Better read and understand this. I see and hear the same thing. I am one of these deplorables.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-ohios-deplorables-reall...

Of course, nothing is certain.  However, there is some compelling evidence that the republicans are in grave danger in the House and at the local level.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/take-the-house-m...

http://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump...

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/10/polls-broken-blind-spots--blue...

Just like I've been saying - people won't necessarily be voting for a democrat as much as they're voting against trump.

 So if the polls were terribly inaccurate about Trump's approval ratings prior to the election what has changed to make them more accurate now?  

 Polls = c rap information, they predicted he wouldn't win.
 Polls = fact. they show his approval ratings are X percentage points.

 People reference todays polling as accurate, but also point out how inaccurate they were prior to the election.

 If I reference poor polling results pre-election it would not make sense for me to consider them accurate today unless there's been changes to account for the margin of error or procedural deficiencies.

 What changed that causes some people to use polls as accurate information today?

Ok, I see your point.

Confirmation Bias.

If something supports our viewpoint, we see it as valuable. If something doesn't support it, we ignore or attack it's credibility.

All of us do this. Some more than others. I'm guilty, you're guilty, everyone is guilty of this.

Every good salesman knows this instinctively. People (myself included)  make most decisions emotionally and then trick ourselves into thinking we based our decision on facts. We look backwards and fool ourselves by selectively remembering 'facts' that support our decision. We 'forget' or tell ourselves we missed the facts that would have caused us to go a different direction.

For a salesman, this gets you the first or possibly the second sale. However, unless your particular product or service performs 'in the heat of the moment' when the memory of that shinny new product is clouded out by the $hitstorm you're in the middle of, you'll find yourself lumped into the used car salesman category instead of a valuable partner. Once you're in that category, forget about getting out. You're going to have to find other customers or wait for that guy to leave the company if you're going to sell to them again. If however, your product or service performs when it really needs to, then you're in like flint. Confirmation Bias works in your favor then. Competitors have little chance of displacing you because their 'facts' are ignored.

In the political world, confirmation bias manifest itself in somewhat blind allegiance to a party. Something drew us to the Republican or Democratic party and when almost anything is presented to us that could disrupt that allegiance, we use confirmation bias to handle that objection.

Which is why confirmation bias is valuable. Otherwise, we'd be forced to flop back and forth, unable to settle on something.

For proof, just watch as TT and I go back and forth ignoring facts that disrupt our position and highlighting only the ones that confirm our bias.

Eegore wrote on 09/19/18 at 07:06:10:


FWIW - For presidential approval ratings, I usually only go with Pew.  They've been tracking it the longest and have a rock solid reputation as being non-partisan.

What would have happened if after the election, US intelligence had announced the results were tampered with by Russian hackers and Trump's win was not legitimate?...

So would they?...

Serowbot wrote on 09/19/18 at 09:37:12:


If it were shown Russian hackers got into individual counties and changed the vote total so that one candidate won majority of electoral votes, I would have been in favor of leaving Obama in office for 3 months and holding the election over in March with paper ballots.

If it were proven one of the candidates participated in the hacking, I would have shot her, left Obama in office, have the parties go thru another nomination procedure, and hold the election in May or June.