Nowadays telephone polling is conducted with both land-lines and cellphones, since land-lines are being phased out from usage.
As for USA 2016, their federal polls were not that far off. Most were predicting a Hillary lead of 4%, and she ended up with a 2% popular vote lead. That's within the margin of error. It was like a statistical miracle that Trump won the states he needed to win, while losing the popular vote by 3 million.
It was like a statistical miracle that Trump won the states he needed to win, while losing the popular vote by 3 million.
Clinton received 2.8 million more votes than Trump. The problem was, 4.3 million of that vote margin was in California alone. Exempt just California, and Trump won the popular vote in the rest of the U.S. by 1.5 million. That's a lot of things, but in a FPTP system, it's not even hard to understand, much less a statistical miracle.
California should secede from the Union.They don't need a United States.They have the 4th largest GDP in the world,they are they are a progressive country stuck in a regressive Union.Take California out of the US and America is a solidly red state.
Why does California only get 2 senators just like The Dakotas,Wyoning or Montana? On their own California has a population as big or bigger tha Canada.Yet they are represented the same way as these backwoods Goober states? For their size California should have 5 or 6 senators and a state like Wymoning should have no more than 1.
The West Coast is the only thing propping the country up. Without California,the US is finished.But it would make for an interesting experiment with solidly blue California governing in traditional progressive fashion while the solid red state gets more decrepid and drowns in the far right wing cesspool Trump has turned America into.
Move over Brexit,make room for Calexit. And it would be more profitable,liveable and independent than Great Britain's Boris Johnson led coalition to leave the EU. I think its clear that Brexit will only bring more unemployment and more expensive goods. It was (is) a faux populist movement that has crazy right wingers like Boris Johson in charge marching Britain off a short bridge.
California? They'd laugh themselves to dominance. California coud easily become a successful sovereign country that woud be the envy of most countries. It's far from crazy idea.
The Americans take a very dim view of states who wish to separate. They are willing to go to war to prevent that from happening. Once you are in the Union, you never get out.
As I've mentioned before, the belief that California is "solidly blue" and "progressive" is as misinformed as the belief that Québec is.
How isn't it? Relatively speaking.
People post here like they have never ever heard of polling bias. All you have to do is poll in an area to support the results you want to manufacture. How do we know whether pollsters poll in Conservative, Liberal or NDP areas? We don't. Who cares whether it is phone or online.
I'd say just the opposite. People here are very aware of pollster bias. What they reject is your insistence that all pollsters are exactly the same.
It was like a statistical miracle that Trump won the states he needed to win, while losing the popular vote by 3 million.Clinton received 2.8 million more votes than Trump. The problem was, 4.3 million of that vote margin was in California alone. Exempt just California, and Trump won the popular vote in the rest of the U.S. by 1.5 million. That's a lot of things, but in a FPTP system, it's not even hard to understand, much less a statistical miracle.
That's some creative right-wing framing. California has been Democrat for a long time, yet the winner of national popular vote is usually the winner of the election. Except for the vote in 2000, but the margin there was about 500,000, not 2.86 Million. How much of Trump's vote was from Texas and Georgia? Why didn't you exlude the largest red states from your "analysis"? And what's the deal with excluding certain states? Did you read this on some alt-right website?
The truth is Trump lost the popular vote, by a wide margin. He was not really elected by the people.
Canada's FPTP is slightly less bad than the US electoral college, as almost all states are winner-take-all and there is only 50 of them, vs 338 ridings in Canada.
How isn't it? Relatively speaking.
Drive an hour inland from the coast and you will meet a lot of Trump supporters. You are right though that demographically they are dwarfed by the huge population living in the major urban centres on the coast, so "relatively speaking" California remains one of the most progressive states in the Union. I oppose California separatism though, even if it could be effectuated peacefully. For all the good things an independent Republic of California could achieve I would feel uncomfortable leaving behind all of the nuclear weapons that would be left in the rest of the U.S., with the rednecks gaining disproportionately more influence over them.
How isn't it? Relatively speaking.
Well, in the incremental, state-by-state march toward marriage equality, California was actually a harder sell than most states(including backwaters like Iowa), what with sections of their electorate being outraged enough to get Prop. 8 on the ballot and passed.
