Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 792: Debate Wrap Up and "The Polls Weren't Wrong"

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

      Thanks to Carl Allen:   Check out his Substack Check out his book: His twitter

Get ready for Las Vegas style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games and signature BetMGM service. There is no better way to bring the excitement and ambiance of Las Vegas home to you than with BetMGM Casino. Download the BetMGM Casino app today. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. BetMGM.com for Ts and Cs. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If

you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact CONNECTS Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BET MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago and beyond, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome mat. Today is Thursday, September

the 12th and it is the, the, it's two days post debate. And we're going to talk about the debate, but also we're going to tell you, we are going to be joined a little later on by a guest, a guest, Carl Allen. He is the author of the book, the polls weren't wrong. So if you're like Cecil and myself, and you're probably checking the polls, like a fucking crazy person all the time, desperately hoping for good news and a reason to wake up tomorrow. This will be a fun and illuminating interview. Thank you very much and you're a buttle, Mr. Carville.

We have no response. That was perfect. That's the way you do it. That's the way you debate. Tom, did you watch the debate? I watched the shit out of that debate. I watched it. I got to tell you, with fucking baited and trembling breath, did I turn that debate on. I watched it live. I watched it live.

I was nervous too. To be honest with you, I was nervous too. And I saw beforehand, and these Aged Like Milk, right? All these posts about how bad Kamala's gonna do, Aged Like Milk. But they all seem to mention her leaving the stage early as a candidate in 2020, right? In the primaries field, leaving early. Yeah.

And how she lost those debates and how Tulsi Gabbard made her look stupid, right? Like those were the things that people... That were being said. That were being said. But they forget a couple of things. One, she did so well against Joe Biden that he felt like he needed to have her on his team.

Yeah, she smoked his ass in the debate. She smoked Joe Biden. Yeah felt like he needed to have her on his team. Yeah, she smoked his ass. She smoked Joe Biden. Yeah, memorably. But what they also forget is how easily she handled Mike Pence in 2020. Yeah. I know why we forget that. We forget that she sat down with Mike Pence while he had a fucking fly on his head for four straight Christian minutes.

Right? He had a fucking crazy fucking horse fly on his face, crawling like fucking basil lip, right? And we forget that she handled that. Yeah. It was not even close. And when she came out this time, I seem, I probably was like one of those people with amnesia that forgot, but the moment she got out there, I realized this is somebody who

is so good at speaking that they became a district attorney of the state. And I was like, okay, no, she's going to be fine. And she was fine the whole time. She was, but you know, like I will give, I'll give everybody who was nervous, even if you did remember her performance against Pence, an out. And that is like, I was thinking about, well, why do the stakes seem so high? And there's so many reasons for it, right? There's so many reasons for it. But one of the chief reasons is that more than in any other previous election,

we know with a certainty now what Trump is and what he'll do and what he can do. The first time that he ran, we didn't know. He was an unknown quantity. In 2015, we knew he was a giant piece of shit. We knew he was a xenophobe and a misogynist and a racist and a, you know, we knew he was a bad guy, right? But now we have lived through four years of this. Then we lived through the aftermath of his losing.

We've learned this incredible amount about who he is and what his plans are. And then, you know, the Supreme Court is just like, okay, guess what? If you're elected, you're king. And he's like, cool, I can't wait to be an evil tyrant. And this is out loud in everything. I'll be a dictator on day one.

No governors either. Nothing in there to slow him down. No baffles. Right. So the stakes are actually higher. So yeah, like I felt like if I, if the rational part of my brain was like, Kamala is so good.

She's so, so good on stage in a crowd making an argument. This is how she cut her teeth and made her living and why she rose to prominence. In my brain, it's like that, but I'm like, but I'm scared all the time. I'm scared, I have anxiety and I get it. And I understand that. I understand the people who skipped the debate

because they just didn't wanna be in that space where they felt so vulnerable. But let me tell you, if you missed the debate, she fucking curb stomped him. So bad. It was so bad. And all she had to do was poke him, let him respond, let him be false and have to respond multiple times, and then just give him enough rope to hang himself over and over and over again. And we were talking about this before we started, but I really do feel like some of that stuff might've been tried in the past, but Kamala was able to pull it off because Trump doesn't want to be talked to

like that by a black woman. Yeah, a hundred percent, man. And I think he got so mad and was so easy to tune up because he's a racist and because he's a misogynist and those two things fill so much of his head that it was impossible for him to let that go and let it go sort of bounce off of him. He was not gonna let those, anything that she said bounce off of him.

He was gonna confront everything she said. I also, yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I also think that we now have so much more information. He's been around now in the political sphere for coming up on 10 years, right? It's been 2015 to almost 2025. It's a long time. And over the last four years in particular, his entire public life has been this nursing of grievances. It's, it is, it has changed. It was bad in the beginning, but it has gotten, I think, genuinely exponentially worse. And that makes somebody very vulnerable. When you see that as, okay, this is a guy who can't help

himself from taking the bait, I think she very astutely realized that, you know, the public sees Trump as stronger, the polling numbers all show us, as stronger on the economy and stronger on immigration. And neither of those things are objectively true They are both actually objectively untrue Harris is stronger with a stronger record on both and that's a better plan right and has a doesn't really have one But but the concept of one he's got a concept, but yes But the public perceives that so that's a weak spot spot for her. And so his intention going in is obviously any question that comes up,

he wants to bring it to immigration. He wants to bring it to the Southern border. He wants to bring it to the economy. I don't think she very astutely realized if she controls the narrative and doesn't let him get his talking points in by finishing her points with a jab about something he's reactive to,

that he'll react to it and it'll eat up his time with stupid bullshit. So she did this so well, you could just watch it like unfold like it was a playbook. She'll spend a minute and 40 seconds of her time responding to the direct question, and then at the end, reach out and poke him about crowd size, or reach out and poke him in the ribs

about some other stupid bullshit that you know he's a reactionary on. And then he can't help it. He's like, all right, whatever. And then he wastes his time, not nailing her down in the places where she might have some public perception of weakness. But now he looks like a crazy old man yelling at a cloud.

It was masterful. You're absolutely right. That's exactly what she did each time. And she picked on different things and different things made him mad. And she knew which ones those were. Not only did she do something really masterful, but I want to roll back to Joe Biden too,

in a lot of ways, because Joe Biden lost a debate to him a while back in June. And everybody was, you know, we know what it feels like to be on both sides of winning and losing. Right. I know there's going to be people out there who say, no, Joe didn't do as bad. Joe did pretty bad in that debate. It wasn't, it wasn't good. Don't get me wrong. Trump lied the entire time and he did it here too. Yes. But what Joe wasn't able to do was take advantage the way she was of those pieces like you were pointing out. But what Joe wasn't able to do was take advantage the way she was of those pieces like you were pointing out.

But what Joe did do was essentially when he stepped down, he essentially did that sort of... I don't know if you've seen the movie Eight Mile. Have you seen the movie Eight Mile? In Eight Mile where at the end he basically raps about all this shit. He's like, I fucking... like my buddy, my buddy got shot in the leg. He shot himself in the leg. You fucked my girl. You guys kicked my ass. Yeah.

Blah, blah, blah, blah. And then he basically says, now, now tell these people something they don't know about me. Tell him something that I didn't fucking say already. Right? Basically, Joe Biden did that to Trump. Right? What he did was he made it so our side isn't assailable anymore because what he had was stuff against Joe Biden.

