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by dragonwriter 2340 days ago
> Yang campaign is actually seeing exponential growth.

In what? His polling position has been bouncing around within the margin of error with no progress for months.

Yang's got some good ideas, and he's certainly one of the most interesting candidates of the cycle. But he's got no momentum.
2 comments
shiftpgdn 2339 days ago
Yang is polling at 8% nationally now. That's more than margin of error.
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dragonwriter 2339 days ago
> Yang is polling at 8% nationally now.

Yes, there's now been published a single poll which has him outside the MoE of zero. (Not outside the MoE of his polling average for any month since October, though, and statistically you'd expect with the number of polls at least one with him at 8% if he was just hovering at 3.5% for this long.)

While that's a landmark, I guess, it's a thin reed to ground a conclusion of any, much less rapid or exponential, progress.

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shiftpgdn 2339 days ago
6 months ago the majority of the US didn't know about Yang (or much more importantly, basic income.). If 8% of voters now know about him and this issue it's a huge win.
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schuke 2339 days ago
Fundraising numbers. Others dropping out would count as progress too I guess. Although polling is still in single digit but 5-6% is certainly progress from 2-3%.
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dragonwriter 2339 days ago
> Fundraising numbers.

Fundraising is just a means to get money to spend (often, ineffectively) building/maintaining support. If you are raising and spending more money and not moving the needle in the polls, that's not progress.

> Others dropping out would count as progress too I guess.

No, if the field is narrowing and you aren't getting any of the support (and your remaining competitors are) that's also the opposite of progress.

> Although polling is still in single digit but 5-6% is certainly progress from 2-3%.

It would be, if he was consistently polling at the former and previously polling at the latter. But that's not what's happened to Yang. His national polling in January has ranged from 2-5%. His national polling in December ranged from 2-5%. His national polling in November ranged from 2-5%. His national polling in October ranged from 2-5%. And the margin of error on most of the polls is in the neighborhood of ±5%.

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