Though I've heard that one of the reasons Prop. 8 passed was that the racial politics of the 2008 election brought two groups of voters, right-wing Christians and African Americans, to the polls in greater numbers than usual, and that these two demographics, while on the opposite side of the party divide, both tended to slant against gay rights.
I'd also imagine that, outside the big cities, California's state and local politics can run pretty right-wing, Orange County being just the most notable example. And they've had a history of sending some real reactionary bozos to congress, like that guy Bob Dornan back in the 80s.
And, even in presidential politics, the blue-streak only goes back to 1992. Before that, California voted for the Republican in all but two of the postwar elections.
Yes. It's not just the small towns, or even just the inland areas like Bakersfield. Orange County (LA's white-flight suburb) is a far-right Limbaugh-listening concealed-carrying county that wouldn't be out of place as a suburb of Houston or Atlanta. LA is still a major oil production city, and while there are some left-wing actors and musicians, the people who own the studios and record labels are classic wealthy Republicans. Not to mention that the vaunted Silicon Valley is home to a major contingent of alt-right tech bros who think the only thing holding them back is taxes/regulations.
California also has a major military base / military contractor presence, the US's largest death row, was the birthplace of three-strikes legislation and all kinds of other mass incarceration strategies, and in general has rather unenviable racial politics.
Yes. It's not just the small towns, or even just the inland areas like Bakersfield. Orange County (LA's white-flight suburb) is a far-right Limbaugh-listening concealed-carrying county that wouldn't be out of place as a suburb of Houston or Atlanta. LA is still a major oil production city, and while there are some left-wing actors and musicians, the people who own the studios and record labels are classic wealthy Republicans. Not to mention that the vaunted Silicon Valley is home to a major contingent of alt-right tech bros who think the only thing holding them back is taxes/regulations. California also has a major military base / military contractor presence, the US's largest death row, was the birthplace of three-strikes legislation and all kinds of other mass incarceration strategies, and in general has rather unenviable racial politics.
Yes but the point is they dont need the US. I'm aware of the far right in California. No different from Quebec. I wouldn't call it a right wing shithole.
Of course these uber wealthy owners of the industry is right wing. Wealth and Republicans make sense. It's the rednecks in the trailer homes that vote for them are fools. I have been to California,people were a little stereotypical Californian and tolerant. Of course out of a country of 40-50 million people there's going despicable,backward wastes of sperm squirming and slithering in the midst.
Next to 80% of the country,California is very liberal. The 3 counts rule? Democratic wanna be governors have made it clear they'd end such a law. I know,politicians are notorious for making promises before elections but it seems to be a common theme.
Anyway,I could say the same about states like Washington,Oregon,Massachusettes or Vermont but unless they join in union they wouldn't make it as a country. I don't think the population would sustain a West Coast/East Coast country . But California it can be done very easily and painless.
But the Senators. Why does the largest populated states in America have the same amount of Senators as a piece of land with an outhouse and a tumbleweed?
Its bullshit and it makes a difference. The most populous states in the union are not completely red. Theres some purple in there too (Which I think makes up a majority of Americans) You could add Alaska but Alaska is a reasonably progressive state even though they are red. But that would be largest land not population.
Most citizens,the most Senators and a more proportional representation. And destroy the Electoral College.
You'd have a very (next to where they are now) progressive society. Outside of PR,stop voting solely on base of party color or lettering representing the party and listen to what the real issues are. What would help YOU in your life? How about getting money out of politics and prosecuting banksters,single payer health service,raising Social Security benefits,ending ALL WARS.
If you're American and intelligent,chances are you're not going to vote Republican. If you're informed,your choice of candidate would change quickly.
Bernie Sanders is STILL the most popular politician in the us,his town halls attract a lot of people. He puposely has his ralleys in places not likely to vote for him but after and hour of Bernie pounding the truth in your head,even these back water hicks get the picture.
Sorry for the tangent.
It was like a statistical miracle that Trump won the states he needed to win, while losing the popular vote by 3 million.Clinton received 2.8 million more votes than Trump. The problem was, 4.3 million of that vote margin was in California alone. Exempt just California, and Trump won the popular vote in the rest of the U.S. by 1.5 million. That's a lot of things, but in a FPTP system, it's not even hard to understand, much less a statistical miracle.
