How Did Your Representative Vote on ERPO?

[Dadstoys]

These turncoats who voted for it know exactly what it's about and they also know it's in the process of being weaponized against gun owners with every amendment to it. Which was the intent from the beginning.

If they claim they don't know, that's even worst because it means your passing shit without either reading or understanding what your voting for.

The minute the mental health provisions of it were removed that should have been all the proof they needed about the intent and they should have been going ape shit and in front of a camera screaming about it.

For those defending it , it's not over yet.
They can still pile a lot of stuff onto it before it's done and most likely will.
Enjoy your loss of rights and your life savings trying to fight it when you get falsely accused by every nutbag that's ever crossed your path.

 

[drgrant]

I agree with much of what you're saying, and much of it applies to polls in general. This poll is not the sort of thing that can be relied upon to give a precise accounting of the nuances of public opinion, it doesn't address the details or arguments for and against ERPO, etc.

And accounting for issue intensity has always been something that's been lacking in polls and surveys. Traditionally speaking, on that issue, the pro-gun side has had it by a landslide.

But scientific telephone polls conducted by live humans are generally considered to be the "gold standard" of polling.

Not sure how anyone can say this with a straight face in 2018. People are dumping landline phones left and right, and the number of people that will answer an unsolicited voice call is likely plummeting by the day, particularly given phone scammers etc.

The bias of this garbage method even shows in the results.... 60% of the respondents are 45+. lol.

While it's getting harder to reach people these days than it used to be, that just means they're more expensive to conduct because it takes more calls, not that the results are off. These days they do a pretty good job of adjusting for any selection bias in the sample.

The margin of error for county-level results would have been very high on a survey this size, which is likely why they weren't released.

I'm just going to guess that if you put a bunch of dots on a map representing the respondents that they're not going to be evenly distributed. Unless the people running the
survey were trying to like get so many respondents per MA phone exchange or something.

With all of that said, I was trying to make a very limited point with those results, and I think that point still holds. The poll shows that, as a threshold matter, public opinion in this state is heavily weighted in favor of more gun restrictions. At this moment the antis seem to be at their zenith as far as issue intensity. Saying someone "voted with the NRA against a bill to take guns away from 'extreme risk' people" is a simple message, and the response requires more nuance to understand.

Without measuring whether the issue is actually important to the voter or not, there's no way to tell how effective that message would be.

The problem is that antis frequently sell this bullshit of gun regulation being well supported by voters, and most of the time that just doesn't pan out in
reality. They spend an awful lot of time and energy propping up this lie only to consistently be shown as nothing more than a whiney
minority.

In a low-information election such as those for state legislators, at a time when people are generically "fed up" with shootings, it's not hard to imagine voters on the fence reading a mailer saying their rep voted with the NRA not to take guns away from dangerous people, and voting against them. It is hard to imagine some response mailing from that rep that attempts to explain the nuances of the ERPO vote actually being persuasive. No one cares about the details.

I guess, I'm just not buying the whole "oh f*** it, its OK for our guy to vote poorly for the sake of political expediency" idea. Even if the intent is to protect someone politically
and then fix it later it makes the whole situation more fragile. It makes non-moonbats more likely to throw in the towel in its entirety, as opposed to JoeModerateDistrict voter guy saying "I need to go vote so joe/jane decentperson can stay in office and they actually have a chance of winning". When joe/jane decentperson stabs them in the back (which is what a lot of what has happened on this vote, effectively) it acts as a deterrent against good people voting. The more f***y-stuff happens the more people are likely to just throw their hands up in the air. This is how we end up with random uncontested seats with a moonbat running the seat in an area where it geographically doesn't make
sense.

-Mike

 

[drgrant]

Unbelievable. Guarantee that none of those people actually have any idea what the laws are. GUARANTEE it. They're just reacting to the news without thinking.

Bad sign for us.

If this survey was conducted in a less shitty way I don't think the results would be nearly as bad. I think the methodology is scientifically flawed and has inherent preselection
bias.

A more dangerous sign (moreso evidenced from the vote and not the survey) is its obvious that some of these pols are sucking for the antis peacocking and other propaganda, and they're actually believing the antis have political traction. That's horrendous- because that means that they've effectively figured out how to trick the politicians into believing that shit.

-Mike

 

[Boston4567]

Not sure how anyone can say this with a straight face in 2018. People are dumping landline phones left and right, and the number of people that will answer an unsolicited voice call is likely plummeting by the day, particularly given phone scammers etc.

The bias of this garbage method even shows in the results.... 60% of the respondents are 45+. lol.

I'm just going to guess that if you put a bunch of dots on a map representing the respondents that they're not going to be evenly distributed. Unless the people running the
survey were trying to like get so many respondents per MA phone exchange or something.

I think you're underestimating how scientific polling has become. Without getting too into too many details... while the issues you're describing are quite real, a lot of very smart people have been given a lot of money to spent a lot of time solving for them. This goes beyond just political polls, think market research for businesses, etc.