What he had was Joe Biden is old. And then finally Joe Biden's like, I'm fucking old. Now tell these people what I did to say something about. And then it just like, now he's stuck. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know how to react. What they did was they took away all his good ammunition for nothing. Yep. Now, what is he going to say? What he had to resort to was a very weak point about the border,

which he failed and which she pointed out multiple times that he killed that border deal that could have changed things. So he had to resort to xenophobic, terrifying attacks against migrant populations across the United States. And then the only other thing he had was the economy. But again, you know, she very astutely pointed out that the economy, the economy that was faltering was garbage given to us by you. We spent three years cleaning up your trash. You, you tanked this economy during COVID.

So now we've got to clean up your trash. And so I think she easily handled those things and at the same time had so many points that she kept pointing out over and over and over again, just these little tiny things and they weren't, it doesn't matter in the big scheme of things that he got mad. What matters is that it flustered him.

Yeah, well, I mean, there is, when we say somebody wins or loses a debate, um, and I would return to the Biden thing. I, uh, Biden was more factually accurate, but that does not mean you win the debate. A debate is won or lost based on its persuasiveness. So persuasiveness is not the same thing as telling the truth all the time, being the most factual. Trump in arguably won the debate against Hillary

in the public opinion, right? That I think is arguable at the very least, not because he was telling more true sentences out of his mouth, but because many people viewed him as being more persuasive. That's what a debate is. A debate is not a place to lay out the details of all your policy proposals. A debate is, it is a place to lay out the details of all your policy proposals and debate.

It is a place to persuade. And she was vastly more persuasive than Trump because she didn't allow him any oxygen to persuade. He was constantly on the defense. He was constantly on his back foot. He was constantly defending bizarre positions. And she made him look like who he is, which is a fucking weirdo crazy person.

Cause she pointed out, she says like, he's out here at his rallies talking about how windmills cause cancer and all this crazy bullshit. Well, that's all true stuff that he does. When the economy comes up, she's like, look, Goldman Sachs says your economy's gonna take, your tariff plan's gonna tank the economy. And she even says something really funny where she's like,

yeah, famously liberal Goldman Sachs has come out and endorsed my plan over yours because your plan is a piece of shit. She was openly mocking him. My favorite line of the night, and this was such a fucking burn, and it's such a difference, I think, you just feel the difference in their ages

and their ability to connect with people. When she burned him and said, look, 81 million people fired him and he's still having a difficult time trying to process that. That is such a great burn. That is such a great burn. Because it's amazingly dismissive. Yes.

And that, of course, tunes him up. Using his own line against him, you're fired, right? Tunes him up. Yep. I think that that was a very well-crafted line. And the other thing I think that it does, subtly but wonderfully, is that if you are one of one of these hyper toxic masculine men, that's a very emasculating thing to say, he's having a hard time processing that.

To talk about a man openly not being able to deal with his feelings, if you're a hyper toxic masculine man, that's like, that's rage bait. You can't, you don't even like. She absolutely teased him up with it too. It was perfect. It was gorgeous. It was perfect.

It was perfect. Yeah, she did, I think, all the correct things. And one of the things that people, you know, we get an opportunity to see candidates in their rawest form, right? These questions are hard questions asked to each candidate and we get a chance to hear them without an interpreter. Nobody's there to craft their message. questions asked to each candidate and we get a chance to hear them without an interpreter.

Nobody's there to craft their message. Nobody's there to write a speech for them to help them craft their message. Or there's no interviewer there where they can use that interviewer. A lot of times interviewers are softballs. So it's easy, right? Whenever Fox goes on, whenever Fox goes on Trump, whenever Trump goes on Fox, he's using that as a way to get his point across unfiltered without any pushback, right?

Anytime he goes on the Now or any of those other tiny internet stations, he's using that as a way to get his unfiltered access to the people, but it's not in a way that he feels pressed or it's a difficult, he's not gonna be pressured on, right? Yeah, it's a soapbox. This is your opportunity to see the two candidates though, in some ways, have their ideas hit each other.

And without anybody else really sort of formulating how you should feel about it. This is your opportunity to see it. That's what debates often are. And we get an opportunity to see how their thought processes mesh and where the hard parts rub up against each other. And what you saw was, on the one side was Trump's

big bag of mashed potatoes and her absolute jackhammer that was able to point. And, and you can tell just by the ending statements, the ending statements, the closing statements at the end where Kamala looks at the camera and says, I'm, I'm about the future. I'm about how are you doing? I'm about helping people about lifting, raising all boats. I'm about making sure that I'm a president for the entire nation. And Trump was, this is the worst country ever.

If you elect her, we will be worse than we are now. They are the worst people in the world. We're going to be raped by immigrants. Yeah. And it's going to be the worst. We're going to, we might as well just light the America on fire right now. Here's the thing. That's not hyperbole because he raises the specter of if I don't get reelected,

there will be a pretty much immediate World War III. Yeah. I mean, he says that. Like, so we just say like light the world on fire. He's literally saying there is, you know, the nuclear is going to be so bad, you won't believe the nuclear. It's crazy. He is, this is straight fear mongering.

His only tactic that he has left is to convince America that we are living through some Mad Max-esque hellscape right now and that somewhere right around the corner, because we're not living through a Mad Max-esque hellscape. So what he does is he paints a picture of a place in America that is right around the corner from you, where these terrible things are happening and they'll happen soon to you if I am not the bulwark that stops it.

It is a fear-based position for weak and small-minded people to grapple with and to hold onto. One thing that Harris said, and she repeated it more than once, and I think it's really, it should be the clarion call for her campaign when it addresses his campaign, is that all of what Trump says is about Trump,

and he's never talking about you. She says it multiple times. She's like, you'll hear a lot about him and his election and his crowd, but he's not gonna talk about you. And I thought it was really interesting that she did that because then he responded by not talking about the American people never did what he played right in once Play right right into because he can't help it. All he cares about is himself. And even when you call him on it

He'll still do he still can't he can't help himself. Yeah Big endorsement that evening by Taylor Swift huge endorse people were Wondering when this was gonna happen because Trump had faked an AI version of this a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago. He had said, I accept to a fake AI version of Swifties for Trump. Yeah. And she came out holding a cat in a photo

and that photo has had 10 million Hardies. Yes, it has. And she has, this has been viewed millions and millions in a photo and that photo has had 10 million Hardys. Yes it has. And she has, this has been viewed millions and millions of times by her enormous audience, which is hundreds, a hundreds of millions, if not billions of people know who Taylor Swift is. Enormous.

And so her audience received this. And since then there's been an uptick in people voting or people registering to vote. Yeah, so there's something like 340,000 or so people registered to vote using the link that she provided. Her link. Her link, her like, go here, register to vote link. Something like 340,000 people registered to vote.

In the first 15 minutes, it had a million likes in 15 minutes, or a million hearts on Instagram, whatever. The lady has like 283 million followers on Instagram. There's only like 370 million people in America. Now that's an international following, but it's hard to overstate how big a celebrity Taylor Swift is. So endorsements like this do matter. I think they really do. They can matter. state how big a celebrity Taylor Swift is.

So endorsements like this do matter. I think they really do. They can matter. It's not as big as Kid Rock, but it's close. Not as big as Hulk Hogan, but it's close. The endorsement is huge though. I mean, it's huge. It's massive.

And she is, you know, Taylor Swift is one of these people who, you know, I think she had, she endorsed Biden in 2020. We figured she was gonna endorse Kamala Harris eventually, but you know, it was a perfect time right after the debate had happened. And the best line I saw, you tweeted it, you sent the tweet to me today, but I'd seen it a little bit before then,

but it was JD Vance who basically said, who's gonna listen to a billionaire who's out of touch with the reality on who they should vote for? It would have been better if he would have just kept on saying things that were for both of them, for both Trump and her. We'd be like, a blonde billionaire with demure hands.

