WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2024
Numbers, like Fox, can be hard: For starters, we'll offer a general observation:
Watching the programs on the Fox News Channel gets to be extremely hard.
Over the course of the past several years, MSNBC was enough of a challenge. But watching Fox is hard.
The demagoguery comes in waves, in every shape and size. The disingenuous conduct is undisguised. When people are willing to behave in these ways, watching them do it is hard.
At certain spots around the world, it's become harder and harder to hold back the sea. It's a bit like that with the conduct at Fox. We add the following fact:
Blue America's major news orgs have agreed to avert their gaze. All in all, our deeply flawed human species may not have been built for this general type of work.
On a more whimsical note:
Who will win the presidential race? Despite press corps devotion to frisking the polls, we have no idea.
We can say that numbers can be very hard. Just in, from The Hill, the latest proof looks like this:
Harris holds 7-point lead over Trump in national survey
Vice President now holds a 7-point lead over former President Trump, according to a new national survey.
The survey, conducted by Reuters and Ipsos, found Harris leading with 46.61 percent support compared to Trump’s 40.48 percent, rounding to a 47-40 gap. That margin was slightly higher than the 5-point advantage over Trump the prior edition of the poll found Harris held.
The report continues from there. According to the report, the survey's numbers for Harris and Trump "round to" a 7-point gap.
Breaking! In fact, those same numbers subtract to a 6.13-point gap. As measured by this particular survey, that's the actual size of the gap.
In our view, Harris supporters should accept the instruction flat or round. But even in this most highly educated of all journalistic worlds, numbers can be very hard!
For further discussion: When a major party nominee is referred to as "Cackling McKneepads" night after night, should other big news orgs take note of that fact?
(At Fox, the women avert their gaze while one of the incels does this.)
And yes, the full picture is even worse. Watching Fox News is depressing and hard. Was our highly self-impressed species really built for this type of work?
My advice to Somerby is to stop watching Fox.
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DeleteSomerby complains about the way the poll numbers were rounded to make the Harris lead look larger. The quote comes from The Hill, which is a moderate to right leaning publication, so I doubt the problem was due to political bias. More likely is that Ipsos gave The Hill a press release that was printed as is.
ReplyDeleteRounding isn't needed for purposes of reporting results to the public, but perhaps it was required to enable averaging of poll results across surveys. In that case, you wouldn't be doing any subtracting to obtain average results. Campaign watchers suggest that people not closely examine individual poll results, as Somerby is doing, but instead look at the averages across various polls. That tends to even out the biases and unusual results to give a clearer picture of who is leading and by how much. And then there is also the margin of error, which would be larger than any rounding problems. Overall, we are just starting to see Harris results that are not only higher but also outside the margin of error compared to Trump.
It isn't that math is hard but that understanding what polls mean is hard. Looking at a poll like this and thinking it can tell you who will win is a mistake. It is also a mistake to say that polls mean nothing and then ignore them.
"Rounding isn't needed for purposes of reporting results to the public, but perhaps it was required to enable averaging of poll results across surveys. In that case, you wouldn't be doing any subtracting to obtain average results."
DeleteWhy wouldn't you?
Because the focus is on creating an average for each candidate, not on comparing them to each other. For example, maybe the campaign is more interested in whether a visit to a swing state resulted in improved favorability compared to before the visit, not how Harris does compared to Trump. Or maybe they are looking at subgroups and want to know whether favorability among young people is increasing. Polls are used for lots of purposes, such as targeting ads and canvassing, deciding where to speak. Somerby’s subtraction is a kind of cherrypicking used to make a specious complaint. What matters is rounding consistently. Somerby should be suggesting rounding to two decimal places instead of whole numbers, but you don’t round to tell a different story for political purposes.
Delete"but you don’t round to tell a different story for political purposes."
DeleteThe report did the rounding, not Bob. What he did was basic subtraction to get a more accurate statement of the poll results.
And by the way, one doesn't round "to two decimal places."
Somerby did that to produce a different result for political purposes.
DeleteHector, you don’t know what you are talking about. When you have a number such as 42.8763, you would report it as 42.88 rounded to two decimal places and 43 rounded to a whole number.
Delete"(We humans! When we're hard up, we pawn our intelligence to buy a drink. That was the finding of the noted anthropologist Cummings, roughly one century ago.)"
ReplyDeleteCummings was a poet, writer and artist. He was never an anthropologist and he is certainly not an expert on human behavior. We do not pawn our intelligence to buy a drink, not even in a poetic sense. We use of intelligence when hard up to solve our problems, not to hide from them using alcohol. Cummings was a Republican and an enthusiastic supporter of Joseph McCarthy, so that is what his view of humanity is worth. At the end of his life, he mirrored Somerby's and Trump's doom and gloom picture of both humanity and the world. That is sad.
Given that Somerby seeks out phrases that resonate with his own inner environment instead of trying to cheer himself up with upbeat poets or song lyrics, it is hard to imagine he is attracted to Harris's optimistic and joyful campaign. I suspect he watches Fox and is attracted to Trump because they mirror his own mood. That also supports my view that Somerby has been lying to us about who he supports and who he will vote for. Note that he expresses no positive reaction to these encouraging new polling results that show Harris gaining on Trump and more likely to win than when she began her campaign.
anon 3:26 - as to your view that TDH is "lying" about who he will vote for - there are 3 possible (sane) reactions: 1) you are a troll: 2) you are incredibly dumb: 3) I can't think of a third one
DeleteThe 3rd one is maybe I’m right.
