Wednesday, July 17, 2024

More about polls and statistics; Aileen Cannon commentary

A post at r/fivethirtyeight discusses why some recent polls were wrong and why the election in 2024 is uncertain. The uncertainty mostly boils down to poll data indicating that 17.4% of poll respondents are still undecided or supporting 3rd party candidates. 
It was brought to my attention yesterday just how different the 2020 and 2024 presidential polling averages are.

On this day in 2020, Biden and Trump were polling nationally at 50.3% and 41.2% respectively, a 9.1 point difference. By comparison, today Trump is leading 42.5% to 40.1%, a 2.4 point difference.

What's most interesting to me are that at this point in 2020, only 8.5% of poll respondents were undecided or supporting 3rd party candidates, compared with 17.4% of poll respondents this cycle. In other words, more than twice as many respondents in 2024 haven't made up their minds yet with the vast majority of them seemingly up for grabs.

This introduces a large degree of uncertainty that I don't see getting discussed much all things considered. In fact, the high degree of undecideds/third party support closely mirrors that of the 2016 election, when Clinton was leading Trump 41% to 37.7%, a 3.3 point difference, with 21.3% of respondents undecided or supporting 3rd party candidates. Hell, even the number of poll respondents supporting the leading 3rd party candidates (Johnson in 2016 and RFK in 2024) are extremely similar at 9.3% and 9% respectively on July 16th. It's worth noting that in the end, Johnson only brought home 3.28% and 3rd party candidates altogether captured just 5.73% of votes cast.

It's also probably worth noting that Trump's top share of the vote in national polling in 2024 has been 43.1% (on March 29th) compared with 45.6% on March 6, 2020 and 38.3% on June 8, 2016. Obviously the biggest difference from 2020 is that Biden is polling at just 40.1% compared with 50.3% on this day in 2020, but it is interesting that this support hasn't gone to Trump, it's gone to undecideds and RFK, which means those votes are arguably up for grabs and/or that many might reluctantly return to Biden if or when he becomes the nominee. How that ~17% share of 3rd party/undecideds break over the next few months will 100% decide the election's outcome.
What really struck me is these comments from a commenter to that post:
Again, I think this introduces a high degree of uncertainty that many aren't taking into account. Keep in mind, this is the exact same reason why the polls were so off in 2016.

By election day 2016, Trump was down by 3.9% nationally with 13.5% of poll respondents still undecided or supporting 3rd party candidates. Trump picked up 4.3% of them and Clinton 2.5%, bringing Clinton's popular vote margin down to just 2.1%, which wasn't enough to put her over the finish line.

And yet, we have models this cycle suggesting that Trump has a more than 80% chance of winning 3.5 months from election day, because he's up by a little over 2 points nationally with more than 17% undecided/3rd party.

Sure doesn't feel like many pollsters and pundits learned the right lessons from 2016.
That strikes me as good news for Biden or whoever winds up running against DJT. The daily analysis at The Hill currently has DJT with a 56% chance of winning, but that would probably increase if the assassination attempt gives him more sympathy and support. We won't know that for a few more days as polling starts to reflect what effect, if any, the deranged nutjob with a gun is going to have on the outcome.

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That subreddit posted a ranking of the top 277 polling sources, plus a slew of others below those at the top. What surprised me was that Gallup ranked 35th and Pew Research Center ranked 40th. The top 11 are shown below.

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The Atlantic published an opinion about the judge that dismissed the Mar-A-Lago case in Florida against DJT:
Judge Cannon Has Gotten It Completely Wrong

In dismissing the classified-documents case, she is ignoring both practical history and legal precedent

Judge Aileen Cannon, a Donald Trump appointee, has dismissed the criminal charges against the former president. On the merits, her opinion is a poor one, ignoring history and precedent. It will almost certainly be reversed on appeal. Even so, her actions will surely delay Trump’s trial and may even prevent it completely, should Trump return to power and dismiss the case before a verdict is reached. For these reasons alone, her decision is certainly notable.

But Cannon’s opinion is even more significant for what it says systematically about the American judiciary and its increasing hubris. Donald Trump is famous for saying that he “alone can fix” the nation. Judges now routinely say that they “alone” know what the law is or should be. Cannon is just the latest, perhaps most egregious, example.

The legal issue in question was the validity of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment by the attorney general. Cannon determined that the appointment was invalid because, in her view, no statutory authority existed for the attorney general to create such an officer. According to her, Smith was an “inferior officer” whose appointment could be approved only if there was specific statutory authority; absent that authority (as she characterized it), the appointment was unconstitutional.

One could write a volume about how wrong Cannon’s analysis is, and no doubt many will do so (including Smith on his inevitable appeal to the Eleventh Circuit). On the statutory merits, for example, the law allows the “Attorney General [to] appoint officials … to detect and prosecute crimes against the United States [and] to conduct such other investigations regarding official matters under the control of the Department of Justice and the Department of State as may be directed by the Attorney General.” This clear language is discarded by Cannon on the borderline-frivolous ground that Smith is sometimes called an “officer” of the Justice Department rather than an “official.”

As to precedent, during the investigation of Richard Nixon, the Supreme Court explicitly acknowledged the power of the attorney general: “Under the authority of Art. II, § 2, Congress has vested in the Attorney General the power to conduct the criminal litigation of the United States Government … It has also vested in him the power to appoint subordinate officers to assist him in the discharge of his duties.”

Cannon casually tosses that off as dicta—statements of the Court not necessary to the Court’s decision. She’s wrong; the special prosecutor’s authority to subpoena Nixon was at issue, and the authority was dependent on prosecutors’ very existence. But even if she were correct, it takes significant hubris to disregard the Supreme Court when you are a lower-court judge.
Maybe what Cannon did has little or nothing to do with hubris. With hubris, you don’t realize your own failings. But in my humble opinion, Cannon knows exactly what she is doing. She consistently throws out existing precedent whenever it serves Trump. She has an agenda to delay, delay delay. When the law or precedent is against that agenda, she rules against against it. 

Cannon used the Mar-A-Lago stolen documents case to block other judges from scheduling proceedings in other Trump cases. That slowed everything by months. Maybe she wants to be removed from the case because she does not have the experience to actually try it, but that imputes good faith. I do not believe she governs** in good faith. Maybe she tread water until it was a good time for her to do something that would get her removed in a way that was good for her and DJT. But at this point, I am unsure if she will be removed from the case or whether it will even matter. If DJT is re-elected he will order the DoJ to drop the case about as soon as he is sworn into office. That will be the end of it.

** I used govern intentionally, instead of judging. She is a radical authoritarian Republican partisan, not a judge.

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