That's some creative right-wing framing. California has been Democrat for a long time, yet the winner of national popular vote is usually the winner of the election. Except for the vote in 2000, but the margin there was about 500,000, not 2.86 Million. How much of Trump's vote was from Texas and Georgia? Why didn't you exlude the largest red states from your "analysis"? And what's the deal with excluding certain states? Did you read this on some alt-right website?
The truth is Trump lost the popular vote, by a wide margin. He was not really elected by the people.
Canada's FPTP is slightly less bad than the US electoral college, as almost all states are winner-take-all and there is only 50 of them, vs 338 ridings in Canada.
Trump won Texas by 800000 votes. Clinton won California by more than 5 times that amount. Put another way, Clinton won California by almost as many votes as Trump got (total) in Texas (4.3m vs 4.6m). If you exempt Texas and California, Trump still wins the popular vote by about 700000. I'm not saying that's the way it should be. I'm not saying that 4 million votes in California should be ignored. I'm just saying that it's not any kind of freak statistical accident or miracle that when you have more than 4 million excess votes in one state, you might win the popular vote and lose the election.
And, since you want to compare with 2000, in 2000 California was won by "only" 1.3 million. Again - right or wrong - the wasted vote in California alone more than sufficiently explains the difference in results between the popular vote and the electoral college result. Ignoring California, Bush won by a smaller margin in the other 49 states than Trump did.
And although I'm not making value statements on the electoral college as a whole, don't pretend for a minute you'd be complaining about the electoral college if Trump had won the popular vote with an extra 4 million votes in Texas, but lost the electoral collge to Madame President Clinton. And if some actual right winger complained and said "but Trump won the popular vote by 3 million", you'd point out the exact argument I made but in reverse. When's the last time you complained about Alberta's wasted Conservative vote?
The fact that two R's have won the presidency without winning the popular vote in the last 16 years is entirely due to the fact that the D's have hugely inefficient votes in California and New York (6 million wasted D votes in those two states alone for 2016), while the R's have a relatively more even distribution of support. It's not hard to understand. It's not a statistical fluke. It's not "creative right wing framing." It's just an observation on how the system works - you can win any one state by 10 million votes and run up the popular vote that way, but when you only win 20 of 50 states you're not going to win the election no matter how many votes you win those states by.
And although I'm not making value statements on the electoral college as a whole, don't pretend for a minute you'd be complaining about the electoral college if Trump had won the popular vote with an extra 4 million votes in Texas, but lost the electoral collge to Madame President Clinton. And if some actual right winger complained and said "but Trump won the popular vote by 3 million", you'd point out the exact argument I made but in reverse. When's the last time you complained about Alberta's wasted Conservative vote?
It was the last time I was advocating for proportional representation, actually.
This comes up a lot in PR threads. I suppose there are two ways to look at the electoral system. Either it's a machine to be gamed to achieve the outcome you want (in which case it's fair if your side wins unfairly, and you just have to suck it up and say "We'd do the same!" when the other side wins unfairly), or it's a mechanism to express the will of the people, in which case making it more fair is a net benefit regardless of whether it helps your side.
I'm on the latter team. Furthermore, I don't see a lot of Canadians advocating for absolute monarchy because the right king could be way more progressive than any government the people would elect. (I do hear this attitude in the Middle East.)
It was the last time I was advocating for proportional representation, actually.
Granted, but to be fair I wasn't responding to you; from what I've seen, you hold a consistent position even when the details change, so I'd give you the benefit of the doubt.
This comes up a lot in PR threads. I suppose there are two ways to look at the electoral system. Either it's a machine to be gamed to achieve the outcome you want (in which case it's fair if your side wins unfairly, and you just have to suck it up and say "We'd do the same!" when the other side wins unfairly), or it's a mechanism to express the will of the people, in which case making it more fair is a net benefit regardless of whether it helps your side.I'm on the latter team. Furthermore, I don't see a lot of Canadians advocating for absolute monarchy because the right king could be way more progressive than any government the people would elect. (I do hear this attitude in the Middle East.)
