Political Betting Thread

[longway]

Think that make sense but I don't think you have to reach our levels. We let a ton of old folks die without setting foot in a hospital. Like our hospitals didn't get overwhelmed but the timing of when our guidelines started dictating that old people probably was better off getting morphine then oxygen if they seemed sick and probably should stay where they were used to their enviorment rather then come to a hospital.

So yea, you might be right about infection rates that might hit the same levels at some point but I don't think countries with a slower rate of infection will hit the same death rates.

As a libertarian I think that some of the stuff the rest of the world does is dumb as shit, but we took some really weird decisions too.

I think the Swedish health authorities admitted they made mistakes in not properly isolating old people's homes etc. They could have done better, and the virus does appear to be getting less severe as well.

But lock downs are not sustainable and incredibly destructive; its only supposed to be a delaying tactic to get your shit together or using them in specific locations where the infection rate is getting out of control, but somehow the pie in the sky when pigs fly idea of eradicating the virus by hiding forever seems to have deeply permeated some quarters.

 

[Slohog]

I think the Swedish health authorities admitted they made mistakes in not properly isolating old people's homes etc. They could have done better, and the virus does appear to be getting less severe as well.

But lock downs are not sustainable and incredibly destructive; its only supposed to be a delaying tactic to get your shit together or using them in specific locations where the infection rate is getting out of control, but somehow the pie in the sky when pigs fly idea of eradicating the virus by hiding forever seems to have deeply permeated some quarters.

Well, I'd say they're a travesty. They were on record saying all kinds of weird shit including, but not limited to:

January 16th :

- The virus does obviously not have a great capacity to transmit among humans.

January 20th:

- We're not likely to get the virus in Sweden.

January 28th:

- There is no evidence that face masks outside of hospitals does anything to stop the virus. (repeated several times over the next few days and to this day they do not admit that face masks actually should be used)

Febuary 1st:
- The virus will turn out to be about as dangerous as the flu.

February 26th:
- We've discussed screaning of people entering Sweden but decided that we don't need that.

March 3rd
- We've decided that the virus, which is not very dangerous to humans, is not reason enough to recommend people to not travel to Italy.

March 5th
- "There are reasons to believe that we've reached the peak"

etc etc

As you said we should've just got in early, stopped travels to some infected countries and taken the safe route for a couple of weeks and then open up when we had enough materials to deal with it. Instead we decided to do fuck all and watch people die and now there's talk about how we can't open up very much even this fall. Like our media is full of people telling is that we gotta keep being careful and not take any risks and if we fuck up they'll close down even more while at the same time being upset that some other countries have "outbreaks" despite their "2nd wave" often being lower then what we have now, despite the fact that we're top10 in the word per capita in deaths.

Now yea, that's a bad way to measure and stuff, but we're still a not very closely populated country with decent hospitals and a reputation of not ever talking to each other even at the best of times so it's still an indication that even if we did some things right I don't think you should point as us as something to copy.

That said you guys are locking shit down for no reason now, as far as I can tell, and it's sillly.

 

[longway]

Well, I'd say they're a travesty. They were on record saying all kinds of weird shit including, but not limited to:

January 16th :

- The virus does obviously not have a great capacity to transmit among humans.

January 20th:

- We're not likely to get the virus in Sweden.

January 28th:

- There is no evidence that face masks outside of hospitals does anything to stop the virus. (repeated several times over the next few days and to this day they do not admit that face masks actually should be used)

Febuary 1st:
- The virus will turn out to be about as dangerous as the flu.

February 26th:
- We've discussed screaning of people entering Sweden but decided that we don't need that.

March 3rd
- We've decided that the virus, which is not very dangerous to humans, is not reason enough to recommend people to not travel to Italy.

