A deep dive into polling in 2020 v. 2016 by @Nate_Cohn of @nytimes. The big news today: Even if this year’s polls are as bad as the 2016 state polls, Joe Biden has enough of a lead to win.
“Of course, the polls won’t be exactly as wrong as they were in 2016. They could understate support for Donald Trump by an even greater degree. But there are good reasons to believe that many causes of 2016’s poll misfire are less likely this time around:
“More pollsters now weight by education, which ensures that voters without a college degree make up an appropriate share of the sample. Many state polls had far too many college graduates four years ago, leading them to underestimate Mr. Trump.
“There are far fewer undecided voters, who ultimately broke toward Mr. Trump across the Upper Midwest. A similar late break among undecided voters this time would be less consequential.
“A more stable race. Our estimate of the polling error in 2016 is a little unfair to pollsters: We’re looking at the average error over the final three weeks of the race.
“That includes polls taken after the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape and before the Comey letter. Those polls showed Mrs. Clinton with a commanding lead. The final polls were more accurate, if still biased toward Mrs. Clinton.
“This time it’s probably less likely that the polls will swing greatly over the last few weeks of the race. After all, they’ve been far more stable over the last few months than they were at any point in 2016.
“That doesn’t mean that we’re immune to another misfire. Indeed, most polling misses happen precisely because the causes can’t be anticipated.
“That’s why our tables on this page also include the polling miss from 2012, when surveys underestimated President Obama. But it also means there’s no reason the polls couldn’t be off by even more than they were four years ago.”
The crackdowns at universities is excessive & inexcusable, but the actions of the protestors do nothing to further their cause. Fringe anarchism & mindless destruction lead ordinary Americans to reject the cause of students’ righteous anger.
The students aren’t being punished for having the audacity to highlight the injustices suffered by the Palestinian populace.
The police response is disproportionate, but they’re responding to the protestors’ childish antics, not their beliefs.
This argument by @jackmirkinson is the next step in justifying outside agitators & provocateurs leading college students down the garden path. This tactic has backfired & removed the focus from the underlying injustice being protested.
This statement by professor Douglas Laycock rings true.
“‘Lots of Americans on all sides are deeply committed to protecting liberty for themselves and the people they agree with, and unconcerned with or affirmatively hostile to liberty for the folks they disagree with.’”
“Douglas Laycock, a prominent scholar of religious liberty law at the University of Virginia who has argued for both same-sex marriage and the rights of religious objectors before the U.S. Supreme Court, questions Barr's commitment to religious liberty at all.
GIFT ARTICLE: A live stream of proceedings in trump’s criminal trial.
“Conroy says Trump violated the gag order when on Truth Social, he quoted the Fox News commentator Jesse Watters denigrating prospective jurors as ‘undercover liberal activists.’”
This sounds like a great project, helping survivors of war heal their lingering emotional wounds & providing a new perspective on war for the rest of us.moralinjuriesofwar.org/about
“Weaving together the voices of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, Moral Injuries of War is a visionary production that brings the untold stories of war to the American public.
“The experience integrates 3D spatial audio with ambient visual design to create an immersive landscape of sound and light, inviting the public to journey alongside veterans as they grapple with their memories.
“Even Justices Neil Gorsuch & Amy Coney Barrett & Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to be embarrassed with the slurry of bad plaintiffs & worse evidence that Hawley paraded before them as a serious legal challenge.
“As usual, when it was clear that the case was too asinine to contemplate, what surfaced instead was a protracted gripe about nationwide injunctions from Gorsuch & aggrieved grousing from Justice Samuel Alito, who sounded annoyed that ADF hadn’t cooked up a more plausible case.”
@Dahlialithwick and @mjs_DC predict SCOTUS will look for another case to ban mifepristone. We must win and win big in November so that the Comstock Act can be repealed Supreme Court can be reformed. slate.com/news-and-polit…
“There are always a couple of tells when the most conservative Supreme Court in more than a century finds itself adjudicating a truly mortifying and meritless case.