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[User 463088]

i'm wondering why the hell they were commissioned. a sample size of under 150 can't be super great for your poll when it comes to demographics and such, can it? i thought 500 was the accepted minimum.

They're not actually comissioned as such. They run their daily tracking poll, then they break them apart by state. Then they decide what turnout model to use on the numbers. Then they use thoe to determine the likelihood of how a state would vote.

Its basically like Nate's model, if you only used polls from one pollster. Then Nate puts them in his model and finagles them even more. It's stupid as fuck.

 

[mo60]

I'm just responding to you both at once, because it's 4am and I'm still reading polling information and I need help> Send help.

The USC poll is not a poll, it's a panel. Part of the way they determined to have a balanced sample was to ask people who they voted for in 2012. Problem is, people rarely admit/remember voting for the loser. So, like Nate said, their numbers are probably off because of that. And, ya, they do 1/7th of the sample every day.

The fact that nearly everyday we see a different leader is what makes adding it to Nate's model so fucking annoying to me. Each days sample can't possibly be representative. If it were, I don't think we'd see such changes every single day.

Like, Trump was at 4% of the AA vote on the 15th. His support for the next seven days was 14%. He went from 4-14% in a single day of the panel. He's now cratered back to 4. So, those 7 days should have been the whole entire panel...and he magically gained and lost 10 points?

Also, these fucking IPSOS things that 538 is using are just ridiculous

I'm supposed to believe that Hillary is winning Nebraska, but losing NH by 14.
Hillary is winning Ohio by 7, but losing Wisconsin by 3.
South Carolina is tied, but Trump is winning Michigan.
Trump is winning Maine, but Hillary is winning Iowa.
Hillary has a larger lead in Pennsylvania, than Trump does in West Virginia.

They must be mostly polling the strongest part of some of the states you listed for either trump or hilary if their polling numbers are all over the place

 

[User 463088]

They must be mostly polling the strongest part of some of the states you listed for either trump or hilary if their polling numbers are all over the place

The numbers are also wildly inconsistent.

Last poll of NH they did had Hillary up by 1. Now she's down by 14. She gained 5 points in Iowa. Trump lost 5 points in Arizona. Trump lost 9 points in South Carolina.

 

[thebloo]

Played the same amount, could take it or leave it. The combat was a capital Meh.
Best game in the last ten years? Red dead redemption, or SMG2.

You need more than 4 hours to learn to love it, yes, the combat sucks. I do agree on RDR though.

 

[User 463088]

Hey!
I loved Red Dead Redemption.

MY TASTES ARE VALIDATED

 

[shinra-bansho]

RDR was boring. A mess like Silver.

 

[cartoon_soldier]

The problem with IPSOS polls are the sample sizes in some states. They are doing this thing where they poll each state but then each state has very small sample size so the polls suck.

 

[Diablos]

I'm about to delete my AP app over their bullshit. Need a good replacement for breaking news tho. AP usually has a good balance and isn't spamming my phone with updates but I'm so pissed off at them.

Hey!
I loved Red Dead Redemption.

MY TASTES ARE VALIDATED

Loved it too. Needs a PC/console remaster version.

It's the best Rockstar game to date imo. GTA5 is good but overrated and has tons of flaws. Like the story/characters trying way too hard to be controversial. It's so annoying. Not a big fan of Trevor at all. I'm not sure why they thought making him SO off the rails was a good idea. Takes away from the game and plot.

 

[thebloo]

RDR was boring. A mess like Silver.

Ban your account.

 

[A Link to the Past]

Ban your account.

Are they wrong though

 

[whyamihere]

Unfortunately, we keep getting a lot of the mediocre tracking polls without many good major national/state polls recently.

 

[aspiegamer]

CNN vs the AP is interesting. I want to think that it's a case of people who still like to claim they're into Actual Journalism being legit mad when another agency who says the same does something extremely boneheaded. Making the dwindling amount of Actual Journalism around look all the worse and driving even more people away, and whatnot.

Of course I doubt it's a complaint quite that noble. Perhaps a little more specific, like "dude, AP, seriously? You're better than this (and us most of the time)." Mind you these are relatively minor battles when you consider that Breitbart is running the Trump campaign. Were this situation a short-sided goof-up on right wing media we'd shrug it off instantly, as would pretty much everyone in the political arena.

