Democrats, Stop With The Poll Rigging...It's Getting Embarrassing

Last fall, in the months/weeks leading up to the presidential election, we spent a fair amount time talking about how Democratic pollsters were setting themselves up for a massive embarrassment on election day with their obviously rigged polling data that consistently suggested Hillary had a commanding lead.  In fact, just weeks before the election, the Washington Post published a poll showing that Hillary was well on her way to a "blowout" 12-point victory (we wrote about it here:  This Is How WaPo"s Latest Poll Gave Hillary A 12 Point Advantage Over Trump).  Needless to say, that never happened and those pollsters suffered the humiliating consequences of their biased "math."

Unfortunately, as last night"s special election in Georgia makes all too clear, no one on the left seems to have learned any lessons from their presidential poll rigging debacle last November.

In fact, one prominent pollster even declared just 6 days before the election that if Ossoff failed to win it would mean that "MATH IS DEAD AND DATA IS BROKEN."

It means there"s a 70% chance Ossoff wins and a 30% chance that MATH IS DEAD AND DATA IS BROKEN.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 14, 2017

Of course, the problem isn"t that "math is dead" or "data is broken"...the problem is that rather than using data to arrive at a solution pollsters have resorted to starting out with a solution and then solving for the data.

Which is exactly what appears to have happened in Georgia.  As the following chart points out, with just 9 days left until election day, pollsters were predicting a fairly easy win for Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff in Georgia"s 6th district runoff...shocking, we know.  But, just over a week later, the Republican candidate ended up easily walking away with the win, and served up another embarrassment for pollsters in the process as actual results swung 8.6 points from predictions peddled to the public just a week earlier.

So how does this keep happening?  Well, it"s not that surprising in light of the fact that Democrats literally wrote a playbook on how to rig polling data through "oversamples."  As we noted last October in a post entitled "New Podesta Email Exposes Playbook For Rigging Polls Through "Oversamples"", it all apparently has a lot to do with "oversampling" various minority groups.

The email even includes a handy, 37-page guide with the following poll-rigging recommendations.  In Arizona, over sampling of Hispanics and Native Americans is highly recommended:

Research, microtargeting & polling projects
-  Over-sample Hispanics
-  Use Spanish language interviewing. (Monolingual Spanish-speaking voters are among the lowest turnout Democratic targets)
-  Over-sample the Native American population

For Florida, the report recommends "consistently monitoring" samples to makes sure they"re "not too old" and "has enough African American and Hispanic voters."  Meanwhile, "independent" voters in Tampa and Orlando are apparently more dem friendly so the report suggests filling up independent quotas in those cities first.

-  Consistently monitor the sample to ensure it is not too old, and that it has enough African American and Hispanic voters to reflect the state.
-  On Independents: Tampa and Orlando are better persuasion targets than north or south Florida (check your polls before concluding this). If there are budget questions or oversamples, make sure that Tampa and Orlando are included first.

Of course, the intent of publishing these ridiculous polls is presumably to "chill" the Republican vote...afterall, why go through the hassle of long lines at a polling station if your candidate has no shot at winning? 

That said, the strategy only worked BEFORE the media and pollsters lost all credibility...so, why bother keeping up the charade?  As we mentioned above, it"s just getting embarrassing at this point.

'10,000,000 people will march on Washington if they Impeach Trump. They will be armed. No kidding.' - Banker

via Soren K Group and Marketslant

Because He"s TNT

Sometime contributor Bon Scott who happens to be not only a Trump supporter but more importantly a Constitutional expert and Big  "L" Libertarian had this to say in response the "Impeach Trump" escalation.

10,000,000 people will march on Washington if they try to impeach Trump... they will be heavily armed. I will be one of them. No kidding

While our colleague seems given to hyperbole consider this. Last year as early as February he said:

"Trump can win. Ignore the polls. Polls are meaningless in an election with so many “shock events”. The truth is Donald Trump can win the election in a landslide. 