March 5th
- "There are reasons to believe that we've reached the peak"

etc etc

As you said we should've just got in early, stopped travels to some infected countries and taken the safe route for a couple of weeks and then open up when we had enough materials to deal with it. Instead we decided to do fuck all and watch people die and now there's talk about how we can't open up very much even this fall. Like our media is full of people telling is that we gotta keep being careful and not take any risks and if we fuck up they'll close down even more while at the same time being upset that some other countries have "outbreaks" despite their "2nd wave" often being lower then what we have now, despite the fact that we're top10 in the word per capita in deaths.

Now yea, that's a bad way to measure and stuff, but we're still a not very closely populated country with decent hospitals and a reputation of not ever talking to each other even at the best of times so it's still an indication that even if we did some things right I don't think you should point as us as something to copy.

That said you guys are locking shit down for no reason now, as far as I can tell, and it's sillly.

Sounds a fairly typical course for most countries, but then places like UK implemented a severe lock down for several months after doing many of the things you mentioned.

Its a more densely populated country, so a lock down was unavoidable, but the length and extent of it was crazy.

I think it's a tough one to navigate though, and we have the benefit of hindsight. But given what we know now, much of what is going on USA with ongoing lock downs and preventing kids from going to school is a political decision, not from any motive to save lives, even though its portrayed that way.

I dont think we should forget many of gbe mistakes were made at least partly bc ofvmisinformation from WHO and CCP. with friends like WHO, who needs enemies.

 

[Joedaman55]

Lol nice, it seems like COVID is the new talking point here. Yes, people are building HIRD immunity which is the reason for the decline in deaths while positive cases increase, links below:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
[URL]https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
[/URL]
You saw a slight increase in deaths during the February through May period which was similar to something seen in 18 or 19 (can’t remember but there’s a graph out there showing a sharp uptick during this period with not much explanation). A lot of the media is stating the information how cases are spiraling out of control without including the information where deaths per positive test are going way down. Again, this virus is being politicized and being made out far worse than it is.

VP should be coming out real soon, I don’t see it being Kamala as she doesn’t give Biden the battleground votes he needs but we’ll see.

The most interesting thing is Lichtman is predicting Biden using his election model and Norpoth is predicting Trump using the Primary Model. You have two successful presidential prediction models going against each other which is rare (although I think Lichtman’s biases are getting in the way of him accurately using his model). I still have Trump as a large favorite.

 

[rev0lver]

I just don't think the covid discussion is that relevant to the purpose of this lol. But we've seen countries have successful lockdowns where they slowed the spread and were able to start opening up. We curved upward after a bunch of governors decided we can open up early. Sweden's somewhat of an outlier and even then, their overall numbers are much worse than others in their region, so it's hard to say it's a desirable model. We know how viruses spread, there's no argument against the fact that avoiding contact will prevent it from spreading. And even if herd immunity were attainable here, which again, is nowhere close to an accepted model of dealing with this due to changes in the virus and reinfection potential, it would probably result in more overall deaths. Most public health experts think that's a terrible idea and I really doubt the international health community is just being paid off by Nancy Pelosi or some shit to say that.

Trump failed his response here and will be portrayed as being responsible for Americans dying, and will only deny responsibility while taking months to start following the advice of health experts. Polling overall, about peoples' attitudes surrounding covid and Trump's approval/election polls, shows how most of America sees this. It's the tipping point toward the end of his presidency, and he'll actually manage to fail against a senile establishment dem no one likes. This didn't have to be a divisive political issue. If he got on the same page with the medical experts and the dems back in March, his numbers could be soaring by now. But his arrogance brought him down.

 

[rev0lver]

Most of the polling I'm seeing showing Trump doing better in certain states come from right-leaning or lower quality pollsters. Sure, there's an argument about a comparison to 2016. But I'm not seeing the right data in his favor. Overall he seems to still be pretty badly down while facing tight races in generally safe-R states. I don't really know what he can do between now and November that's going to change that. With how divisive of a figure he is, the vast majority of America has likely made up their minds on how they feel about Trump, and it's very unlikely he'll be able to pull people from the other side.

