start with before applying demographic adjustments etc to arrive at the forecast. Look at the "How do we get from polls to forecasted vote share?" bit on here.
"Governmental restrictions of civil liberties must be a last resort in a democratic society. To justify such radical measures, both the Government, their scientific advisors and the NHS must be more honest and transparent with the public in respect of the data driving lockdown decisions."
(NHS hospital doctor writing on Lockdownsceptics today).
Lol, an article posted by Toby Young which he attributes to "my friend who’s worked as an NHS doctor for the past 30 years".
My friend, who has worked in journalism for the past 30 years, thinks that website is a highly suspect source.
"But here’s the thing: Yes, Biden and Democrats should be nervous that he has only about a 5-point lead in Pennsylvania, the most likely tipping point state. Five points is more than a normal-sized polling error, but not that much more. And Biden does have some backup plans. A regional polling error in the Midwest or the Northeast wouldn’t necessarily doom his chances in states like Arizona, for instance. It wouldn’t be the blowout that Democrats hope for, but Biden would still retain an edge in the Electoral College even without winning his birth state."
A 5 point lead in Pennysylvania is understating it. It's currently 5.3% on 538, but that doesn't tell the full picture.
11 different polling companies have published polls in Penn with fieldwork being concluded within the past week, so presumably they feature in that 538 average. 10 out of 11 give Biden a lead of 5% or more, in the range 5% to 10%. Then there's 1 remaining poll with a tiny sample commissioned by this outfit ( https://amgreatness.com/ ) whose website is promoting the outlandish conspiracy theories that Trump is using to undermine the integrity of the entire electoral process. It gives Trump a lead of 3%, a difference of 8% or more in Trump's favour compared to the findings of all those other 10 polling companies.
By all means believe that one poll if you trust Trump to tell the truth. Personally, I think that Trump's trying to take people for a ride with the polling his people have commissioned, just as he's trying to do with everything else he does. And because that one rogue poll that's off the scale must be pulling the average down, I think the average is slightly understating the strength of Biden's position.
I note that that InsiderAdvantage PA poll for AmericanGreatness has a sample size of 400 split 45% Dem, 43.5% Rep, 11.5% independent/other whereas...
The latest State voter records show Pennsylvania is 46.6% Democrat, 38.9% Republican and 14.4% independent/other voters.
One of the worst arguments against climate change is that Siberia might, unfortunately, become "nicer".
It is an upside. Large swathes of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, Russia, Mongolia, will become warmer, kinder, more cultivatable. Richer. Better. Sweeter.
This is no small thing. These are huge tracts of Planet Earth
There will be many many downsides to global warming, potentially calamitous in the medium term, but denying the advantages undermines the whole debate
"But here’s the thing: Yes, Biden and Democrats should be nervous that he has only about a 5-point lead in Pennsylvania, the most likely tipping point state. Five points is more than a normal-sized polling error, but not that much more. And Biden does have some backup plans. A regional polling error in the Midwest or the Northeast wouldn’t necessarily doom his chances in states like Arizona, for instance. It wouldn’t be the blowout that Democrats hope for, but Biden would still retain an edge in the Electoral College even without winning his birth state."
A 5 point lead in Pennysylvania is understating it. It's currently 5.3% on 538, but that doesn't tell the full picture.
11 different polling companies have published polls in Penn with fieldwork being concluded within the past week, so presumably they feature in that 538 average. 10 out of 11 give Biden a lead of 5% or more, in the range 5% to 10%. Then there's 1 remaining poll with a tiny sample commissioned by this outfit ( https://amgreatness.com/ ) whose website is promoting the outlandish conspiracy theories that Trump is using to undermine the integrity of the entire electoral process. It gives Trump a lead of 3%, a difference of 8% or more in Trump's favour compared to the findings of all those other 10 polling companies.
By all means believe that one poll if you trust Trump to tell the truth. Personally, I think that Trump's trying to take people for a ride with the polling his people have commissioned, just as he's trying to do with everything else he does. And because that one rogue poll that's off the scale must be pulling the average down, I think the average is slightly understating the strength of Biden's position.
I note that that InsiderAdvantage PA poll for AmericanGreatness has a sample size of 400 split 45% Dem, 43.5% Rep, 11.5% independent/other whereas...
