"The Blowout No One Sees Coming" from Vantage Data House

[LauraInLA]

Has anyone heard of this group?

“Vantage has been tracking seven swing states daily since August. Until recently, the race consistently appeared as a toss-up. Just a few days ago, the numbers started to shift. It's clear the momentum is moving away from Trump. Here's how our nightly tracking data (1,200 interviews per state) stacks up against what FiveThirtyEight (538) and RealClearPolitics (RCP) are reporting in their averages.”

https://app.vantagedatahouse.com/analysis/TheBlowoutNoOneSeesComing-1

[Wiz Imp]

1. Never heard of them but very encouraging analysis

Hopefully they are right.

[dweller]

2. Hmmm

“ When a campaign releases a poll, it’s not to inform the public; it’s to shape public perception in favor of their candidate or agenda.”


✌🏻

[Fiendish Thingy]

3. Polling averages cannot be trusted due to manipulation by corrupt Red Wave pollsters. Nt

[CaptainTruth]

18. Some polling averages exclude partisan polls.

The key is to know which polls are included in the average & how they're being weighted, if at all.

[Fiendish Thingy]

33. No major aggregator excludes all Red Wave pollsters

538 is excluding a couple of the worst ones, but not all of them.

I don’t think RCP is excluding any.

[CaptainTruth]

47. Which is why I ignore major aggregators like the two you mentioned...

...& only pay attention to independent analysts who are transparent about how they compute their "average" which of course is never a simple average.

[PAMod]

54. Check out VoteHub.

Their only filter is they only use polls graded B, B+, A & A+ .

[Rstrstx]

57. This looks more realistic

But a true nail biter, 270-268 with Michigan carrying Harris over the top by a few tenths of point.

Vanguard’s data is not jiving with the early voting numbers, especially Florida. They have Trump up in AZ which agrees with the early numbers coming in but Florida is WAY off.

The Blue Wall looks much better, which just enough to get to 270.

In every swing state it will come down to how the independents go, though FL and AZ don’t look swingy at this point, at least at the presidential level.

[Fiendish Thingy]

58. Graded by who?

538 hasn’t given letter grade ratings for nearly two years, and even “highly rated” (based on last performance) NYT polls have been consistent outliers this year.

[Dennis Donovan]

4. Interesting snip:

Noise in the Numbers: The Great Polling Mirage 



Why do our numbers tell a different story than the averages? Simple: public polling is riddled with noise.

Republicans are in serious trouble, though few are willing to acknowledge it. Every major Republican Senate candidate is trailing in swing states according to leaked Senate Leadership Fund polling. Some split-ticket voting still happens, but every major Senate race is down by 5-8 points while Trump leads in the presidential polls. The math just doesn’t add up.

[LAS14]

10. How, exactly, does "noise" differ among the polls? What is "noise?" nt

[Dennis Donovan]

15. Here's an old article from 2018:

How To Block The ‘Noise’ When It Comes To Political Polling

Polls are still a good way for the media and the general public to gauge political races, as long as they’re taken in aggregate.

[LAS14]

19. Interesting article, but it doesn't tell me what "noise" is....

.... unless it is just "stuff that makes a poll inaccurate." The word "noise" was used only in the title and the closing sentence.

[cally]

30. Well, I'll try

Long time time statistics days for me but the noise in just normal variation found in surveys. Sometimes the sample taken has responses that differ significantly from other polls or earlier polls or your statistical assumptions in designing polls. Statisticians expect this and refer to this as noise. If other polls have similar responses than these are taken more seriously.

For example, a pollster take s a daily tracking poll. One days results show black women voting overwhelming for Trump. Since all these polls have relatively small sample sizes for various demographics, then a few abnormal answers will change the results. That’s noise.

This is just normal noise and expected. Nothing nefarious.

[LAS14]

48. Thanks! So if a poll has noise that doesn't necessarily mean a poll is bad, right? nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

50. ALL polls have noise, more or less, so yes, not necessarily bad. . . . . . nt

[cally]

56. Yes

Not necessary indicative of manipulation of results

[Bernardo de La Paz]

31. Voters' intentions form a signal. "Noise" is an engineering term meaning anything corrupting a signal.

We are familiar with noise on a radio when there is loss of signal beginning to occur from distance or weak receiver or poor antenna location or nearby devices generating interference. The noise obscures the signal and makes it harder to perceive and understand.

Ideally (never realized), a poll is an instant snapshot (signal) of all the voters intentions at a particular moment.

Noise comes in (more or less) because of many factors that are dealt with more or less.

