Cameroni

Indeed, to all intents and purposes polls are a snapshot in time always. They will try to amend their data to reflect new trends but this may or may not succeed in reality. I'm a forex trader and we use a variety of tools to predict how the market will act. However, more often than not the market surprises almost everyone, despite the best info and tools we use to predict what it will do. Reality has too many variables. It's true, past events form future trends...often, but not always. There can be major suprises.

Yes, looks like we are, and the reason I highlighted the undecided voters in swing states was merely because pollsters have highlighted that they believe the swing states and in particular the undecided voters in those states will decide the election. As this is a close election, at this point in time that seemed a reasonable argument to me. Given the importance of the undecided voters in swing states, the difficulty of predicting how they would vote struck me and hence how hard pollsters would have it to predict their numbers or votes accurately, given how some undecided are actually voters who have decided, people who will not turn up to vote and so on. Having looked at Democrat pollsters in particular they certainly do not claim to know the outcome of the election, and I just found it funny how some people here thought polls are Nostradamus like certain predictions. I don't think they are.

Yes, indeed undecided voters are invisible in polls to some degree because polls cannot accurately predict how many undecided there will be, if they will vote, or how they will vote. Some people who claim to be undecided in polls are not. Some who claim they will vote do not. In the end reality is too complex for mathematical modelling to be accurate.

Yes, polls are "somewhat" of a guide. With a strong emphasis on "somewhat". Can they accurately predict how undecided voters in swing states will vote? No. Can they accurately predict how many undecided voters there will be in swing states? No. So "somewhat" yes. But accurate? Not necessarily. Thus it's a bit foolish to get so excited about polls.

First of all there is a risk that a perfectly random sample of a given size may not reflect the characteristics of the population as a whole (known as “sampling error”). In fact, the group of people who participate in any given survey are virtually never an idealised random sub-set of the population that will actually turn out to vote. Instead, they can differ from the eventual mix in important ways, which collectively are known as “non-sampling error”. Then polls are subject to the vagaries of voter turnout. Polls conducted among all adults will include the views of people who are ineligible or not registered to vote. Those limited to registered voters treat all respondents in this group as if they had an equal probability of showing up to vote, which they surely do not. And those that seek to filter out respondents unlikely to vote, or that grant more weight to the views of people who are more likely to show up, can get such calculations wrong. Although no two surveys are identical, ones that use a similar approach to predicting turnout are more likely to wind up with errors of a similar size and direction than are ones that handle it differently. In statistical terms, each of these different methods of turnout projection can produce a “bias”, which is likely to contaminate the results of all the pollsters that use it in a similar way. The group of people pollsters can reach by using live telephone interviewers may have different voting intentions than those they can reach by automated phone calls, or via the internet. Individual pollsters may make methodological choices, such as weighting schemes, that consistently lead to more or less favourable results for a particular political party. Ahead of time, it is impossible to know the direction or size of the bias that each of these characteristics may introduce. Voters who have a soft but consistent preference for one of the two major parties often say they are undecided or planning to vote for a third party. This makes polls in the first half of the year a surprisingly weak predictor of final results. For example, in June 1988, George H.W. Bush trailed Michael Dukakis by 12 percentage points in polling averages (he went on to win by eight). Exactly four years later, Mr Bush led Bill Clinton by ten percentage points, and wound up losing by seven. In more recent years, polling errors have been a bit smaller—but they can still be substantial. In 2000 Mr Bush’s son George W. saw his ten-point lead over Al Gore in the popular vote turn into a deficit during the final three months of the campaign. It took the Electoral College and a disputed 537-vote victory in Florida to save his presidential bid. And notoriously, Hillary Clinton led Donald Trump by around eight points in June, August and even October of 2016, before she barely squeaked out a two-point edge in the popular vote. https://www.economist.com/interactive/us-2024-election/prediction-model/president/how-this-works Ultimately, some people who claim to be undecided are not, they favour one or the other party. Some who claim they will vote for one or the other, do not, or are not eligible to vote. The key point is however that undecided voters in the swing states will determine the election, which is not about who gets the most votes, Clinton got the most votes and lost, because of the way the US electoral system works. Undecided voters do change over time, and polls cannot accurately predict how they will vote. Reality, ultimately, is more complex than science and mathematics will be able to model. We saw this with corona, and we saw it with past polling efforts.

You can watch the polls if you want, but sadly they are useless to determine the outcome of the election. Undecided voters in the swing states will determine the election. And they are not reflected in the polls. On the matter of polls, even democrat pollsters have sounded a warning bell: Democratic pollsters have spent nearly four years trying to fix what went wrong last time. But, they warn, there might still be some other issues. The polls could again underestimate Trump this year — though it might be for some other, unknown reasons. “Every year, we’ve had different curveballs. This is a difficult industry,” said John Anzalone, who was the lead pollster on Biden’s 2020 campaign. “Something’s gonna happen in 2024. You and I, right now, don’t know what that is.” https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/22/democrat-pollsters-kamala-harris-00176065 Funny how professional pollsters are a lot less confident than professional Democrat cheerleaders like you, Irish.

