Thread: Clinton-Trump debate today

You can watch it on twitter live, maybe? U.S. Presidential Debate

Originally Posted by Elkvis

It's all just a show. The election is a tool used by the establishment, along with professional sports, popular music, television, and movies, to subdue and manipulate the populace. The outcome is already decided. The new "leader" has already been chosen. If you're not a (b|tr)illionaire (look up the Rothschild family), you don't have a say.

It really is just a show, because the president isn't as powerful a position as people think. A lot of people should've paid more attention in high school government classes about the roles/responsibilities of all the different political positions in the U.S.

Summary: Presidential election, omg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Meanwhile, in congress, where ........ really matters...

Vote for Johnson, is my only remark.

Originally Posted by Epy

Vote for Johnson, is my only remark.

My vote is for President Camacho!

The outcome looks more like sliding towards Clinton. Despite what casual observation of the 2nd debate suggests, polls show 57% Clinton and 34% Trump. But I gotta say as an outsider, I am astonished these two have even qualified for a post that was once held by the likes of Lincoln, JFK, Roosevelt.. Maybe this has something to do with Trump's popularity, he just seems to be alien to the word "classy" compared to the greats that were once POTUS. Even though Trump weighs less on the "scandal" scale, I am yet to see Clinton losing her cool once on stage.

Originally Posted by Mario F.

I think it's got nothing to do with him. He's the symptom. We've lost the great leadership values of the past and are being ruled by people lesser than we are. When the great seat of power should only be reached by people greater than we are. We can see that all around the world. It's not just Trump, or Hillary, or Obama, or Bush. It is also figures like Schroder, Merkel, Sarkozy, Blair, Cameron, Berlusconi, Prodi, Puttin, ... a long list that I need to stop here. We even permit sad and pathetic comical figures like Juncker or Barroso to reach positions of power within our supranational organizations.

There's been a systematic deterioration of democratic values that permits lesser individuals to climb the ladder of power and great individuals to refuse to participate or be removed from participation. Democracy is not rigged, but sick. A sickness that feeds on itself and corrodes future generations not allowing for the birth of great men or women that can change this downward spiral.

The thing is that, despite all the divisions and all the problems facing American society, I see in the United States a comparatively stronger civil society, better informed and that is still not acting as an eco of politics. We don't have in Europe influential civilians participating in the deconstruction of political arguments like Americans do. We don't have influential writers, influential thinkers, influential civil organizations. Heck, we don't even have shows like John Oliver. So there's still hope across the ocean that they can eventually manufacture a way out of something black and sinister that has hit Europe longer than it has hit them and has corroded us beyond repair.

The problem is TV. That reality trash basically resulted in politics going the same way, i.e. focus on shock value, controversy, conflict, etc. That's what politics and all media is now -- basically overly dramatic reality drivel like Jersey Shore and other similar forms of diarrhea.

The problem with thinking is that politics have become severely polarized because of previous point, and the advent of non-face-to-face communication makes it easier for people to generally disregard others' opinions. There's no reason to say "I disagree but respect your opinion" anymore because it's extinct. Social media has turned most everyone into Narcissists.

Everyone I talk to is either like "Lolz Trump is big evil dumb businessman republi........ hurhur" or "Lolz Hillary is going to let the muslims take over the country and take all our guns away!"

No one wants to sit back and look at both sides with objectivity. My personal opinion is that if you stand back and look at it with objectivity, Trump is an idiot with no business being president, and Hillary is a traditional (crooked) politician. She lost all respect from me after the email scandal, calling Trump supporters deplorables (see previous point about not respecting others' opinions), and collaborating with the DNC to suppress Bernie. If Bernie would've made it in the primary we'd have a good choice at least.

Neither candidate has a shred of decency. Honestly we don't even need the position of president, we should just abolish it.

Originally Posted by stevesmithx

polls show 57% Clinton and 34% Trump

Lies, damned lies, and political polls.

What poll are you referring to? CNN's 500-person poll that oversampled Democrats?
Because independent polls not undertaken by the establishment overwhelmingly show otherwise:

Originally Posted by Yarin

Lies, damned lies, and political polls.

