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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
Let's start with the most interesting bit of theorizing I encountered, from always interesting @davidshor.
He thinks it's the pandemic: Dems took it seriously, stayed home and started responding to polls more. GOP did not.
This theory's almost too smooth to be true, but it's elegant and fits a lot of things together.
Remember those studies that said Biden does better in a COVID hotspot?
Well, Biden didn't do better in COVID hotspots.
So maybe... that just means the polls were biased by COVID
Another interesting thing it helps explain.
Our 10/19 battleground polls were... pretty accurate!
So were the state polls conducted from Jan-Mar 20.
Now, maybe these polls were just as bad--and Trump actually led big back then!
Or maybe... the bias started since then
Shor also put forward some data that's at least plausibly consistent with it. The increase in Dem response clearly happens before the pandemic, in the primary. But maybe it held because of the primary
There are some other theories worth consideration, too.
It's possible that four more years of Trump did four more years worth of damage to the credibility of media/polls, creating a 'hidden Trump' vote that didn't really exist in 2016
On the flip side, another possibility is the resistance: the huge surge of political activism on the left. We know political engagement is correlated with survey response. Maybe the folks now donating 100 millions to Senate races are now taking polls way more than four years ago
And a final possibility--and ultimately a falsifiable one--is the turnout.
There were a lot of polls showing no LV/RV gap or even a D turnout edge. Not sure that will hold up with final data.
It certainly didn't hold up in FL, where we have great data already.
Anyway, I do think it will take a while to get some better answers here. If you're looking for a polling autopsy, then I'd say the 'body' of polling is still at the scene of the crime and won't make it to the morgue for a bit.
But the fact that we don't have an autopsy wouldn't stop the police from acknowledging the existence of a dead body, and we don't need to shy away from the obvious, either: the poll results were quite bad, and the final numbers won't fundamentally change that

More from Nate Cohn

Nate Cohn
Nate Cohn
@Nate_Cohn
One question I keep getting about the Georgia early voting is about age: isn't the electorate older, and how much does it hurt the Democrats?
So far the answer is 'not really' and 'not at all.'

The first question is easy enough. As of today, youth turnout is basically keeping pace with the general, controlling for the slightly reduced opportunities to vote. This augurs for an unusually young


The second question is more interesting: are the Democrats hurt by lower youth turnout? So far the answer is no, and there are two reasons.
One reason: there's not a *huge* gen. gap. Maybe young voters are D+20 while >65 are R+15. You need a big gap for modest changes to matter.

The second reason is maybe more interesting: the young voters who have voted are just a lot more Democratic than the young voters who turned out at this stage of the general election

By party primary vote history, the 18-29 year olds who have voted so far are D 38, R 12. They were D 33, R 14 in the general at this stage.
POLITICS
Nate Cohn
Nate Cohn
@Nate_Cohn
Another day of strong early voting in Georgia, with another 154k voters turning out in person yesterday. That's similar to but slightly behind the fourth day of early voting in the general, which was at 164k

Cumulatively, we're still running ahead of the general election on in-person early voting, but I don't think anyone expects that to last--and there's a very long time left for that flip to happen


As I've said, the big takeaway is that the turnout looks like it will be healthy and high, and it's not obvious who it will help v. the general. As I've mentioned, there are crosscutting patterns at play that make it difficult to sort out where we'll end up. Let's look at a few

One is that there are fewer absentee votes--and those are heavily Democratic.
This is expected: far fewer realistic opportunities for voters to request a ballot for this special than the general. And some counties may be behind


Now, of course, if in-person and election day voting drop just as much (or more), then this isn't actually an issue for Democrats at all. That would have been a very reasonable assumption before early voting. Now I'm not totally sure! We'll have to wait and see
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Nate Cohn
Nate Cohn
@Nate_Cohn
Joe Biden leads Donald Trump in Pennsylvania and Florida, according to new Times/Siena polls taken after the first debate.
Biden leads in Pennsylvania, 49 to 42 percent among likely voters. He leads in Florida, 47 to

In an analysis of interviews conducted yesterday, including in Arizona (where a poll is ongoing), there was modest evidence of a shift in Joe Biden's direction after Trump's COVID diagnosis. That said, one day of interviews is not nearly enough to reach any firm conclusions

The shift, though, would be material if confirmed and it was statistically significant, controlling for the demographic and political variables used in weighting. That said, it's still just one day of interviews. We'll have to wait and see here.

Of the two results, the biggest surprise was probably Florida, where we found Biden+5 with a R+4 sample. This is a fully updated voter file that reflects some meaningful GOP registration gains in the states.

