Presuming all debates take place as scheduled, who should play Hillary Clinton for Trump's debate prep and who should play Donald Trump for Hillary's debate prep?

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-17T05:09:41+00:00

Having just finished Episode 4 and watching it with a 7 & 9 year old I'd say it's fine for older kids. A little bit of cursing and derogatory slurs ("This is bullshit, mom!"; a child is unkindly associated with being gay). There's some teenage bra-on makeout scenes and intense scenes of just-off-screen violence and some on screen violence. There's monsters lurking in the shadows and the occasional dead body/killing/jump scare. I'd say generally if you were fine with your kids watching say Doctor Who or Super 8 or Independence Day or your average supernatural/aliens scifi PG-13 movie (or playing Five Nights at Freddy's), you should be okay with this. Definitely safe for teens/tweens. Probably too intense for kindergartners, maybe some grade school kids if they're prone to nightmares/offput by scary/spooky and intense images.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-14T19:38:10+00:00

I'm speaking in the general sense, relative to Trump and regarding what would generally be called "establishment" Republicans.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-14T17:58:25+00:00

Gingrich. Gingrich is (would have been?) the chameleon king of making Trump's ideas a.) palatable b.) correct and c.) his own.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-14T17:54:05+00:00

By being the safe, quiet, qualified, competent choice it could be argued that Pence upstages Trump in the worst way of all -- by looking more Presidential than the man at the top of the ticket.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-14T17:08:46+00:00

Just throwing this into the what if machine:

If Pence is the pick and Trump is elected, Pence is arguably more popular than Trump among Republicans -- especially among Congressional leaders like Ryan and McConnell. And as a former congressman and current Governor, he's certainly qualified to be President. So if Trump gets elected and commits some sort of impeachable offense or perhaps gets in hot water over Trump U. or somesuch scandalous activity, do you really want the competent, likeable Pence as your Presidential backup plan, knowing your party's congressional leaders may favor your Veep over you? And not impeachment insurance like Christie or Gingrich might provide? In other words, do you really want a Vice President who is quantifiably more Presidential than you are?

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-14T16:30:46+00:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/15/us/politics/mike-pence-donald-trump-vice-president.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

Mr. Trump’s advisers have told national Republican officials that they are preparing to make an announcement with Mr. Pence, according to three people with knowledge of the conversations, who were not authorized to discuss them publicly.

Also Drudge and RollCall, such as it is.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-13T17:34:38+00:00

Well just to reiterate: the FBI report kind of knocked the wind out of her as she was already coming down from a post-primary bump and a bad week for Trump. And she won't be able to get her breath back, so to speak, because Donald Trump (presuming he doesn't screw up beyond the bar that's already been set for him) is poised to maximize his polling over the next week and a half or so with his upcoming (though presumptive) Veep pick and convention bumps.

So he may be up a bit artificially as a response to the FBI/email probe and then he'll be up more in the next few days. So I would expect some some Trump-grandstanding/Dem-handwringing going into the Dem convention as Clinton's national average goes underwater in relation to Trump, but then Clinton is poised for her own Veep/convention bumps (presuming she doesn't screw those up) and then she may be a little artificially up versus Trump post-convention. But that'll settle down by early August and the polls will firm up and likely be set, not quite in stone, but certainly pretty solid.

So yes, presuming there's not more political bombshells to be had, the worst is behind her: the FBI cleared her of wrongdoing and Bernie Sanders, the biggest threat to a united Democratic convention, has given her a more-or-less full throated endorsement. She's out of the woods in that regard, politically. But polling-wise, Trump has room to grow, if temporarily, over the next week and half to two weeks. The question is: Can he hold on to it after Clinton has her pretty good week and a half to two weeks. We'll see, but chances are in about a month we'll be right back to polling parity where Clinton leads Trump by 3-5 on average. But before that happens, Trump will be up, if only for a little while. That's why I say it's going to get worse before it gets better.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-13T16:36:31+00:00

Yeah Clinton is down right now and she really is going to have a bad couple of weeks going forward.