That was true. We quoted him in our October 2016 post HERE

SKG contributor Vince Lanci echoed Bon"s words in this Aug post:

On the flip side Trump fans should be happy.  If past calls are any indication Trump will indeed win in  landslide..

Bon also said in our July Post

Trump will spend like a drunken sailor

That Story HERE

This is also true in Trumps"s attempts if not in execution yet. 

Can you argue With Bon?

The truth is, while our pseudonymous contributor is given to outrageously couched statements, he  has picked up  on something that is close to our hearts.  You can  see it in how polls are just wrong consistently. And to us that is explainable. The statistical world relies to heavily on  polls. Polls are merely "snapshots" of moments.

What is not revealed in polls is the subjectivity of the person being polled!. We know the bias of pollsters. But what has been ignored for years is subjective probability. That concept relates to trends when humans are involved.

Do you think people are going to be honest with pollsters anymore? No, they say what you want to hear so they can move on. Voting is very private. And people  are taking back that privacy. On a broader scale, subjective or conditional probability includes drifts or trends.  Nassim Taleb is a key proponent of this, and we count him  as a genius in  taking his options  knowledge and applying it to many fields in need of improvement. We also  enjoy his lambasting those dogmatists that do not get it.  Jim Rickards is another subscriber to Bayesian  theorems. 

What Is  Bayesian  Probability?

Simply put, is it a 50/50 chance the sun rises tomorrow? Statistically the answer is yes to an uneducated caveman seeing it for the first time. But how many times can that caveman stick with those stats when 5 years later the sun continues to rise?

Personal example: If it is 50/50 that a coin  lands on heads or tails, then how come I could at one time flip a coin and make it land on heads 10x in a row? Statisticians will say " Luck, law of large numbers will fix that". Sorry guys that is just not true.

Here is why. I practiced coin flipping at one point in my trading career to make it a skill. I measured how high it had to go, what side the coin had  to start on, and how hard I had to flip it. Was I cheating? No. What people see as randomness is actually a skill based event via intense practice. Had I let the coin land on the ground it would have been randomized. But I did not.

 

Pollsters Do Not Get it

This is the essence of the core ignorance of pollsters and statisticians. They ignore the human factor. And with that, they miss grass roots macro  trends like the populism that triggered Brexit. They do not see what our friend Bon does, that people are not numbers, and the more we rely on  models dogmatically,  the more likely we are to be surprised. Or as he would say : Dont be stupid! Trump is going to win in a landslide.

So while numbers are counted by Nate Silver, conditional/ subjectivity of the person polled is not factored in. This is the problem in modern  polling and stats. 

In trading we used to Fade brokers to protect ourselves from this. We were taught statistically that it is 50/50 every order is buy/sell. But when  a  broker came in everyday at the same time for 2 months straight and bought from us, that concept meant shit. We used to say:  Crap, how high do I have to make this price so he would not buy from us? And the answer was essentially NONE. That broker was a buyer and would continue to be one until he began unwinding  his position.

 

Option Traders Don"t Get it

At the time I understood this as Bayesian probability and explained the rationale for "fading" markets to my boss and mentor. He disagreed. He did not get it. He was an extremely hard working savant who in the end became a bitter detractor despite my idol worship and his own immense  success. When you quit working for him, with only a couple exceptions, you were the enemy.  All this because the man, like the modern pollster could not grasp that whenever human behaviour is involved, probability has a subjective factor.

What are the Odds of a DC March if a Populist President is Impeached?

Can we afford to ignore "Bon", our colleague who is quite sane, does not represent the lunatic fringe, and is intimately aware that while Trump may not be a beltway darling, he has governed through populism.

Witness how Trump castrated the media with his "Fake News" press conference. He literally made people reject the MSM info as false and further likely turned people off to even looking at it. 

He effectively put them in a box where they could not sell their wares anymore.

This is no easy task. Winning elections via populism is easy game. But actually governing that way is not easy. We"d dare say,  it has not been done ever in a Republic.