 

[longway]

Most of the polling I'm seeing showing Trump doing better in certain states come from right-leaning or lower quality pollsters. Sure, there's an argument about a comparison to 2016. But I'm not seeing the right data in his favor. Overall he seems to still be pretty badly down while facing tight races in generally safe-R states. I don't really know what he can do between now and November that's going to change that. With how divisive of a figure he is, the vast majority of America has likely made up their minds on how they feel about Trump, and it's very unlikely he'll be able to pull people from the other side.

I don't know, until the covid got really bad he was doing well. His numbers were trending upward steadily, of course now it's different, but to call a reversal of a long term upward trend occurring in a short span baked in is premature.

He was the favourite for quite a while. Its not as if always underwater.

We all know that his numbers tanked badly when pussygate hit, but with in a month he had recovered all lost ground and then some.

 

[longway]

I just don't think the covid discussion is that relevant to the purpose of this lol. But we've seen countries have successful lockdowns where they slowed the spread and were able to start opening up. We curved upward after a bunch of governors decided we can open up early. Sweden's somewhat of an outlier and even then, their overall numbers are much worse than others in their region, so it's hard to say it's a desirable model. We know how viruses spread, there's no argument against the fact that avoiding contact will prevent it from spreading. And even if herd immunity were attainable here, which again, is nowhere close to an accepted model of dealing with this due to changes in the virus and reinfection potential, it would probably result in more overall deaths. Most public health experts think that's a terrible idea and I really doubt the international health community is just being paid off by Nancy Pelosi or some shit to say that.

Trump failed his response here and will be portrayed as being responsible for Americans dying, and will only deny responsibility while taking months to start following the advice of health experts. Polling overall, about peoples' attitudes surrounding covid and Trump's approval/election polls, shows how most of America sees this. It's the tipping point toward the end of his presidency, and he'll actually manage to fail against a senile establishment dem no one likes. This didn't have to be a divisive political issue. If he got on the same page with the medical experts and the dems back in March, his numbers could be soaring by now. But his arrogance brought him down.

There is a lot factually wrong here. At no point did he fail to listen to experts. When he was doing daily briefing people liked him so much that media had to cut him off. His numbers tanked badly bc he lost the narrative war. Not saying his covid response was great, but the stuff you say about him is nonsense. I don't know why one side wants to deify experts, I would love to live in a world where all you had to do was listen to an expert, but it doesn't work like that. This pandemic demonstrates how badly wrong experts have been on just about everything.

Not saying don't listen to them but advocating that we should be free to challenge them, rather than accepting their pronouncements as those from God. If you look around there is also a large subset of experts that think that we are close to herd immunity, and they are optimistic that the worst is behind us, but they never get the same exposure as a doom mongers.

Eg in UK we went with the imperial model, which was far more pessimistic than the Oxford model. I don't think there is the agreement you think there is. It was later found that the imperial model was a mess and often made no sense.

There is simply no rapport possible with the dnc, they hate him no matter what and that's that.

You don't even seem to understand a vaccine bestows herd immunity, if herd immunity is not possible, neither is a vaccine.

Lock downs are a delaying tactic, they only save lives by ensuring medical services are not overwhelmed. What saves lives are vulnerable populations sheltering while the more robust section of the population takes the hit until herd immunity is reached, then vulnerable populations can emerge safely.

If cuomo has botched it so much that so many have died and ny has still not reached immunity, then ny is an even bigger disaster than I thought.

I don't know where you get your ideas, but it is all pretty jumbled up.

 

[rev0lver]

When he was doing daily briefing people liked him so much that media had to cut him off. His numbers tanked badly bc he lost the narrative war.

???? In what universe??? Trump's approval trailed upward by 2 points, still in the negatives mind you, for only about 2 weeks. Approval generally goes up for everyone during a crisis so long as they're doing a halfway competent job. Yet he barely handled a small jump before fumbling it. His numbers tanked when he started contradicting Fauci, spewing factually incorrect information, pretending everything was going smoothly despite the case/death numbers, flirting with conspiracy theories, and showing more concern over the economy than public health. He brought that on himself. If you think the media's was incorrect in spinning it against him, despite their "spin" just being basic fact-checking and their agreement with global leaders +the majority of health experts, then that's just a pure failure of leadership on his part.