The latest State voter records show Pennsylvania is 46.6% Democrat, 38.9% Republican and 14.4% independent/other voters.
Draw your own conclusions.
If it followed that pattern, then how did Trump win PA in 2016 given the GOP has narrowed the gap since the last election?
It is amazing how many people seem to be under the impression that the purpose of trade deals is to make imports cheaper. When offering the prospect of cheap imports is actually the bargaining chip you use to get what you want. You don't need a trade deal to reduce the cost of imports!
The working class in the hospitality sector are also being hit, probably the safest at the moment are workers in the public sector on average or only slightly above average incomes who can wfh
Safest in which sense? I’m a worker in the public sector with a slightly above average income but I’m not sure how safe teaching is at the moment. OTOH I don’t expect to be made redundant any time soon...
Teaching is pretty safe, there will always be schools and most of them with guaranteed taxpayer funding and even as we go to stricter lockdowns in the highest tiered areas schools remain open (and some private schools are also doing teaching remotely as well).
You may not earn the big bucks in teaching unless you are the Head but you are also safer than the average worker in a recession
It doesn’t feel that safe: I normally spend most of the winter suffering from one respiratory infection or another (indeed I ended up in hospital last year with pneumonia). Social distancing and masks can only go so far.
In the medium term, I am not at all sure that teaching is safe. Knowledge has become commoditized with the internet. The role of teaching is no longer to transfer knowledge, but to help students develop the skills needed to identify the right questions and how to go about answering them. This will require a 'teacher'-type role, but the bulk of what is now teaching will become asynchronous, self-directed learning off internet resources.
As I’m now older than the age at which my predecessor retired (i.e. I’m over fifty) I’m not too worried. Actually you’ve just described the lessons I’ve been putting together for remote teaching of those who can’t make it into school at the moment. It’s something teachers have been thinking about for a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom
One of my mates has got Covid, the first person I actually know that has got it, and my football match is called off on Saturday as the other team have a few players with it
Just heard that the dear partner of an old colleague has died of Covid after being hospitalised for a fall indoors. It's a right bugger. This is the nearest it has come to me so far.
On middle class job losses I'm reminded of a very persuasive paper written by Robert on this subject. It is our skills which will determine our future success rather than which country we're from or backgrounds.
This will apply to the comfortable middle classes as much as it will to the working classes in all western nations. The UK is a country that is at the cutting edge of many industries, especially information, data and service automation, it is bound to cause a huge loss of jobs in the near future among the middle classes in the same way mechanisation caused job losses in manufacturing, even of the high tech variety.
As an example the PS4 was assembled by hand in 2013 mainly in China by Foxconn, 7 years later around 95% of PS5s are being assembled by robots and one pilot line has hand assembly which is going to be kept running to test board changes and simplification. PS4 assembly created tens of thousands of jobs in China, fairly well paid ones too by Chinese standards, PS5 assembly has created a few very highly paid engineering jobs in Japan and some construction jobs but very few ongoing ones other than robot maintenance and monitoring.
The middle class jobs are going to be lost in accounting, general medicine, simple types of legal services and loads of others. These types of jobs are well paid but don't require specialist knowledge within an industry and people who aren't skilling up are in trouble.
The working class in the hospitality sector are also being hit, probably the safest at the moment are workers in the public sector on average or only slightly above average incomes who can wfh
Safest in which sense? I’m a worker in the public sector with a slightly above average income but I’m not sure how safe teaching is at the moment. OTOH I don’t expect to be made redundant any time soon...
Teaching is pretty safe, there will always be schools and most of them with guaranteed taxpayer funding and even as we go to stricter lockdowns in the highest tiered areas schools remain open (and some private schools are also doing teaching remotely as well).
You may not earn the big bucks in teaching unless you are the Head but you are also safer than the average worker in a recession
It doesn’t feel that safe: I normally spend most of the winter suffering from one respiratory infection or another (indeed I ended up in hospital last year with pneumonia). Social distancing and masks can only go so far.