So here we are. A populist-ly elected President who has thus far governed through populism. A president with a loyal following that is likely to not take an unconstitutional impeachment sitting down. Trump will not go quietly into the night. He will appeal to the public. He is a narcissist. And to his credit, narcissists are  all about winning popularity contests.

And against him are now the legal types who will use the Constitution to undermine it.

To Bon we joked:

"To get you and your pals to disburse, all we have to do is kill the wifi."

To which he responded:

That isn"t enough. You may get some to go home with Beer bribes, but the core people mean business. They will not stand for this.

 

People vs. Elites

Do you want to bet against a DC march  if Trump is impeached? Do you want to be short Gold or long stocks if that happens?

A march would be an exponential increase in uncertainty. The people vs the Elites. And in the end with Elitist power at their disposal including manipulating the press, social media, revoking freedom of speech and rights to assemble and restricting gun ownership; it wont be enough. There will be the fallback to the use of force. People in power always lean on that when  needed. And while they may have learned marketing and manipulation tricks, at bottom, there is always metal hammer inside that velvet wrapper you see.  

 

People are fed up. Impeach  at Your Own Risk

We personally own 2 guns. A Benelli shotgun for skeet, and a 357 magnum for target range shooting. As believers in gun control laws for non law abiding citizens, we will not be inclined to subscribe to giving up what protects us from  a deep state that does what it wants and when it loses, changes the rules. This is the potential beginning of  the libertarian left and right People aligning against the authoritarian left and right Elitists. 

 

Impeachment Adds Uncertainty, Not Closure

So this will not end with impeachment. It will only stir more problems at grass roots levels. To tell 50% of the country that already distrusts its institutions that those  same institutions are collaborating to kill off their president may be a spark of revolt unlike anything seen  since the 1960s.

This is the cause that would unite libertarians, rednecks, NRA types, uneducated (but no less human and entitled to constitutional rights) and the silently suffering suburban middle class under one banner. People evolve at their own pace. Stop telling us what is best for us. That is not working out so well for you in the world. Don"t do it here

Lowest Turnout Since 1974 As France Decides The "Future Of The EU"

Update: as of 5pm, the French voter participation was 65.3%, which is the lowest in presidential elections going back at least all the way to 1988:

• 2017 : 65.30%


• 2012 : 71.96%


• 2007 : 75.11%


• 2002 : 67.62%


• 1995 : 66.07%


• 1988 : 70.63%

And according to a separate accounts, the voter turnout was the lowest going back all the way to 1974.

#Presidentielle2017 : participation à 65,3% à 17:00. (71,96 % en 2012 et 75,11 % en 2007)./Ministère pic.twitter.com/YYAHgjEBrz

— LesNews (@LesNews) May 7, 2017

An estimate by elabe/BFMTV estimates the final voter turnout at just 74%, which would make it the lowest since 1969.

Estimate for final voter turnout - 74% (@elabe_fr/@BFMTV) lowest since 1969.
2012 - 80.35%
2007 - 83.97%
2002 - 79.71%
1995 - 79.66%

— Andrew Connell (@andrewiconnell) May 7, 2017

* * *

According to the French interior ministry some 28.54% of registered voters have cast their votes in the presidential election by 12:00 a.m. local time (1000 GMT) on Sunday, a lower than expected initial turnout and the lowest at this stage of the day since the 2002 presidential poll, when it was 26.19%. Prior midday turnouts were 30.66% and 34.11% in 2012 and 2007, respectively. A final turnout of 75% is expected at this election; the eventual turnouts in 2002, 2007 and 2012 were all above 80 percent.

Voter apathy did not prevent both candidates from voting for themselves, however, and both did so early on Sunday.

Emmanuel Macron casts his ballot at a polling station in Le Touquet, France.

Marine Le Pen casts her ballot at a polling station in Henin-Beaumont, France.

