GA-6 Special election discussion thread

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

GOP pollsters Trafalgar Group have it: Ossoff 50 Handel 47

There polls were super Republican in 2016, but most ended up being pretty accurate.

Trafalgar polled the LA runoff and the SC R runoff excellently. Their only error in 2016 was NV, which is ridiculously hard to poll. I'd imagine these numbers are pretty spot on. But remember that undecideds in Georgia go basically 100% republican, so this is basically a 50/50 finding.

[Hindsight was 2020]

GOP pollsters Trafalgar Group have it: Ossoff 50 Handel 47

There polls were super Republican in 2016, but most ended up being pretty accurate.

Trafalgar polled the LA runoff and the SC R runoff excellently. Their only error in 2016 was NV, which is ridiculously hard to poll. I'd imagine these numbers are pretty spot on. But remember that undecideds in Georgia go basically 100% republican, so this is basically a 50/50 finding.

Undecideds broke for Ossoff last time

[GeorgiaModerate]

GOP pollsters Trafalgar Group have it: Ossoff 50 Handel 47

There polls were super Republican in 2016, but most ended up being pretty accurate.

Can we spot calling them super Republican when they were the most accurate state level polls?

Also, *their

Well, the actual results were pretty super for Republicans.

[GeorgiaModerate]

GOP pollsters Trafalgar Group have it: Ossoff 50 Handel 47

There polls were super Republican in 2016, but most ended up being pretty accurate.

Ossoff's support also seems to be a tiny bit firmer than Handel's; she has a larger percentage of leaners than he does.

[Hindsight was 2020]

These all seem to be saying the same thing about this race which is Ossoff wins 2-3 an it should really concern Handel that she has never came close to 50 in any poll but Ossoff has hit it a couple times

[Adam Griffin]

GOP pollsters Trafalgar Group have it: Ossoff 50 Handel 47

There polls were super Republican in 2016, but most ended up being pretty accurate.

Can we spot calling them super Republican when they were the most accurate state level polls?

Also, *their

There's a difference between being right coincidentally and actually being right. If I correctly calculate the odds of a quarter landing on heads three times in a row, then that makes me right. If I correctly guess that the quarter will land on heads three times in a row, then that makes me lucky.

That's why there are so many "pollsters" in each election cycle who get bestowed with the title of "[one of the] most accurate pollsters of the election cycle", and then proceed to being hilariously wrong in future ones (just like they were in the past). In most cases, their methodologies haven't changed; they just lucked out. If a pollster predicts in every election that the results are going to be more GOP/DEM than other pollsters are showing, and the results in one election cycle do in fact end up being more GOP/DEM than most expected, then voila: "most accurate pollster"!

TL;DR: broken clock is right twice a day; Trafalgar is a sh**t pollster

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

Can anyone please tell me how margin of error is calculated? Thank you in advance.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Can anyone please tell me how margin of error is calculated? Thank you in advance.

http://www.dummies.com/education/math/statistics/how-to-calculate-the-margin-of-error-for-a-sample-proportion/ is a pretty good explanation.

[The Other Castro]

They're sending me to Georgia tomorrow until the election, this should be interesting.

[GeorgiaModerate]

They're sending me to Georgia tomorrow until the election, this should be interesting.

Please continue to send us dispatches from the front lines.

[The Other Castro]

FWIW, that poll also has Ossoff winning the early vote 56-44.

[Adam Griffin]

FWIW, that poll also has Ossoff winning the early vote 56-44.

Would this be...good? Dems won the early vote in April by 30 points, but presumably a greater share of the electorate has voted early this time.

[GeorgiaModerate]

FWIW, that poll also has Ossoff winning the early vote 56-44.

Would this be...good? Dems won the early vote in April by 30 points, but presumably a greater share of the electorate has voted early this time.

I think it's believable, and Republicans seem to be cannibalizing a lot of their election day vote this time

I do too.  With the large number of Republican candidates in the first round, many of their voters probably waited until Election Day to make up their minds.  That factor isn't present in the runoff.  There was a comment by one of the well-known analysts (sorry, don't remember who) a few weeks ago that he thought Handel needed at least 46 or 47% of the early vote.

[OneJ]

GOP pollsters Trafalgar Group have it: Ossoff 50 Handel 47

There polls were super Republican in 2016, but most ended up being pretty accurate.

Can we spot calling them super Republican when they were the most accurate state level polls?

Also, *their

There's a difference between being right coincidentally and actually being right. If I correctly calculate the odds of a quarter landing on heads three times in a row, then that makes me right. If I correctly guess that the quarter will land on heads three times in a row, then that makes me lucky.

