Thanks for perfectly describing NPR's Friday weak sauce analysis of their undecided rubbish focus group. But as we all know addiction to 1980's style horse race coverage is a tough habit to quit when the four horsemen of the authoritarian pocalypse are galloping towards your studio. Back to James:
Can confirm. We're seeing many indications here in the Pacific Northwest that an election may be imminent. The signs are everywhere, literally, promoting candidates for public office and ballot initiatives. Many feature colors we associate with elections—red, white, blue.
Yesterday we saw mobile early voting locations visiting rural areas, and I think it's safe to conclude that every interpretation of the data suggests so-called election deniers are wrong. Our analysts are very bullish on an election within the next three weeks.
we asked our panel of undecided voters what key questions they would ask the candidates, and how they would vote today.
James James McJamerson, 59, wonders if the United States has elections, and if so, when. Bront Brentman asks "who will the presidential candidates be? Do we know yet?"
Maria Milferson, who has reliably complained about politics for several cycles, says she is tired of the same old politics and just wants to vote for change she can believe in, no matter what that change is.
Dobson Dugnutt, 47, from Michigan wonders why the parties didn't pick Obama or Reagan, and thinks it's suspicious that they didn't. And Alison Truk, our youngest panel member at just 23, says she was going to vote Biden, but is now leaning Trump after Biden cancelled the TV show Kaos which she liked
I know it's just a numbers game for why shows get cancelled or renewed, but it does seems weird given how many folks seemed to love it. Would love someone to pick apart what happened
Sleve McDichael, longtime resident of Pittsburgh, says he's undecided because he doesn't trust political ads and media spin. He has to do his own research.
When asked when in the next few weeks he plans to conduct that research, he said "look at that bird, I think it's a hawk!" and walked away
Sometimes a perplexing vote makes sense when you remember that some people just fundamentally have no idea what’s happening in the world and refuse to find out
This seems like something that needs published stats to back it up, especially confidence intervals.
Do you assess with high confidence that there will be an election soon, where “soon” is defined as being in the next month?
Working on a proposal to poll all of the country's eligible voters all at once to drive the margin of error down, and to minimize systemic bias, we'll only ask eligible voters who have voted by mail or who vote in person by checking what mark they wrote on the paper
Make sure you capture where they voted. Ideally you'd get full biographical details for rich crossfabs, but we can always use location as a proxy for a lot of that.
That seems like just about the only way to really be sure, because that’s leveraging a self-selected group likely to be very deeply involved in holding an election.
Comments
I just got my ballot, I guess I’ll fill it out and put it in the box but idk.
James James McJamerson, 59, wonders if the United States has elections, and if so, when. Bront Brentman asks "who will the presidential candidates be? Do we know yet?"
https://youtu.be/kY12SbF3J_4?si=dGThz6one3G1LVWN
When asked when in the next few weeks he plans to conduct that research, he said "look at that bird, I think it's a hawk!" and walked away
Who are these people? We haven't bothered to check yet.
Why are they voting early? Who can say?
What does this mean? What do you want it to mean?
Will this matter? Unlikely, but we have to fill the time.
Do you assess with high confidence that there will be an election soon, where “soon” is defined as being in the next month?