DeleteI'm betting the 1) and 2) Exacta.
Delete"We do not pawn our intelligence to buy a drink, not even in a poetic sense."
DeleteOh but we do. Most weekday nights. The 'drink' we get is the feeling of being told we're always on the side of the angels.
The 'pawning' is that we're not, and we know it. But we refuse to admit it.
Maybe you do, but Somerby is generalizing to all of humanity. We don’t all watch Fox to have our prejudices confirmed. Somerby always judges humanity by its worst specimens (or what he considers worst).
DeleteYou accuse Somerby of lying based, in part, on the fact that he is "attracted to Trump." Have you missed Somerby's innumerable comments about Trump being a dangerous whackjob?
ReplyDeleteHow many times has Somerby quoted Harris compared to the number of times he has quoted Trump?
DeleteWould a reasonable person give airtime to someone they consider a dangerous whackjob. Somerby has routinely defended Trump. He has disagreed that Trump should have been impeached, objected to the 1/6 Select Committee investigation, has objected to the hush money trial and other trials of Trump (including E.J. Carroll's trial), presented innumerable times when he thought the press was unfair to Trump in their interpretations of his statements (such as the Charlottesville quote). That is a lot of defending of someone Somerby supposedly considers a dangerous whackjob.
DeleteTrump promised a bloodbath if he were to be elected.
Deleteanon 4:26 - everywhere Trump is the center of attention. He's running for president. You're the last person to be assessing anyone as a reasonable person. Some people can't whistle; some aren't good at math; "reason" seems to be something thazt you missed the boat on.
Delete"How many times has Somerby quoted Harris compared to the number of times he has quoted Trump?"
Delete4:22, I'm about to blow your mind. Is it the quantity of quotes that matters or what he says about the quotes?
Kablooie!
Dpends on whether you are trying to infer something about Somerby’s beliefs and motives or not.
DeleteAh, I get it. If you want to know what Bob thinks about Harris or Trump, ignore what he says about them, but focus on how many times he mentions them.
DeleteSomerby doesn’t state things directly. That’s the problem.
DeleteIt's alway someone else's fault, isn't it?
DeleteWhat Somerby does and doesn’t say is Somerby’s fault.
Delete"Watching the programs on the Fox News Channel gets to be extremely hard.
ReplyDeleteOver the course of the past several years, MSNBC was enough of a challenge. But watching Fox is hard."
It is only hard if you lack an open mind and with it, the inability to consider a point of view that differs from your own.
Sure, but the personalities are hard to swallow. Gutfeld? Watters? Hannity?
DeleteI'd rather drink castor oil.
"inability to consider a point of view that differs from" reality. FIFY.
DeleteIn his speech in PA, Trump said he is going to deport legal immigrants, the Haitians in Springfield OH. They are here legally. That amounts to ethnic cleansing. Should we be keeping an open mind about that? I don't think so.
ReplyDeleteWhy is Somerby working so hard to convince us that Harris's lead is slightly less than the 47-40 being reported everywhere would suggest? We're supposed to think he is enormously committed to accuracy in reporting, but he never seems to find errors in favor of Dems like Harris. And he doesn't actually comment on whether this discrepancy is meaningful in any way. Does Somerby think this means that Trump has more of a chance of winning than the 6 pt lead would indicate? Playing with numbers in calculations doesn't change the reality of who is voting for whom on the ground.
ReplyDeleteIt didn't seem like he worked very hard at all. It's simple subtraction and Bob is correct that the lead is more accurately described as 6 points.
DeleteThe poll numbers are not presented in relation to each other, as differences. They are listed as rounded whole %s. Somerby’s subtraction has nothing to do with the article reporting the poll results. Somerby wishes to minimize the lead but the article is just reporting results using the same method of rounding as all statisticians use, not reporting the difference. Accuracy is not at stake. Both approaches are accurate, but they are talking about two different things.
DeleteReminds me of the old joke.
DeleteThere are three kinds of people: Those who get math, and those that don’t.
"Somerby’s subtraction has nothing to do with the article reporting the poll results."
DeleteThen what does it have to do with?
It compares Harris to Trump on one factor (unstated by Somerby) but that isn’t the sole purpose of the poll, so the report didn’t do that subtraction. It just gave the numbers without the subtraction.
DeleteI'm going to go out on a limb and say the factor being compared was, "Who are you going to vote for, Harris or Trump?"
DeleteAnd there doesn't seem to be any good reason not to do the subtraction the way Somerby did it.
Bob's right again.
Things aren't looking very good for Harris.
DeleteAnd you reside on what planet?
DeleteHector, look up the Reuters Ipsos poll and see what they asked and who they surveyed.
DeleteThis thread on rounding, and the one above on rounding, remind me of the “This amp goes to 11!” scene in Spinal Tap.
DeleteSuppose we round to the tens instead of single points. Then, rounded, Harris leads 50-40, a ten point lead!
DeleteOr suppose we round to the hundreds. Then it’s tied, 0-0.
Delete"Well, it's one louder, isn't it?"
DeleteWatching Fox is hard. Turning off the TV is easy.
ReplyDeleteGreg Gutfeld's got nothin' on Republican US Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana:
ReplyDelete"Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters… but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP. All these thugs better get their mind right and their ass out of our country before January 20th."
Or else what, Clay?
I believe the race is very close. All the battleground states are close.
ReplyDelete