In the medium term, I am not at all sure that teaching is safe. Knowledge has become commoditized with the internet. The role of teaching is no longer to transfer knowledge, but to help students develop the skills needed to identify the right questions and how to go about answering them. This will require a 'teacher'-type role, but the bulk of what is now teaching will become asynchronous, self-directed learning off internet resources.
As I’m now older than the age at which my predecessor retired (i.e. I’m over fifty) I’m not too worried. Actually you’ve just described the lessons I’ve been putting together for remote teaching of those who can’t make it into school at the moment. It’s something teachers have been thinking about for a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom
I used flipped classrooms, cross-learning and Jigsaw technique as much as I can, even in in-person training.
Re: WA State numbers, of course we are NOT a presidential battleground, nor do we have any kind of US Senate race this year.
Best we have federally is one contested congressional race: CD03 in southwest WA now in GOP hands.
At state level, closest will be for WA Secretary of state; Republican incumbent if re-elected will almost certainly be only state-wide GOP election official. There are number of hot legislative races, but no real prospect for Democrats loosing control of both houses. Note that legislature and Governor do NOT have direct role in redistricting, that is done by commission (one member from each leg caucus) and lines are drawn by consensus, so no party has inbuilt advantage.
We also have one state voter referendum, sponsored by evangelicals to overturn sex education law passed this year by the legislature. Note that WA GOP wanted this on the ballot - and got their wish - in order to boost turnout by low-turnout conservative Christians, who would be inclined to vote for Republicans on down the ballot. (Here in WA, statewide AND county measures come BEFORE candidate races including Pres & VP).
Its all good until this tweet...sigh...my article is gah substandard, because i only got comment from white men (no matter how qualified they are on the subject), please don't beat me up over this, i have some more diversity in a different article. What a sad atttitude, not basing your article on accuracy and academic quality of the contributors, but what is the make up of their gender and skin colour.
One of the worst arguments against climate change is that Siberia might, unfortunately, become "nicer".
It is an upside. Large swathes of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, Russia, Mongolia, will become warmer, kinder, more cultivatable. Richer. Better. Sweeter.
This is no small thing. These are huge tracts of Planet Earth
There will be many many downsides to global warming, potentially calamitous in the medium term, but denying the advantages undermines the whole debate
Thank you. We don't need The Hill though, we can see what is happening.
Well said @brokenwheel. The data coming through seems fairly clear - Biden is not winning a landslide and there are a number of pluses for Trump.
You can stick to your polls
Would agree with your first sentence, but not the second.
What data would you highlight that suggest the Democrats are winning a landslide?
And I don't mean opinion polls or Nate Silver's percentages
Why not? Do opinion polls not constitute 'data'?* Just because you don't agree with them (well except for Trafalgar, presumably...). You disagree with the evidence of the polls. SSI agrees with them. Hence you disagree. Which is what he said.
*wish somebody would tell the politicians who live their lives around them.
It is amazing how many people seem to be under the impression that the purpose of trade deals is to make imports cheaper. When offering the prospect of cheap imports is actually the bargaining chip you use to get what you want. You don't need a trade deal to reduce the cost of imports!
And that is before AI starts to really start to be deployed....
I had a play around with GPT-3 which is OpenAI's language generator the other day.
To say it was impressive is an understatement, it was mind blowing. You can create scenarios with a few lines of text and it writes stories or answers questions entirely in context within the scenario.
My friend showed me a few conversations he had with it and I thought he was winding me up and had written it himself, but after trying it I realise that it really is that good.
It's not just our jobs we should worry about with this technology.
I think the immediate future is a bit more mudane. A little bit like we used to have to have 1000s of people to make a car, now we have 10s of people to control / maintain the robots and a small number of highly skilled individuals to do detail work, I believe we will similar rip through lots of middle class professions, where the AI does a lot of grunt work and ML teasing out lots of analysis which currently requires teams of people.
Even creative industries won't be safe from this. I have seen various tech for enhancing video ads, where again a lot of the grunt work is done by humans, instead the computer can be trained to go through touching things up, providing focus / highlighting to shots etc. Basically getting into a state where one person can then just finish it off.
Yes my thoughts were similar a few days ago, but the rate of change is very rapid now.
But yes jobs like law and accountancy I expect to be partially replaced in the next decade or so. It's when authors, musicians and artists are outclassed by AI that we need to start to worry.