What poll are you referring to? CNN's 500-person poll that oversampled Democrats?
Because independent polls not undertaken by the establishment overwhelmingly show otherwise:

Thing to remember is that we have 320 million people, and these 500-2000 sample sizes are crap. Polls are useless, just wait for the big tamale.

>> What poll are you referring to? CNN's 500-person poll that oversampled Democrats?
>> Because independent polls not undertaken by the establishment overwhelmingly show otherwise:

>> Thing to remember is that we have 320 million people, and these 500-2000 sample sizes are crap. Polls are useless, just wait for the big tamale.


I know this is a week old, but I'm surprised nobody responded to these messages. Regardless of how you feel about the candidates, at least educate yourselves on how polling works before making these types of comments.

First, to Yarin. The "not undertaken by the establishment" polls that appear to be in that picture are completely different than the polls that showed that Clinton "won" the debates. The polls in those pictures are merely surveys open to anybody who decides to click and answer them. This makes the population who respond not representative of the country as a whole. If the website doing the survey has an audience that prefers one candidate over another, then you will likely get an outcome in the survey favoring that candidate. If one candidate's supporters are more enthusiastic, especially about the outcome of these surveys, then you also might get an outcome in the survey favoring that candidate.

This is different than the scientific polls that showed Clinton "won" the debates. Scientific polls attempt to survey a sample of the country (or the subset of residents that might vote in the election). While there is certainly some margin of error in doing this kind of poll, it can generally be relied upon to give a rough estimate of how the entire population feels. If you look at several different independent scientific polls, you can get a pretty good sense of who people (or voters) feel "won" the debates.

In the last U.S. Presidential election, many Romney supporters didn't think the polls (which had a fairly strong consensus that Obama was up by about 2 points) were accurate. They thought that Romney's supporters were more enthusiastic, and that the polls oversampled Democrats. It turns out, the polls were pretty accurate and could be used to accurately predict the outcome in all 50 states. In fact, the polls underestimated Obama's support, and he won by about 4 points nationally.

The lesson is, don't ignore the "mainstream media" and "establishment" polls because you're biased against them, and definitely don't look at unscientific online surveys as evidence of anything. If you average the results of a few national polls, chances are you'll be within a couple points of the actual state of the race.


And Epy, I'm not sure why you think a sample size of 2000 out of the 225 million eligible voters is crap, especially when it is weighted scientifically. As I mentioned before, poll aggregators predicted the national vote to within a few points and predicted each state outcome last election and the election before. I mean, sure, one individual poll might be off by 10 points but there's no reason to wait for the big tamale to understand that (a) Clinton currently has a big lead and (b) her lead increased after the first and second debates.

Originally Posted by Daved

In the last U.S. Presidential election, many Romney supporters didn't think the polls (which had a fairly strong consensus that Obama was up by about 2 points) were accurate. They thought that Romney's supporters were more enthusiastic, and that the polls oversampled Democrats. It turns out, the polls were pretty accurate and could be used to accurately predict the outcome in all 50 states. In fact, the polls underestimated Obama's support, and he won by about 4 points nationally.

Another terrific sample size. How many presidential elections have we had? Historically, some elections have had huge changes over the course of months, and some have been as bad as 5% off between the election results and the last polls. Here's another great sample size: I only looked at Gallup's historical data

Election Polls -- Accuracy Record in Presidential Elections | Gallup Historical Trends
Gallup Presidential Election Trial-Heat Trends, 1936-2004

Originally Posted by Daved

And Epy, I'm not sure why you think a sample size of 2000 out of the 225 million eligible voters is crap, especially when it is weighted scientifically.

Because statistically, for a single poll, the best you can get assuming everything went perfectly (perfectly representative sample) is +/- 3%. That number increases as the population proportion gets farther away from 50%.

Assumptions: average sample size of polls = 1000, election is tied 50-50, 95% confidence.
p = population proportion
n = sample size

Standard error = sqrt(p(1-p)/n) = sqrt(0.5(1-0.5)/1000) = 1.58%
Multiplied by t-value for 95% confidence (1.96) = 3.1%
Confidence interval is then p +/- 3.1%
Play with that math if p <> 0.5; confidence interval gets bigger / worsens.
Basically, can only begin to suspect that the poll is meaningful if the spread is >6.2%. But that's absolute best case scenario.

