Goldy

Proverbs 20:17
Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.

Discuss.

Revelation 17:8
The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.

Discuss.

 

The. Stupid. Fucking. Electoral. College. *

 

---

* Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a substantial margin. If we elected our president, as we should, by a National Popular Vote, there would be no need for all this stupid punditry.

There’s been a lot of bedwetting in recent days over a flood of new polls that threatened to undermine the foundation of Hillary Clinton’s once formidable electoral college firewall. Key swing states like Florida, Nevada, and North Carolina, which for weeks had shown small but consistent leads for Clinton, suddenly plunged into Trump territory, while once solid leads in New Hampshire, Virginia, and Pennsylvania appeared to melt into the margin of error. As a result, polling aggregation sites from Nate Silver’s widely-followed 538 to Darryl’s less well known but equally pedigreed analyses here on HA showed Trump’s chances of winning surge into the disturbing realm of the remotely possible.

But what if some of the polls that introduced all this late uncertainty weren’t just wrong, they were, well, intentionally wrong?

Ignore for a moment the reasons why, but if your goal was to game the polling aggregation sites you would probably want to wait until the final weeks of the election to release a flood of new polls with absurdly large sample sizes (and absurdly low margins of error) surveying a handful of key swing states while providing little or no prior track record on which to judge your credibility. In other words: Meet the Remington Research poll.

Coming out of virtually nowhere, the Remington Research Group in collaboration with Axiom Strategies suddenly emerged as one of the most prolific pollsters of the fin de cycle électoral, simultaneously surveying eight “battleground” states on October 23, October 30, and again on November 3. This sudden displaying of polling prowess is particularly remarkable given the incredibly large size of its voter sample—and by “incredibly,” I do mean that these numbers are not credible.

For example, Remington’s November 3 poll (surveyed Nov 1-2) includes and analyzes the responses of 19,640 likely voters across eight states, ranging from a robust 1,793-voter sample in Nevada to an inexplicable 3,076-voter sample in Virginia. Compare that to the ten most recent Virginia polls posted to 538:

The second largest sample size of the group is SurveyMonkey’s 2,109, and even that’s an outlier given that it’s an online poll that typically uses larger samples in order to compensate for selection bias and other errors. Remington claims to be conducting its surveys via IVR (interactive voice response) technology—good old fashioned robocalling—a method that normally would suffice with about a 1,000-voter sample in a state the size of Virginia. A similar pattern can be seen in survey after survey, state after state, with Remington standing out by far as the largest sample size in any state (and generally one of the most Trump-leaning).

Darryl continues to include Remington in his analysis because it fits his inclusion criteria, and he correctly does not want to change criteria mid-cycle. But those large sample sizes immediately jumped out at Darryl as odd. As Darryl explains, response rates for IVR are notoriously low—probably around 10 percent. That means Remington would have needed to dial about 200,000 voters over two days to achieve its 19,640-voter sample, and then analyze all these results. That may not be beyond the capabilities of a large, established pollster, but it’s not the sort of operation one builds overnight. Further catching Darryl’s eye is Remington’s unusually low reported margin of error: “+/- 1.77” in that Virginia poll, for example. That’s not only weirdly low, it’s weirdly precise; experienced pollsters don’t tend to present that number out to the second decimal place, says Darryl.

Remember: polling is expensive. A typical 600-800-voter IVR survey might cost a campaign or media outlet about $8,000 or more, and a live interviewer telephone survey would cost several times that. (A high-quality live-interview bilingual internal poll of the sort statewide campaigns use might cost $30,000 or more.) So why would Axiom/Remington put in the extra time and money to survey four times as many voters as the typical public state poll?

One obvious answer would be to game the average margins calculated by all these polling aggregators everyone is obsessing on. I’m way oversimplifying it, but the way these polling aggregators generally work is that they add up all the samples from various polls over a specified period of time, and then do some math to them. They essentially create one giant poll out of many in an effort to smooth out the variation and find (as Silver would say it) “the signal in the noise.” (Darryl could explain it better, but in many more words. If you’re curious, you can read his entire simulation FAQ here.)

And what that means is that Remington’s 3,076-voter survey that had Clinton at just +2 influences the average about 4.7 times more than Roanoke College’s 654-voter sample that had Clinton at a robust +7. (Well, not exactly. But again, ask Darryl.) In fact, under most models, Remington’s extremely low reported margin of error would overweight its impact even more.

