Luc Turpin

It will be close. Worried! Georgia and North Carolina.

Yup! Go Iowa go! And yup also!

Exit poling Maybe not a good omen for Harris. "No incumbent or incumbent party has won with these kinds of numbers — 72% of voters say they are dissatisfied or angry about the direction of the country. And Joe Biden’s approval number is just 41%, while 67% call the economy bad or poor." https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/2024-election-trump-harris/index.html?t=1730849462506

You are fortunate in physics. One science has no accepted theory and penguins at the top of the world, and ignoring both of them. Moving on!

Tea leaves is my preferred method. Not saying that they are wrong, but maybe stretching it a bit to consider it as a "large" shift. We will see! And I do say that two weeks out, it looked as if it was for Trump to win. But, with the silliness at Madison Square Garden, it now appers as if it is for him to lose.

I got that their model was not updated to keep it a comparison between apples and apples, and that there is under sampling of women, African Americans and the city of Detroit based on abstentee ballot returns and early voting. But, I don't think that this would bring it beyond the 4% margin of error territory.

On pole herding and J Ann Selzer's shocking Iowa poll. "Statistical principles suggest that, if the race is truly tied, most polls should show near ties. But there should also be a fair amount of variation with some polls showing clear leads for either candidate, and we’re getting very few of those this year. “The odds are 1 in 9.5 trillion against at least this many polls showing such a close margin,” Silver wrote." "But is the herding hurting one candidate more than the other? Both parties have reason to hope the polls are missing support for their side. Republicans’ reason is that pollsters did underestimate support for Trump in 2016 and 2020. That could happen again: New York Times chief polling analyst Nate Cohn wrote Sunday that, in the final Times polls, “white Democrats were 16 percent likelier to respond than white Republicans,” which “raises the possibility that the polls could underestimate” Trump once more." "Others suspect pollsters have overcorrected to the point they’re now overestimating Trump’s support. The highly respected Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer shocked the political world Saturday with a poll showing Harris up by 3 in her state, despite the widespread assumption that it was a safe Trump state. Some theorize Selzer has caught on to a shift toward Democrats that other pollsters have missed, but others suspect her poll is just an outlier that won’t actually match the results." https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/382161/harris-trump-final-polls-2024-who-will-win

A 2% percent spread on a 4% percent margin of error with a .007% response rate; not sure that this would be indicative of anything! Except a toss-up.

Interesting! Electoral votes counting only states where a candidate leads by 3 or more: 226Harris 230Trump Electoral votes if current polling translates perfectly to results (it won’t): 251Harris 287Trump Electoral votes if state polls miss in the same way they did in 2020: 226Harris 312Trump Electoral votes if state polls miss in the same way they did in 2022: 303Harris 235Trump Includes polling as of Nov. 3. See the latest polling averages »

And I remember aggregate Florida polls stating that Democrats had a chance at it in 2020 and it was a Republican win. "Before the election, aggregate polls had Biden in the lead in Florida by 1 to 3 percentage points. Despite this, Trump won by a 3.4-point margin, improving on his margin from 2016 by 2.2 points." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_Florida#:~:text=Before the election%2C aggregate polls,election in Florida since 2004.

The Iowa shocker! Harris leading Trump 47-44% in red state Iowa https://www.reuters.com/world/us/harris-tops-trump-latest-iowa-poll-marking-turnaround-des-moines-register-survey-2024-11-03/

No, no, no, not slow vote counting Maricopa County again! A Clinton-Trump or Biden-Trump finish on when a final verdict is available? The latter appears more probable than the former.

I admit that I am getting caught up in trying to read tea leaves and chicken entrails, and it passes the time until we'll know when we know.

Early Voting Trends in Some Key Battleground States Apart from actual poling, early voting trends may be helpful in giving us a slight insight into what might be actually playing out in this 2024 U.S. election. Here is a bit of information that may or may not be revealing anything. Note: Grant you that this is as good as holding up a crystal ball to the light, but fun to do. General New voters in many of the seven closest battlegrounds exceeds the 2020 margin. Pennsylvania Warning signs for Trump – more women have voted early than men in the 2024 election, and registered Democrats aged over 65 have so far also outvoted Republicans in the same age group – Politico https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-bad-news-pennsylvania-early-voting-harris-1978491 Female Democrats dominate new voter numbers https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/early-voting-data-shows-new-voters-group-swing-election-rcna178187 Gorgia Early voting usually favours Democrats – 4 Million early voters in comparison to 2.7 Million in 2020. https://sos.ga.gov/news/georgia-voters-break-4-million-votes-during-early-voting-period Michigan 41% of registered voters have already voted. 13% are first time voters. Modeling suggest Democratic women are slightly outpacing Republican women while Republican men are nearly doubling the number of new Democratic men. https://www.michigan.gov/sos/elections/election-results-and-data/voter-participation-dashboard Arizona Male republicans lead the way in new voters voting early https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/early-voting-data-shows-new-voters-group-swing-election-rcna178187 Nevada Of the more than 542,000 early in person voters, 45.5% were Republicans, and 27.7% were Democrats. Of 483,171 mail ballots received as of Friday, 40.2% were sent by Democrats, 30.3% by Republicans, and 29.4% by others. https://nevadacurrent.com/2024/11/02/as-early-in-person-voting-ends-democrats-are-left-with-a-lot-of-work-to-do/