JD Vance, he's doing this interview and it's fucking great. He's like, oh yeah, we like Taylor's just music well enough. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha That's your guy, man! That's your dude! He's a billionaire, supposedly. Your guy walks around talking about how billion-y billionaire he is. Dude, it's so, I mean, it's so fucking close. You're so close to it. It's like you're leaning into the flame. Yes! You're that close to it. You can't imagine. You almost feel like, at this point,

JD Vance is a plant. You almost feel like. I said that to your wife earlier over dinner. You almost feel like he is a fucking, he saw, and he actually does believe that never Trump stuff that he touted before and he came in saying, I will ruin this fucking from the inside. That's the only way I could imagine JD Vance. Part of me kind of, there's an insane part of me, the part of me that like thinks I got hit in the head

and I've been in a coma since 2015 or whatever. Like there's a part of me that's like, yeah, maybe that's true. Because it'd be an amazing season closer. Oh! Season 2025 of United States would be so amazing if at the end of it all, when Trump's giving his concession speech,

JD Vance takes away, he's like, I always fucking hated this guy. And then he just drops the mic and he walks away. Oh, he's so amazing. You conceded? Okay, good. Boom. Yeah.

It's, you know, it's bullshit. Cause none of these guys would ever run their career into the ground for this. None of them. No, no, no. They have no principles. This guy has no principles. I'm kidding.

Don't send me your messages being like, you guys are off base. It's a joke. He's bought and paid for by Peter Thiel. It's a joke. We don't think that. No, no, he's bought and paid for by Peter Thiel. We know this.

This side, if I may call it such, does not become your, my little brothers. All right, so this story comes from USA Today. Trump admits he lost in 2020, leading white nationalist, Nick Fuentesentes to disavow him. Guys, he doesn't just disavow him. Nick Fuentes has a fucking hissy fit. Nick Fuentes gets angry, bro. I want to point out too that they brought this specific line that Trump used in an interview where he said he lost by a whisker. He was interviewed by some guy who says he's a centrist

who isn't a centrist on YouTube or whatever. And during that interview, that person asked and he said, yeah, I lost by a whisker. And I think he said it a couple of times. And then they brought this up on the debate. If you missed the debate, they brought this up. And what Trump wound up saying was, I was being sarcastic.

I wasn't actually saying that as fact, I was just being sarcastic when I said I lost by a whisker. And then the moderator said, well, I didn't detect any sarcasm. On to you, that of my president. It was amazing. But genuinely, that's his out here now. But when this story posted and when Nick Fuentes was talking about this, he hadn't clarified

yet. So people, this was all big news to a bunch of people who thought that the election was stolen. So now wait, is Nick Fuentes back on the Trump train I wonder? I don't know exactly, but it's just too delicious to pass up. Yeah. All right. So let me read what he's saying because it's so good.

So Trump says on a podcast with Lex Friedman, he says, he beat us by a whisker. It was a terrible thing. He said similar things at the moms for Liberty summit a few days later. So he said it more than once. So then Nick Fuentes gets, gets wind of this, right? And Nick Fuentes fucking flips this shit. So he says, so why did we do this stop the steal? Why did anyone go to January 6th? Why did anyone go to jail? It would have been good to know that before 1,600 people got charged.

It would have been good to know that before I had all my money frozen, got put on a no fly list, banned from everything, lost all my bank and payment processing. Nick, Nick, I'm sorry, I'm not laughing. I am laughing at you, actually. I'm kidding, I'm laughing at you, Nick. I'm 100% laughing at you. Nick, I'm sorry. I'm not laughing. I am laughing at you. I'm kidding. I'm laughing at you, Nick.

I'm 100% laughing at you. Oh, I'm fucking laughing right in your stupid fucking shit face, you piece of shit. I love that these dumb ass motherfuckers got grifted. And I really do hope that Trump had, and I don't know if this will happen, but I hope Trump does say in more than one place that he lost the 2020 election. I hope he comes out. And I hope all these people have a realization, I mean this with the fucking bottom of my heart,

with all sincerity, I hope they all see how played they were. How easily played they were. That they were, oh look, you guys were all played. He never gave a shit about any of you. This was always fake. He knew it was fake when it was happening. He did, this was no good faith. There was no good intention. He was using you and you're stupid and you got used and you lost everything for nothing and you fucking deserve it. And

I hope none of you get any of it back ever. And you can just tell the quality of thinker Nick Fuentes is if he's genuinely reacting to how Trump Manipulated him because it was so obvious to every single person Everybody saw how Trump was treating it people in his own cabinet said Trump is trying to manipulate this because he wants a different outcome. It isn't true There was an entire wants a different outcome, it isn't true. There was an entire congressional hearing on this. You could have watched, you could have just sat and watched

and saw all the evidence that they rolled out day after day, all the depositions that they took that they played tape for. You could have just watched. And those weren't fucking Democrats they were interviewing. Those were people from his inner circle. So for you to be so fucking blatantly and on purpose, stupid, I have no sympathy. None, none, none.

Because these guys used that grift for their own grip. Absolutely. They took this was a fucking MLM of grift. You bet. They built a fucking down line of deceit in order to steal from other people, in order to sell fucking boner pills and hate magazines and whatever other nonsense evil merchandising

awful bullshit crypto garbage that these assholes have peddled I that they lost everything doesn't begin to do justice to the damage that they've done They were wrong on purpose if it was genuine on their part. They were wrong on purpose. Five dozen cases, five dozen, 60 cases thrown out in courts all across this country related to Trump's efforts to stop the steal. There was no steal to stop. Five dozen times this went to court and was thrown out because there was nothing there. Five dozen times this went to court and was thrown out because there was nothing there. Five dozen times. It is disingenuous to pretend at some point.

And if you insist on pretending in the face of monumental evidence so that you can grift other people and now you have the gall to be mad that you were grifted, get the fuck out of here, Nick Fuentes. And the fucking damage that you've done to the election integrity in this country. It's not just Trump. Trump, of course, has damaged elections. Maybe beyond repair, we'll find out soon.

We'll know, but maybe beyond repair. But you fucking fueled that fire for four years because it got you clicks and it got your hearts and it got your likes and it got you dollars in your pocket. So fucking any kind of bit of cognitive dissonance you feel over this, I can't rub my hands together hard enough for that. And now folks, it's time for who do you trust?

Hubba hubba hubba, money money money, who do you trust? Me, I'm giving away free money. This story comes to the New Republic pro-Trump media firm abruptly folds after Russian scheme exposed. This is Tenant Media. Wow. Huh? Crazy. So Cecil real quick, buddy. Who was in Tenant Media? Who were the personalities, my good man? Well, two that people might know are Tim pool and Dave Rubin, huh? Shills from the fucking start look you could turn on Dave Rubin and Tim pool Anytime in the last several years and you would hear them spouting essentially pro-russian propaganda

At ad nauseam the entire time. It was all anti-ukraine There's a great clip of Tim pool saying they are the enemy new Ukraine is the end and ad nauseam the entire time it was all anti-Ukraine. There's a great clip of Tim Poole saying they are the enemy. New Ukraine is the end. I mean, he's literally just, I mean, you might as well just have the Russian national anthem playing behind him. It's so obvious, right? But it wasn't obvious, at least to me, that it was Russian money, because we weren't sure whether that grift was,

this is what the right wing wants to hear, so they're making money off that. But what we found out was that they were making like $100,000 a video, up to $400,000 a month. These guys were making money hand over fist, touting and promoting a line of reasoning that made it seem like Russia, the things that were happening in Ukraine

and all these other pro-Russian positions were just something that the regular old right-wing people should really care about and really be against when the United States is against them. Yeah. And you know, Russia has had a long history of fomenting division. So not only were they explicitly promoting pro-Russian anti-Ukrainian standpoints, but they were also explicitly sowing seeds of political and cultural division in our country because that is good for our enemies. The more divided we are, the weaker we are. The less

coherent we are as a culture, the weaker we are. The more that they can sow that kind of chaos, the more that plays into their ability to control and manipulate our elections, into our weakness as a culture and as a country, that damages our economy. It causes shit like January 6th to happen, and it damages our ability to be a functioning democracy that other international countries see and respect and hold up.