It's just a subsample, so big MoEs here, but we found no evidence of the big Trump gains among Hispanic voters in Florida or in Miami-Dade County. Biden even narrowly led a (very small) sample of Cuban voters; they were R 47-28 by registration. Again, small samples but...
POLITICS
Nate Cohn
Nate Cohn
@Nate_Cohn
A lot for Democrats to like in the early voting data over the last few days, as they are now running ahead of where they stood at a similar point of the general election--thanks to a stronger Black turnout


The Black share of in-person early voters was basically identical to the general election over the first few days of voting, but that began to diverge late last week--and even more so over the weekend, which is typically a strong period for Black turnout in Georgia


As most of you know, the Black turnout in Georgia (and nationwide) was relatively weak v. other groups in the general election. That's been a matter of some consternation for progressives who wish it weren't so, but it's also the big source of upside for Democrats in this runoff

At the moment, the higher Black share of in person early voting is enough to cancel out the smaller share of mail-in absentee voters, who were overwhelmingly Democratic in the general--giving Democrats, in my view, a slightly more favorable electorate at this stage of voting

Looking ahead, we're about to lose a certain amount of clarity in our day-by-day comparison, since the holidays will dampen (and outright eliminate) turnout on GOP-friendly days. We'll probably watch the Dems expand their lead v. the general, and then the GOP try and claw it back
POLITICS
Nate Cohn
Nate Cohn
@Nate_Cohn
Georgia early voting took a few days off over the holidays, like most everything else, but it was back near general election levels on Monday


As we've expected from the start, this creates a challenge for comparing where we stand now v. the general election.
Day 11-13 were fairly good days for the GOP in Oct.; they run farther behind without those days, but we have no reason to think that's for a meaningful reason

I'll offer two ways of trying to account for this. It's not perfect, but there are many circumstances in which it still permits useful analysis. 1) Remove those same days of in-person voting (not mail) from the advanced vote in October; 2) A direct day-to-day comparison

That first comparison--removing ipev from GE holiday-equiv. --will be represented with a dotted line, shown here.
This isn't perfect: one could imagine, for ex., that someone who would have voted on day 12 will now vote on day 18, boosting later tallies. But still useful context


With that in mind, it still seems Democrats continue to show a lot of strength. Yesterday, they continued to run well ahead of the general election, including excluding holiday equiv. days
POLITICS

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Brian Cates
Brian Cates
@drawandstrike
A lot of people don't understand that Trump & his incoming team didn't face a normal transition period, like it was over a in a matter of a few weeks or months.

The DOJ transition period JUST ENDED when Sessions left. Almost 2 exact years to get it there.

Pompeo at the CIA took over a year before he was done and ready to shift over to the State Department.

All kinds of stuff has been going on behind the scenes nobody leaks or talks about.

We only had the barest mention of the fact the Clinton Email investigation restarted

Nobody leaked in a year that Huber was deep diving into the Clinton Foundation.
Keep that in mind as all the usual suspects continue to INSIST nothing is happening/going to happen.
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What does "patriots in control" mean?
What would that "look like" in reality?


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Hunter Biden's book is categorized as "Chinese


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A "pillow guy" has military-grade intercepts detailing the IP addresses and device MAC IDs of EVERY incursion into every county in the
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Seth Abramson
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
(MAJOR NOTE) The reason Manafort took over Trump's campaign in just 3 weeks despite being hired as a mere delegate counter is that ROGER STONE initiated a whisper campaign against Corey Lewandowski. That campaign started...days after Manafort returned from meeting with WikiLeaks.

2/ Stone and Manafort are longtime business partners; we'd expect Manafort to tell Stone what Assange told him, and for him to expect Stone to then pressure the campaign not only to hire him but quickly elevate him.

And who was Stone in touch with at the campaign? Trump himself.

3/ I bet you Manafort's late March emails are very interesting and that some of them are to/from his longtime business associate Roger Stone. And I bet Roger Stone's late March phone calls are very interesting and that some of them are to/from his longtime friend Donald Trump.

4/ At the end of March 2016, Trump suddenly convenes a NatSec meeting. At that meeting he directs his NatSec team to change the RNC platform in July to benefit Putin. Who later takes credit for that change?

Paul Manafort's business associate, Kremlin agent Konstantin Kilimnick.

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Sharjeel Usmani
Sharjeel Usmani
@SharjeelUsmani
Thread on elections:

1) Only CPIM can compete with BJP in hypocrisy and shamelessness. I mean they are calling the opposition coalition (Muslim League + Congress) communal in Kerala, equating Muslim League with RSS and subtly consolidating Hindus using Islamophobic

2) campaigns while in West Bengal they're themselves in alliance with Congress and a Muslim party ISF, founded by an Islamic cleric. In West Bengal they are appealing on the lines of social justice, Dalit emancipation and Muslim empowerment.

3) Their candidates in Bengal, most of whom would distance themselves from anybody visibly Muslim and would leave no chance to demonize them, are now flaunting pictures with Muslim men and women covered in skullcaps and Hijab. In Kerala, they once disowned their own party leader

4) because he performed Umrah. Meanwhile, their PR agency called NewsClick is publishing pieces suggesting how TMC's violence helped BJP make inroads in Bengal while ignoring that it was CPIM's vote that shifted to BJP and hence it should be them who should be called out for not

5) being able to keep their votes intact. I am not in support of Mamata in Bengal or Congress in Kerala. I only hope and wish ISF, IUML, SDPI, AIMIM, AIUDF, Welfare Party and other Muslim outfits win as many seats as there are! #ApniQayadat

End.
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Martyn McLaughlin
Martyn McLaughlin
@MartynMcL
Here's a quick thread on the chronology leading up to today's vote in the Scottish Parliament on whether ministers should go to court to investigate the finances of Donald Trump's Scottish resorts via a legal mechanism known as an Unexplained Wealth Order.👇

Intrigue surrounding the source of Trump's finances here is by no means new. An editorial in @TheScotsman questioned where the money was coming from back in *2008*. But the UWO issue came to prominence last Feb during exchanges in the Scottish Parliament.

