3. Revenge farts

Turns out there’s only three. Unfair to ask for five

Is he thinking these name drops are a POSITIVE thing?

It’s so tragic that Cheryl Hines is married to that guy… it almost ruins Curb for me. Almost.

Those who describe his presidency as an encore are correct

The real dummies are the ones expecting anything of substance from a political speech.

You got 2/3 correct

Vice President of the United States Aaron Rodgers

Let’s be very, very honest about this:

He’s in the right age group.

This is interesting to me:

Democrat who ran heavily on abortion rights, IVF wins Alabama special election

Not for the abortion angle…but because of how it reflects a specific issue with polling that is unique to this era.

This district is <55,000, so very little external polling was done. Instead, all of the polling was internal contract work…which is usually much more granular and exact than external polling is.

Lands, the Democrat who flipped the seat, had internal polling that showed her with a slight 3 point lead (meaning her indicated advantage was small enough to be within the margin of error). Powell, the Republican, had internal polling that showed him with an 11 point lead….plausible, given the district.

And this discrepancy is actually why we get to know what the internal polling said.

Usually we wouldn’t get to see those numbers. But since there was no independent polling being done, and every campaign wants to be the one to write the narrative, the wide discrepancy between the results of the two candidates’ internals became a topic of public debate. Lands used her numbers to indicate momentum. Powell’s campaign mocked the idea of a previously-failed Democrat candidate in a red district claiming to have the advantage…and he approached his campaign like someone who is very confident in his numbers.

Yeah, so….Lands won by 25 points.

That’s a massacre. In a district that voted Trump twice.

Now, neither team’s polls got it right…but Powell’s internal numbers were off by 36 points! Thirty six! Holy shit.

One of the curiosities to me in 2022 was the uncharacteristically bad polling work done by some of the groups that Republican candidates rely on for their internals. Trafalger, for example, missed the boat completely (but is still getting contracts). Most of the public pollsters who most badly predicted in Republicans’ favor were the ones who were also getting internal polling contracts from them.

In other words, the party seems to be increasingly taking the Donald Trump approach to its polling work: hire only the people who tell you what you want to hear, until all of the people around you start telling you what you want to hear.

And this polling work produces external outputs, too, meaning they directly effect the national polling averages.

Here’s a snippet from 538’s autopsy of polling in 2022, where they evaluate pollster accuracy in that election:



And a snippet from a NYT article about polling in 2022:

Yeah that’s crazy! Nice reporting McP.

Fascinating results to this question from the Marist poll:

To what extent do you agree with the statement “Americans may have to resort to violence in order to get the nation back on track.”

Democrats: 7% strongly agree, 5% agree
Republicans: 6% strongly agree, 22% agree
Independents: 5% strongly agree, 13% agree

https://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-conten ... 291554.pdf

The fact that question is even being asked is the real fascinating result here

There was significant violence after the last 2 elections so it's not surprising.

Wait until Civil War comes out

False equivalence.

What's the more damaging headline?

"AZ supreme court approves near-total abortion ban"

or

"Inflation continues to grow"?

neither