Thread on Exit Polls and Voter Analysis: Neither the right or the left should put much, if any stock, in either.

Over the years, after witnessing one horrible blunder after another and the damage they leave in their wake, I truly believe media should abstain from using them.

We often ignore the years when exit polls correctly called the winner, though were still showing serious issues due to at least non-response bias.

Veteran exit pollster Murray Edelman has spoken a lot about this.

Here are some notable, egregious misses.

In 2004, the Kerry Campaign was elated. The Bush Campaign was in shock re Florida. The latter was confident they over-performed exit polls. By night's end, a Kerry exit poll win turned into a historically comfortable Bush win in a razor thin state he barely won 4 years before.

But that still left the Bush Campaign short in Ohio and Iowa, both of which exit polls suggested they would lose.

The loss for Kerry and his supporters was so painful that they continued to argue Bush stole Ohio years after he won a second term.

Why?

Exit polls showed it was mathematically impossible for Bush to win Ohio. That is why Russert and others were openly celebrating before the polls closed.

Hyped expectations leave people entertaining conspiracies rather than attributing misses to known problems with exit polls.

1/ There's an unusual pattern for voter turnout in Red, Blue & Swing states.

Changes in voter turnout from 2016 to 2020 has been largely attributed to increases in mail-in votes this election.

Interestingly though, Red & Swing states had the greatest increases in voter turnout.

🚨THREAD🚨

Unusual turnout in Democrat-controlled areas where we have also uncovered serious allegations of fraud

President Trump performed about the same in these counties as in 2016

Yet Joe Biden's totals surged where the counting was paused and Democrats were way behind

Milwaukee County, WI

2016:
H - 288,822 (65%)
T - 126,069 (28%)

2020:
B - 317,251 (69%)
T - 134,355 (29%)

That's a 9.8% increase of ballots for Biden over Hillary

28,429 more ballots

Wayne County, MI

2016:
H - 519,444 (66%)
T - 228,993 (29%)

2020:
B - 587,074 (68%)
T - 264,149 (30%)

That's a 13.0% increase of ballots for Biden over Hillary

67,630 more ballots

Dekalb County

2016:
H - 251,370 (79%)
T - 51,468 (16%)

2020:
B - 308,102 (83%)
T - 58,361 (15%)

That's a 22% increase of ballots for Biden over Hillary

56,732 more ballots

Fulton County

2016:
H - 297,051 (67%)
T - 117,783 (26%)

2020:
B - 379,095 (72%)
T - 136,716 (26%)

That's a 27.6% increase of ballots for Biden over Hillary

82,044 more ballots

Real talk on the burnout many of us living in the US are feeling days before this election. The burnout we feel isn't tied to work, but the political and social environment we've been swimming in the past four years, and particularly this year. (THREAD) 1/

In the next @NewYorker, I look at a culture of retribution against whistleblowers under Trump—and a new complaint implicating CIA director Gina Haspel and Donald Trump’s nominee for the top legal job in the intelligence community in a retaliation campaign.

In the complaint, a DOJ lawyer claims the retaliation came after he uncovered a secret CIA surveillance program and a practice of lying to prosecutors to conceal its use in criminal cases. The scheme was corroborated in hundreds of pages of emails, transcripts & other documents.

Experts said the concealment may have broken laws and undermined convictions. The FBI told prosecutors that the CIA information, which resulted in numerous prosecutions, came from FBI investigations, named after the Pirates of the Caribbean films, into a fictional crime group.

As the DOJ lawyer, Mark McConnell, raised his concerns to superiors, he faced what six officials said was a retaliation campaign by CIA leadership. Intelligence officials were furious.

CIA officials repeatedly called for repercussions or consequences for McConnell—Haspel allegedly personally joined those calls, though the agency denies it. McConnell’s lawyer, who also represented the Ukraine whistleblower, called for an investigation into Haspel’s role.

#Gaslighting alert:

You may come across bot-amplified activists pitching the idea that #Republicans have been packing the Courts for years, and therefore, hypocritically object to Democratic Party machinations to inflict #courtpacking on America if Kamala Harris and her running mate are elected.

So, is it true, have "Republicans been packing" the Courts for decades?

Well, let's start by agreeing that this, or any, conversation is pointless unless we share a common language. If you think so, then ...

The term "court-packing" was devised to describe a proposal by President #FDR to add additional justices to the Supreme Court thereby increasing the number of justices. His plan wasn't so crass as simply to add justices.

Rather, under FDR's plan, the number of justices sitting on the Court would be increased by an additional justice for each sitting justice that reached the age of 70.

If you're one of the people who've had to cut folks out of your life for being Trump voters, please know that I'm proud of you and I know you may feel grief. I'm sorry for us.

1) Why we need the electoral college system. (A thread)

Using the popular vote and not the electoral college count would have made Hillary Clinton president last time and Joe Biden president this time, in a landslide, which is what we anti-Trump citizens wanted.

2) But what about "next time"? Trump is an incompetent bozo who killed 130,000 Americans, crashed the economy, embarrassed the nation and he's still very popular.

What if the next Trump is just as evil, but actually competent? The next Trump could win the popular vote, too.

3) Direct democracies ALWAYS commit suicide because the public always falls under the spell of a demagogue at some point, and they vote themselves into catastrophe.

Athenian Democracy lasted only 140 years -- far less than the US so far.

4) The Spartan system lasted 600 years, because it was more like our system -- the popular vote was merely the opinion of the people, and a wise few made their own choice -- usually with the popular vote, but not always.