While parallels with the US election in November have suggested that a low turnout may have an adverse impact for Macron, it remains unclear who is the biggest winner from French voter apathy. Pollsters have said abstentions would be highest among left-wing voters, disappointed by Sunday"s choice after nine other candidates were eliminated in first round, but it is unclear what a high or low turnout could mean for the outcome. That said, even a modest boost for Le Pen based on early voting patterns would likely be insufficient if latest polls are an indication: Macron was set to win the head-to-head with between 61.5 and 63 percent of the vote, according to the last opinion polls on Friday

As two weeks ago, polling stations at France"s European continent opened at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) and will run for a maximum of 12 hours. Those in the largest cities will close at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT). In France"s oversea territories, the voting was held on Saturday. Over 47 million French voters are registered to cast their votes at some 69,000 polling stations.

The stakes are familiar: as Reuters puts it, "Macron, who wants to deregulate the economy and deepen EU integration, is set to win the head-to-head with between 61.5 and 63 percent of the vote, according to the last opinion polls on Friday. Should an upset occur and Le Pen win, the very future of the EU could be on the line given her desire to close borders, dump the euro currency, and tear up trade treaties."

In an analysis posted yesterday, famous French investor Charles Gave said that even a Macron victory would result in "total mayhem" in France as the resulting parliamentary elections would likely lead to broad governance chaos. Furthermore, even a defeat would be seen a victory of sorts for Le Pen: the 48 year-old"s vote is likely to be about twice what her party scored the last time it reached the presidential second round in 2002, demonstrating the scale of voter disaffection with mainstream politics in France.

Markets, meanwhile, are confident a Macron victory is assured.

"We increased our equity exposure and added some French stocks after the first round," said Francois Savary, chief investment officer at Geneva-based fund management firm Prime Partners. "The major political risk of a Le Pen victory appears to be disappearing."

After a campaign in which favourites dropped out of the race one after the other, Le Pen is nevertheless closer to elected power than the far right has been in France since World War Two. If opinion polls prove accurate and the country elects its youngest-ever president rather than its first female leader, Macron himself has said himself he expects no honeymoon period.

Macron"s task will be difficult: up to 60% of potential voters for the young politician have said they will do so to stop Le Pen from being elected to lead the euro zone"s second-largest economy, rather than because they fully support the former banker turned politician. "I don"t necessarily agree with either of the candidates," psychotherapist Denise Dulliand, who was voting in Annecy in the mountainous southeast, told Reuters. "But I wanted to express my voice, to be able to say that I came, even if I am really not satisfied with what is happening in our country, and that I would like to see less stupidity, less money and more fraternity." Should Macron disappoint, it is quite likely that the fickle electorate will turn quickly against Francois Hollande"s former cabinet member.

Whether Macron"s supporters will get their wish to see Le Pen lose, will be revealed at 8pm local time, when the first exit polls are disclosed.

Meanwhile, investors are already setting their sights on the upcoming French parliamentary elections next month in which the new president will try to secure a majority in parliament. According to Reuters, much will depend on how the candidates score on Sunday. Le Pen"s niece, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, on Thursday told L"Opinion daily that winning 40 percent of the vote would be "a huge victory" for the National Front, something Charles Gave echoed yesterday,who said Le Pen"s daughter is poised to be a formidable force in 2022 presidential elections.

In any case, whoever wins, the result will be "historic" and will open a new chapter in French politics, with both French legacy parties, the Socialists and The Republicans that have ruled France for decades, swept away from the chance to retain power for the first time in decades, in an embarrassing defeat in which the French population denounced an establishment status quo that has failed them.

50,000 Police Monitor As 47 Million French Voters Decide The Fate Of Europe

After months of anticipatory build up, voting is underway in France on Sunday in the first round of a bitterly fought presidential election that is seen as crucial to the future of the Eurozone, and a closely-watched test of voters" anger with the political establishment.

