Pollster Ann Selzer ending election polling, moving 'to other ventures and opportunities'

[u/BastianMobile]

https://eu.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/2024/11/17/ann-selzer-conducts-iowa-poll-ending-election-polling-moving-to-other-opportunities/76334909007/

[u/justbuildmorehousing]

Ill forever be shocked that ‘the best pollster in America’ missed her final poll by 17 points when she had been so accurate every other year. Man I thought that (and some other indicators) meant we were finally getting a general polling error in our favor

Now we have a pedo getting nominated for AG

[u/creaturefeature16 → u/justbuildmorehousing]

I think that's why a lot of leftists are falling to the same election fraud conspiracies as Trump supporters did. Between polls like Selzer, Jon Ralston election prediction (first time he was wrong in 10 years), Trump's weird comments about "we don't even need your votes" and acting like he didn't even care towards the end...it seems surprising that he won.

But at the end of the day, I think the polls were indeed correct this time. It was very close with a MOE that bent in Trump's favor....CNN did a bunch of forecasting and showed this exact scenario playing out if the polling error was in Trump's favor.

Turns out: the American electorate is far more binary than we thought, and having your unpopular candidate drop out of the race in the last 3 months if an election, only to be replaced by another unpopular candidate that nobody asked for, demotivates a big chunk of your base.

[u/Sspifffyman → u/creaturefeature16]

Nah, Kamala wasn't really the problem. Remember, every incumbent party in a democracy worldwide has been getting hit hard this cycle. The reason? Inflation. Dems on average have a two point or so advantage in the popular vote, and this year inflation caused a 4-5 point red shift, meaning we lost by 1-2 points. That's actually better than most other democracies worldwide. So it's possible Harris was actually a better candidate than most. (Not saying she was for sure, but it's certainly possible)

It was just a horrible environment.

[u/CapuchinMan → u/Sspifffyman]

I'm regurgitating Ezra Klein here, but that's because I think he was right. The problem was also that the means by which democratic candidates do the fact-finding to find out what they will need to do to turn out their base, and what will resonate with independents - primaries - couldn't be performed.

Kamala was accepted because of the narrow timeframe, and access to the electoral funds that Biden had raised, but that too, so late that there wasn't sufficient time to build what might have been a more robust campaign.

Additionally, an anti-incumbency bias meant that there was no room for her to both tout her administration's accomplishments but denounce their failures. A different democrat could have done that. Fucking Manchin, concerning whom there was speculation about a Presidential bid, could have done that with ease. And he would have been better than the current situation.

So much of this has to be laid at the feet of the Biden team - they lied about his ability, and his hubris prevented the party from finding a more able candidate, one that might distance themselves from his administration, but still present a viable alternative to Trump.

[u/Khiva → u/CapuchinMan]

A different democrat could have done that.

Nah, honestly unless they ran a complete wild-card like Terry Crews, there's no escaping the Dem label and voters were just mad the president didn't wave the Magic Inflation Wand.

[u/CapuchinMan → u/Khiva]

The problem is the Dems didn't get a chance to that fact-finding at all. Someone not in the administration would have had a more credible position criticizing the administration than Kamala. In the end it still might have been Kamala to win the primaries but she perhaps might have had a more refined campaign. But because of the choice of the Biden campaign to hide his deficiencies, they never got to try.