That's hilarious. With one hand they send arms to destroy Russia, with the other they send investment to do business in Russia. The hypocrisy of the US is unrivalled int he world. Unbelievable.

I don't read Fox news, but I see the Wall Street Journal was not impressed: "Kamala Harris’s speech was fine, and delivered with assurance. I prefer “Ask not what your country can do for you” to “Never do anything half-assed,” but tastes vary. Too soon we were hearing phrases like “assure access to capital.” The text didn’t have the feeling of a story being told from some previously unknown inner depth. It stuck to résumé values and life experiences, rather than a sharing of her thinking. I’m not sure it advanced her position with those who aren’t already with her." https://www.wsj.com/opinion/kamala-harris-gets-off-to-a-strong-start-61b6fd9b

Yeah, it works again. The other day it didn't.

Trulove himself said that Kamala Harris was present at court when his guilty verdict was read out and laughed in his face. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13750465/actor-wrongfully-convicted-kamala-harris-taunt.html Kamala Harris being present at court when Trulove had his verdict read out does imply that Kamala Harris was involved to some degree in Trulove's case. It is very normal for more junior prosecturs to run some issues by the more senior lawyer in the department. The Trulove case being high profile it would have been natural for Linda Allen to seek Kamala Harris views on the more delicate aspects of the case. But clearly ultimately Harris will always point to the crooked police officers, never mind that her office had the duty to evaluate the evidence. If 4 relatively uneducated police officers can deceive Kamala Harris so easily, then it would be even easier for diplomats, politicians or secret service people to do so.

Her speech was really poor. Emotional clap trap without an ounce of substance. I was expecting her to start crying any second, the way she talked, but thankfully that spectacle did not happen.

This is so true, I wanted to get the Russian side of the story and go to Russia Today using google. Impossible.

Yes, that article supports the initial sentence that her prosecutorial record will become of paramount importance in this election. For more details on the Trulove case, you can read about it here https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13750465/actor-wrongfully-convicted-kamala-harris-taunt.html https://michaelpatrickleahy.com/tom-pappert-explains-kamala-harris-role-in-the-case-of-a-san-francisco-man-wrongfully-convicted-of-murder/

It is truly bizarre to listen to Kamala Harris speak, she sounds like her own words will make her cry any second. So odd. Never mind that she provided no substance whatsoever, how she will fund the promised tax cuts for the middle class for instance, but her delivery is so strange.

Harris herself has made much of her prosecutorial credentials and is on public record for this. So her record as a prosecutor will play a major part in the election soon. In the case of Trulove there are two possibilities: 1) Former star attorney Linda Allen was really that incompetent and Kamala Harris did not play any role and was negligent in not exercising the supervisory role which her office demanded, or 2) Kamala Harris was well appraised of developments by her junior attorney Linda Allen, but did not take the appropriate steps. Either way, her record leading the prosecution team is extremely poor. Unfortunately, Trump is clumsily overexaggerating the attacks with his characteristic disregard for honesty, and thus Harris has escaped so far easily real scrutiny of her poor prosecution record. This will surely change. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-08-22/kamala-harris-prosecutor-dnc-convention-california-attorney-general-san-francisco-harry-litman “But we were also very critical of Kamala taking a punitive-first approach,” Hollins continued, recalling Harris’ stance on school truancy. As DA, Harris championed state legislation that threatened jail time for parents if their children were repeatedly absent. As DA and AG, Harris was also criticized for defending convictions in cases where there was evidence of innocence and prosecutorial misconduct; opposing legislation to require AG investigations into police shootings; defending the prison system in civil rights litigation, as the state’s top lawyer and clashing with sex worker rights’ groups. She declined to seek the death penalty as SFDA, but then as AG fought against a challenge to capital punishment. Jeralynn Brown-Blueford’s 18-year-old son was killed by an Oakland police officer in 2012, and after the local DA declined to file charges, her family advocated for then AG Harris to intervene, but the officer was never prosecuted. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/24/kamala-harris-california-record-election

It does make you like Zelensky though, he does have a modicum of courage. Will he have enough courage to go against the nationalist militias that support him, and negotiate for peace, well his survival may depend on how they behave. Great article. Good work.