To be fair, PPP is a Democratic polling firm. Other polls in Montana have shown a much larger Trump lead there. It is entirely possible that PPP are also selectively releasing polling that favours a narrative that they think favours their cause. In this case to encourage their supporters to go to the polls by believing that the Democrats are in with a shout. Even if they don't need Montana for the White House, there is a tight Senate race there, so Dems going to the polls in Montana does matter a lot in terms of the prospects of the Dems controlling the Senate.
I suggest that it's best at this point to discount all polling by conducted by companies that either have links to the respective parties (the likes of PPP, Trafalgar, Rasmussen) or which was commissioned by organisations which are strongly campaigning for either side.
On middle class job losses I'm reminded of a very persuasive paper written by Robert on this subject. It is our skills which will determine our future success rather than which country we're from or backgrounds.
This will apply to the comfortable middle classes as much as it will to the working classes in all western nations. The UK is a country that is at the cutting edge of many industries, especially information, data and service automation, it is bound to cause a huge loss of jobs in the near future among the middle classes in the same way mechanisation caused job losses in manufacturing, even of the high tech variety.
As an example the PS4 was assembled by hand in 2013 mainly in China by Foxconn, 7 years later around 95% of PS5s are being assembled by robots and one pilot line has hand assembly which is going to be kept running to test board changes and simplification. PS4 assembly created tens of thousands of jobs in China, fairly well paid ones too by Chinese standards, PS5 assembly has created a few very highly paid engineering jobs in Japan and some construction jobs but very few ongoing ones other than robot maintenance and monitoring.
The middle class jobs are going to be lost in accounting, general medicine, simple types of legal services and loads of others. These types of jobs are well paid but don't require specialist knowledge within an industry and people who aren't skilling up are in trouble.
In which case rather than being the exception Trump and Boris and Sanders and Corbyn populist politics in the west will become the norm, it is a prosperous and large middle class which shores up the centre ground, without it voters will increasingly move to the extremes of left and right and certainly without a UBI
"Governmental restrictions of civil liberties must be a last resort in a democratic society. To justify such radical measures, both the Government, their scientific advisors and the NHS must be more honest and transparent with the public in respect of the data driving lockdown decisions."
(NHS hospital doctor writing on Lockdownsceptics today).
The govt's scientific advisers aren't quite up to the job. It covers up its inadequacies by ruling by decree.
Locking up the healthy is the reverse of how past plagues were dealt with. Moreover COVID-19 isn't on what we now know serious enough to be called a plague. If the IFR is somewhat lower than flu for the under-60s, and only gets worse than flu for the over-70s, why the f*** were entire businesses closed down?
"But here’s the thing: Yes, Biden and Democrats should be nervous that he has only about a 5-point lead in Pennsylvania, the most likely tipping point state. Five points is more than a normal-sized polling error, but not that much more. And Biden does have some backup plans. A regional polling error in the Midwest or the Northeast wouldn’t necessarily doom his chances in states like Arizona, for instance. It wouldn’t be the blowout that Democrats hope for, but Biden would still retain an edge in the Electoral College even without winning his birth state."
A 5 point lead in Pennysylvania is understating it. It's currently 5.3% on 538, but that doesn't tell the full picture.
11 different polling companies have published polls in Penn with fieldwork being concluded within the past week, so presumably they feature in that 538 average. 10 out of 11 give Biden a lead of 5% or more, in the range 5% to 10%. Then there's 1 remaining poll with a tiny sample commissioned by this outfit ( https://amgreatness.com/ ) whose website is promoting the outlandish conspiracy theories that Trump is using to undermine the integrity of the entire electoral process. It gives Trump a lead of 3%, a difference of 8% or more in Trump's favour compared to the findings of all those other 10 polling companies.
By all means believe that one poll if you trust Trump to tell the truth. Personally, I think that Trump's trying to take people for a ride with the polling his people have commissioned, just as he's trying to do with everything else he does. And because that one rogue poll that's off the scale must be pulling the average down, I think the average is slightly understating the strength of Biden's position.
I note that that InsiderAdvantage PA poll for AmericanGreatness has a sample size of 400 split 45% Dem, 43.5% Rep, 11.5% independent/other whereas...