Local polling stations opened at 0600 GMT and will close at 1800 GMT, with about 47 million voters expected to cast their ballots in around 67,000 polling stations amid a high terror alert.

Voters, on edge after Thursday"s latest ISIS terrorist attack, will be monitored by more than 50,000 police officers backed by elite units of the French security services patrolled the streets less than three days after a suspected Islamist gunman shot dead a policeman and wounded two others on the central Champs Elysees avenue.

A voté ????#JeVote pic.twitter.com/ZZTw1ZAe7F

— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) April 23, 2017

A voté. pic.twitter.com/E2DVMIHak8

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) April 23, 2017

By noon (6.00 a.m. ET), turnout amid perfect weather conditions across much of France was 28.54%, according to official figures, roughly the same as in the 2012 first round, in which almost 80% eventually took part.

Finally Inside the Lycée in London to vote in French president elex after 2 hours of lines outside And now, more lines. #Presidentielle2017 pic.twitter.com/0UZyzz4EUJ

— Yann Tessier (@Y_Tessier) April 23, 2017

Some polls had been predicting a much lower turnout, closer to the 70% that took the then National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen into the second round in 2002. Pollsters are unclear about what a low or high turnout could mean in 2017.

Long queues of French nationals in London waiting to vote in today"s presidential election #frenchelection pic.twitter.com/C4cKFNtp0S

— MarieLouiseGumuchian (@MLGumuchian) April 23, 2017

While we have previewed today"s event extensively (most recently here), Reuters summarized it best: today "voters will decide whether to back a pro-EU centrist newcomer [and a former Rothschild banker], a scandal-ridden veteran conservative who wants to slash public spending, a far-left eurosceptic admirer of Fidel Castro or to appoint France"s first woman president who would shut borders and ditch the euro."

The outcome of today"s election will show whether the populist tide that led to Brexit and Donald Trump"s victory is still rising, or starting to ebb.

The biggest wildcard ahead of today"s outcome is the high level of indecision among the population, with nearly a third of potential voters undecided until the last minute. Hanan Fanidi, a 33-year-old financial project manager, was still unsure as she arrived at a polling station in Paris" 18th arrondissement.

"I don"t believe in anyone, actually. I haven"t arrived at a candidate in particular who could advance things. I"m very, very pessimistic," she said.

Looking at the outcome of today"s vote, while the possibility of a Le Pen-Melenchon run-off is not the most likely scenario, it is the one which alarms bankers and investors.

Putting the performance of Marin Le Pen - as well as that of her father Jean-Marie - in election context:

• Jean-Marie Le Pen, 2002: 16.8%


• Jean-Marie Le Pen, 2007: 10.4%


• Marine Le Pen, 2012: 17.9%

Le Pen has told supporters "the EU will die", while Macron, 39, a former Rothschild banker wants to further beef up the euro zone. Le Pen further wants to return to the Franc, re-denominate the country"s debt stock, tax imports and reject international treaties. Melenchon also wants to radically overhaul the European Union and hold a referendum on whether to leave the bloc.

Le Pen or Melenchon would struggle, in parliamentary elections in June, to win a majority to carry out such radical moves, but their growing popularity also worries France"s EU partners.

Germany"s position on today"s election is hardly a surprise: "It is no secret that we will not be cheering madly should Sunday"s result produce a second round between Le Pen and Melenchon," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said. If either Macron or Fillon were victorious, each would face challenges. For Macron, a big question would be whether he could win a majority in parliament in June. Fillon, though likely to struggle less to get a majority, would likely be dogged by an embezzlement scandal, in which he denies wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, polls opened on Saturday in France’s overseas territories, allowing citizens to cast their ballots a day ahead of voters on the French mainland. According to unconfirmed twitter reports, based on preliminary offshore results, support for Melenchon is far greater than for any of his competitors.