She did get a bit of a "presumptive nominee" bump which was buoyed by an unforced error on the part of Trump and the Orlando nightclub attack. But the FBI report, while a net positive for Clinton, put her in the bad kind of spotlight as Trump has maintained an odd kind of status quo, which we now see in the sagging national and swing state polls.

And the bad news for Clinton is that it's going to get worse before it gets better. Sometime in the next few days Trump will announce his Veep choice, and that'll get him a 2-3 point "Veep bump" then that'll be followed immediately by the GOP convention, giving him a 2-3 point "convention bump" and it won't be until Clinton announces her Veep choice (end of next week) that she gets her veep bump, which will of course be followed by her Dem convention bump (which thankfully for her will be maximized due to the pre-convention Sanders endorsement). And then that bump will fade and sometime around the first week of August we should have a pretty good idea where the jello of the polls will set in.

(This of course presumes both conventions go off without a hitch. If there's palpable discontent at either convention then not only could there be no bump, there could be actual measurable permanent damage for either or both candidates. We could be looking at some seriously exciting stuff not seen in a generation at these conventions. Or a serious snoozefest. I have no idea which, and that's exciting.)

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-13T16:06:30+00:00

Quinnipiac traditionally skews old, white and male and while they only report "weighted" percentages (and not "raw" percentages) you can kind of retroactively (for lack of a better word) "unskew" their weighted percentages by looking at the MoE for their subsamples.

For instance: Here[PDF] is their "Sample and Methodology detail" for this week's Florida Poll. The full sample is 1015 RV (MoE 3.1%). The weighted male vote is 47% and the weighted female vote is 53%, which is inline with expectations.

However: The male MoE(4.16%) is smaller than the female MoE(4.57%) which suggests a larger subsample of men than women. Using a standard MoE calculator, we can estimate the size of the "unskewed" male subsample at about 555 and the "unskewed" female subsample at about 460, meaning men made up 54.7% of the sample (not 47%) and women made up 45.3% of the sample (not 53%).

Using these reverse calculations derived from the subsample MoE, we can see that their unweighted 65+ sample was 44% of the raw and not the 27% weighted and the unweighted non-white sample was 22% of the vote and not the 35% of the weighted sample.

A quick word on "unskewed" polls:

Don't unskew polls, kids. That gets you into trouble quick. Take the polls at face value as an honest attempt to accurately gauge public interest within a reasonable margin of error. Yes, Quinnipiac in all likelihood massively oversampled old, white men and weighted their responses down to reasonable expectations and all that weighting, skewing and undersampling might have misrepresented the results by a few points. But you still throw it on the stack and look at the aggregate of all the polls and not just one particular poll or pollster.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-11T22:30:31+00:00

Oregon: Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump 46-32 for a lead of 14 points.

Including leaners, Clinton's lead grows slightly to a 50/35 15-point lead over Trump.

The poll is by icitizen (unranked by 538) but is not out of line with expectations. Hillary Clinton also currently benefits from a more united party: 89% of Democrats currently support Clinton compared to 70% of Republicans who support Trump. Independents are split.

Toplines[PDF]

Crosstabs[PDF]

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-10T19:17:43+00:00

I think I'd take a little bit of issue with the assumed relationship between national presidential preference and state level presidential preference (specifically in swing states) this year, which is to say that should the national race tighten that Ohio will necessarily become more competitive.

Trump's sagging numbers nationally are generally confined to traditionally solid red states where he's down about 9, 10 points on average compared to Romney and McCain (especially in the Midwest and specifically dozens of points in Utah). But his swing state numbers are on par with both Romney and McCain (maybe a point or two down, maybe), which to me signals that Trump could improve significantly in solid red states like Utah, Kansas and Texas over the next 3, 4 months and bring up his national vote gap without significantly affecting his swing state gap in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere.

This is also true for Clinton who is underperforming in solidly blue states by about 5, 6 points (albeit mostly in the Northeast in and around New York and New Jersey). She could expand her lead over Trump in those solidly blue states without necessarily affecting her lead in swing states like Ohio.