The latest State voter records show Pennsylvania is 46.6% Democrat, 38.9% Republican and 14.4% independent/other voters.
Draw your own conclusions.
If it followed that pattern, then how did Trump win PA in 2016 given the GOP has narrowed the gap since the last election?
Clearly Trumpsky took Keystone State in 2016 in large measure due to registered Democrats voting for him.
SO one critical PA factor THIS year is, how many of those Trump 2016 registered Dems swing back and vote for Biden 2020?
From polling and press reports from places like Scranton & Wilkes-Barre, would appear this number MAY be somewhat bigger than a breadbox.
If the IFR is somewhat lower than flu for the under-60s, and only gets worse than flu for the over-70s, why the f*** were entire businesses closed down?
It is every chancellor’s job to worry about the wind changing. It is the current prime minister’s habit not to care. Even without differences of economic philosophy, tension is inevitable between Johnson’s incoherence, promising the earth with no regard for who should pay, and Sunak’s need to be independent and in control of the Treasury. His campaign for the succession is built on his brand as the serious, capable one in a cabinet of rogues and ninnies. It is a catch-22: being chancellor puts Sunak in pole position to take over, but the longer he serves as a Johnson loyalist, the less attractive he looks as a potential prime minister.
The current Tory leader is in difficulty but his leadership is far from derelict. He still has reserves of support in the country, a ruthless streak and infinite pride. Two axioms stand out from any study of Johnson’s career: first, he must never be underestimated. Second, his greatest skill is getting out of the scrapes that his lack of judgment gets him into. Put those together and you arrive at the forecast that he will be a terrible prime minister who is good at clinging to power. He will leave no legacy to inherit, only a mess to clear up.
There can be no continuity in Johnsonism. It is an episode, a convulsion, a one-off. The next prime minister, even if it is another Tory, must run as an antidote to the current one. That is hard for someone who has helped cook and serve the noxious brew. Sunak has less time than he thinks. He has to decide how long to be part of the Tories’ Johnson problem before somehow offering himself as their solution
"But here’s the thing: Yes, Biden and Democrats should be nervous that he has only about a 5-point lead in Pennsylvania, the most likely tipping point state. Five points is more than a normal-sized polling error, but not that much more. And Biden does have some backup plans. A regional polling error in the Midwest or the Northeast wouldn’t necessarily doom his chances in states like Arizona, for instance. It wouldn’t be the blowout that Democrats hope for, but Biden would still retain an edge in the Electoral College even without winning his birth state."
A 5 point lead in Pennysylvania is understating it. It's currently 5.3% on 538, but that doesn't tell the full picture.
11 different polling companies have published polls in Penn with fieldwork being concluded within the past week, so presumably they feature in that 538 average. 10 out of 11 give Biden a lead of 5% or more, in the range 5% to 10%. Then there's 1 remaining poll with a tiny sample commissioned by this outfit ( https://amgreatness.com/ ) whose website is promoting the outlandish conspiracy theories that Trump is using to undermine the integrity of the entire electoral process. It gives Trump a lead of 3%, a difference of 8% or more in Trump's favour compared to the findings of all those other 10 polling companies.
By all means believe that one poll if you trust Trump to tell the truth. Personally, I think that Trump's trying to take people for a ride with the polling his people have commissioned, just as he's trying to do with everything else he does. And because that one rogue poll that's off the scale must be pulling the average down, I think the average is slightly understating the strength of Biden's position.
I note that that InsiderAdvantage PA poll for AmericanGreatness has a sample size of 400 split 45% Dem, 43.5% Rep, 11.5% independent/other whereas...
The latest State voter records show Pennsylvania is 46.6% Democrat, 38.9% Republican and 14.4% independent/other voters.
Draw your own conclusions.
If it followed that pattern, then how did Trump win PA in 2016 given the GOP has narrowed the gap since the last election?
Clearly Trumpsky took Keystone State in 2016 in large measure due to registered Democrats voting for him.
SO one critical PA factor THIS year is, how many of those Trump 2016 registered Dems swing back and vote for Biden 2020?
From polling and press reports from places like Scranton & Wilkes-Barre, would appear this number MAY be somewhat bigger than a breadbox.