1) A poll is not taken in an instant. Typically the data is gathered over several days, or at least several hours. A voter might change their mind after being asked and recorded but before the data collection closes.

2) A poll is only a sample of the voters, not all of them. So the sample might be more or less an accurate representation of the voters as to affiliation, demographics, and geographic location.

3) People responding might lie or make mistakes.

4) People recording responses can make mistakes.

5) Questions may be poorly formed or poorly understood by a voter.

6) When various adjustments are made by pollsters to the output numbers to correct for past biases, known sampling errors, etc., mistakes can be made.

7) Malfeasance can creep in at any stage where participants and pollsters attempt to put a thumb on the scale to skew results for hidden aims.

All of these factors put noise into the results, i.e. they do not perfectly reflect reality.

[LAS14]

49. Thanks. nt

[Farmer-Rick]

23. It's all those manipulated, faked GOP polls

Last edited Thu Oct 24, 2024, 03:45 PM - Edit history (1)

Here's what I read on another post.

It's the best explanation I have seen yet of why the polls are showing a tight race when it's clearly a Harris win.

"This time, because they started earlier and are producing more polls their polls are often only 1-2 points to the right of the polling average or independent polls. They are working the averages more carefully this time, over using the time and volume to move them gradually so the op is not as crude and as easy to see as last time. If Harris leads by 2.5 points and you drop 5 polls showing the race tied or her ahead by 1 or even 2 points the averages moves and it looks like she is losing altitude.

Consider this Tweet from one of the top analysts at 538. It is part of a thread referring to what was a very junky PA poll by TIPP.

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16f8f964-36e2-4522-a702-7bbb12522595_898x328.png

(I couldn't copy the image but the link will take you to the tweet he's referring to.)

So here is 538 admitting that even something they consider a bad poll could move the average in PA by a tenth of a point. OK, red wave pollsters say, got it. Appreciate the tip! So I just need to produce more polls to move the average by a meaningful amount. Which is what they’ve done. If each of these polls moves the average by a tenth of a point then 16 of them in October in PA could have moved the average by 1.6 points - and poof a Harris lead becomes a tied race.

Elon Musk and primary political patron of JD Vance. Polymarket is buying product placement on sites and with influencers for their 2024 American election results even though NO AMERICAN CAN LEGALLY PARTICIPATE IN PROCESS THAT DETERMINES THE DATA. Polymarket is everywhere. Harry Enten higlights their data on CNN. Right wing influencers pump Polymarket maps showing Trump “winning” everyday. Nate Silver is an advisor to Polymarket. Elon and Twitter of course are pumping this stuff, hard."

https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/vp-harris-and-her-campaign-are-working

They are creating a Red Mirage with these manipulated polls. They use-to NOT do sooooo many. Now they do them daily. So the sites that aggregate polling data are very likely very wrong.

If you have a pollster you think is truly honest with no pressure to rig a poll or 2 for the filthy-rich oligarchs, then that is probably your best bet of getting good polling results. I'm sure the Harris campaign has them.

The aggregate sites are too easily manipulated, no matter how well they claim to weigh the polls they put in the mix. That weighing itself is put a slight bias into the polling results.

And ignore the betting sites. If you're rich, dumping money into a betting site to create an appearance of Trump winning is easier than buying pollsters.

[LymphocyteLover]

42. yeah, I've seen that. Very curious discrepancy.

[dweller]

5. Also interesting data on split ticket

One particularly confusing case is in North Carolina where Lt. Governor Mark Robinson’s disastrous gubernatorial campaign is sinking every race on the ticket. Robinson is trailing by 22 points overall and a staggering 41 points among women. Yet, Trump is leading by 0.4-1.2 in the averages. It’s hard to imagine a Republican losing by 41 points among women while Trump is supposedly running a close race. Even without the gender gap, the idea that Robinson is down 22 points while Trump is ahead defies logic. This would be a 23% split ticket margin, which would be astonishing. 







✌🏻

[Doodley]

7. OMG! I didn't realize Kamala was losing in every swing states on RCP and most on 538.

Praying Vantage Data is right.

[SunSeeker]

21. It reflects a recent flood of Republican-leaning polls meant to influence the averages.

https://newrepublic.com/article/187425/gop-polls-rigging-averages-trump

It is a cynical attempt to hide Kamala's momentum and make it appear that Trump has momentum. The polling aggregators like RCP and 538 are being used in this scheme.

[wolfie001]

34. Yes!!!

I'm hoping it's just Red Wave BS hyping they're so adept at using. Just a tidal wave of misinfo.

