"It's still 12 months out", "It's still 11 months out", "It's still 10 months out"...

[BG-NY (permanently retired)]

When does this rhetoric end?

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

Until Trump wins

[OSR stands with Israel]

I think after the conventions end is a good time for this type of rhetoric to end . My general rule of thumb basically is that every election should be considered a tossup until at least the conventions end given how close 4 of 6 elections were this century.

[TML]

Remember: back in mid-1988, people would have been saying (based on polling at that time) that Dukakis was on track to beat Bush.

[Tekken_Guy]

Polls have been showing movement towards Biden. Trump is barely up in Emerson and Quinnipoac swung back hard towards Biden lately.

[BlueSwan]

When does this rhetoric end?

Good question. People are really deluding themselves about this election. This is NOT a normal election. This is basically an election between two incumbents. People are not voting for "generic D" or "generic R". People are not going to learn anything new about these two candidates. The political climate is massively polarized. Trump is an 80% favourite at this point.

[Birdish]

That's always been the rhetoric BG-NY. Every presidential election is like that.

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

 “The polls could be off by 5 points.”

[°Leprechaun's Rainbow]

Possibly in October. A lot could happen in the last 4 weeks.

The debates.

Trump's trials.

Or possibly when Trump picks his VP, which could be anywhere up to the GOP convention.

In October the phrase could be "Dewey beats Truman", if either of the candidates seem certain to win, like in 2016 when the phrase was "Clinton is going to win", was the conventional wisdom.

[Redban]

Remember: back in mid-1988, people would have been saying (based on polling at that time) that Dukakis was on track to beat Bush.

Polling wasn’t as plentiful and detailed in those days compared to now 

[Birdish]

Remember: back in mid-1988, people would have been saying (based on polling at that time) that Dukakis was on track to beat Bush.

Polling wasn’t as plentiful and detailed in those days compared to now 

On the other hand, everyone had a landline and people actually picked up the phone back then.

[Andrew Cuomo is a No Go]

Presumably when the election occurs. What kind of question is this?

[Redban]

On the other hand, everyone had a landline and people actually picked up the phone back then.

And yet polling (which was basically just Gallup) was still wrong back then, in spite of their landline methodology when people had house phones and  they actually picked up. So what’s your point?

Polling nowadays are done by a combination of mobile and online surveys, with online surveys beginning to dominate. Polling went through these sort of changes before, as they transitioned from in-person surveys in the 1960s-1970s to landline phone surveys in the 1980s; and there were people like you who thought  change would make polls unreliable: they argued that moving from in-person questioning to telephone questioning would give wrong results. Right now,  the data indicates that online surveys today actually have a low level of nonresponse, largely because people are less afraid to say how they feel online compared to on the phone .

[GAinDC]

I actually have felt a shift in the Biden campaign over the last month, and some of the polls are showing a shift in his direction.

[OSR stands with Israel]

On the other hand, everyone had a landline and people actually picked up the phone back then.

And yet polling (which was basically just Gallup) was still wrong back then, in spite of their landline methodology when people had house phones and  they actually picked up. So what’s your point?

Polling nowadays are done by a combination of mobile and online surveys, with online surveys beginning to dominate. Polling went through these sort of changes before, as they transitioned from in-person surveys in the 1960s-1970s to landline phone surveys in the 1980s; and there were people like you who thought  change would make polls unreliable: they argued that moving from in-person questioning to telephone questioning would give wrong results. Right now,  the data indicates that online surveys today actually have a low level of nonresponse, largely because people are less afraid to say how they feel online compared to on the phone .

Also American politics from the 1960s-1990s was more fluid then it had ever been before . A large part of that was that you had both a major dealignment of the south and north east occur in the 1960s and they both took around 30 years to realign to the opposite party so that created a massive amount of voters who were open to voting for both parties.