To be clear, I agree with your analysis and I'm a big supporter of PR as well. I just think the position that Trump's victory despite losing the popular vote was a "statistical miracle" is ridiculous. As I argued above, it's not even surprising when you look at vote totals in California compared with the nation as a whole. Of course that brought the usual tired accusations of regurgitating alt-right talking points, as if that changes any of the data or arguments being presented.
Your argument is still lopsided, since conservative states are smaller but more numerous, rural states. You can't just exlude the largest state in the nation, or compare it to just ONE largest rural state and call it even. Rural states are disproportionally overrepresented in the Electoral College.
If the results were reversed, I would NOT try to pretend that certain states don't exist. I would still consider it a deeply flawed system. The so-called President has no actual mandate from the majority of the population.
For comparison, consider the French presidental elections. They have 18 regions, yet every person's vote is equal in presidential elections, no matter which region you are from.
This is what I mean about pollsters.
Most of them claim they are the best.
Mainstreet Research are stating on their website that they were the only pollster to have forecasted a Liberal majority in the 2015 federal election.
This is what I mean about pollsters.
Most of them claim they are the best.
Mainstreet Research are stating on their website that they were the only pollster to have forecasted a Liberal majority in the 2015 federal election.
All politicians also say they are the best, but to say they are the same is ignorance. Focus on facts, not just on claims. Every polling organization is also a business and will naturally try to promote themselves.
Mainstreet's claim is misleading, as most pollsters don't do seat projections at all.
Mainstreet was off by more than 20 points (!) in the Calgary election.
No one pollster is consistently the best. They have good forecasts and not so good forecasts.
But Mainstreet claims that they were the only ones forecasting a Liberal majority for the 2015 federal election.
Right now they are forecasting a PC majority government in Ontario
Go figure!
NDP Surge To Second As PCs Slip
https://www.mainstreetresearch.ca/ndp-surge-to-second-as-pcs-slip/
No one pollster is consistently the best. They have good forecasts and not so good forecasts.That's a very lazy way to approach pollster performace. Just like some people say that "all politicians are the same" and don't even bother to do any research.
It's not laziness, but perhaps a bit more common sense.
No one pollster has cornered the market on accuracy, no matter how many times you say it. They have good forecasts, and not so good forecasts. And there are even times when online polling averages are more accurate than telephone polling averages.
Mainstreet Research say they are the only pollsters that forecast a Liberal majority in 2015, and quite frankly that is what most voters are interested in, as opposed to what percentage of votes a particular party is going to get.
Personally though I am not a big fan of what any pollster says about their own polling record. Protection against herding needs to be taken into account. That is why only taking a pollster's results on the day before the election is frequently useless for determining a pollster's accuracy.
Trying to confuse the issue is not common sense.
You've previously referenced Nate Silver's 538. Well, guest what, they don't say all pollsters are the same. They give each pollster a grade from A+ to F, based on past track record, while taking pre-election poll hoarding into the account. (That's in the US.)
Based on past performance and methodology, some pollsters do stand out. Nanos Research uses a proven methodology and has a very accurate track record in every election. You can actually trust their margin of error.
Not so for Mainstreet, who were absolutely disgraced in the Calgary election. They also use IVR, which has a very high decline rate of participants. Mainstreet bothered forecasting seats in 2015, while most other pollsters didn't. Although 39% is a pretty safe bet for a majority government, historically. Mainstreet could have claimed to be the only pollster who determined the sky is blue and that would have been technically accurate.
Live telephone pollsters were participating in the 2015 federal campaign. So, it's not very surprising that IVR and online pollsters "weighted" their raw data accordingly. But in some municipal and provincial elections, without *real* live telephone pollsters, online and IVR pollsters often miss the mark by an extreme margin.
Canada's FPTP is slightly less bad than the US electoral college, as almost all states are winner-take-all and there is only 50 of them, vs 338 ridings in Canada.
The good thing about Canada is that the country is not as deeply polarized as the United States, and the results of Canadian elections tend to be more representative of the way people voted.
For example, in Canada, the winner of the popular vote almost always wins the National election. The only time in modern history when someone lost the popular vote but didn't form the Federal government was in 1979 when Pierre Trudeau won the popular vote but lost to Joe Clark.
