2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: 12.8%. That's the margin Hillary won CA by. Remember those suspect polls that were [View all]nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)by a very well known phenomena called the Band Wagon effect. This is not unknown to most political reporters. This was a call from the head editor at the political desk. If the Editor at the AP did not realize that he or she was creating news, that person needs to go back to school and take a few classes, Journalism 101 and Ethics would be two good ones.
And the AP story might have said whatever, it had the effect it had, I told you one very specific example locally. It is close enough where not all ballots have been counted, (yeah, yeah, they are not counted as in absentee ballots,) and as usual I will be watching the registrar for the next week or so. But if the turnout was not likely down by about 5 percent, we would not be having that specific of a conversation,
The same happens every November, by the way, This is not a new problem.
And your bias is quite partisan. My bias is professional, There is a difference.
I know from experience that this effect is real, I am careful to the point of never ever say who I am supporting... of course people here took it to be the guy you do not like.I ain't telling who we voted for. Suffice it to say we did, but that is the extent of what you need to know, And when asked about actual endorsements or recommendations by readers, we endorsed voting. Yup, we have our favorites, we are not telling. And in November we are again planing to endorse voting, or perhaps money in politics, as a joke mostly. Maybe wake up a reader or two to that issue.
I know you do not want to believe this likely had the effect it did, But i know more than a few of my circle of friends were disgusted. and a few actually sat it out. (Those are real world examples, as anecdotal as they are). And I could show you academic writings, or even hearings, 1980 led to hearings... it will not change your opinion. But facts are pesky on this.