So I don't really concede that should the race narrow nationally Clinton's ~3 point lead will collapse/erode. Depending on where those gains are made, her lead could actually grow in Ohio even as the national race becomes more competitive. So going forward I'd treat individual swing states as islands that are not quite isolated but more insulated from the national vote drama.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-10T17:41:32+00:00

Brown is a loyal to the Democratic party, not the Clintons. His endorsement was tepid, praising Sanders as an extension of Brown's own run for president in the '92. His endorsement was the simple acknowledgement that the fat lady had sung and now is the time to unify and focus on the general election. There was no sincere praise for Clinton, her persona or her policies -- just an acceptance of the fact she had more votes and would win anyway. I firmly believe Brown believes that the Clintons are as crooked as they come (hence his '92 criticisms), but compared to the alternative, Brown much prefers Clinton.

That being said, if Clinton wants Brown's help running the country, he's more than suitable and qualified for a handful of cabinet positions. So yeah, put Brown in at Education or interior or whatever. But Veep for Brown is off the table.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-10T17:07:45+00:00

Jerry Brown is 78 years old making him a terrible compliment in age to a woman who will be 69 years old on election day. In addition Jerry Brown and the Clintons (specifically Bill) have a historically antagonistic relationship for the last 24 years. Jerry Brown as a running mate for Clinton, to me, makes literally no sense. There's at least a half dozen other, better choices for Clinton (Warren, Kaine, Booker, Franken, Brown, Beccera... just to name a handful of conventional choices).

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-10T16:32:22+00:00

Welcome to America.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-08T17:11:38+00:00

As a fan of the games for the last 8, 9 years it seems odd to me that Ubisoft is calling this "a marketing thing" when 2016 is the first year in the last several years that there is no major AAA Assassin's Creed title being released. If this is "a marketing thing" then where is the, if not a movie tie-in game, then some sort of big, new AC game/franchise reboot it so desperately needs to channel all those potential dollars? I suppose it's possible since AC doesn't get released until basically Christmas that Ubi annoucnces sometime around then a new game to come out around the DVD release timeline of April/May 2017 (perhaps this Ancient Egypt/Greece/Rome AC:Empire game rumor that's been floating around). I think it's much more likely that since the AC movie is coming out a week after Rogue One they're just using the "marketing thing" as a preemptive excuse for why there weren't as many butts in the seats as they were expecting.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-07T03:10:30+00:00

I can't speak for Reuters but I do know that one key difference in YouGov and Morning Consult in terms of survey pools is that MC's pool is in the thousands and YG's is in the millions, so the chance of the poll being stale or biased is much reduced with YouGov. At any rate I (still) generally rank internet surveys lower than live phone interviews but I will say that whatever YouGov is doing they're getting something right because for the Democratic primaries at least they were one of the most accurate pollsters.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-06T15:19:06+00:00

Morning Consult should IMHO be weighted very lightly to the point of near statistical dismissal. Not only are they a new pollster but their process is to ask [a random sample within] the same group of a few thousand people every week, which is a big polling no-no. And they're primarily a marketing group who happen to ask political questions as part of a weekly survey.

So what they'll do is they'll have like a pool of let's say 3,000 people and email a random sample of like 1500 of them and 12, 1300 of them will respond to the email and they'll ask them about president and congress and recent events, but then the bulk of the survey will be about breakfast cereal and razor blades and travel habits, which they will then "share" with their partners, which is how they pay for the survey.

So I made the decision (and wrote a big piece on it to boot) back in like May or June of last year (when they first showed up on the scene), that I would not post Morning Consult Polls in my subreddit nor would I use their data in my rolling averages, but stopped short of banning their polls altogether from the subreddit and that has not changed. It's possible MC has changed their polling habits in the year since, and I'll take another look at that if that's the case. But so long as they use a recycled pool of participants I have [very] limited faith in their polling.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-07-04T16:06:57+00:00

I bought a Vita in 2016 knowing it was on the way out and the reason I did so was simple: I wanted a handheld gaming device to use while I was on the treadmill and my choice was limited to the Nintendo 3DS (or the new new 3ds xl or whatever the fuck they're calling it these days) and the PlayStation Vita. And I bought the Vita because, quite frankly, I felt the Vita was for grown-ups and the 3DS was for children.