You don't even seem to understand a vaccine bestows herd immunity, if herd immunity is not possible, neither is a vaccine.

Natural herd immunity and vaccinated herd immunity are two different things. I said this kind of herd immunity might not be possible because the virus can change and we don't know how long our antibodies are effective for it. This is why the flu still exists and why we constantly have new vaccines for it. And again, a vaccination response ends up with less cases+deaths, so the optimal solution of the two is prett yclear.

If cuomo has botched it so much that so many have died and ny has still not reached immunity, then ny is an even bigger disaster than I thought.

NY's response gave them one of the best trendlines in the country from their initial outbreak. That looks like a success. You think they should open up and just find out if thousands more people die? It's pretty clear why Cuomo and co are double digits ahead of Trump in approval.

 

[Joedaman55]

Most of the polling I'm seeing showing Trump doing better in certain states come from right-leaning or lower quality pollsters. Sure, there's an argument about a comparison to 2016. But I'm not seeing the right data in his favor. Overall he seems to still be pretty badly down while facing tight races in generally safe-R states. I don't really know what he can do between now and November that's going to change that. With how divisive of a figure he is, the vast majority of America has likely made up their minds on how they feel about Trump, and it's very unlikely he'll be able to pull people from the other side.

People just assume it’s 2016 where polling got it wrong but it’s been historically inaccurate. Below is a link to the Primary Model:
http://primarymodel.com/

I agree that most of America has figured out who they’re voting for and if they’re voting.

 

[longway]

???? In what universe??? Trump's approval trailed upward by 2 points, still in the negatives mind you, for only about 2 weeks. Approval generally goes up for everyone during a crisis so long as they're doing a halfway competent job. Yet he barely handled a small jump before fumbling it. His numbers tanked when he started contradicting Fauci, spewing factually incorrect information, pretending everything was going smoothly despite the case/death numbers, flirting with conspiracy theories, and showing more concern over the economy than public health. He brought that on himself. If you think the media's was incorrect in spinning it against him, despite their "spin" just being basic fact-checking and their agreement with global leaders +the majority of health experts, then that's just a pure failure of leadership on his part.



Natural herd immunity and vaccinated herd immunity are two different things. I said this kind of herd immunity might not be possible because the virus can change and we don't know how long our antibodies are effective for it. This is why the flu still exists and why we constantly have new vaccines for it. And again, a vaccination response ends up with less cases+deaths, so the optimal solution of the two is prett yclear.



NY's response gave them one of the best trendlines in the country from their initial outbreak. That looks like a success. You think they should open up and just find out if thousands more people die? It's pretty clear why Cuomo and co are double digits ahead of Trump in approval.

Forget about the Trump aspect. Some fair points, others not so fair. Doesnt matter to me.

So you advocate lockdown until a partially effective vaccine is available? Good luck with that strategy. The issue is that a lengthy lockdown is not sustainable, you are talking about economic and social devestation that will take years if not decades to reciver from.

You look at only one metric, there is the overall picture to consider. Way better is excess deaths, for example.

I think ny should do what makes sense for its citizens. Im not saying dont take mitigation measures, you can see quite clearly already that there is no exponential infection rate associated with opening up, if this is the case why not start? Whats the point of zero infections if you destroy a city to achieve it.

Are they going to lockdown forever? Of course not, one way or another the lockdown has to end. You act like there is some choice here, there isnt.

Btw as other scandi countries open up infections spiking, all lockdown does is delay the inevitable. Not saying it should not be used, but its an extreme measure that causes many other problems, not a default position, but one of last resort that can only be used for a short time.

 

[rev0lver]

Forget about the Trump aspect. Some fair points, others not so fair. Doesnt matter to me.

So you advocate lockdown until a partially effective vaccine is available? Good luck with that strategy. The issue is that a lengthy lockdown is not sustainable, you are talking about economic and social devestation that will take years if not decades to reciver from.