5) In our system, the voters don't choose the president. Everyone thinks they do, but they do not. The president is selected by Electoral College electors on December 14.

The election we just had was the American public giving the EC our opinion.

My Thoughts: #ClintonFoundationWhistleblowers

(1/15) This country needs more honest, open and aggressive debate and sharing of ideas and opinions so thank you to those individuals on this thread with similar or vastly different views but who have individually committed

Summary of the Michigan Kraken release. Once again, Happy Thanksgiving, America!

COUNT I
Defendants Violated the Elections and Electors Clauses and 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

So. Anyone who watched the Bobulinski interview last night now understands the seriousness of his allegations. He dropped bombshell after bombshell last night while also providing iron clad evidence to his claims. Text messages, emails, private meetings in dimly lit hotel...

Typically during an #FCCLive @FCC open meeting like today's 10:30, especially one with #NetNeutrality & #TitleII on tap, I tweet (a lot) to debunk the nonsense put out there by @AjitPaiFCC, @BrendanCarrFCC, and their enablers. But today let's take a different approach.

For today's remand order vote, with the Pai FCC botching the DC Circuit's mandate to look at how the repeal and reclassification decisions also harm public safety, broadband competition, and #Lifeline support for broadband, I decided to pre-but as much as I could. #FCCLive

Let's see how quickly my talking points bingo card fills up once the meeting starts at 10:30. But at very least I'll have succeeded in filling up Pai and Carr's mentions and the #FCCLive hashtag. (It's the little things that keep us going this week.)

The mega-thread that follows is long, but I wanted to draw on all of the great work @FreePress has done over the past week, year, and really more than a decade now, debunking the deregulatory fantasy figures put out by Pai and people like him. #FCCLive

So watch this space later for @freepress's final press statement by @danaflo on today's all-but-certain outcome. In the meantime, let's explore why Pai's predetermined outcome is outrageous, amidst all of the other outrages we can see right now. #FCCLive

Ok. We are 50 hours out from the first polls closing. Here's @NextIrishGE take on what to look out for on Tuesday night...… and beyond.

7PM EST (Midnight🇮🇪) Partial results from IN & KY will be joined by VT, SC, GA & VA.

Key here will be Georgia. It appears to be deadlocked, and if it goes blue it's game over for Trump. Atlanta Metro Area turnout will be key here.

In the Senate, watch GA and SC (both R-inc).

7.30PM EST (12.30AM🇮🇪)

Three states: NC, OH & WV. All Trump states in 2016, if Biden wins either NC or OH, it looks over for Trump. Both will report quickly, so likely calls will be made at some point.

Two Senate races here, but watch NC where R-inc Tillis looks to be behind.

8PM (1AM🇮🇪)

16 States + DC.

Florida will already have around 80% in at this stage, so a call could be made rapidly. Other swing states closing are PA and NH, but don't expect results from the former for some days.

Watch ME senate.

8.30PM (1.30AM🇮🇪)

Only Arkansas closing. Both Trump and R-inc Sen. Cotton expected to win easily.

Since it's Veteran's Day, it seems like an appropriate time to talk about how the Georgia General Assembly has screwed military voters out of their opportunity to vote in runoff elections for state offices like the one we're about to have on December 1 (for PSC). #gapol 1/

To begin, you have to understand that there is a federal law, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (known as UOCAVA "you-oh-cava"), that protects military voters and citizens living overseas. 2/

One provision of the UOCAVA requires states to send absentee ballots to protected UOCAVA voters at least 45 days before any federal election. This is because mail to and from overseas military can be very slow. 3/

Back in the early 2010s, the Department of Justice under Obama sued the State of Georgia because the state's election calendar held runoff elections too close to the general election to allow absentee ballots to meet the 45-day deadline. 4/

Georgia argued in court that the UOCAVA did not apply to runoff elections and it lost. UOCAVA applies to *all* federal elections, including runoff elections. 5/

Some early theories on went went wrong with the pre-election polling this

Before we go into what went wrong, let's just call a spade a spade here: this was a bad polling error. It's comparable to 2016 in size, but pollsters don't have the excuses they did last time.
This year's polls would have been *way* worse than 2016 with a 2016 methodology

There are really two halves of polling: the quality of the sample you get, and the adjustments you take to improve the representativeness of your sample.
Since 2016, pollsters got better at the adjustments, but the underlying sample got worse

To my mind, the easiest way to see it: the crosstabs on white voters nationwide, particularly whites without a degree
In 2016, the polls *did* show Trump doing way better among those voters.
In 2020, they did not. And they were dead wrong.
Same story with seniors.

So what happened? How did the samples get that much worse over the last four years, especially among white voters without a degree and seniors?
At this stage, it's really just speculation. We'll know more later--it's too early for an autopsy.
But here's some early speculation

I can’t bring myself to watch Republican Senators like Cruz, Lee, and Sasse wax rhapsodic about the Constitution while the President they support is spreading disinformation about the election and accusing Biden, Obama, and Clinton of treason. Sorry, just can’t do it.

Anyone who’s read the writings of the founders knows full well they their beloved Trump is the Platonic form of the type of President the founders most feared, and that they epitomize the sort of short sighted and craven public officials they also desperately feared.

These GOP Senators are smart and well-read enough to understand how outlandish their President is, and how embarrassingly cowardly their behavior has been these past four years.

The chutzpah of these people to pass themselves off as great patriotic lovers of the founders’ Constitution. Feh.

If they loved the Constitution, they would be telling people not to vote for Trump until he agrees to accept the results of the election. Otherwise they are aiding and abetting an attempt to shred the Constitution. Shame on them,