[calimary]

41. Well, I guess that's one way to put your thumb on the scale.

[lees1975]

37. Real Clear Politics is itself a Republican leaning organization.

They favor the red leaning polls over the neutral ones.

[OnDoutside]

52. Might be worth looking at Hopium Chronicles By Simon Rosenberg

He gives a very calming overview of what's going on with the polls. Basically Republicans are dumping crap polls to influence the likes of 538, and the avalanche recently has pushed 1.5 to 2% back towards Trump, but it's made up stuff.

https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/

[LauraInLA]

8. This is one point I. Very uncertain of -- Robinson is simply soooo terrible that I'm willing to bet

he bucks the trend and Republican voters stick with Trump but can’t bear to support Robinson.

[LymphocyteLover]

43. Yes, NC doesn't make sense. In fact, very little of the polling data makes sense. A lot of people are saying Trump is

running stronger now than in 2016 and 2020 and it makes no fucking sense at all, given all that's happened since the 2020 election (Jan 6th, the various criminal indictments and convictions and his general mental deterioration).

The only thing I can figure is either the polls are just fundamentally FUBARed or inflation and GOP nonsense about the border scrambled a lot of people's brains.

[GusBob]

6. Very interesting

I understand, (kinda) this point:

" This poll says its a dead heat, so you better vote" instead of "relax this poll says we got it in the bag" The media of course prefers the horse race, blow outs are boring. But surprise blowouts? Now there's some copy!

[LAS14]

9. Are the Vantage number an average, or the results of the latest poll?

I wish I were technically savvy enough to read this article with ease.

Would some of you smarter DUers comment on it?

[LauraInLA]

11. I'm unclear on this, as well, but they claim they're getting data from 40k responses per state per year with an

“Authenticated Predictive Projection Model”. Like you, I’d like to hear other more informed opinions .

[MontanaFarmer]

28. Looks to be the latest numbers but

not from 1-off polls but tracking polls. To me the fact that it's a set of numbers from tracking polls should allow it to pick up the movement from independent voters pretty accurately. Certainly interesting.

[Martin68]

12. I hope they're right.

[LauraInLA]

13. My husband's take:

‘So, first of all, it's not a blowout no one sees coming. The polling data clearly shows that there are enough electoral votes in play that either candidate could have an overwhelming electoral college advantage.

Their analysis about the correlation between Senate polling vs. presidential polling is kind of silly. It's like saying, "look at the national polls, because those have correlated with outcomes the vast majority of the time". many of these polls ask about the Senate and the presidential race at the same time, so if you get different numbers, it literally means a respondent is telling you they are not intending to vote along party lines. Regardless of how unusual that may or may not be, the poll is telling you that isn't following historical trends, it's because reality isn't following historical trends.’

[LauraInLA]

14. Apparently this org has arisen from an Entrepreneurial Accelerator Program.

[GusBob]

17. It sounds to me like

(Without doing any research aka pulling an opinion out of my backside)

It sounds to me like they are shooting to make a "splash play" prediction

[wolfie001]

16. Well, the orange fatso is an insane shitbag so......

.....I would hope this is the logical outcome.

[dsc]

20. NC will be an interesting case study

Stein is ahead by 13.8 in the average on RCP 52 to 38.2. If anything like that margin holds, the ticket splitting for a Trump win would have to be way bigger than it was in either 2016 or 2020. In both of those years we elected a Dem gov but Trump carried the state. Trump did just under 4% better than the GOP result in governor (.2% loss vs 3.5% win) and he did about 6% better in 2020 (4.5 % loss vs 1.5% win). He would require a nearly 20% differential to win, I would guess it is doable but not likely.

[Ray Bruns]

22. Are you telling me that talking about Arnold Palmer's penis is not a winning campaign strategy?

[Farmer-Rick]

24. It's "they're eating the dogs"

That will win the race for Trump.

Not so much the "They're eating the cats, they're eating the pets." That will win it. And now he's going on about geese. Can't lose with those huge national concerns.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

53. I guess he's wondering where the geese went - how about Florida.

I’ve been seeing big flocks of birds up in the sky here.

[PatrickforB]

26. No doubt. Trumpy is lurching from major mistake to major mistake. n/t

[PatrickforB]

25. This is very good information! Thank you. n/t

[jgmiller]

27. Never heard of them but it's interesting

I like that they were very open in their analysis and methodolgy, there's some weird things in here though. Just on a gut feeling GA, FL and NC seem way too skewed to Harris. PA has that feel too but they are a hard one to peg down so it might be realistic yet AZ,MI and NV seem logical. Let's hope they are right though!