The issue returned to parliament last November, when First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said any consideration or application for an UWO were "properly matters for the Crown Office, not for the Scottish ministers."

This argument went against the explicit definition of who is able to apply for a UWO, as set out in the Criminal Finances Act 2017 / Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which states that "the Court of Session may, on an application made by the Scottish ministers, make an UWO"


The leading advocate, Aidan O'Neill QC, has also said Scottish ministers alone are responsible for decisions around UWOs, and that transferring responsibility to the Crown Office or Lord Advocate "does not and can not" change its legal responsibilities.
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HELLO: If you pee and every time you finish, your urine looks like this picture, you may have a serious medical illness.

Foamy urine especially if it is persistent and noticeable over time may mean you have a serious kidney problem.

Let’s talk about this today...
RT for others.


What are the features of a normal urine?

A normal urine should have a light yellow colour, painless, odourless (or faint smell), steady stream and should ideally not foam when you pee.

When there’s something wrong, then you see changes in all the above normal features of urine.

For instance if urine becomes very deep yellow, it may mean you are dehydrated;

If urine becomes painful or smells really really bad, it may mean you have an infection;

If urine has a poor stream, especially in a man, it may mean a prostate problem like cancer.

Do you get me?

So today let’s talk about Foamy Urine.

What are the things that can cause urine to suddenly be foamy. As I said in the first tweet, it MAY mean a serious medical illness like a serious kidney problem.

First things first- it does NOT always mean a problem but it may as well.

Now what are the causes of Foamy Urine:

1. SPEED-
If you pee really fast or with a lot of force, it may make your urine more foamy than usual. The speed and force makes the urine generate a lot of bubbles which tend to almost quickly disappear as it is formed in the toilet bowl.
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A #story from #Thiruvilayadal puranam- one of divine leelas of Bhagwan Shiva

#threadseries #madurai

Koodal Kaandam

Story 21 - it is about how stone elephant came to life and ate sugarcane - When Raja Abhisheka Pandyan met Ellam Valla Siddhar

கல்யானைக்கு கரும்பருத்திய படலம்


Raja Abhisheka Pandiyan went ahead to meet Ellam Valla Siddhar on the premises of the temple.On seeing the arrival of Raja, people surrounding Siddhar moved back. Abhisheka Pandiyan introduced himself to Siddhar &asked about his whereabouts.Also his purpose of visit to Madurai.

Raja asked why he performed magical acts, does he expect anything from him or people of Madurai.

Siddhar laughed & replied to Raja that he was from Kasi. He had heard a lot about Madurai in Kashi.Also told that this place is a Mukti Kshetram,so he had come to stay here.

Siddhar asked Raja if he has the capability &power to give anything that he asks for. Siddhar told King that he has power to do things even if he think of it.Siddhar asked King to ask whatever he wants & it would be provided, whatever these people had asked, they were granted.


Abhisheka Pandyan was shocked to receive such a reply from Siddhar,& he decided to test the power of this Siddhar. By that time, Raja saw a person in crowd having Sugarcane.

Raja took Sugarcane from that person.
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f1talks.pl
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To tłumaczy wysokie kwoty jakich Williams ma oczekiwać za fotel od nowego kierowcy. Jest pewnie próg opłacalności i dopóki nie zostanie osiągnięty, to zmiana z finansowego punktu widzenia nie będzie się zwyczajnie opłacała. #F1pl

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Like company moats, your personal moat should be a competitive advantage that is not only durable—it should also compound over time.

Characteristics of a personal moat below:


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Things that might get commoditized over time (some longer than


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Khatvaanga
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@khatvaanga
Sri Gurubhyo Namah.
Some tweets on Adi Shankaracharya and in particular the Guru Parampara of @sringerimath. [I had done this series earlier 5 years ago on account of Shishya Sweekaram].


Adi Shankara established the Sringeri Peetham as the 1st of 4 amnaaya peetams.

The four being
1. Sarada Peetam at Sringeri.
2. Govardhana Peetam at Puri
3. Kalika at Dwaraka
4. Jyothir at Badarikashramam.

He installed his 4 most prominent shishyas as heads of the peetams.

Sureshwaracharya was assigned to Sringeri as its head.

Sringeri is a corruption of Rshyashrunga giri.

Rshyashrunga maharshi [and his father Sri Vibandhaka Maharshi] did their tapas at this place.

It is at Sringeri that Shankara spent 12 of His precious 32 years!!

That gives you and idea how much He loved this place.

Rshyashruga maharshi had a horn on his forehead, a result of being born to a deer. His mere presence was enough to shower rains!!

Rshyashrunga was one who led Putrakamesthi Yaagam of Dasaratha Maharaj and which resulted in Sri Rama's birth!!
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