So like it play all of this to their advantage. So that heavy division that they sow, that's all Russian propaganda. It was clearly Russian propaganda. Their defense that these idiots are trying to use is they didn't know they were Russian stooges. And I'm kind of like, that's just as bad. That's just as bad.

If you are so fucking stupid that you are able to be swayed by money and you are able to hold a series of positions and espouse a series of points whose only aim serves our enemies overseas and you're like, well, but I didn't know I was a complete toolbox asshole. It's like, well, all right. So you were a useful idiot. Yeah, you're a useful idiot. That's your defense? I was a complete toolbox asshole. It's like well alright, so you were a useful idiot. Yeah, you're a useful idiot That's your defense. I was a useful idiot. Why would anyone take you seriously Dave Rubin? Why your career should be gone forever when this got found out fucking Russian state media RT. They tweeted back

LOL When they got caught they laughed at it They laughed at it openly when they got caught they acknowledged they at it. They laughed at it openly. When they got caught, they acknowledged they did it and laughed on fucking Twitter when this happened. Well, and what you have is a group of people who, you know, followed this stuff, like you said, espouse these ideas and got paid handsomely for it. You know, this last week, the debate happened and someone, this was Sarah posted on our

Facebook page a comment when, you know, after Trump clearly lost, she had posted something like who's going to replace Trump now? And there's a bunch of comments underneath. You know, it's funny. And someone commented and said, this isn't funny. You know, real lives are at stake. This is just content for you guys. You know, real people, their lives are at stake

in this election. And I wanna respond to that by saying like, very simply, if it was just about getting content, I could be a very rich person right now. Cause it's so easy to do the things that Tim Pool did, or to do the things that Dave Rubin did, and to be easily as or more entertaining than them, and espouse all these terrible ideas,

and be a multimillionaire in a year. Yep. In a year, I could be a million... I could retire in a year of doing videos. $5.2 million if we counted up 52 weeks, I get $100,000 a video. $5.2 million I could retire in a year. All throughout what we've done has been to try to show what our values are and to say like, this is just content for you guys. If it was just content, I could be rich right now. And I know that that joke's

been said by multiple people in our sphere, multiple times. We've said, man, there sure is a lot of money on the grifter side. There sure is a lot of money on that grifter side. Here you get an opportunity to see where that money comes from, where that money is, is, is, is pouring in from and what you have to do for that money. And I won't sell my values out for money. I won't ever do that. No. And I want to add to that because I, it is, that's actually like, it's a pretty fucking

offensive thing to say when you look back and say, Hey, you know, Cecil, you and I have been doing this show or some version of this show for almost 18 years, long before there was any way to even think about monetizing podcasts. This was not about the money. We've been doing some version of this show for almost, dude, we're going to be 20 years in like a minute. There wasn't even a Patreon. There was no such thing as Patreon. We did this for years and years because these are things we care about. These are conversations we wanna have

because these are values that we hold because this is a way that we wanna grow together as people. And we have grown together as people as a result of this show and the things we've learned and the people that we've met and the experiences that we've had. Our minds have been changed. Our attitudes have been opened.

Our horizons have expanded. We've met and experienced so much because of doing this show. It's not about the content in terms of like, I just wanna put something out so I can charge for it. We've been doing this, if we did this for a half a decade before there was a way to charge for things. Yeah. I and we were raising money for charity while charge for it. We've been doing this. We did this for a half a decade before there was a

way to charge for things. I only were raising money for charity while we did it. I think, I think I understand and empathize with the person who feels afraid. I do. I empathize with them. But I also want to point out like it's, it's not just about content for me. It's about showing you what my values are and, and, and gathering people with like-minded values together. That's what it's always been about. But you look at this particular story and how this thing played out, and so many people on our side had been calling,

you know, the amount of money that's being fed into this system, into this grift of the right wing for a long time. We thought it was a grift of the right wing. It turns out it was the grift of Russia of the right wing for a long time. We thought it was a grift of the right wing. It turns out it was the grift of Russia on the right wing. Yeah, how much of the right wing now has really become a true believer propaganda arm of the Russian state?

It's not zero, man. Like there's, because the thing is like, there's some people who are saying these things because they're paid to do it, right? I believe that 100%. Then there are other people who are convinced that propaganda is true. And that's why propaganda is done, because it works.

Because it convinces people to hold a set of values and a mindset and a series of ideas. We wouldn't do propaganda if we had to pay everybody to do it. You do propaganda because you pay one or two people to do it and it convinces all the others. The right is now full of these Russian state sponsored ideas. That's in there now.

You can't pull it out. You fire these guys, they don't keep saying it, but they've converted a bunch of people into believing those things are true. That's the damage has done it. That's why RT laughed. RT wasn't like, oh, go, we're caught, it's over. Fuck.

They laughed. They laughed because they got it done. And they stirred that pot up and you can never unstir it. Never. You can never unstir it. So we are joined by Carl Allen, the author of The Polls Weren't Wrong. Welcome to the program, Karl. Karl, we got a chance to take a look at your substack and a little bit of your work today. I am dying to know about how we are misled by polls because much of a political podcast,

as you can understand, we're a secular podcast, but we talk a lot about politics. We get informed by these polls all the time. We like to think we might have some idea of what they're about, but perusing your work, I'm not sure I do. So what are we getting wrong? Yeah, so there are a couple places where we should start when we talk about poll data. The first place that we should start is the science behind it. Polls are a science,

and that is very important to understand. Despite how they might be talked about, treated or viewed, they are a scientific tool, polls. But at the same time, the amount of imprecision inherent in that instrument, in that poll, really confuses people. It really throws people off. Because when we are shown poll data, what are we shown? We are only shown the top lines, right?

So a poll came out today, I think I saw National Poll Harris was like 49, 46 or something like that. And if I'm wrong on that, there is another poll that says that, which I'll talk about. But let's say a poll says 49, 46, we only ever see those top lines, but what do we know about polls?

There's a margin of error. That margin of error is the biggest part of the imprecision that is inherent to the poll instrument. And that is the most fundamentally misunderstood statistic. So when I do chats like these with you guys, when I go to colleges, when I talk to just like my friends and family, I have to remind them that when they are told and polls are talked about on TV by people in suits and people who are objectively very smart about how polls work, it is not their

fault that they don't understand them. It is not the consumer's fault that they are misled. So just take that poll example 4946, that poll is a very, very, very minute tiny piece of data. And in that tiny minute piece of data, there's still a margin of error. So most commonly, that poll is reported as Kamala Harris ahead by three. That is absolutely a false precision is, I think, one way that some statisticians would describe that characterization. In fact, statistically, most likely Harris is not at 49 and Trump is not at 46. Most likely, the number is different than that.