I've also seen press reports suggesting many were sticking with Trump even if they didn't like him personally. But such vox pop was dismissed as lacking in credibility.
Thank you. We don't need The Hill though, we can see what is happening.
Well said @brokenwheel. The data coming through seems fairly clear - Biden is not winning a landslide and there are a number of pluses for Trump.
You can stick to your polls
Would agree with your first sentence, but not the second.
What data would you highlight that suggest the Democrats are winning a landslide?
And I don't mean opinion polls or Nate Silver's percentages
Why not? Do opinion polls not constitute 'data'?* Just because you don't agree with them (well except for Trafalgar, presumably...). You disagree with the evidence of the polls. SSI agrees with them. Hence you disagree. Which is what he said.
*wish somebody would tell the politicians who live their lives around them.
I don't agree with Trafalgar either. I'm sceptical of polling because of structural issues.
In considering yours truly's views on Pennsylvania, please know that I am
> native-born Pennsylvanian
> descendant of immigrants - German, Scots-Irish & Irish Catholic) who came to PA before 1850.
> direct descendant of three PA soldiers who defended the Keystone State and turned back the "High Tide of the Confederacy" at Gettysburg.
> son of politically (and religiously) mixed marriage, my maternal grandmother being a local Democratic activist, while my paternal grandfather was a rock-ribbed Republican.
Doubt that ANY PBer can match my PA credentials! Hope you are all SUITABLY impressed!!
Here's a tip for ENIght - keep yer eye on Beaver County!!!
I keep hyping up Ralston, but he knows Nevada more than anyone.
Over 46% of all registered voters (not just those who voted in 2016) have already voted in Nevada.
Money quote:
"if indies are evenly split, and neither candidate loses more than 10 percent of his base, Biden is up by 6."
I am Ralston's biggest, best and most original fan on here. However I think he is not paying enough attention to the voter registration numbers which at the moment suggest the election is an incredibly narrow (much narrower than Hilary) Biden win.
If the Early Vote lead gets as big as he thinks it must for the Dems to be confident then I'm willing to go with the Sage of Nevada but I believe the Voter Reg numbers hold the key.
In considering yours truly's views on Pennsylvania, please know that I am
> native-born Pennsylvanian
> descendant of immigrants - German, Scots-Irish & Irish Catholic) who came to PA before 1850.
> direct descendant of three PA soldiers who defended the Keystone State and turned back the "High Tide of the Confederacy" at Gettysburg.
> son of politically (and religiously) mixed marriage, my maternal grandmother being a local Democratic activist, while my paternal grandfather was a rock-ribbed Republican.
Doubt that ANY PBer can match my PA credentials! Hope you are all SUITABLY impressed!!
Here's a tip for ENIght - keep yer eye on Beaver County!!!
What was your prediction for PA in 2016 just before voting ended on election night?
Comments
You may not earn the big bucks in teaching unless you are the Head but you are also safer than the average worker in a recession
And the phrase is "Minnesota Nice" though of course there ARE many nice people in Wisconsin - though many Minnesotans would dispute that!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004HZYBAO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-early-voting-blog-3
I keep hyping up Ralston, but he knows Nevada more than anyone.
Over 46% of all registered voters (not just those who voted in 2016) have already voted in Nevada.
Money quote:
"if indies are evenly split, and neither candidate loses more than 10 percent of his base, Biden is up by 6."
"In fact, a recent poll by the Cato Institute suggests that nearly two-thirds of Americans say that the political climate is sufficiently harsh that they don’t want to give their genuine opinion about politics."
Yeah I know the phrase, but there's a very similar culture in parts of Wisconsin. Oh and Minnesotan's might dispute that...but they wouldn't say it to their face.
..
11 different polling companies have published polls in Penn with fieldwork being concluded within the past week, so presumably they feature in that 538 average. 10 out of 11 give Biden a lead of 5% or more, in the range 5% to 10%. Then there's 1 remaining poll with a tiny sample commissioned by this outfit ( https://amgreatness.com/ ) whose website is promoting the outlandish conspiracy theories that Trump is using to undermine the integrity of the entire electoral process. It gives Trump a lead of 3%, a difference of 8% or more in Trump's favour compared to the findings of all those other 10 polling companies.
