[dionian]

Call me a skeptic, but it's certainly odd all the errors always lean to one side. Maybe this has to do with the leftward trend of the mainstream press.

> What happened in 2024 isn’t something I’d have scripted, though. Basically, their new election model was literally broken, continuing to show Joe Biden virtually tied with Trump even after his disastrous debate. (Evidently because Morris’s design for it had been overcomplicated. These models are hard to design, by the way.)

[Octoth0rpe]

> Maybe this has to do with the leftward trend of the mainstream press.

What mainstream press outlet has moved leftwards? I can't think of any, and I certainly am interested in knowing which those might be. Inversely, cbs, the ny times, and the washington post have all shifted rather noticeably rightward in the last 10 years.

[armchairhacker]

According to AllSides, many outlets moved left, although some did move right: https://www.allsides.com/blog/AllSides-Media-Bias-Rating-Ove...

It and https://mediabiasfactcheck.com say NYTimes “leans left” and is “left-center” respectively.

What’s an example that you believe highlights NYTimes moving rightward?

[Octoth0rpe]

> What’s an example that you believe highlights NYTimes moving rightward?

The treatment of Mamdani for one, or Hochul/Cuomo.

>say NYTimes “leans left” and is “left-center” respectively.

That can be true and at the same time it can be moving rightward.

[armchairhacker]

I’ll give you that one: Madmani is treated unusually different by the news and social media, and his opponents were bizarrely overtly flawed.

[laweijfmvo]

you should scroll through AllSides' twitter before trusting them to be impartial.

[armchairhacker]

https://xcancel.com/AllSidesNow

Again, which one of these tweets highlights their bias? Most of them are event headlines from a “left”, a “center”, and “right” source.

[bryanlarsen]

That same result would also be achieved by the Overton window moving right.

[jcranmer]

> What’s an example that you believe highlights NYTimes moving rightward?

Look at their coverage of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's response to a question about Taiwan versus Trump's response to a question about Taiwan. In the first case, their quote included all of the um's and other similar pauses in answering the question. In the second case, their quote of Trump cleaned up all of those artifacts. The end result is that it looks like AOC is flailing to come up with an answer while Trump has a clean, polished answer. But if you compare the actual audio clips of both answers, Trump's answer is the one that involves far more flailing to come up with a response.

There is a general pattern in the more subtle aspects of presentation and framing that generally excuse the behaviors of right-wing politicians compared to the same actions being done by a left-wing politician.

[armchairhacker]

I assume you mean this article for AOC quotes: https://archive.ph/gmvBy

And this for Trump quotes: https://archive.ph/staNQ

You’re right about the quotes.

But also consider this article that was published after Trump’s, not even labeled “editorial” or “opinion”: “Trump’s Taiwan Gambit is Already a Gift to China” (https://archive.ph/lwBWD)

[AgentOrange1234]

This is a pretty comprehensive treatment: https://www.plutobooks.com/product/how-to-sell-a-genocide/

[wredcoll]

NYTimes constantly deletes parts of Trump's comments or outright rephrases them in an attempt to make him seem smarter, or at least, less insane. They rarely to never do that for other people.

[thaumasiotes]

> They rarely to never do that for other people.

They do that to everyone. That's how all quotation in journalism is done.

[CGMthrowaway]

>cbs, the ny times, and the washington post have all shifted rather noticeably rightward

As the Overton window or activist left moves further left on issues like identity politics, crime and free speech (1619 Project era at NYT, staff revolts etc), steady coverage can appear "righter" by comparison without actually changing

[rc_kas]

Remember when Net Nuetrality was the priority of hackernews and slashdot and basically all people in tech. Now it's a "leftist policy". We live in crazy times.

Overton window has definitely shifted to the right. Beign a normal person who values science is now considered "leftist". Its nuts.

[Terr_]

There's also a bloc that's been working to try to retroactively redefine what "Net Neutrality" means.

Instead of the usual stuff like "consumers have rights" or "ISP monopolies are bad" or "utilities should just provide the product and not spy and manipulate", they want it to mean something closer to "no online community can moderate itself."

And that's the charitable version. The worse version involves rank hypocrisy and selective enforcement, where large social "networks" must be "neutral" to literal nazis, while somehow it's also OK to permaban for insulting Dear Leader.

[JuniperMesos]

The set of people who are "basically all people in tech" has changed a lot since then for a variety of reasons; it's not surprising that any given political issue from a decade ago might not have the same resonance today.

[Octoth0rpe]

Where is the steady coverage? Again, I see coverage moving rightward at every major publication (including the ny times)

[notahacker]

Apparently it's "steady coverage" for CBS to be taken over by a culture warring op-ed writer who singlehandedly spikes investigative journalism if the Trump administration don't want to offer their comments on the story, and for WaPo op-eds writers to tweet that "we're now a conservative opinion section"...

[wredcoll]

Wait, so your argument is that people being against censorship or discrimination are now considered to be left wing? That's literally the overton window moving to the right, you're contradicting yourself!

[jandrese]

> leftward trend of the mainstream press

Oh yeah, venerable institutions like the Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, and the like? Or maybe you mean the TV news organizations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, Nexstar, or Hearst? Or maybe cable news organizations like CNN or Fox News?

The narrative of the "liberal media" is so out of date it makes you look out of touch. The mainstream media is captured by billionaire interests and has been so for years now.

[tkzed49]

Why would a left-leaning press engineer errors predicting the victory of the left? Wouldn't this lull supporters of the Democrats into a false sense of security and enable Republican wins?

[guywithahat]

I think it's more of a systemic issue than top-down manipulation. Like, as a hypothetical, they're disregarding some people as being extremist when in reality they have reasonable, representative views. This produces biased results, and people who agree with the results share them because it supports their world view. The shares and new revenue reinforce the companies decision to produce biased reports, and the effect is politicians read these popular reports thinking they're accurate and make policy decisions around them, when in reality they're just a political wish-list.

[convolvatron]

its this really what we're left with, people sharing their skepticism? without any dint of rationale, just stories about how these obviously bad people did all this stuff that everyone knows.

I'm not going to defend Silver's predictions, but what was really refreshing about his work was some lovely diagrams, and real intent behind exposing his methodology. it was never 'trust me I'm the expert', but 'wow, this is hard and these are the problems and this is how I tried to deal with them'

[jdlshore]

Are you sure you aren’t experiencing selection bias? The article only mentions one modeling error (the one you quoted), so “all the errors” must be the ones you’ve noticed elsewhere.

[LanceH]

It seems calling a state purple is just using a synonym for red.

[burnte]

> Maybe this has to do with the leftward trend of the mainstream press.

What? Media in the USA has staggered to the right over the past ten years. The only reason it was called liberal before that was because one party used facts and data and the other preferred to rig the system against the common people. While Stephen Colbert made the joke "Reality has a well known liberal bias" it's joke only in that the conservative viewpoint today seems focused on imaginary problems and denying the existence of real ones.

[joshstrange]

> Stephen Colbert made the joke "Reality has a well known liberal bias"

Video (queued up): https://youtu.be/IJ-a2KeyCAY?t=270

It's always pretty depressing to go back and watch this or old Colbert Report episodes and realize how parts are incredibly "evergreen", sometimes you don't even need to change out the names.

[rvba]

Maybe there were no errors and a certain techbro helped with the counting machines so right wing could win?