Harris could be higher or lower, Trump could be higher or lower, blah, blah, blah. And I say that this is why all of these polls that are released have different numbers. They're surveying similar populations, nationally, states, whatever. But we should expect it is not a flaw. It is not a problem when we see these slightly different numbers. What is a problem is when the media says, this most recent poll, or not even just the media experts,

literal experts may have the same misunderstanding. This most recent poll says this, therefore this one is probably the most correct. This pollster has historically been a good pollster and then they gave this number. We have tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny bits of data that if we look at it properly, we can piece together. of data that if we look at it properly we can piece together. But the media has a

incentive I would say because they need content, they need things to talk about. If you take enough polls you can find a poll that says anything. Trump up seven, Trump getting 70 percent of the black vote, Harris getting 99% of independents. You're gonna find all of these crazy things if you take enough polls. And that is one way that the media is, I wouldn't say causing problems because funding these polls is important. And that's where the money comes from most of the time.

But there is also the other side of things where, hey, we just took a poll. This is what it says. Let's talk about it for four hours. When I when people ask me what I do when I see a new poll, I prefer to show them I say, neat. And I and I look at the numbers and I set it aside. And that's pretty much all you really need to garner from any individual poll. So I, that's, I gotta, I gotta stop you then because I, I've got, I've got a burning question here. And I really mean this because I feel like I don't understand what the fuck I'm supposed to understand when I look at a poll.

to understand when I look at a poll. In other words, like, what's the utility of polling when you're looking at an election? Like, let's use our current Trump-Harris election as an example, but like when it is so close, when it is within the margin of error, I'm struggling to understand the utility. I do the same thing that you do. I get a poll and I hold it in front of me and I say, neat, and then I don't know what the fuck else to do with it. You know what it feels like to me is it feels like my Fitbit data. I used to have a Fitbit. It used to tell me how many steps I walked and I would say, huh,

and that's all I would know what to do with that. Or be like, you slept six hours. I'd be like, well, that's over. I don't know what I, it feels trivial because I doesn't feel actionable. So I want you to help me understand too, Carl, what the hell am I supposed to understand about polling that makes polls important? Cause you said these are important to fund, but then you also said the same thing I do, which is neat.

And at the same time, I will also confess I nervously refresh constantly because I'm terrified over the course of the next 60 days. So other than like the emotional security blanket, which is, you know, just my personal failing. Right. Well, that, that tells me that you are like most people, including myself, um, who are engaged and you care about what happens. And the media and people who need your eyeballs,

they need your clicks, they need your interaction on social media. They know this, they know this. And so all of this repetitive in your face, there's another poll today, there's another poll today, there's another poll today. Well, each individual poll tells us very little. Each individual poll tells us very little because polls are extremely limited in what they can tell us. And just to shamelessly plug my book for a second, one of the reasons my first chapter is only about half related to polling is because of exactly the point that you brought up, which is I see this data,

I don't know what to do with it. In a proper scientific field, which polling currently, the polling, the people who do the polling adhere to most good scientific standards. The people who analyze polls do not, and I'll get into that. But about the first half of the first chapter of my book, I talk about it is the job of experts in the field to take all of this information coming from all of these different directions.

Some of it matters, some of it's bullshit. Some of it looks more important than it is. Some of it's out of, you know, it's outside the margin of error, so to speak. And it's important for the analysts to say, okay, this is an outlier piece of data. We don't need to look too much into this. In a proper scientific field,

what would happen is the analysts, the experts would consume all of this data, consume all of this data, consume all of this data, figure out what the hell it means and say, okay, public, this is what is important. So I want to get to, I think, a problem of concept that I have with polling. And you can tell me if I'm off base. I think that most of my life, I've looked at polling as a predictive modeling thing to do, right? It's a predictive modeling. But I've come to realize that I don't think

that it is predictive modeling. And I wonder what questions I have is gonna be about this. But it feels more like it is a snapshot of time of when the poll was taken. Like in this moment, this is what we think based on this poll, which is not necessarily the same thing as a predictive model. So I've been reading about other predictive models. I'm sure everybody else who consumes political news has as well, like Alan Lichtman's keys. I forgot how many, there's like 14 keys or something.

And then, you know, like I read- 13 keys. 13 keys, thank you. And then I read something about like, oh, well, you know, actually if you look at the S&P 500, the S&P 500 has accurately predicted the winner of elections based on who the incumbent is and the activity of the S&P since 1984.

It's been accurate every time. So how do polls stack up as predictive models or we should we not think of polling as predictive modeling? Should we think of polling as something different entirely? All right. So I have to get this out of the way early that polls are not predictions. Polls inform predictions. I use a few different examples to explain this in the book, and I'm always unsure of what the best one is. So you guys can tell me if I'm making sense. You get it. You guys can look at me and you have my permission.

You have my consent. You guys can look at me. I want you guys to guess how much I weigh, how much I weigh, but not right now. I want you guys to guess how much I will weigh on election day. 57 days, give or take, right? 55. I don't even know. It's been a while. So think about how you would inform that guess. You guys can just look at me. You'll probably go through your database. You're like, well, I weigh this. I know somebody that has a similar body type to him that weighs this.

Are you a stress eater? Yeah, that's even better because you're helping me make my point. So the best possible data that you could have about what my weight will be in 55 days is what? What it is right now. So if I, if I stand on a scale and I say, Hey, this scale says my weight is this, does that predict what my weight will be in 50? Is that number on the scale of prediction of what my weight will be in 55 days? That number isn't a prediction. I see your point. That number is not the prediction, but it informs my ability to make it. It gives you a starting point. It gives you a baseline.

And that question you asked about whether or not I'm a stress eater, but that's a great point because even if you know with 100% certainty, plus or minus 0.00 pounds, what my weight is right now, that only gives you a starting point for what my weight will be in 55 days. You as a consumer of this data, you have to say, okay, which is most likely, will his weight go up? Will his weight go down? Will his weight stay the same?

We could all make very reasonable assumptions and argue fervently about it's gonna be close to winter time, it's after Halloween, he's gonna get to eat a bunch of candy, he's sitting on his ass all day doing podcasts. You know, we can argue all these things there's ways it's gonna go up, or maybe we can make a case that most likely

my weight will stay the same. There's reasonable arguments to be had, but, and here's the big point, we can both make reasonable assumptions. I say, ah, my weight's probably going to stay the same. You say, ah, the weight's probably going to go up. But 55 days from now, when I stand on a scale again to see who's right, who's right. We can't judge the accuracy of my weight today based on what it is 55 days from now. We can't judge the accuracy. The poll isn't wrong. Yeah, go ahead. Right, yeah. So the poll isn't wrong just because a poll taken on November 4th isn't predictive of activity on November 5th. I think it's a problem of perception from the public.

To use the scale example again, you brought up one really good point. Whether or not I'm a stress eater. Good point. Can you guys think of any other confounding variables for what could change my weight now to election day. Are you planning on any amputations? Because that would be a huge change in weight. You know what I mean? Right, scheduled bariatric surgery coming up. You know, and yeah, right, right.

Yeah. You started a workout plan. If you just downloaded the Lose It app, there's lots of ways. It can change a lot of things, for sure. You're taking a baking class tomorrow. Like I'm going the other way. I'm going the other direction.

You're going for the thicker. I like it. I'm a little thicker. I gotta fill it up for the winner. You know what I mean? It's a young winner. I'm like a gopher. I gotta hibernate.