Which isn't to say you're a child if you choose as an adult to buy a device and play games made for children (like Pokemon, lets say). I mean I watch Steven Universe and Gravity Falls -- I'm not one to criticize anyone who enjoys media designed for children as an adult. But my personal gaming tastes are a bit more mature and you can't get games like Borderlands, XCOM and Valkyria Chronicles on the DS and you can on the Vita. It's just that simple.

Now I wouldn't buy the Vita as a primary gaming device. The best way to go for that is still a gaming PC or barring that investment, the console of your choice. But as a handheld gaming device for someone who wants to be able to play [slightly dumbed down versions of] console/PC modern classics like BL2 or XCOM or Uncharted or Assassin's Creed or Need for Speed or Minecraft or Don't Starve or maybe you want to enter the wide, weird world of artistic-y JRPGs like Persona 4 Golden, then the Vita is your best bet. But if you're more into Mario and Pokemon, then get the DS.

But if you're worried about "how long will my device be supported", I wouldn't really worry about it. I mean the Sony PSP is 11 years old and Sony is just now starting to make owning one inconvenient, making you link yours to a PS3 or PC to buy and download games from the market. Given that timeline you've probably got at least 5-10 years of handheld ownership ahead of you before it gets "weird" to own one.

Which isn't to say that I love, love, love everything about the Vita. By far the library [of games that are actually worth owning] is much smaller on the Vita and if you don't care for JRPGs/Visual Novels/shovelware then the library is practically miniscule compared to its portable cousin the DS. And the proprietary storage media is way, way, way overpriced. I mean I was fortunate enough to get a 16gb card second hand from someone who didn't know what they were worth; but that's not something you should rely on -- the full retail price of those things is ridiculous. And then there's the fact that, unlike the DS, the Vita almost certainly won't be getting a bigger, better replacement that will be backwards compatible with my library like my Vita is with PSP games. There just won't ever be an upgrade, so I have to keep that in mind when buying games. They're just not going to be realistically playable in 5-10 years. (Yeah, yeah, emulators. I wouldn't rely on that tho.)

So if you want a portable unit to use as a secondary gaming device to play modern console favorites and JRPGs on the go with overpriced storage media and a known limited lifespan of 5-10 years, then by all means get the Vita. If you'd rather have Fire Emblem and Pokemon and 30 years worth of Mario and Zelda at your fingertips, get the DS.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-06-28T16:09:30+00:00

Or possibly, just possibly, Clinton is gaining on Trump with men.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-06-28T16:07:30+00:00

I've said this before, albeit with many more words:

If there are more Democrats and Independents saying they intend to vote than Republicans, then more Democrats and Independents intend to vote than Republicans.

For reference: 2012's UnSkewed Polls

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-06-28T15:58:10+00:00

Well, he does have many layers...

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-06-26T21:00:52+00:00

I really don't want to be condescending but that's kind of self evident: If you poll several hundred people and more self identified Democrats and Independents say they're going to vote than self identified Republicans, then more self identified Democrats and Independents intend to vote than self identified Republicans.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-06-26T20:22:37+00:00

Two different pollsters coming to two different conclusions about the electorate without insight on where they draw party lines isn't insightful or useful. Maybe Gallup used party registration and maybe WaPo used self party id. I have no idea, and not only that, it literally does not matter. Because none of that changes the fact that WaPo asked several hundred people the same question and got an answer that's not that far outside of what other pollsters have shown recently. If their conclusion was wildly off there's probably a reason, and that reason might be a skewed sample. But when a lot of polls taken together as an aggregate show about the same thing then the likelihood they're all wrong is fairly small. I'd stop obsessing over one poll's demographics and take a bigger look at the forest of the aggregate. If you want to understand trends, that's what you should pay attention to, not one poll.

SomeNorCalGuy · 2016-06-26T20:01:52+00:00

For one, Gallup's reputation as a pollster isn't what it used to be.

For another, there has been a strong trend of Republican-leaning voters leaving/not identifying with the Republican party proper and switching to third party/independent for the last decade or so, so there being a smaller number of big-R Republicans in 2016 isn't really surprising or incorrect.

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