.@BFMTV ????????????#Élysée2017 : La #RTBF publie les résultats définitifs en #Guyane : #Mélenchon 24,72%#LePen 24,29%#Macron 18,75%#Fillon 14,66% pic.twitter.com/5CVZyGmDtn

— ????Le Globe (@LeGlobe_info) April 23, 2017

Occasional live feed from Paris courtesy of Reuters:

What Is Trump's Approval Rating? It Depends On Who You Ask

While we would never be the ones to question the integrity of "independent" pollsters, how could we given the amazing job they did predicting the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, we"re starting to grow a bit curious about the ever-widening gap in Trump"s approval ratings between the various polling institutions.

For example, the latest Rasmussen daily tracking poll found that 53% of likely U.S. voters approve of President Trump’s job performance while 47% disapprove.

Meanwhile, even the notorious "oversamplers" at Reuters found that Trump"s approval rating is just over 50%.

That said, the vehemently impartial folks at ABC/WaPo recently drew a very different conclusion, finding that President Trump is basically the least popular candidate to take the White House in modern history, with a 40% approval rating... 

...while CNN came up with similar results finding that only 44% approve of President Trump.

And while we know what you"re thinking, we"re sure the divergent results from ABC/Wapo and CNN were in no way a disingenuous attempt to artificially manufacture a poor approval rating for President Trump, a candidate whose political views couldn"t be more divergent from their own.  After all, utilizing an aggressive 8-point sampling margin for Democrats, with only 23% of respondents identifying themselves as Republicans may call into question a pollster"s credibility...

...which is probably why CNN decided to get smart by only showing a 4-point sampling advantage for Democrats while loading up their poll with independents instead...

"A total of 1,002 adults were interviewed by telephone nationwide by live interviewers calling both landline and cell phones. Among the entire sample, 29% described themselves as Democrats, 25% described themselves as Republicans, and 45% described themselves as independents or members of another party."

Of course, as we"ve repeatedly pointed out, these sampling mixes couldn"t be further from reality.

In conclusion:

The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017

About Those Polls - Rigged Or Just Clueless?

Over the past couple of weeks, we have constantly pointed out that polling data was seemingly being manipulated to "manufacture" artificial leads for the mainstream media"s chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton.  By "oversampling" democrats and/or various minority groups, pollster after pollster kept rolling out predictions that seemed utterly ridiculous to us but were gobbled up by complicit media outlets.  Here is just a small sample of our headlines from the past couple of months:

"ABC/Wapo Effectively Admit To Poll Tampering As Hillary"s "Lead" Shrinks To 2-Points"

"How Reuters "Tweaked" Its Latest Poll (Again) To Show A Clinton Lead"

"Statisticians Warn Of "Systemic Mainstream Misinformation" In Poll Data"

"CNN Goes "Full Reuters" - Attempts To Rig VP Debate Poll With Too Many Dems In Sample"

"New Podesta Email Exposes Playbook For Rigging Polls Through "Oversamples""

Now, with the official results in, we can finally confirm that pollsters were either intentionally manipulating their data or were simply clueless about how to structure their sample pools.  Per Bloomberg, going into election night, only two polls, IBD/TIPP and USC Dornsife/LA Times, showed victories for Trump while all of the other major polling outlets showed a 3-4 point national lead for Hillary.  And, while Hillary may still scrape up a modest popular vote edge it will be no where near the 3-4% margin predicted by these polls.

But, as bad as the national polls were, the data from the swing state polls was even worse.  Heading into election night, pollsters predicted a 6.5 point advantage for Hillary in the state of Wisconsin even though it now looks like Trump will win the state by 1.3% or more.

Same thing in Pennsylvania where Hillary was considered a 2-point favorite even though Trump will win the state by over a point.

Meanwhile, in Michigan Hillary was considered a 3.4 point favorite though it looks like Trump will take that state as well.

Finally, while pollsters capitulated and admitted that Trump was the likely victor in Ohio his actual 8.5-point win in the state eclipsed the 3.5-point average going into election night.

So we leave it to you to decide:  "Rigged" or "Clueless".