Unfortunately, we keep getting a lot of the mediocre tracking polls without many good major national/state polls recently.

Not worth worrying about, seriously. It's becoming progressively more difficult to try to make the race look competitive on an electoral level, so things that drive people to think it's closer? That's fine. You'll note the media barely bothers will polls anymore, because they're against the horserace narrative. CNN had their own come out last Monday I think, and covered the raft of swing state polls a week ago, but it's nothing like the usual habits of picking apart every single poll every single day that we're used to. Minimal excitement when a "good" poll for Trump is -8, and a swing state is less than -10.

 

[Diablos]

Unfortunately, we keep getting a lot of the mediocre tracking polls without many good major national/state polls recently.

Like the Reuters poll from yesterday that has her at 5 points ahead?

 

[thezerofire]

Are they wrong though

yes

 

[sazzy]

Why is CNN pushing this 'both camps have fallen to name calling' story?

I haven't seen the Clinton campaign resort to name calling.

 

[whyamihere]

Like the Reuters poll from yesterday that has her at 5 points ahead?

I mean yeah, kind of. Tracking polls are helpful because they can maybe show trend lines over time. We've seen that the past few weeks were ~maybe~ Trump has picked up a point or two. But it also could all be noise.

It's a pretty static election, which isn't that surprising. Even as messy as the primary was, you could model a lot of it down to demographic data once we had some data points post-NV/SC.

 

[Stinkles]

I come with grave tidings from the world of academia.

Today, a college student was triggered during a short history lecture I was "attending" with a friend before my own classes started. He interrupted the professor to espouse his own political views and how the content of lecture was bothering him. It was just as it was foretold!

The professor was giving an aside about how the classification "civilization" tends to be often used in such a vague way that she sees it used to smuggle in connotations about a dichotomy of "civilized" people versus "uncivilized" people with poorly defined boundaries of what the classification of "civilization" is supposed to entail. Whereas a more accurate view in her opinion would be to consider a continuum of continual small advances and setbacks as social structures grew organically.

Some guy then interrupted her to tell her that she was "being politically correct". He then stuttered a bit about how she was constraining the way people think - you know, by pointing out how she felt a dichotomy was warping people's perceptions - and then said something about how politically correctness is ruining colleges.

I didn't say anything in response to him - because I wasn't exactly supposed to be there - and everyone just ignored his little outburst anyways... but I really, really wanted to take that opportunity to bore everyone with semantics talk and definitively smack down the whiner.

And that student's name? Albert Einstein.

 

[A Link to the Past]

yes

Oh, okay

 

[nature boy]

Why is CNN pushing this 'both camps have fallen to name calling' story?

I haven't seen the Clinton campaign resort to name calling.

Not name calling, but her ads are all attack ads on Trump.

Let's face it, this is a referendum on each other.

 

[whyamihere]

Not name calling, but her ads are all attack ads on Trump.

Let's face it, this is a referendum on each other.

I don't know if we'll ever see anything quite like this ever again. Even versus a Ted Cruz, I have to imagine this would be more issues-focused.

 

[Finale Fireworker]

I support the mass deportation of people who don't appreciate and respect Red Dead Redemption. Obama deports more people than any president in history, and yet these people still walk alongside me? Like they have any right? Don't tread on me.

 

[Y2Kev]

Red Dead is good but I think has a lot of the same flaws GTA4 had. The setting is more novel I think so people forgive it.

I think the game is a suspension bridge of sorts with the high points being the two strong women in the game-- at the beginning and at the end. The middle seriously descends into trashola and you basically are doing the same, "Oh...you are horrible...but I will work for you anyway!!!" crap.

I thought the beginning and the end were genuinely great though.

Ban fans of GTA4.
Ban fans of Alan Wake.

 

[BenjaminBirdie]

I support the mass deportation of people who don't appreciate and respect Red Dead Redemption. Obama deports more people than any president in history, and yet these people still walk alongside me? Like they have any right? Don't tread on me.

PWEASE NO STEPPY

 

[thebloo]

Ban fans of GTA4.
Ban fans of Alan Wake.

Lock them up!