By all means believe that one poll if you trust Trump to tell the truth. Personally, I think that Trump's trying to take people for a ride with the polling his people have commissioned, just as he's trying to do with everything else he does. And because that one rogue poll that's off the scale must be pulling the average down, I think the average is slightly understating the strength of Biden's position.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8885557/Shoppers-left-baffled-vegan-BUTCHER-set-launch-offering-meat-free-lookalike-products.html
After Neil's pathetic attempt at using laged case numbers in Sweden to claim cases weren't growing significantly anything he says on the topic should be treated as a deliberate attempt to lie.
https://twitter.com/tradegovuk/status/1321187022883663873?s=20
To say it was impressive is an understatement, it was mind blowing. You can create scenarios with a few lines of text and it writes stories or answers questions entirely in context within the scenario.
My friend showed me a few conversations he had with it and I thought he was winding me up and had written it himself, but after trying it I realise that it really is that good.
It's not just our jobs we should worry about with this technology.
Dido's Razor?
Which is 57% of all active registered voters in the state's largest county (29% of WA).
NOTE that IF final voter turnout = 90% (it was 81% in 2016) then 800k is 63% of projected ballots cast; if turnout is lower, then percent returned so far is of course higher.
Further note that King County is a Democratic stronghold - indeed THE Democratic stronghold - in WA State, and that its return rate is higher than the statewide rate.
AND that Seattle - which is Democratic Mother Lode in King Co, and home to 10% of state voters - has a higher rate of early returns than King County as a whole OR the State of WA. Despite the fact that traditional pattern is for Seattle early returns to LAG the rest of the county until just before EDay.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/27/politics/tom-wolf-donald-trump-pennsylvania/index.html
Even creative industries won't be safe from this. I have seen various tech for enhancing video ads, where again a lot of the grunt work is done by humans, instead the computer can be trained to go through touching things up, providing focus / highlighting to shots etc. Basically getting into a state where one person can then just finish it off.
(NHS hospital doctor writing on Lockdownsceptics today).
But we can usually work out approximately how many by looking at polling responses by type.
So with Brexit, you saw big leads for Remain with in person telephone calls, small leads with automated phone response, and small Leave leads with on-line pollsters. Simply, people tell the truth more to machines than to nice ladies on the phone.
The problem is that we're not seeing that in US. On-line pollsters are giving similar results to in person phone ones.
Pre-covid they'd plug a lot of the gaps with contractors or consultants (no offence to people who do that, but a pet hate of mine - people who come in, get the great projects, leave on a moment's notice before it is properly finished taking all their skills and knowledge with them and leaving the far less well paid regular workforce grunts to pick up the pieces). But travel bans and budget cuts means contracting has entirely dried up, at least in our organisation.
You can stick to your polls
We may have to go through all this again.
The answer is yes, but would he be released from jail, or would he have to conduct his presidential duties from his prison cell?
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/pennsylvania/
My friend, who has worked in journalism for the past 30 years, thinks that website is a highly suspect source.
--AS
The latest State voter records show Pennsylvania is 46.6% Democrat, 38.9% Republican and 14.4% independent/other voters.
Draw your own conclusions.
https://twitter.com/tradegovuk/status/1321194448710225920?s=20
Actually you’ve just described the lessons I’ve been putting together for remote teaching of those who can’t make it into school at the moment. It’s something teachers have been thinking about for a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom
https://twitter.com/apoorva_nyc/status/1321197153704923141?s=20
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa
Right now, women are slightly more than 56% of the known early vote total. Women are considerably more Biden-leaning than men (who prefer Trump).
This will apply to the comfortable middle classes as much as it will to the working classes in all western nations. The UK is a country that is at the cutting edge of many industries, especially information, data and service automation, it is bound to cause a huge loss of jobs in the near future among the middle classes in the same way mechanisation caused job losses in manufacturing, even of the high tech variety.