Another reason is that this was also the era that political info was dominated by the big 3 news networks(ABC, CBS, NBC) more than anytime in history. Prior to that the news was dominated by Newspapers and Radio which led to people consuming different info and afterwards by cable news and now social media which leads people to consuming different info as well. In the big 3 era, pretty much all the national news people got was from the nightly news reports which were only 30 minutes a day outside Sunday Shows and special events(conventions, debates, and election nights) so people generally did not have much of an opinion on the candidates until the conventions themselves which is why you would see such dramatic polling swings until at least the conventions were completed. Lastly since the big 3 news networks were where people got their political info from the effects of good and bad news for a particular candidate would have a very uniform impact.

So really the 1960s-1990s is an era of politics that is clearly an aberration at this point rather than the rule . Hell in the 1980s news anchors were complaining about the fact that ticket splitting was way to large and the fact that party label didnt seem to mean anything anymore lol.

[Mr.Bakari-Sellers]

Notwithstanding the R hack polls we have a glidepath to Filibuster proof Trifecta and Steve Konaki on MSNBC says TX, NC are swing states and max our gains are 360 DPrez 222 DH and 52/48 DS because of J6

Polls are polls they aren't votes

[Birdish]

On the other hand, everyone had a landline and people actually picked up the phone back then.

And yet polling (which was basically just Gallup) was still wrong back then, in spite of their landline methodology when people had house phones and  they actually picked up. So what’s your point?

Polling nowadays are done by a combination of mobile and online surveys, with online surveys beginning to dominate. Polling went through these sort of changes before, as they transitioned from in-person surveys in the 1960s-1970s to landline phone surveys in the 1980s; and there were people like you who thought  change would make polls unreliable: they argued that moving from in-person questioning to telephone questioning would give wrong results. Right now,  the data indicates that online surveys today actually have a low level of nonresponse, largely because people are less afraid to say how they feel online compared to on the phone .

Most major news organizations were doing their own polling by 1988. Gallup was considered the gold standard but it's easy enough to dig up NBC/WSJ or NYT's/CBS polling from around then.

Also, "people like me"? I'm not sure I made a statement one way or the other, but I'll say that my reservations about online polling have been more than affirmed by the last few cycles.

Edit: Not to say online polling is useless, and it can be done very well. I'm warry of specific online only pollsters releasing constant streams of data with little to no methodological standards who aren't transparent about how they collected their data or which vendor they used.

[Mr.Bakari-Sellers]

It's best to make D nut maps Alben Barkley, S019 made R nut maps and they were WRONG

These are Pred maps that we make not Ratings maps S019 has ME and PA going R 😁😁😁

[DrScholl]

When does the thuggish bullying to force people to conform to the idea that Trump is inevitable end? This attitude proves what a second Trump term would be like. Concentrated and abusive harassment to get people to conform to Trump. The arrogance in this attitude is worse than any supposed "coronation" that Hillary Clinton received in 2016.

It's very transparent what the Trump cabal is up to. They are trying to use polling to keep Democrats from turning out at all and that's what this rush to declare a race that is months away is about. This isn't a Blanche Lincoln or Mark Pryor situation.

[DrScholl]

Furthermore, the OP's predictions for 2022 were a flat out disaster and the prime example of wishcasting.

Masters by <1, Tossup
Bennet by 8, Safe D
Walker by 3, Lean R
Laxalt by 1, Tilt R
Hassan by 4, Likely D
Budd by 8, Safe R
Vance by 13, Safe R
Oz by 2, Lean R
Johnson by 7, Likely R

Things have gotten a lot worse on the ground for Fetterman in the past week. I think jumping on the dogs story came off as desperate.

sis you don't even go here

Little buddy, how confident are you in Fetterman winning? I am never in the state outside of NEPA.

Are you thinking that Oz has momentum and particularly that he will match and even improve on Trump in the NEPA areas?

Yes, the question is if he can hold the margins in central and Western PA imo.

He won't do well in Montgomery, Bucks, Delware but those are lame counties.

He considered some of the most decisive counties in Pennsylvania "lame" and that likely contributed to his delusion that Oz was winning.

Things have gotten a lot worse on the ground for Fetterman in the past week. I think jumping on the dogs story came off as desperate.

Another bad take based on likely wishcasting.