I gotta get this in. So I wanna ask you about data gathering with respect to political polls. Because my wife and I talk about this in. So I wanna ask you about data gathering with respect to political polls, because my wife and I talk about this all the time. I will tell you that I'm probably wrong about this because I don't know what I'm talking about. So that's my preface. Well, but I sort of feel like right now,

I don't really believe in the ability of pollsters to gather data accurately across a cohort of digital and legacy responders to polling. So I think in the past, you know, my past, I'm a Gen X guy, the phone rang in the house and you answered the phone. Everybody answered the phone. So if I wanted to do a poll,

I could just dial the phone a whole bunch of times, call up a bunch of people, and I would be fairly certain that it would be randomized in some meaningful way as to who answers the phone. I don't think that's true anymore. I think nobody answers the fucking phone. When you call the phone, I've never met a millennial, like millennials run away from their phone

like it catches fire if it rings. They're not answering the phone. And then the people like my dad aren't going on YouGov and filling out surveys. So I'm, I'm, I'm at a place where I'm like, I don't know that I believe in our ability to meaningfully poll a cohort of legacy and digital responders. Does that make sense? No, you're, you are right on man. You are right on.

The biggest challenge in the past, I would say 10 years in the polling industry has been that non-response. So we talked about, wait, everybody knows about the margin of error when it comes to affecting the poll numbers, but non-response is probably number two in the most difficult to quantify variable in terms

of getting a truly random sample. Because like you said, some people are more apt to pick up their phone and talk to somebody. But those people are not always a representative subset of the population that you want. A gentleman by the name, gosh, Warren Mitofsky, I think was his name. He is the guy who basically started utilizing random digit dialing for poll data.

So he was the guy, and I think this was in the mid to late 90s, who almost perfected this random sampling method. And in 10 years, it was obsolete because nobody was answering their phone anymore. So yeah, so what random digit dialing is still a big, it's still useful. There are better cell phone databases that some pollsters have access to

and things like that. The number one challenge is that is, is far as how pollsters have their data is non-response. Believe it or not, and this is getting into the science side of things, believe it or not, for a long period of time, pollsters were able to weight their data in such a way because they knew who was responding and who wasn't. They were able to see, you know, millennials, young people weren't responding, and they were able to weight their data properly. But there's a certain tipping point in terms of how low the response rate can be before

you can't wait your way out of bad data anymore. Right. Yeah, makes sense. You can't wait your way. You can only wait your way out of data to a point out of bad data to a point. And there hasn't yet and I have to say this as someone who wrote a book that says the polls weren't wrong, but we haven't reached we haven't quite reached that tipping point yet. And it is because pollsters have been slightly,

slightly trying to stay ahead of these issues to where, yes, we still have these problems with non-response among young people and getting certain people to fill out surveys and things like that, but that response rate is just good enough. And the sampling methods are just innovative enough to where they can say, yes, our weighting methods

aren't necessarily perfect. We know that, but we think they're good enough. So far they have been. But I think there will be a tipping point unless the methodology improves within the next, I mean, 10 years, we saw random digit dialing become almost obsolete in terms of reaching landlines and things like that.

So reasonable to say in the next 10 years, unless we continue to make progress on the data collection side, that there will be those issues with not being able to weight your way out of bad data. I have a question about trending. So we can look at something like you were mentioning earlier, your weight, right? So let's go back to your weight again. Let's say we look at your weight on a scale.

We know that your scale, you were these weights through all of June, all of July and all of August. And we got a chance to plot that data. And when we look at an election that's coming up, we have that information because like you say, we're polling all the time. We're finding out what that snapshot looks like today and tomorrow and the next day. How accurate is looking forward by looking backward?

How much can I glean from that information in the past? Yeah, there's definitely some value to that And here's where the value comes in. There was an election in New Hampshire just a couple of days ago, a primary election, nobody cared, well, I don't wanna say nobody cared about it, but when pollsters asked people about who they wanted to vote for, there were 50% undecided, 50% undecided

like three weeks before the election. They had no candidate preference, the primary for both Democrat and Republican House members, 50% undecided, the top candidates were getting like 20% in the poll. So when we look at trends like that over time, what we're looking for is how are these undecideds deciding? How are they making up their minds?

Because as of right now, the unscientific standard that are used by people who analyze polls in the US is they assume undecideds will split evenly between the top two candidates. 2% undecided, 10% undecided, 50% undecided, they do not care. Their assumption is that undecideds must split 50-50. We know that's not always true.

We know that's almost never true, but they say, ah, it's a good enough assumption. Just like with my weight, the most reasonable assumption might be that my weight stays the same. Well, wait a minute, I gotta stop you real quick. Yeah. I just, correct me if I'm wrong,

but like, if I'm gonna look at the undecided and split them in half, and then assign half to one category and half to the other category, isn't that the same as not counting them at all, numerically? That is correct. Okay, good, yeah, all right, I'm not crazy. It's the same as not counting them at all. So to use a more, using those big numbers, numerically? That is correct. Okay, good. Yeah. All right.

I'm not crazy. The same is not counting them at all. So to use a more, um, using those big numbers, I would call that as like an outlier, but it makes a point to show how dumb it is to assume that undecideds will always split 50 50 because it's undecided split 30 20. Well, now that's a 10 point discrepancy from a very small percentage difference. So looking at more traditional Senate elections, presidential elections, the ones that are really on people's minds right now, we might have 10% undecided.

Well, if candidate A is up by two, as it's reported, 46, 44. And let's just assume for just for sake of for thought that there's no margin of error that we somehow magically know with certainty that those top two candidates are 46 and 44 with 10% undecided. Well, if you can do the math, it's arithmetic. If 60% or six out of 10% decide for that candidate who's behind, all of a sudden they are tighter in the lead. And that's that 60-40 split versus 50-50 split is impossible

to detect unless you have really, really good data. But what would an analyst say about that data? They would say the polls were wrong because their assumption did not hold true. And fundamentally, that is so ignorant, that is so misplaced, and it has no place in any valid science. But speaking a little bit to the name of your podcast,

this is the way it has always been done for 100 years. Since the founding of this field or since holes have started being used for political data, and it is stuck in the mind of analysts that this is how it has always been done, and there has been no consolidated effort to say, guys, why would we assume this when we can test it? Why would we make this assumption about how undecideds will split when

we have data that shows that it is almost never true? Speaking very briefly to analyzing your last question, analyzing trends and data over time, that happened very recently when Kamala Harris became the nominee taking the place of Joe Biden. A lot, and this was pretty clear in the data, there were tons of Democrats and people who had traditionally voted Democrat who asked whether they would vote for Trump or Biden said they were undecided.

Well, really what they were saying is, I don't want Joe Biden to be the nominee. So I'm not, I can't yet express my support for him, even though I would vote for him. If it came to that, in June, there was still this mindset of, man, I really hope he's not on the ballot. I'm going to say I'm undecided. And as soon as Kamala Harris became the nominee, a lot of those, I wouldn't say necessarily reliable, but a lot of those swing voters who leaned Democrat were so relieved. There was a huge bump in the numbers and everybody felt that shift and the race changed immediately. And where we're at now is Harris had a lot of momentum and Trump was kind of stuck at his usual ceiling where he traditionally polls in the swing

states. And now everybody's still fighting over those undecided voters. And that's where we're at. That's where we're at right now. So I'm feeling like this. I'm feeling like, Carl, the polls are not prognosticative in and of themselves. We've determined that. And to a large degree for the everyday person, they're not particularly useful either. You're just a regular guy,

sitting at home, what's that? Individual polls are not very useful. So, and if I'm just some guy sitting at home, there's nothing I can do with any of this information. It is like my Fitbit. It's like, it's trivia, unless it changes my activity, right? Unless it inspires some action, information is trivial, right?