I hope that you are right in stating that numbers would paint a different picture than percentages. I really do not want another four years of Trump, even if I am not an American citizen. "Compared to the same point in 2020, early turnout is lower in 36 states this year, and higher in 3 states, where data are available." same source Again, I hope that cherry picking is the case here and that Harris has a real run at it. Source: https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/23/politics/early-voting-trends-2024-2020-visuals-dg/index.html

Might the following two charts not bode well for the Harris camp? More Republicans, less Democrats and more older people are voting early in 2024 than in 2020. Source - CNN

A few key statistics. Abortion is legal in Canada through all nine months of pregnancy, nevertheless no providers except hospitals offer care beyond 23 weeks. 90% of abortions are done in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, while less than 1% beyond 21+ weeks. Reasons for late-stage abortions are: fetus gravely or fatally impaired; woman’s life or physical health at risk; abusive relationship; children or young teens unaware of pregnancy or in denial. I contend that this statistical picture reflects the position of a majority of Canadians on abortion. Having one is acceptable in an early term pregnancy while proceeding with one for a non-medical reason afterward, much less acceptable. I also contend that there would be a more robust discussion over a late-stage termination in the case of an abusive relationship and in children or young teens as the fetus would be viable then. I am almost certain that adoption would be brought into light as a substitute for abortion.

Right on both counts

Canada's version of Trump is called Pierre Poilievre, but with no nuke button. If an election was held today, the race would not even be close as Poilievre's Conservative Party commands a 22 points lead in poling over the next closest rival, Trudeau's Liberal; currently the party in power. Pickups adorn Canadian flags, implying that they are the only true patriots. Most with such adornments go faster than everyone else, do not signal and cut into lineups. They behave as if they are right and the rest of us are knuckleheads. Altruism at its finest hour.

My pet worry is not a future smarter dictator, but more immediately, Trump starting a war with China, and Russia being pulled into it. You see, the politics of fear also has its grip on me.

Why does Trump even have a following? Because emotions and fear drive human behaviour. No one understands this better than Trump. I want Elon to pull 2 trillion out of the U.S. economy and see how that goes. And a cell phone is a too powerful tool for most of us.

We would not be contemplating quantum mechanical processes if classical ones were satisfactory at uncovering how the brain works. Circumstancal ; nothing conclusive; still fishing for answers https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.110.024402 https://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/99/101 https://bigthink.com/hard-science/brain-consciousness-quantum-entanglement/ I remain sceptical that QM can address all of the issues of the mind-brain conundrum.

I committed to cease and desist on bias.

I disagree. There are such assumptions made in science and the implications are significant. However, I cannot demonstrate it, so I shall heed Dim's advice and just end the discussion. Listening and heeding your call by ending this one.

So, let’s be more precise. When acknowledged, most biases are managed in science with the exception of the non-empirical ones such as reductionism, determinism, causality, materialism, etc. They are basic assumptions that are made about how the world operates which then permeates the whole of science. They affect what topic to study in science, how hypotheses and experiments are set up; they play as well a role in the evaluation of evidence and interpretation of results. They are assumptions that need to be contended with when doing science, but in most cases are not. And there is no empirical way of managing them as they, again, are of a non-empirical empirical nature. It basically states that even our eyes and brains can easily be deceived in thinking something that is not and that context matters. An example of context at play was given above when I stated that non-empirical assumptions are being made and then brought along while doing science and affecting outcome. The Zipf's law thing appears to be also an indication that context might be at play in the elaboration of three different sets of physics equations. Did I, at any time, explicitly or implicitly, mention religion or spiritualism in any of my posts on bias? Saying that there is bias in science is not directing the discussion towards any notion of religiosity or spiritualism. Contending that basic assumptions are being made and then brought along while doing science is also not that. And of "we're not having any part of it. Is it bias?" I would answer that yes it is and .....legitimate.