In the United States, the Democrats have lost the White House twice within the time span of only 16 years even though they won the popular vote in 2000 & 2016.
Yes, but the problem with our electoral system is that it significantly distorts popular support. Parties win fake "majorities" with just 37-40% of the vote.
Also, since the Conservatives are to the right of the Liberals, NDP, Greens, and BQ, most elections that lead to the Conservatives forming government are "wrong winner" elections.
For example, in Canada, the winner of the popular vote almost always wins the National election. The only time in modern history when someone lost the popular vote but didn't form the Federal government was in 1979 when Pierre Trudeau won the popular vote but lost to Joe Clark.
In the United States, the Democrats have lost the White House twice within the time span of only 16 years even though they won the popular vote in 2000 & 2016.
For definitions of "winning" that include "plurality", sure. Another way to put it is that in every Canadian federal election for the past 34 years, a majority of Canadian voters have voted against the party that formed government. Or to look at it yet another way, Donald Trump got 46% of the vote in 2016. No Canadian federal party has done that well since 1984.
Well said cco.
For example, in Canada, the winner of the popular vote almost always wins the National election. The only time in modern history when someone lost the popular vote but didn't form the Federal government was in 1979 when Pierre Trudeau won the popular vote but lost to Joe Clark.
In the United States, the Democrats have lost the White House twice within the time span of only 16 years even though they won the popular vote in 2000 & 2016.
For definitions of "winning" that include "plurality", sure. Another way to put it is that in every Canadian federal election for the past 34 years, a majority of Canadian voters have voted against the party that formed government. Or to look at it yet another way, Donald Trump got 46% of the vote in 2016. No Canadian federal party has done that well since 1984.
The main reason for that is because the United States is a 2-party system. It's much easier to get a larger percentage of the vote when there are only 2 parties.
Canada, like almost all other Western countries, has multiple parties. Therefore, it is very difficult to win with as large of a percentage of the vote.
One of the unusual features of the American political system is that there are only 2 parties. This is basically unique in the Western world. Almost every other Western country has multiple parties in its legislatures. This is also one of the reasons why American politics is so polarized.
Canadawide the Cons are now within 2% of the Liberals according to the latest polling from the favourite pollster of many Liberal supporters here. We are still quite a distance away from the next election but are we possibly looking at a minority government situation in 2019?
cco wrote:
I don't see a lot of Canadians advocating for absolute monarchy because the right king could be way more progressive than any government the people would elect. (I do hear this attitude in the Middle East.)
I've heard Canadian progressives say that the senate should flex its muscles and veto legislation passed by Conservative dominated Commons.
Personally, I think that would be a very bad idea.
Nanos release as of May 15, 2018
Liberals 36, Conservatives 34, NDP 19, Green 6 in latest Nanos federal tracking
http://www.nanos.co/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Political-Package-2018-05-11.pdf
With that said, Sheer's Preferred PM numbers are actually going down, now at 20.9%. I assume the Ontario Provincial election is having an impact on the federal numbers. But if Ford wins, (God forbid, but it looks likely at this point) this will probably have the opposite effect on the federal scene.
In other words with less than 2% difference between them the Libs and the Cons are tied within the margin of error which looks like a minority government if an election were held today
Aren't you supposed to be focused on NDP's numbers? Why does the Lib-Con race matter to you, if you think they are the same?
Margin of error
Gauging voter intentions has never been easy, but after several spectacular recent flops, Canada's pollsters are trying to return the industry to its once credible predictor of public opinion
Nor was 2012 an anomaly: Alberta-scale disasters have become increasingly common in the world of public-opinion research, from Israel to Scotland to the United States.
In Canada, with a federal election looming, the polling industry is in a nervous state. Its earnings are shrinking, its reputation is tarnished and its methodologies are in flux. Known for their bravado and influence, many pollsters have been left feeling vulnerable.
"These are not the golden days of polling, that's for sure," said Scott MacKay, president of Winnipeg-based Probe Research. "There are many reasons and they sort of overlap and intersect with each other. It's sort of the perfect storm."
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/survey-says-the-future-of-...