Yeah. So, but what I think it can tell us, and correct me if I'm wrong, is it can tell us this is where we need to concentrate efforts. Yes. This is where work needs to be done. It is better based on this polling data. It is better for me to fundraise here than to fundraise there. It is more important for me to do something in this locality or with this cohort or with this demographic than some other. So I think it can, it can

inform. I've been trying to think this whole time. Well, what the fuck do I care, Carl? Why do I care about the polls? But I think I do care about the polls Even if I don't care about them in the prognosticative way that I thought about them my whole life Um, you're absolutely right and and we shouldn't view toll should view polls as a predictive tool because well because they aren't Um, they're not they're not a predictive Tool in the same sense that a scale is not a predictive tool. Right. It is the best possible tool that we can use to,

if we are interested in forming a prediction, we can, but your point is spot on, that it tells us which races are closest. And we know with the Electoral College, which, you know, I don't speak about the politics of the electoral college in the book, but the electoral college sucks. It doesn't make sense. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. College says the popular vote of the country doesn't matter, but the popular vote of a few states do. It makes no damn sense. Yeah, really stupid.

But with that data, campaigns have gotten very strategic with how they spend their money and where they focus their money. And polls allow us to see which states tip things, which states are going to be the most important. And we can't say for certain which states are necessarily going to be the closest, but we can say with a pretty high degree of certainty, we can narrow it down to about six states where we

really need to win and compete to make a big difference in whether or not we win or lose. Really good example, Barack Obama, I can't remember if he won Indiana, I think he won Indiana one year. And now when people think about Indiana as a possible swing state, or even Ohio, where I live, when people think about Ohio traditionally, it was like the biggest swing state. Now nobody gives a shit about it because it's pretty pink. I would say not necessarily red, but you know, if Harris wins here, we're going to have a really, really early and good night. Um, but you know, if Harris wins here, we're going to have a really, really early and good

night. Yeah. Yeah. But how quickly things can change. If we didn't have poll data, campaigns would be spending tons of money in Indiana and Ohio, because the only data that they had was what happened the last election. Reasonable hypothesis to say Ohio used to be a swing state, Indiana was competitive, let's make sure we're spending money there. Well, people with good data, campaigns who say we have really good data that says Ohio is out of play, we're not going to waste money there, we're going to spend more elsewhere, they now have a competitive advantage. We didn't talk about this, but my background is in sports data and analytics. So when I talk about a competitive advantage, it's about turning your turning one dollar into

two dollars, turning four dollars into ten strategy. In 2020, I think, I invented a metric called progressive above replacement, progressive above replacement, which was basically where we should focus our money. Or if you as a person who says, money or if you as a person who says, I want to support progressives, I want to knock these far right lunatics out of office. I said, these are the races where your hundred dollars can do the most good where you can do the most good. And I found that very insightful because it was really just all about figuring out exactly what you said, which races are the most competitive and how are we going to focus our time, energy

and other resources? What do you think of, you know, if I'm in the end of October, I am refreshing FiveThirtyEight about 12 times a day. I'm playing with their predictive model simulator. I'm looking at where they are on certain things. What do you think about sites like that? I mean, in a lot of ways, when we were calling the 2016 election, we were looking at that data.

We were doing it again for 2020 and 2022. So what do you think about a site like that? Is it, is a useful tool for an average person who might not understand the nuances about polling that you do? Yeah, big time, big time. I don't hold back on my criticism of FiveThirtyEight and other analysts in their, let's say,

ignorance about how to analyze poll data, but they do deserve a ton of credit for bringing a more probabilistic approach to elections, because everybody knows that at the end of the day a more probabilistic approach to elections. Because everybody knows that at the end of the day in an election, you either win or lose. That's it. Those are the only two possible outcomes. Unless it's 2000 and we don't know who decided or why.

But there's two possible outcomes, win or lose. And our minds with our biases, when we look at something that happened, we rationalize, oh, in hindsight, this should have been obvious. But in reality, the best possible data that we can have is all a range of probabilities. FiveThirtyEight deserves a ton of credit for

bringing that fact to the public. And on top of that, they give people tools that they can use to say, okay, well, if she wins this state, then these are the dominant, this is the domino effect, because these states are all correlated. Brilliant stuff, brilliant stuff, very useful stuff. But on the other side of that, there is the potential for misuse and misunderstanding such as, oh, they said this person was 90% to win and they didn't, that means their forecast was bad or wrong. Yeah, can I jump in real quick? It's always been something that I just wanna make

a funny analogy and then I'll let you say smarter things. But like it always made me laugh when people would look at 538 and they'd be like, ah, it's bullshit. He got it wrong. And you're like, well, I mean, there was like a 45% chance or whatever it was that Trump was going to win. And everybody was like dumbstruck as if he that wasn't almost a coin flip but like Every month or so when someone wins the lottery

Which is a one in a billion channel, you know one in 300 million chance that someone's gonna win We're like, yeah. Well, of course, that's just how numbers work But like when there's a 45% chance of this thing happening, we were all like, the math is bullshit. Let's kill Nate Silver on TV. It was crazy. It was like, yeah, like I just, I remember trying to hold both of those things. Like how can you believe somebody wins the lottery? Yeah. Yeah. And then also be like 45% chance is basically zero. What is happening? Well, yeah, you're exactly right, man. And another way I present numbers in the book is I talk about dice.

If you roll two dice, the most common outcome is a seven, but the probability of that is only 16%, 16.6, whatever. Interesting. Even the most common outcome is highly improbable. Even the most likely outcome is highly improbable. And when we talk about dice, that makes sense. Kind of. It takes a second to process, but you're like, yeah, okay. That kind of makes sense. So if I ask someone to predict a roll of dice, six, seven, eight, nine, like, whatever, it doesn't matter. But you're basically just lucky if you get it right. It's just a

number. But if we were to take a more scientific approach, so you talked about assigning a probability to it, I would say seven plus or minus four would be a really good way to approach the problem. Three to 11 is about 95%. About 95%. So if I say you probably won't roll a two or a 12, about one in 20 times, I'm going to look like a dumb ass because it's about 5% to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But again, all I'm doing is like a dumb ass. Because it's about 5% to happen. Yeah, yeah.

But again, all I'm doing is giving a probability. I'm not trying, I'm not saying this will or won't happen. So thinking probabilistically is they deserve some credit for that. However, however, where they deserve a ton of scrutiny, a ton of shit, and I will not rest until it's over with. When they look at a poll, and they see that candidate A is at 46%, candidate B is at 44%,

they say, and this is their exact words, I'm not exaggerating. I'm not taking any liberties here. They say unless candidate A wins, that poll was wrong. Unless candidate A wins, that poll was wrong. They don't care about undecideds. They don't care about the margin of error. They don't care about people changing their minds, which happens more than we would like to think. All they care about is if this poll was able to be plugged into their forecast.

All they care about is if they could plug this poll data into their forecast and make them look good. And this happens every year, guys. This happens every year, 2008, 2012, big elections. Nate Silver kind of got famous for his brilliant, brilliant forecasts. How often did we hear about how great the polls were? Not really. Nate Silver was the genius here. 2016. Yeah.