Linda Allen was a prosecutor working under Kamala Harris. Looks like Harris threw her under the bus to save her own skin following the Trulove debacle: In reviewing Trulove’s story, Pappert pointed out how multiple staff members under Harris’ leadership as district attorney seem to have hit “brick walls” or “gone dark” in their careers upon working for the now-vice president. “Linda Allen seemed to have a great career before she went to work for Kamala Harris and prosecuted [Trulove’s] case. She seemed to be an up-and-comer in California, especially as a public lawyer. But when this case happened, she seemed to have been sort of thrown under the bus. Pappert also identified Larry Wallace, another individual who worked for Harris when she was San Francisco’s district attorney. Wallace also seemed to have hit a “brick wall” in his career after working for Harris. “It is an interesting pattern with Kamala Harris when people in her, not that ancient of history, seem to have gone dark. So this individual, Larry Wallace, is now retired or so says his online profiles, but he continues to coach basketball. So we’re trying to get in touch with him. I would say it is interesting that he was, I believe, a 16 year police veteran. He then worked for the Department of Justice He then worked for Kamala Harris, and it wasn’t until working for Kamala Harris that his career seemed to meet a brick wall,” Pappert said. Regarding the Trulove case, Pappert went on to point out that all scenarios in which Harris may have been involved in the case reflect negatively on her as a leader. “The real question here is: Was Kamala essentially abandoning her job duties and allowing this office and the people working in it to operate without her oversight? Or was she directly involved in this, and therefore knew what Linda Allen was doing that was apparently improper in this case? I think those are the two options,” Pappert explained. “Either Kamala Harris is a leader who doesn’t keep track of what her people are doing, or she’s a leader who potentially instructs her people to do the wrong thing. Either way, I don’t think we want that person to be in the Oval Office,” Pappert added. https://michaelpatrickleahy.com/tom-pappert-explains-kamala-harris-role-in-the-case-of-a-san-francisco-man-wrongfully-convicted-of-murder/

Clearly in this war Zelensky does depend in part on the nationalist militias like the Azov brigade, and undoubtedly their influence is not a positive one. Another excellent article.

Sorry, I'm not Swedish. And I could care less if Volvo is Swedish, Chinese or Angolan. However, it is simply not true to say that Volvo cars are Chinese. They are not. The head of design at Volvo, Thomas Ingenlath, is Swedish. Almost the entire board of directors of Volvo is Swedish. It's main factory is in Sweden. Volvo is not MG. Volvo has retained considerable independence from Geely. MG cars are Chinese. Absolutely. Volvo most definitely are not. They are conceived, designed and manufactured in Sweden to the largest extent, though some are made in the US, Belgium, Malaysia and China. But Volvo cars are still Swedish. It looks like the excellent, and fantastically expensive EX90, costing 105,000 Euro and thus more than the electric BMW SUV, was designed by a team lead by Robin Page in terms of styling, who has since moved to Bentley, but Swede Tomas Ingenlath retained overall responsibility for the design of the EX90. Though clearly the Shanghai studio must have had some input, it is not clear if they played a leading role. The EX90 is manufactured in South Carolina and China, that much is true.

That's a fair point, but prosecutors also have means at their disposal to investigate, and they do use them. Kamala Harris was served with fabricated evidence and was unable to figure out that it was fabricated. And this was just four police officers. How easy will it be for hardened political operators or secret service agents or diplomats to pull the wool over Kamala's eyes? When she can't even figure out when four police officers are playing her?

I agree 100%, the fight by the Ukrainians is nothing short of heroic. However, their economy is one tenth the size of Russia, they are running out of manpower too. Their country is largely destroyed. The billions the Americans cynically pour in, knowing full that the Ukraine can never win, are just meant to weaken Russia. Indeed a negotiated peace for land would be by far the rational option, but Ukrainian nationalists who insist on not ceding an inch are to blame for those peace negotiations not happening.

It was Kamala Harris responsibility, as the prosecuting attorney, to evaluate the quality of the evidence. Of course. She failed miserably in the case of Mr Trulove.

The Global Head of Design at Volvo is a delightful Brit called Jeremy Offer. The CEO of Volvo is a Scottish chap called Jim Rowan. He succeeded Håkan Samuelsson in 2022. As for Volvo's board of directors, you can see they are almost all Swedish and listed here: https://www.volvogroup.com/en/investors/corporate-governance/board-of-directors.html Volvo's head designer, the guy doing the actual work, is Thomas Ingenlath. He's Swedish. https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/volvos-head-designer-explains-future-of-the-iconic-swedish-brand Yes, I would. Volvo has shifted production of EV cars from China to Belgium. The reason was EU tariffs. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volvo-shifting-ev-production-belgium-evade-china-tariffs-times-reports-2024-06-09/#:~:text=Regulatory %26 Policy-,Volvo shifting EV production to Belgium,China tariffs%2C The Times reports

Well quite, the US would appear to have a broken justice system, and Kamala Harris was an integral part of this failed justice system. That's the whole point though, when election time nears there is bound to be some real scrutiny of her record as a DA, even if it's just because the Trump camp will push it on the agenda with millions of ads. And frankly her stint as a DA was far from the stellar legal performance some might think. There's plenty of stuff there to discredit Harris as incompetent.

Kamala Harris obviously failed to evaluate the evidence correctly and was easily misled by 4 minor police officers providing her with faked evidence. Either she colluded or she's hopelessly incompetent. Do we really want a woman with the finger on the button who is misled by 4 relatively uneducated police offiers? If it's so easy for four policemen to fool her, how much more for experienced politicians and diplomats?