Vance is going to win this by 11 and we're going to have to pretend to be surprised.

Vance won by 6% not 11%.

[Crumpets]

After the conventions, around Labor Day. And if you think I'm just being a partisan hack, here's me saying the same thing in 2020:

May 4, 2020
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=372081.msg7329287#msg7329287

Absolutely nothing that happens before Labor Day - impeachment, COVID, Tara Reade, Bernie endorsement, 2nd quarter GDP change, etc. - will have any bearing on the outcome of the election except for the names of the people who will be on the ballot and participating in the debates.

July 15, 2020
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=383238.msg7461571#msg7461571

As one of those people, I would amend that statement to "Few persuadable voters will pay attention until after Labor Day." Elections are about both turnout and winning over undecided voters. The turnout battle is happening now as Biden consolidates the less-enthusiastic leftist Democrats and tries to demoralize Trump voters. But the apathetic middle-of-the-road voters who will be the target of the latter competition really won't be paying attention until the conventions, if not the debates.

And here's me making basically the same point in 2016:

July 12, 2016
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=240571.msg5154863#msg5154863

I feel like if the RNC were so colossally behind in their ground game, Clinton should be up by more than 5 points or so. Maybe this will manifest itself after the conventions or Labor Day, or maybe they'll just get their act together by the time people start paying attention.

[BG-NY (permanently retired)]

Furthermore, the OP's predictions for 2022 were a flat out disaster and the prime example of wishcasting.

Masters by <1, Tossup
Bennet by 8, Safe D
Walker by 3, Lean R
Laxalt by 1, Tilt R
Hassan by 4, Likely D
Budd by 8, Safe R
Vance by 13, Safe R
Oz by 2, Lean R
Johnson by 7, Likely R

Things have gotten a lot worse on the ground for Fetterman in the past week. I think jumping on the dogs story came off as desperate.

sis you don't even go here

Little buddy, how confident are you in Fetterman winning? I am never in the state outside of NEPA.

Are you thinking that Oz has momentum and particularly that he will match and even improve on Trump in the NEPA areas?

Yes, the question is if he can hold the margins in central and Western PA imo.

He won't do well in Montgomery, Bucks, Delware but those are lame counties.

He considered some of the most decisive counties in Pennsylvania "lame" and that likely contributed to his delusion that Oz was winning.

Things have gotten a lot worse on the ground for Fetterman in the past week. I think jumping on the dogs story came off as desperate.

Another bad take based on likely wishcasting.

Vance is going to win this by 11 and we're going to have to pretend to be surprised.

Vance won by 6% not 11%.

(1) I am not great at making predictions. I’m fine admitting it though. I was pretty close in 2016 and 2020. Wrong in 2014, 2018, 2022.
(2) I thought people who turned out in 2016 and 2020 but didn’t in 2018 would in 2022. I was wrong, Trump-only voters exist.
(3) In 2022 there was a flooding of the zone mentality with GOP biased polls from garbage firms. This year, high quality polls from unbiased outlets are telling us the same story.
(4) Regardless of the above, the collar counties in Philly are lame.

Since you’re looking at my posts, notice that until late August 2023, I had Biden as a strong favorite. Polls 14 months out are pretty accurate historically. 9 months out even more so.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Well yeah, it's still true. We're already seeing a lot fall into place for Biden's campaign.

You want us to panic, but elections these days aren't really determined until the last few weeks. That'll be the time to get cocky or filled with despair.

[BG-NY (permanently retired)]

Well yeah, it's still true. We're already seeing a lot fall into place for Biden's campaign.

You want us to panic, but elections these days aren't really determined until the last few weeks. That'll be the time to get cocky or filled with despair.

I don't want anybody to panic. I had Biden as a heavy favorite until August 2023. I just am a bit frustrated that polls are being spun/discounted by a subset of users. If polls shift to Biden, it's a change.

I am biased toward Trump because I prefer him on policy (particularly on taxes and regulation), but Biden hasn't been terrible. I would vote for and donate to him over a Haley if in some universe she was the nominee.

[bagelman]

On October 23rd.