Now if you take a bunch of different polls to make an average and do a CI for that...

Taking data from: Latest Election Polls 2016 - The New York Times

Code:

clc
clear

alpha=0.05; % 95% CI
n=10; % sample size
ts = [tinv(alpha/2,n) tinv(1-alpha/2,n)]; % critical t values

% hillary
x=[.47 .42 .42 .40 .45 .5 .43 .51 .51 .50];
CI=mean(x) + ts*std(x)/sqrt(n)

% trump
x=[.4 .42 .38 .41 .39 .41 .39 .36 .46 .38];
CI=mean(x) + ts*std(x)/sqrt(n)

results:

Code:

CI =

   0.43121   0.49079

CI =

   0.38063   0.41937

>>

So today, you can say that Hillary will probably win because the CIs do not overlap. But if you change the confidence level to 99%, you can't say that.

Moving on though, look at that same link above and look at the percentages over time...point is, yeah, if we had the election tomorrow, Hillary will probably win, but it's still 3 weeks away so these polls will become meaningless.

But the larger point is not who is going to win, the point is that you need huge sample sizes to really get accurate and meaningful, and that you have to wait for the polls that are very close to the election date.

Again, keep in mind this is all assuming that everything is perfectly unbiased. Lols.

Aside: who has the time or desire to actually answer phone surveys? Or any form of that crap? That's what you call sample bias.

Originally Posted by Daved

I know this is a week old, but I'm surprised nobody responded to these messages. Regardless of how you feel about the candidates, at least educate yourselves on how polling works before making these types of comments.

First, to Yarin. The "not undertaken by the establishment" polls that appear to be in that picture are completely different than the polls that showed that Clinton "won" the debates. The polls in those pictures are merely surveys open to anybody who decides to click and answer them. This makes the population who respond not representative of the country as a whole. If the website doing the survey has an audience that prefers one candidate over another, then you will likely get an outcome in the survey favoring that candidate. If one candidate's supporters are more enthusiastic, especially about the outcome of these surveys, then you also might get an outcome in the survey favoring that candidate.

This is different than the scientific polls that showed Clinton "won" the debates. Scientific polls attempt to survey a sample of the country (or the subset of residents that might vote in the election). While there is certainly some margin of error in doing this kind of poll, it can generally be relied upon to give a rough estimate of how the entire population feels. If you look at several different independent scientific polls, you can get a pretty good sense of who people (or voters) feel "won" the debates.

In the last U.S. Presidential election, many Romney supporters didn't think the polls (which had a fairly strong consensus that Obama was up by about 2 points) were accurate. They thought that Romney's supporters were more enthusiastic, and that the polls oversampled Democrats. It turns out, the polls were pretty accurate and could be used to accurately predict the outcome in all 50 states. In fact, the polls underestimated Obama's support, and he won by about 4 points nationally.

The lesson is, don't ignore the "mainstream media" and "establishment" polls because you're biased against them, and definitely don't look at unscientific online surveys as evidence of anything. If you average the results of a few national polls, chances are you'll be within a couple points of the actual state of the race.


And Epy, I'm not sure why you think a sample size of 2000 out of the 225 million eligible voters is crap, especially when it is weighted scientifically. As I mentioned before, poll aggregators predicted the national vote to within a few points and predicted each state outcome last election and the election before. I mean, sure, one individual poll might be off by 10 points but there's no reason to wait for the big tamale to understand that (a) Clinton currently has a big lead and (b) her lead increased after the first and second debates.

You call CNN's poll scientific, but you never once mention what methods they employ to ensure the accuracy of their polls. I'm sure you're not just slapping the "science" label on something just because you agree with it... right?

Most of the western media has a sickeningly evident bias. Regardless how you feel about the candidates. You would think CNN would be reporting on the leaked emails and Veritas tapes that amount to admissions to fraud, threatening the integrity of your democracy. Instead, they're too busy interviewing athletes on what they think about Trump's use of the term "locker room talk", and too busy attacking him for not objecting to a talk show host using a vulgar term for his daughter.

I do trust the judgment of the people who sat in the room with them during the debate, who applauded and laughed for Trump, and actually booed Clinton, over a poll conducted by an organization who's bias is so bloody obvious that it's disgusting.