 

[Poodlestrike]

Red Dead is good but I think has a lot of the same flaws GTA4 had. The setting is more novel I think so people forgive it.

I think the game is a suspension bridge of sorts with the high points being the two strong women in the game-- at the beginning and at the end. The middle seriously descends into trashola and you basically are doing the same, "Oh...you are horrible...but I will work for you anyway!!!" crap.

I thought the beginning and the end were genuinely great though.

Ban fans of GTA4.
Ban fans of Alan Wake.

Alan Wake 5 eva

But yeah, agreed on RDR. I think having a strong ending is part of what gives it such legs for a lot of people, their overall last impression of the game is favorable so they sorta rose-color the rest of it. Plus, there's a lot of systems-first players on GAF who really dug the little stuff like the hunting, so idk.

 

[BenjaminBirdie]

Lock them up!

"Niko, what the hell do you have to lose?"

 

[gaugebozo]

Alan Wake 5 eva

But yeah, agreed on RDR. I think having a strong ending is part of what gives it such legs for a lot of people, their overall last impression of the game is favorable so they sorta rose-color the rest of it. Plus, there's a lot of systems-first players on GAF who really dug the little stuff like the hunting, so idk.

What I remember is: "Collect 500 more wild feverfew!"

 

[Finale Fireworker]

I love RDR because of the opportunity it gives you to live the setting. Westerns, historically, give you a pretty limited view of the world. They're all filmed in Red Rock Canyon. The towns all look the same. A western is a western is a western, and I say this as a longtime fan of the genre.

But RDR allows you to break away from traditional rails of the narrative and explore it on your own. You can hunt for pelts. You can break a horse and make it your own. You stop robbers, you get a drink at the saloon, you sit on top of a train, you watch the sun set and rise. RDR appeases the genre fan in me by letting me take my own picture of the Wild West. For me, getting ambushed by bandits on a quiet road and playing cards in Dodge City is as much of the story as the character tragedy at the backbone. The game provides you with a hugely interactive image of your fantasy version of the Wild West, and I can't ever think of a time I wasn't wholly and completely immersed by it.

I read a review somewhere once that said RDR's greatest triumph is making something as simple as riding your horse in the Great Plains a hugely enjoyable experience. I agree with that. If I could play any game for the first time all over again, it would be RDR.

It's a bit weird, because I'm a story-first player, and RDR is an example I use of a game with systems inseparable from the narrative. Running from two grizzly bears and being afraid to spin the camera and see how close they are, or shooting a snake as it comes up on you in the brush, or picking up your sniper rifle with its filthy, warped lens, are all the story to me. The systems and sequences are not the space between the text, they are the text itself. Not everyone feels that way. They say the mechanics appeal to the kind of players who drill into the mundane and explore them as their own challenges. I say never breaking your own horse is tearing a page right out of the book.

I miss that game like an old friend.

 

[Y2Kev]

yeah all of that stuff sounds fuckin boring

ban u

 

[NYCmetsfan]

RDR was boring. A mess like Silver.

Kev is better

Edit: no Kev!

 

[shinra-bansho]

I agree with me. Westerns are boring. Boring. Sad!

 

[Finale Fireworker]

yeah all of that stuff sounds fuckin boring

ban u

I AM BEING TREAD ON! DON'T TREAD ON ME! END THIS TREADING!!

I'm all riled up now. I'm going to go deliver my unsolicited opinion to a college classroom.

 

[Y2Kev]

I'm very rarely into simulation systems unless the game is a simulation game. I do really enjoy a sense of place; Mass Effect 1 is the best Mass Effect not just because it has the best story and the best style but because it really feels like a real thing. But hunting for pelts for no real reason?

I'd say Rockstar often dilutes its own games by adding so much stuff that is just purely unnecessary at the expense of, for example, solid mechanics and level design, but there's no evidence Rockstar ever has to make choices at all ever. They have so much moolah they can do everything they want. I just don't avail myself of those systems.

But I liked RDR. I thought it was very enjoyable in certain key sections of the game. And I thought the core middle of the game was really not good.

edit: This is in contrast with Ubisoft. Ubisoft has not made a good game since Splinter Cell Blacklist.

