• otp@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    Refer to the title panel of the comic, which says the problematic statement is…

    No president has ever been re-elected under <circumstances>.

    What you said was,

    no incumbent has ever won a second term with an approval of less than 51%.

    Or to summarize…

    no incumbent has ever won a second term with [circumstances]

    So is it sounding familiar?

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Except that we actually have approval ratings and polls for about 90 years of elections. From which we can build the appropriate counter-factuals to actually create a statistic because an approval rating is a continuous variable, not a discrete variable. An approval rating of 51% is directly comparable to an approval rating of 31%, and all Presidents ‘have’ this condition, even if it went unmeasured. I also have a sufficient range of variation to build the negative case example because I have presidents and candidates across the range of variation observed in the condition, and variation in the outcome: winning an election.

      Being a felon is also a condition, but 100% of the data we have is “not a felon”. And we have no variation in the observed outcome. Some non-felons won, some non-felons lost. We’re not testing if they are a felon or not, we’re testing if they win the election or not.

      Look I get that this is beyond you, but you really aren’t making the point you think you are here. Also, you are on the wrong side of the fallacy the comic is presenting. I’m not trying to interpret being a felon has on becoming president, you are. I’m interested in what the polling data has to say about the probability of winning, which is a statistically and scientifically grounded thing to do.

      You mostly seem like you have an axe to grind because Biden is losing the election for you. I’m sorry for that.