Silver's forecast was objectively very good. He was right that there was a lot of uncertainty and his forecast was, I think, almost spot on. But day after the election, polls were wrong. Not Nate Silver, not Sam Wong, not the guys who do forecasts, but the polls. And so this pressure all sits on the pollsters and they deserve very little of it. Scrutiny, yes. Yeah. But pressure, it all goes, it all goes to one to one side. And so I'll say this, and I actually pulled out my book here. I just got the book yesterday from the publisher,

a physical copy that is. Unfortunately, thinking probabilistically is something the current standards don't allow for. The current definitions used by experts say polls make predictions both about who will win and by how much. It's unfair to ask the public who has been wrongly convinced of polls as predictions

to suddenly accept a nuanced and relatively advanced understanding of the difference between polls and forecast. The added layer of hypocrisy comes when forecasters brag about how many states or constituencies they called right when they're right. But once a chastised the public for not understanding it's just a probability when their calls are wrong. They take all the credit, all the adulation, all the applause. Yeah, I got it. Me, me, me, me. They do the rounds. They take all the credit. When they're, when their forecast, when they were able to plug the polls

into the forecast, sure. And get an output that makes them look good. But what happens when their forecast put out an 80% probability that this person would win? Well, when it was 80% in 2012, and that 80% hit, hit, hit, hit all over, me, me, me. Yeah. When that 80% doesn't hit, domino effect doesn't hit, doesn't hit. Oh, you all just, it's just a probability. You all don't understand. Counting the hits and forgetting the misses. Yeah. All right. Okay. So final question. Yeah. Who's gonna win the election? Who's gonna win the election?

Yes. I wish I could tell you the answers in the book, but it's not. I did. So my deadline, the UK had an election on July 4th appropriately. The deadline for my book was before that. There is analysis of non-US elections,

specifically Brexit and the UK general elections in it. I was consuming all of this data. I did forecasts for the UK election. I said in the book before it happened, where the polls would miss and why. Where the polls would miss and why. I was hesitant to put it in the book because I really don't want to get too much into forecasting.

I really don't want to get out of the talking about poll data. Sure. But it was so important that I include the nonsense that UK pollsters do. There is some content in here that is highly indicative of who has a higher probability of winning than you might think. There is some data in here that says a certain candidate, I don't name names, but if a candidate reaches a certain threshold in the poll data, they have a much, much, much higher

win probability than anyone would assert, than anyone would realize, that I would believe. One of the beautiful things about numbers, guys, one of the beautiful things about science is it helps us explain things that we otherwise could not understand. And when I analyzed this data and I looked at what the data means,

it started to fricking make sense. It started to make sense. So I will say I do have a forecast up on my substack. I have Harris as a medium favorite right now, a medium favorite. FiveThirtyEight has her as a slight favorite. Nate Silver has her as a slight favorite Nate silver his her has her as a medium underdog I don't want you to follow me because I tell you what you would like to hear yeah I'm 100% following you because you're telling me what I want to hear Carl we feel very well and good very intellectually honest but I got to survive the next 55 days without having a fucking coronary so I'm gonna read your goddamn substack and I'm gonna read your goddamn sub stack

and I'm gonna jerk off to it as long as it says that Harris is gonna win. If it makes me feel better, I will think the stripper's into me. That's all I'm saying, okay? Now you're putting pressure on me, guys. Now you're putting pressure on me because if I start to see things

that don't look good for Harris, I'm like, man, but he's jerking off to this Carl if people were gonna find this book, where would they look? Anywhere books are sold Amazon you can buy direct from the publisher. Well, thanks so much for joining us Carl We really do appreciate you talking us through this. And we will put a link in this week's show notes for the book, for the different places that people can buy it. Thanks again, Carl.

Thank you, man. Thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it. All right. So that's going to wrap it up for this week. Be sure to come on Saturday, the 21st Citation Needed live show of the Introduction to Project 2025. We're going to be reading that project and treating it, the introduction, like a citation needed essay. So if you like the show Citation Needed, if you like the guys from Scathing Atheist So if you like the show citation needed, if you like the guys from scathing atheist, if you like those guys from

cognitive dissonance and you want to help raise money for Kamala Harris, the Harris Walls Victory Fund, you can come find us at our YouTube page on the 21st 8 p.m. Eastern Time and we will be doing a great live stream to raise money for the Harris Walls campaign. Help them try to win the United, you know, help them try to win the presidency. We got an interesting message this week from someone who said, you know, what does that money go to? And that money, what that money goes to is it goes to pay advertising spots in states that are hotly contested where they think they can get the most bang for their buck.

We heard that earlier from Carl about how they use those polls in order to strategize. We learned, we know that that money goes to help pay for staffers and help pay for people to help call and travel and visit. We helped pay for these venues that they use to go have these rallies. So that money is used to help advertise that campaign to get it to those places, to those battleground states,

to get people to know more about the issues and know more about how to vote, know more how to register and know more how to, you know, hopefully win this thing for Harrison Walls. So that's where that money goes. That money is, and it's useful. That money is always useful. Money is very important. These candidates cannot run without money. Campaigns cannot win without money.

It is not possible. This is the American system. Ever since Citizen United, money makes a difference. So we need to raise money. Yeah, and don't get me wrong, I would love to go back to not doing that. Yeah, same. I we need to raise money. Yeah. And I, and I don't get me wrong. I would love to go back to not doing that. Yeah. I think it'd be amazing.

It would be amazing if we could be like, hey, for Harrison Walls, we're going to donate all this money to doctors at all borders. That'd be amazing. Yeah. I would love to do that. But we realize that the money will go to hopefully creating an America that is safe for people who are on the margins, wherever those people are, right? Whether that's economically, whether it's there, there

are migrant community, whether they're a minority community that happens to be one of the dislike communities that the right is now focusing on, like the trans community or the gay community. Those are people who will be more safe if Kamala Harris becomes president. So that's what we're going to aim our funds at there. We think that we can get a lot of bang for our buck here. So come join us, even if you're out of, and also you can only do this if you're the United States citizens. You can only donate if you're a United States citizen. But if you happen to be up late in England or you happen to be up early in Australia, come hang out with us.

Come out and hang out. You know, the more people that are in that video, even if you're not gonna give money, the more people that show up to that particular live stream, the better off we're gonna be because we're gonna get strangers, people who don't know us to come in, who will see, hey, I wanna donate.

Oh, my money's matched and they will donate and maybe they'll donate more. So it'll be super important. And I have one more, I have a favor to ask. And I mean this, I mean this, if you can do this guys, everybody, if you have any socials at all, if you can broadcast and amplify and, you know, retweet or share or whatever links to our stream, as many people as possible,

we need, we need as big an audience as possible. Let's broaden the tent. Everybody that's listening to this, if you'd be so kind to amplify the stream, amplify that message, help us get the word out. It would be great to have an enormous crowd there. It'd be awesome to raise some real serious money and make a difference.

And as it stands right now, there's $17,000 in matches. So the first $17,000 that gets donated is essentially doubled. You're doubling your money. So come join us September 21st, 8 p.m. Eastern time. We're gonna be live. We're gonna be having a lot of fun. We're gonna be doing this whole citation needed thing.

And we're gonna be covering Project 2025. You're gonna wanna hang out. We wanna thank Carl Allen for joining us. He wrote a book called The Polls Weren't Wrong. And you can check that book out in the show notes. You can buy that book. You can also check out Carl's sub stack and his Twitter. That's all linked below.

Thank you, Carl, for coming on the show. We hope you guys check that stuff out. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this week. We will not be live streaming because it's so close. It's so close to when the live stream's happening. We're not live streaming next week. We'll be live streaming. We're moving that stream two days forward,

not the 19th. We're gonna be streaming on the 21st. So come check us out then. All right, that's gonna wrap it up for this week. We're gonna leave it like we always do with the Skeptics Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, issue hypno Babylon bullshit.

Couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative acupunctuating pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy healing water downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch late night info-docutainment, Leo Pisces cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, bigfoot, yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, Put his nuts on a dresser and I'd beat him with the spike bat. Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak stigmata, nonsense.

Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. Inclusive. Doubt even this. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod.

Help us spread the word by sharing our content. Find us on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and Pretz, all under the handle at dissonance pod. This show is can credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at 617-249-4255 or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.