Only in the Beltway's obsessively negative coverage of Hillary Clinton, is a 20 point breathlessly headlined as 'Boy, she's in trouble now! This is where it ends.'
She's only ahead by 20. Tomorrow the sky officially starts falling on her campaign.
Vice President Joe Biden has not announced a run for president, yet he's up 10 percentage points from one month ago in a new national poll, while Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has taken a 10-point drop.
"A Monmouth University poll released Tuesday finds that Clinton's support has dropped to 42 percent among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters; at the same time, Biden's support has increased to 22 percent. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is up 4 points and now sits closely behind Biden with 20 percent of the vote, placing the two in an essential tie, given the poll's 5.3 percent margin of error."
"The remaining Democratic candidates, Martin O'Malley, Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb, continue to struggle in the race, taking just 1 percent or less of the vote."
"The poll also finds that Biden and Clinton are equally liked among Democrats: 71 percent of Democrats rate them each favorably. Forty-one percent of Democrats rate Sanders favorably, while 45 percent still have no opinion of him."
"According to the HuffPost Pollster National Democratic chart, which aggregates all publicly available polls, Clinton continues to maintain a strong lead with 45 percent of the vote; Sanders is second with 23 percent and Biden now takes 17 percent."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/joe-biden-hillary-clinton-poll_55eeff8ce4b093be51bc2765
There is so much dishonest spin in this small group of paragraphs. The central narrative is that she had a 40 point lead in July and now it's 20 points so obviously as she lost 20 points since the last poll the next one will have her tied and then she'll be down by 20.
As Nate Silver always points out if someone's poll numbers drop from 50% to 43% all things being equal you'd expect them to go back to 50% than 35%-it's called regression to the mean.
But the media reports based on the snowball theory. The momentum is all against Hillary and it's just building and building because of well-emails, and Bernie, and Biden, and just because people don't like Hillary, she lost in 2008 and the same exact thing is going to happen again, etc.
So the whole Beltway narrative is just very silly but that doesn't mean they won't keep repeating it in the vain hope that saying what isn't so enough times might make it so, just a little bit.
I mean, it makes me think of what Tom Brown say-he gets it from David Romer-about Feynman Certainty
What could falsify your theory?
What would the media have to see to admit that maybe Hillary isn't just plummeting across the board? My argument is that there is nothing that would make them admit it.
I guess they assume because she had a 40 point lead in earlier polls but 20 in recent polls that is calamitous. Surely if she is really going to roll to the nominatio she should lead every poll by 40 points.
A very ignorant and childish understanding of how polls work in campaigns but I guess that's what they imagine.
What would I have to see to agree the race is really tighenting? Well for starters for her to be losing in someplace other than NH. It's tightened in Iowa though she still has an 11 point lead but even Iowa is relatively more Bernie friendly as it has lots of white liberals and few minorities.
One thing that would change my mind is if I saw him dominating among any other group but white liberals.
P.S. Another silly thing the above quote implies is that Biden is some kind of super candidate because he's over 20% and he's not even running yet.
To the contrary, you'd expect him to be doing better before he runs. A lot of hey is made out of Hillary's drop in favorability-though she remains very well liked among Democrats as the above quote admits-but this is to be expected. Non-partisan figures are always more popular than once they start running for office.
Biden's cakewalk would be over if he really does put his hat in the ring.
Basically
1. The media has it in for Hillary-and old story, particularly at the allegedly liberal NY Times.
2. Even apart from this they want to convince everyone that there is a lot of suspense in the Democratic nomination because otherwise there's not much to talk about-or at least so they think.
But maybe the media should worry more about informing the public than framing things in a way that they imagine will make it more exciting-much less just because they have an axe grind with Hillary.
P.S.S. And why do they have an axe to grind with her? Well it's a Clinton thing, it's true. Then there is her gender which certainly doesn't make them less critical of her.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/08/joe-biden-getting-a-gender-advantage.html
She's only ahead by 20. Tomorrow the sky officially starts falling on her campaign.
Vice President Joe Biden has not announced a run for president, yet he's up 10 percentage points from one month ago in a new national poll, while Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has taken a 10-point drop.
"A Monmouth University poll released Tuesday finds that Clinton's support has dropped to 42 percent among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters; at the same time, Biden's support has increased to 22 percent. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is up 4 points and now sits closely behind Biden with 20 percent of the vote, placing the two in an essential tie, given the poll's 5.3 percent margin of error."
"The remaining Democratic candidates, Martin O'Malley, Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb, continue to struggle in the race, taking just 1 percent or less of the vote."
"The poll also finds that Biden and Clinton are equally liked among Democrats: 71 percent of Democrats rate them each favorably. Forty-one percent of Democrats rate Sanders favorably, while 45 percent still have no opinion of him."
"According to the HuffPost Pollster National Democratic chart, which aggregates all publicly available polls, Clinton continues to maintain a strong lead with 45 percent of the vote; Sanders is second with 23 percent and Biden now takes 17 percent."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/joe-biden-hillary-clinton-poll_55eeff8ce4b093be51bc2765
There is so much dishonest spin in this small group of paragraphs. The central narrative is that she had a 40 point lead in July and now it's 20 points so obviously as she lost 20 points since the last poll the next one will have her tied and then she'll be down by 20.
As Nate Silver always points out if someone's poll numbers drop from 50% to 43% all things being equal you'd expect them to go back to 50% than 35%-it's called regression to the mean.
But the media reports based on the snowball theory. The momentum is all against Hillary and it's just building and building because of well-emails, and Bernie, and Biden, and just because people don't like Hillary, she lost in 2008 and the same exact thing is going to happen again, etc.
So the whole Beltway narrative is just very silly but that doesn't mean they won't keep repeating it in the vain hope that saying what isn't so enough times might make it so, just a little bit.
I mean, it makes me think of what Tom Brown say-he gets it from David Romer-about Feynman Certainty
What could falsify your theory?
What would the media have to see to admit that maybe Hillary isn't just plummeting across the board? My argument is that there is nothing that would make them admit it.
I guess they assume because she had a 40 point lead in earlier polls but 20 in recent polls that is calamitous. Surely if she is really going to roll to the nominatio she should lead every poll by 40 points.
A very ignorant and childish understanding of how polls work in campaigns but I guess that's what they imagine.
What would I have to see to agree the race is really tighenting? Well for starters for her to be losing in someplace other than NH. It's tightened in Iowa though she still has an 11 point lead but even Iowa is relatively more Bernie friendly as it has lots of white liberals and few minorities.
One thing that would change my mind is if I saw him dominating among any other group but white liberals.
P.S. Another silly thing the above quote implies is that Biden is some kind of super candidate because he's over 20% and he's not even running yet.
To the contrary, you'd expect him to be doing better before he runs. A lot of hey is made out of Hillary's drop in favorability-though she remains very well liked among Democrats as the above quote admits-but this is to be expected. Non-partisan figures are always more popular than once they start running for office.
Biden's cakewalk would be over if he really does put his hat in the ring.
Basically
1. The media has it in for Hillary-and old story, particularly at the allegedly liberal NY Times.
2. Even apart from this they want to convince everyone that there is a lot of suspense in the Democratic nomination because otherwise there's not much to talk about-or at least so they think.
But maybe the media should worry more about informing the public than framing things in a way that they imagine will make it more exciting-much less just because they have an axe grind with Hillary.
P.S.S. And why do they have an axe to grind with her? Well it's a Clinton thing, it's true. Then there is her gender which certainly doesn't make them less critical of her.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/08/joe-biden-getting-a-gender-advantage.html
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