You look at only one metric, there is the overall picture to consider. Way better is excess deaths, for example.

I think ny should do what makes sense for its citizens. Im not saying dont take mitigation measures, you can see quite clearly already that there is no exponential infection rate associated with opening up, if this is the case why not start? Whats the point of zero infections if you destroy a city to achieve it.

Are they going to lockdown forever? Of course not, one way or another the lockdown has to end. You act like there is some choice here, there isnt.

Btw as other scandi countries open up infections spiking, all lockdown does is delay the inevitable. Not saying it should not be used, but its an extreme measure that causes many other problems, not a default position, but one of last resort that can only be used for a short time.

Obviously yeah lockdowns come with other consequences but we've seen where they've been successful in states and countries that did much better than America as a whole. Which shows how vaccination is not the only endgame. Doing proper contact tracing and essentially eradicating the spread is feasible and has worked, and allowed some places to cautiously open up.

I don't think it's clear anywhere that opening up doesn't increase infections. We had states that saw exponential rises once they loosened restrictions. Florida's a good case there, where they shot up to having more cases than NY ever had, despite NY doing significantly more testing. Georgia controversially got very anti-lockdown and have now broken the top 5 in total cases despite not even being top 15 in state population density. Picking 1 case of a country doing ok today is an issue when you don't know what other factors might cause that, and when there are other failures with similar strategies, and other successes with different strategies.

Lockdowns will end eventually, and we'll eventually have treatments sooner or later. But it's pointless to say "screw it, let it spread" unless we reach a point where a vaccine or cure is too far away. Most people seem to agree that health takes precedence over economic issues in this case. I've lost acquaintances (as young as 30!) and have seen friends lose parents to this, which is honestly a little scary. The medical community is working harder and faster than ever before on this, so we have to see what we can do.

 

[rev0lver]

People just assume it’s 2016 where polling got it wrong but it’s been historically inaccurate. Below is a link to the Primary Model:
http://primarymodel.com/

I agree that most of America has figured out who they’re voting for and if they’re voting.

I would strongly disagree with using a model like that when there are other historical stats that would clearly predict a Trump loss. And there are so many factors involved in the primary process that does not necessarily translate to the general election. It seems better to look at that on a case-by-case basis. I also think it's weird that they don't talk much about 1992 on that site, where Bill Clinton did kinda poorly in the early primaries until Super Tuesday. Actually pretty comparable to Biden's primaries in 2020.

Approval ratings have also predicted every incumbent presidential election result since approval was tracked. No incumbent has been re-elected with <=45% approval in their election year. Trump would have to be a historical exception to win if his approval doesn't significantly improve. The closest historical numbers to his is Gerald Ford in 1976, where he lost to Carter by 50 electoral votes. By this metric, Trump could be predicted to lose by more than that.

 

[Joedaman55]

I would strongly disagree with using a model like that when there are other historical stats that would clearly predict a Trump loss. And there are so many factors involved in the primary process that does not necessarily translate to the general election. It seems better to look at that on a case-by-case basis. I also think it's weird that they don't talk much about 1992 on that site, where Bill Clinton did kinda poorly in the early primaries until Super Tuesday. Actually pretty comparable to Biden's primaries in 2020.

Approval ratings have also predicted every incumbent presidential election result since approval was tracked. No incumbent has been re-elected with <=45% approval in their election year. Trump would have to be a historical exception to win if his approval doesn't significantly improve. The closest historical numbers to his is Gerald Ford in 1976, where he lost to Carter by 50 electoral votes. By this metric, Trump could be predicted to lose by more than that.

I agree there are other factors I look at too outside of this model to generate probabilities. Regarding Clinton, the Primary model still picked him even as a result of those poor early primaries. Even though Clinton was struggling, Bush was not winning by large margins over Buchanan on top of his party holding presidency for three terms (incumbents have an advantage but not if their party has held more than two terms). Although, Bush likely wins if Perot didn’t enter the race, Perot took so many votes from Bush and got close to 19% of the popular vote.