 

[Finale Fireworker]

I definitely get where you're coming from. And if I had any one complaint to make against RDR, it's the transition to Mexico. I'm the kind of player who does everything (or almost everything) before they move on, so I had completed all the missions and side-quests in Texas before John crosses the border into Mexico

The pacing of this transition is very poor. You have a somber moment alone at a campfire, then John stands up. And that's it. You're in Mexico. Your momentum from earlier is completely gone and your whole slate is wiped clean. I remember feeling like I just started the game all over. You start a new story, with new characters in a new place, and have to be reminded time to time had John is really doing out there. Otherwise, the Mexican Revolution plot is entirely self-contained. When it concludes, you resume your story from earlier.

So if you don't like all the little systems, you've just lost a lot of steam and have to work to get invested again.

That's poor pacing and poor writing, because you ask the player to let go of the story you're telling so that you can tell them a different one before resuming.

Mexico, which comprises the center section of the game, is positively its weakest point. So I agree with you when you say Mexico is the problem and it's ruining what makes America great.

 

[Y2Kev]

Mexico is sending their dictators, their tyrants, and their subservient women. Our leaders are HORRIBLE.

 

[andthebeatgoeson]

Levels in video games used to be called boards

Used?

 

[CrazyDude]

I come in to the Poli thread to get away from the hustle and bustle of the gaming side, and why do I see? Gaming talk. I am very disappointed in all of you here.

 

[User1608]

I hope they do an HD remaster of RDR, I would definitely play it then.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Civilisation is a mess of a word tbf. Going from civis -> civilis -> civiliser -> civilisation and being a political term the entire time means it carries so much history with it, it couldn't help to be anything other than vague. The Proto-European kewis just meant to settle down, and a civis in Latin was just a settled person (e.g. in contrast to the pastoralist people of what is now Germany). You then get civitas (location of the settled people) as a word for city and then civis narrows to specifically city person in response. As Roman thought developed, civis began to have normative as well as positive associations - for example, what are the duties of a civis, their responsibilities, their rights? And so the word civis now denotes a legal and political status whereby you are afford rights and duties as a civis of Roma/Roman citizen. Non-Romans (by which I mean the city of Rome), even those who were also Italians (as in: lived in the area named Italia), are not extended the civis until the Social Wars, but this gets extended over the centuries so that soon the whole Roman Empire has "city rights", so civis stops being the duties of someone living in the city of Rome and starts being associated with the entire Roman nation/people, so a civis is a person who has particular rights and duties afford to them by their nation (i.e.: citizen).

And so you get notions of civilis, the issues pertaining to civis (i.e., what rights? what duties?), becoming civilis (civiliser) and finally the notion of something having become civilis (civilisation). So we started with something like "settled people/not nomads", and ended up with "people who have established conceptions of what one owes their nation". Only then European refuse to accept conceptions that don't fit their own or recognize that nations don't manifest uniformly and that nation itself is a contested term, and suddenly it ends up with "people who agree with European (or sufficiently similar) conceptions of what one owes their nations", which, unsurprisingly, means only Europe counts as civilised. Funny, that.

So yeah, trash term.

But I am looking forward to Civ 6!

 

[nature boy]

Donald J. TrumpVerified account
‏@realDonaldTrump
Dwayne Wade's cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago. Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!

....

 

[Y2Kev]

Um ouch

 

[Frank the Great]

....

...

 

[Bowdz]

....

This fucking guy.

 

[bangbang i'm a timpani]

....

holy fuck what an idiot


hillary's strategy this week was flawless. trump was moving the polls, she gave a really solid speech that unhinged him, and now he was easily baited into his usual crazy time

 

[Deleted member 231381]

My biggest dream right now is that Texas pulls an Indiana and goes blue by like a 0.1% margin or something. It'd only be the once, but lordie would it be satisfying.

 

[bangbang i'm a timpani]

lol wait he also spelled Dwyane Wade wrong

 

[rjinaz]

....

Oh gees. I'm kind of glad he just doesn't get it.

 

[Y2Kev]

Dway-nay

 

[Dubbedinenglish]

Can't tell on mobile, Android or iPhone?

 

[nature boy]

Can't tell on mobile, Android or iPhone?

You think the campaign tweeted this?

It was him. (Android)