Thus, flood the media with some very-large-sample Trump-leaning polls, and the state of the race in some of these battleground states starts to look very different. For example, as of last night, Darryl had Clinton with only a 27.9 percent probability of winning Florida—but remove the Remington polls and Clinton’s probability jumps to 68.2 percent! In other words, a single pollster can flip Florida. Likewise, Clinton’s probability of winning an Electoral College majority would’ve climbed from 80 percent with Remington to 94 percent without. For many nervous poll-watchers, that’s the difference between wet sheets and dry sheets.

But what’s in it for Remington? Well, to know for sure, you’d have to ask the Remington Group. Or maybe their partner, Axiom Strategies.  Or better yet, Ted Cruz’s former presidential campaign chief strategist Jeff Roe, who happens to own both the Remington Group and Axiom Strategies. But I have three theories:

1. Bump up turnout in support of down-ballot Republicans. As the Princeton Election Consortium’s Sam Wang recently explained, “increased confidence is associated with increased turnout.” Sure, Trump may be a lost cause, but as long as Trump supporters don’t know it, down-ballot Republicans won’t suffer quite as much.
2. Undermine public faith in the outcome of this election.  If Hillary Clinton substantially over-performs the polling averages it will look awfully suspicious to voters already primed by Trump’s relentless voter fraud allegations. I mean, Nate Silver has never been wrong before, so why would he miss a few key states this time around? Such suspicions will serve Republicans well as they continue their efforts to delegitimize Clinton through hearings, confirmation battles, and ultimately impeachment.
3. Fuck with Nate Silver. Silver has been the target of a lot of well-deserved criticism this cycle for all the click-baity volatility he built into his new (and opaque) models—but four years ago he was a goddamn hero for the way he championed data-driven journalism over the usual data-free kind. Republicans hate Silver for interfering with their election narrative. So maybe this is just payback?

Whatever the reason, the fact is that these Remington polls just don’t pass the smell test. (Clinton is winning only 65% of African-Americans in Virginia, and only 48% of Hispanics in Nevada? I don’t think so.) And Remington isn’t the only late-comer to flood the swing state polling swamp with suspiciously pro-Trump results. Republican consultancy shop Trafalgar Group (infamous robocaller and former Chris Christie advisor Robert Cahaly) has generated a wave of weirdly-worded surveys that purport to reveal a “shy Trump-voter” demographic that every other pollster has missed! Trafalgar too calculates its margin of error to the second decimal place, a level of precision that feels out-of-place amidst their outlier results. (Trump is up 2 points in Michigan, or something!)

Yeah, sure, all of the aggregators will ultimately call this election correctly, in that Clinton will win by some margin or another. And at this late stage there’s little if any argument over who is leading where. But I’ve no doubt that Republicans are attempting to game the system in a way that makes this whole poll aggregation endeavor far less useful than it was in the past two presidential cycles. So don’t be surprised on Tuesday night if the presidential election turns out to be less competitive than we’ve all been led to believe.

Exodus 25:15
Don’t ever remove the poles from the rings.

Discuss.

Job 9:23
When a good person dies a sudden death, God sits back and laughs.

Discuss.

Genesis 6:1-4
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

Discuss.

Hosea 10:13
Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies: because thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men.

Discuss.

Isaiah 13:16
Their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.

Discuss.

Genesis 11:10-24
Two years after the flood, when Shem was one hundred, he had a son named Arpachshad. He had more children and died at the age of six hundred. This is a list of his descendants:

When Arpachshad was thirty-five, he had a son named Shelah. Arpachshad had more children and died at the age of four hundred thirty-eight.

When Shelah was thirty, he had a son named Eber. Shelah had more children and died at the age of four hundred thirty-three.

When Eber was thirty-four, he had a son named Peleg. Eber had more children and died at the age of four hundred sixty-four.

When Peleg was thirty, he had a son named Reu. Peleg had more children and died at the age of two hundred thirty-nine.

When Reu was thirty-two he had a son named Serug. Reu had more children and died at the age of two hundred thirty-nine.

When Serug was thirty, he had a son named Nahor. Serug had more children and died at the age of two hundred thirty.

When Nahor was twenty-nine, he had a son named Terah. Nahor had more children and died at the age of one hundred forty-eight.

Discuss.

Nahum 1:2
The Lord is a jealous God, filled with vengeance and rage.

Discuss.

Song of Solomon 4:5-6
Your breasts are perfect;
they are twin deer
feeding among lilies.
I will hasten to those hills
sprinkled with sweet perfume
and stay there till sunrise.

Discuss.

Exodus 32:27-29
Then he said to them, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the LORD today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”

Discuss.

Luke 19:29-34
As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’”

Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”

They replied, “The Lord needs it.”

Exodus 20:15
Thou shalt not steal.

Discuss.