So the difference if using that election as an example is Biden is similar to Clinton primary results wise but Trump did much better than Bush in the primaries.

There’s been plenty of lower approval ratings at a period of time than Trump but not this close to election at least that I can remember. If the results don’t work out the way I believe they will I’ll build this into my system.

VP comes out today and it looks like Rice has momentum based on odds shifting.

 

[rev0lver]

I agree there are other factors I look at too outside of this model to generate probabilities. Regarding Clinton, the Primary model still picked him even as a result of those poor early primaries. Even though Clinton was struggling, Bush was not winning by large margins over Buchanan on top of his party holding presidency for three terms (incumbents have an advantage but not if their party has held more than two terms). Although, Bush likely wins if Perot didn’t enter the race, Perot took so many votes from Bush and got close to 19% of the popular vote.

So the difference if using that election as an example is Biden is similar to Clinton primary results wise but Trump did much better than Bush in the primaries.

There’s been plenty of lower approval ratings at a period of time than Trump but not this close to election at least that I can remember. If the results don’t work out the way I believe they will I’ll build this into my system.

VP comes out today and it looks like Rice has momentum based on odds shifting.

You could also argue the same about third parties in 2016. Obviously they didn't pull as much as Perot, but they pulled more votes than any third parties have since Perot ran for office. Lots of those were just anti-establishment votes from people who disliked both candidates while Hillary was assumed to win anyway, and the polling was actually a lot more accurate to the results when you factored the third parties in. We don't have that factor this time around (or at least it's not likely), and the anti-Trump voters might take things more seriously than they did before. Should also point out though that GHWB entered the 1992 election with his approval in the 30's.

And sure Trump doesn't have historically low approval compared to others, but election year is where it matters most. Carter and GHWB lost with lower approval than Trump, Ford lost with higher approval than Trump. Every other incumbent won with >50% approval, with the arguable exceptions of GWB and Obama, who were hovering around 49%. If Trump gets re-elected, he would have the lowest approval of any incumbent winner by a wide margin, and I find that more unlikely than the primary model having a bad year. There are too many factors that a primary model, by design, cannot take into account, while standard polling and approval can directly show overall attitudes at any point in the race. We just see more often than not that it would naturally line up with a primary model, but that won't always be the case.

edit: I am definitely interested to see how candidate approval factors in though, not just presidential approval and incumbent results. But I don't know where historical data for that is easily tracked.

 

[rev0lver]

On the VP pick, I think it just has to be Susan Rice. Or at least it has to be the best pick for Biden. She checks all the boxes while being establishment enough for the DNC agenda, while being uncontroversial enough for the progressive and establishment wings to be okay with her. Yeah progressives will hate that it's not one of them, but the backlash would be a lot less than it would be for Kamala.

 

[Foghorn Leghorn]

@anyone who was betting on the Dem nominee many moons ago when I was saying Kamala would win.

I'll consider my Kamala Harris pick as a half win. Since we all know Biden is..... (insert descriptor here)

 

[rev0lver]

welp.... lol

 

[Joedaman55]

Hahahaha holy shit, he really did pick Kamala. This election cycle is going to be even more hilarious.

 

[longway]

We had states that saw exponential rises once they loosened restrictions. Florida's a good case there, where they shot up to having more cases than NY ever had, despite NY doing significantly more testing.

You guys keep using the word exponential, you obviously dont know what it means. There is no exponential rise anywhere that has opened in usa. Obviously infections are going to increase, thats a given.

Testing and tracing is ok, but you are not going to be able to implement that in usa bc you have so many illegals. And it has limitations anyway bc of asymptomatic or spread by people with mild symptoms.

There is no eradicating this virus without complete isolation from outside world. I dont know why this virus engrnders such an hysterical overeaction, we live with all kinds of risks without such a crazy emphasis on just this virus and just one metric of it.

There is nothing that cannot be handled in states that are opening up, that is the bottom line.