[bucolic_frolic]

29. If these guys have gamed the pollsters, they will be top dog going forward

Data tells us a lot about everything if we do enough analysis

[Orange Buffoon]

32. I don't understand Figure 7

It shows a tremendous shift toward Kamala from September to October in all the swing states EXCEPT North Carolina, where it shows her support lessening from + 24 to +10. Why should N.C. be the mirror opposite of all the other swing states?

[kerry-is-my-prez]

35. I've been doing my own own averages. At least half of the polls are RW.

[lees1975]

36. Look at their data collection.

Seven swing states, 1,200 responses daily. That's catching any trend for sure. And their methodology of tracking voters on more than one race, and candidate, seems a lot more sound than the separate responses and sometimes no other responses, of other polls. They've provided evidence that shows ticket splitting is not anywhere near what it would have to be if the numbers the polls put out are accurate. I mean, in Arizona, for example, how could it be that a full 10% of Trump voters would not vote for Kari Lake, or that 10% of Gallego's voters would not vote at all for the top of the ticket? That would be historically different from past patterns.

Back in 2000, I subscribed to a Gallup daily tracker. It was frustrating at times, because it was just raw data, no factoring or any guesses on "voter enthusiasm," but it also turned out to be remarkably accurate. One day, it would show an 11 point Gore lead, the next day, Bush was up by 10. But at the end, they were within a single point of the final count, which was close and which resulted in a Gore popular vote victory.

[Katcat]

38. Hubby and I voted today

WV and i have never seen as many voters as I saw today. Red WV so that might be bad but I’m glad they voted

[shotten99]

39. Thanks for this!

I have an unhealthy obsession with polling this time of year and reading something like this definitely calms my nerves a bit.

Regardless, bad polling news makes me nervous so I donate when I see it.

Good polling news makes me think my donations are working so I donate more.

[PortTack]

40. I don't buy that Harris is behind in AZ. And I don't buy her taking FL. They didn't list WI...seems odd

Last edited Thu Oct 24, 2024, 04:43 PM - Edit history (2)

On edit: so AZ knows how crazy kari lake is and a total trump sycophant, but their going to split the ticket and vote for Galleo and then for tfg? Nah…not buying that.
And, if Harris were ahead by 4+ in FL and the campaign’s internal polls said so…they would be in the state with big dollars and she would be there campaigning. Her campaign continues to be very strategic, spending campaign dollars in swing states where she absolutely needs to win and some in states that might flip. Hello…she’s not been to FL. Yes, she’s going to TX, that’s to help Allred.

These numbers don’t appear to be a blow out. I’m not sure I buy any of it. Certainly not putting any weight in 538 or rcp.

Not paying attention to the polls, but listening to Simon Rosenberg and Tom Bonier…they’ve got the goods.

[crimycarny]

59. Later on in the article Vantage House says Trump unlikely to lose FL

Though the chart says +4 for Harris in FL (according to Vantage House), later on in the article they write:

Florida’s Shifting Ground

Can Harris take Florida? Possibly, but we don’t expect Trump to lose. He’s been polling ahead by +2 to +4 for a while, and Harris’ recent gains are within the margin of error.



So I'm a bit confused by the chart posted in the article, but Vantage House is stating they don't expect Trump to lose Florida. I agree that the biggest indication Trump is winning Florida is the fact that Harris hasn't campaigned there.

FL would be nice as it would reduce my blood pressure much earlier on Election Night, but I don't think Florida will be needed.

[Warpy]

44. Political polling company

instrumental in keeping the "horse race" going for the media. I can only assume they're reading the writing that has always been on the wall and trying to salvage their reputation at the last ,minute.

[BWdem4life]

45. How did WI get replaced with FL in their list of 7?

Not a single mention of WI, even though they conclude that it's unlikely FL will break our way. Very interesting article anyway...

[Coexist]

46. Kick

[getagrip_already]

51. Noone? Lol....

Many of us have been laughing at the polls for years.

Its laughable they havent picked up the roe effect, or the veteran backlash, or the democracy outcry.

Really? Have peoples heads been that far up the fox's hole?

[Dem4life1234]

55. It shouldn't be that close in the first place

Tells about the character of many living in the United States.

[RidinWithHarris]

60. Florida +3.7% for Harris?

Damn, that's be great if that's accurate. If we see Florida come in for Harris, I think the election is a done deal. Some states might be counting mail-in ballots for a while, Trumper legal challenges might clog up the works for a while before any network wants to declare a winner, but in my opinion having Florida would seal the deal and make all the rest noise.