As an example the PS4 was assembled by hand in 2013 mainly in China by Foxconn, 7 years later around 95% of PS5s are being assembled by robots and one pilot line has hand assembly which is going to be kept running to test board changes and simplification. PS4 assembly created tens of thousands of jobs in China, fairly well paid ones too by Chinese standards, PS5 assembly has created a few very highly paid engineering jobs in Japan and some construction jobs but very few ongoing ones other than robot maintenance and monitoring.
The middle class jobs are going to be lost in accounting, general medicine, simple types of legal services and loads of others. These types of jobs are well paid but don't require specialist knowledge within an industry and people who aren't skilling up are in trouble.
Best we have federally is one contested congressional race: CD03 in southwest WA now in GOP hands.
At state level, closest will be for WA Secretary of state; Republican incumbent if re-elected will almost certainly be only state-wide GOP election official. There are number of hot legislative races, but no real prospect for Democrats loosing control of both houses. Note that legislature and Governor do NOT have direct role in redistricting, that is done by commission (one member from each leg caucus) and lines are drawn by consensus, so no party has inbuilt advantage.
We also have one state voter referendum, sponsored by evangelicals to overturn sex education law passed this year by the legislature. Note that WA GOP wanted this on the ballot - and got their wish - in order to boost turnout by low-turnout conservative Christians, who would be inclined to vote for Republicans on down the ballot. (Here in WA, statewide AND county measures come BEFORE candidate races including Pres & VP).
https://twitter.com/apoorva_nyc/status/1321197162873688065?s=19
*wish somebody would tell the politicians who live their lives around them.
But yes jobs like law and accountancy I expect to be partially replaced in the next decade or so. It's when authors, musicians and artists are outclassed by AI that we need to start to worry.
I suggest that it's best at this point to discount all polling by conducted by companies that either have links to the respective parties (the likes of PPP, Trafalgar, Rasmussen) or which was commissioned by organisations which are strongly campaigning for either side.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/The-ten-worst-Covid-data-failures
The govt's scientific advisers aren't quite up to the job. It covers up its inadequacies by ruling by decree.
Locking up the healthy is the reverse of how past plagues were dealt with. Moreover COVID-19 isn't on what we now know serious enough to be called a plague. If the IFR is somewhat lower than flu for the under-60s, and only gets worse than flu for the over-70s, why the f*** were entire businesses closed down?
SO one critical PA factor THIS year is, how many of those Trump 2016 registered Dems swing back and vote for Biden 2020?
From polling and press reports from places like Scranton & Wilkes-Barre, would appear this number MAY be somewhat bigger than a breadbox.
--AS
The current Tory leader is in difficulty but his leadership is far from derelict. He still has reserves of support in the country, a ruthless streak and infinite pride. Two axioms stand out from any study of Johnson’s career: first, he must never be underestimated. Second, his greatest skill is getting out of the scrapes that his lack of judgment gets him into. Put those together and you arrive at the forecast that he will be a terrible prime minister who is good at clinging to power. He will leave no legacy to inherit, only a mess to clear up.
There can be no continuity in Johnsonism. It is an episode, a convulsion, a one-off. The next prime minister, even if it is another Tory, must run as an antidote to the current one. That is hard for someone who has helped cook and serve the noxious brew. Sunak has less time than he thinks. He has to decide how long to be part of the Tories’ Johnson problem before somehow offering himself as their solution
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/27/rishi-sunak-ambition-collision-course-boris-johnson-ego-tory-party
I think the simple answer is nobody really knows.
> native-born Pennsylvanian
> descendant of immigrants - German, Scots-Irish & Irish Catholic) who came to PA before 1850.
> direct descendant of three PA soldiers who defended the Keystone State and turned back the "High Tide of the Confederacy" at Gettysburg.
> son of politically (and religiously) mixed marriage, my maternal grandmother being a local Democratic activist, while my paternal grandfather was a rock-ribbed Republican.
Doubt that ANY PBer can match my PA credentials! Hope you are all SUITABLY impressed!!
Here's a tip for ENIght - keep yer eye on Beaver County!!!
If the Early Vote lead gets as big as he thinks it must for the Dems to be confident then I'm willing to go with the Sage of Nevada but I believe the Voter Reg numbers hold the key.
Cases are racing up and intensive care admissions is rising slowly as well.
It's nothing disasterous, but Neil's attempt to say that there is no rise at all is risible.