That's why there are so many "pollsters" in each election cycle who get bestowed with the title of "[one of the] most accurate pollsters of the election cycle", and then proceed to being hilariously wrong in future ones (just like they were in the past). In most cases, their methodologies haven't changed; they just lucked out. If a pollster predicts in every election that the results are going to be more GOP/DEM than other pollsters are showing, and the results in one election cycle do in fact end up being more GOP/DEM than most expected, then voila: "most accurate pollster"!

TL;DR: broken clock is right twice a day; Trafalgar is a sh**t pollster

Great point Adam. I was just going to ask isn't Trafagular a bad pollster in general earlier.

[GeorgiaModerate]

GOP pollsters Trafalgar Group have it: Ossoff 50 Handel 47

There polls were super Republican in 2016, but most ended up being pretty accurate.

Can we spot calling them super Republican when they were the most accurate state level polls?

Also, *their

There's a difference between being right coincidentally and actually being right. If I correctly calculate the odds of a quarter landing on heads three times in a row, then that makes me right. If I correctly guess that the quarter will land on heads three times in a row, then that makes me lucky.

That's why there are so many "pollsters" in each election cycle who get bestowed with the title of "[one of the] most accurate pollsters of the election cycle", and then proceed to being hilariously wrong in future ones (just like they were in the past). In most cases, their methodologies haven't changed; they just lucked out. If a pollster predicts in every election that the results are going to be more GOP/DEM than other pollsters are showing, and the results in one election cycle do in fact end up being more GOP/DEM than most expected, then voila: "most accurate pollster"!

TL;DR: broken clock is right twice a day; Trafalgar is a sh**t pollster

Great point Adam. I was just going to ask isn't Trafagular a bad pollster in general earlier.

538 gives them a C rating based on 12 polls.

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

And usually the predictit market is very easily swayed, but this poll barely even moved it.

[GeorgiaModerate]

For reference:

In April (all votes), Fulton was 45%, Cobb 32% and Dekalb 23%.

In early vote, Fulton was 53%, Cobb 26% and Dekalb 21%.

Through today:

Cobb 22479 (18.8%)
DeKalb 28159 (23.6%)
Fulton 68907 (57.6%)
Total 119545

[GeorgiaModerate]

For reference:

In April (all votes), Fulton was 45%, Cobb 32% and Dekalb 23%.

In early vote, Fulton was 53%, Cobb 26% and Dekalb 21%.

Through today:

Cobb 22479 (18.8%)
DeKalb 28159 (23.6%)
Fulton 68907 (57.6%)
Total 119545

Also for reference: the distribution of registered voters in the district is approximately Cobb 29%, DeKalb 23%, Fulton 48%.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Wow maybe Cobb just fell to far behind early to catch up by EV an will be in third place which is awful for Karen

[The Other Castro]

It's not clear whether Cobb's under-performance so far in EV will translate to a lower portion of the vote total once the election day vote is in.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

In less time than this stupid election has been dragging on, the UK Labour party with less money than Ossoff spent went from 20 points behind to losing by 2 and now ahead.

[Hammy]

In less time than this stupid election has been dragging on, the UK Labour party with less money than Ossoff spent went from 20 points behind to losing by 2 and now ahead.

To be fair, the amount of money in politics is actually regulated there via heavy restrictions on political advertising.

[Holmes]

In less time than this stupid election has been dragging on, the UK Labour party with less money than Ossoff spent went from 20 points behind to losing by 2 and now ahead.

Cool. We'll soon live in a world where both Prime Minister May and Representative Ossoff are a thing.

[Beet]

In less time than this stupid election has been dragging on, the UK Labour party with less money than Ossoff spent went from 20 points behind to losing by 2 and now ahead.

Yeah, plus they had to go through two terrorist attacks and somehow managed to avoid electing a raging Islamophobe. In one of them, three men with a giant truck and big knives managed to kill a massive death toll of eight people. On the other hand, their lack of guns to overthrow the government if it becomes tyrannical means Theresa May will turn into Joseph Stalin any day now, just like every other Prime Minister since Robert Walpole.

[Beet]

In less time than this stupid election has been dragging on, the UK Labour party with less money than Ossoff spent went from 20 points behind to losing by 2 and now ahead.

Cool. We'll soon live in a world where both Prime Minister May and Representative Ossoff are a thing.

Obviously the person who won the second most amount of votes should be national leader. #Murica