THE POLLS ARE ALL WRONG. A STARTUP CALLED CIVIS IS OUR BEST HOPE TO FIX THEM
https://www.wired.com/2016/06/civis-election-polling-clinton-sanders-trump/
Aren't you supposed to be focused on NDP's numbers? Why does the Lib-Con race matter to you, if you think they are the same?
Because the NDP has far more influence to effect positive change in a LPC or CPC minority government than a LPC or CPC majority one???
Nah... LPC minority government, perhaps. But how much was the NDP able to achieve during Harper's two minority governments?
Nah... LPC minority government, perhaps. But how much was the NDP able to achieve during Harper's two minority governments?
How much COULD the NDP achieve when the Liberals were voting to keep the Cons in power, over and over again? And after years of voting to keep the Cons in power dozens of times, what right did the Liberals have to even be surprised when the voters no longer believed they were different than the Cons, and what else could possibly have happened but that the Libs would see their support collapse?
Because otherwise the NDP would have triggered another election, for which they didn't have the money for? Is that it?
How many times did the Liberals vote to keep the Cons in power?
Kudos to the NDP for their symbolic gesture of voting against a Con government, knowing that they don't have the votes to trigger an election. But that's hardly an actual achievement, and certainly it's not worth looking forward to, in the next hypothetical parliament.
Nah... LPC minority government, perhaps. But how much was the NDP able to achieve during Harper's two minority governments?
How much COULD the NDP achieve when the Liberals were voting to keep the Cons in power, over and over again? And after years of voting to keep the Cons in power dozens of times, what right did the Liberals have to even be surprised when the voters no longer believed they were different than the Cons, and what else could possibly have happened but that the Libs would see their support collapse?
It would be great if the Libs could be held to a minority but the election isn't tomorrow. This is just the late mid-term pre-election slump. The Liberals are most certainly timing themselves to peak election day. They know they can't sustain a political high 24/7 throughout a mandate. They know there will be times that they are spending political capital, like on the pipelines.
Having said that the other parties also have plans which they will not be sharing anytime soon.
How many times did the Liberals vote to support Harper?
How many times did the Liberals vote to support Harper?
Why does it matter?
Technically, Dion's Libs abstained multiple times. But apparently, Dion's Liberals were supposed to trigger one election after another, because that'd very productive and help the progressive cause??
Obviously the FPTP parliamentary system was not working when the tail (a Con minority governemnt) was wagging the dog (i.e. the progressive majority of this country). But having multiple elections would not have been helpful, since only the Cons had the money for it, in addition to the corporate media backing. I was truly hopeful for the anti-Con coalition. Too bad Iggy didn't go through with it, but I can also understand why he didn't. He was not an elected party leader and would have been an unelected PM.
[quote=NorthReport]
Technically, Dion's Libs abstained multiple times. But apparently, Dion's Liberals were supposed to trigger one election after another, because that'd very productive and help the progressive cause??
Obviously the FPTP parliamentary system was not working when the tail (a Con minority governemnt) was wagging the dog (i.e. the progressive majority of this country). But having multiple elections would not have been helpful, since only the Cons had the money for it, in addition to the corporate media backing. I was truly hopeful for the anti-Con coalition. Too bad Iggy didn't go through with it, but I can also understand why he didn't. He was not an elected party leader and would have been an unelected PM.
Dion was overthrown by party insiders and Iggy was put in his place because Dion made that deal with Layton. Then Iggy led them to the worst showing ever and the backroom was overthrown.
I don't think Dion was overthrown because of the coalition deal, which Liberal MPs overwhemingly supported. Dion was very ineffective at selling the coalition. Some polls begun showing a Con "majority" as a result. (That's 40% FPTP majority, NOT 50%+.) Dion was thrown out because he was bad at campaigning and bad at representing the coalition. Both Liberal MPs and the NDP were openly embarrassed for him. Anyone remembers his blurry video? I still remember Liberal MPs saying they were dissappointed. Nobody could predict that Iggy would do even worse.
IMHO, perhaps the strangest thing about Dion and Ignatieff is that they were both pretty accomplished individuals who nevertheless failed to launch.
And meanwhile we've got Doug "I can make stickers" Ford looking at potentially governing the most populous province by virtue of having the same parents as Toronto's arguably most unfit Mayor. Huh.