What you see on a results sheet isn't raw data, it's adjusted by data scientists to properly weight everything from age to race to region. This particular poll does include cell respondents, per the note at the bottom of the last page. If not enough of a particular category or subgroup of people responds, that's all factored in.

It's a poll of registered voters, not general population... probably a tad under 50% of the voting-age population is 45 or over, and older people are more likely to be registered to vote, so 57% being 45+ is about right.

I agree with most of what you said otherwise

 

[Buck F]

Still, not sure if serious, you really think that would emerge as an issue in a lot of these districts? I doubt "gun control" is a hot button thing in many of
them. Most people "in the rest of massachusetts" care mostly about how f***ed up their schools, or roads and bridges are. The rest of this stuff is mostly crap, that nobody really cares about outside of the districts that have a few big dump cities.

Of course the pols apparently have been successfully hoodwinked into believing this, as well as yourself and other people here. Congratulations, you've bought into the first layer of
anti rhetoric. Their plan is working swimmingly. An aide in Bloombergs office is probably reading this thread with a smile on their face now, because they know they've managed a win when they get even gun owners to start getting fully invested into their lies/propaganda. They probably had a phone bank full of blown ins calling up a few legislators and suddenly everyone thinks its this huge, mainstream issue.

-Mike

I agree that “gun control” is not a hot button issue in a lot of these districts, right up until someone votes NO and they get buried because they get painted as someone who’s against keeping guns put of the hands of the mentally ill/unstable folks. No one is getting fully invested in their lies and propaganda, it sucks, I just don’t want my rep, who I know is very supportive of the 2A, to lose his seat just so we can have a 138-15 result instead of 139-14. In this district, it would likely cause him to lose the race and he’d be replaced by a Dem. There’s a reason GOAL thanked Dooley and a couple others who voted yes. This isn’t about the merits of the bill, when it’s a landslide there’s no sense losing good reps over it.

 

[Buck F]

What is silly is people refusing to admit that they were bent over the table like the rest of us and fed BS by these reps that claim to be supportive.

What’s silly is thinking anyone is going to go down with the ship on a 139-14 vote on principle so people don’t get butthurt because they think they shook hands on something. I can only imagine what happened when you found out there was no Santa Claus. Jesus. Nobody got bent over anything by these few reps, project much?

 

[namedpipes]

What’s silly is thinking anyone is going to go down with the ship on a 139-14 vote on principle so people don’t get butthurt because they think they shook hands on something. I can only imagine what happened when you found out there was no Santa Claus. Jesus. Nobody got bent over anything, project much?

Not to point out the obvious or anything, but 14 of them DID take a moral stand.

It was a bad bill.

 

[Buck F]

Not to point out the obvious or anything, but 14 of them DID take a moral stand.

It was a bad bill.

No one is disputing it was an awful bill. 139 voted for it. It wasn’t a moral calculation by any of them, it was a political one. If the 14 thought their seats were at risk voting no, they’d have voted yes.

 

[Nick Fury]

But scientific telephone polls conducted by live humans are generally considered to be the "gold standard" of polling. While it's getting harder to reach people these days than it used to be, that just means they're more expensive to conduct because it takes more calls, not that the results are off. These days they do a pretty good job of adjusting for any selection bias in the sample.

You really have no idea who participates in these phone polls do you? I actually did this a lifetime ago and I can surely say the participation demographics have not changed one bit. It ain’t the working class stiff thats for damn sure...

 

[Boston4567]

You really have no idea who participates in these phone polls do you? I actually did this a lifetime ago and I can surely say the participation demographics have not changed one bit. It ain’t the working class stiff thats for damn sure...

They dont just have a couple guys in a room calling random numbers and putting them into an Excel spreadsheet; they employ statisticians and data scientists to make sure they are calling a representative but random sampling of people, then apply appropriate weighting and adjustments. See, for example:

Why Sampling Works - AAPOR
Weighting - AAPOR

 

[Nick Fury]

And you still miss the point entirely. Joe average hangs up. Sample that...

 

[namedpipes]

They dont just have a couple guys in a room calling random numbers and putting them into an Excel spreadsheet; they employ statisticians and data scientists to make sure they are calling a representative but random sampling of people, then apply appropriate weighting and adjustments. See, for example:

Why Sampling Works - AAPOR
Weighting - AAPOR

Statisticians lie more fluently than politicians.

The difference is, often the statistician BELIEVES the lie.

 

[Boston4567]

And you still miss the point entirely. Joe average hangs up. Sample that...

I didn't miss the point, it just seems like you didn't click through the links, so I'll help:

ADJUSTING FOR DEMOGRAPHICS

This adjustment is made because some demographic groups tend to be overrepresented or underrepresented in the sample. For example, young men are considerably harder to reach at home than older women. So unweighted data frequently include a larger proportion of older women and a smaller proportion of younger men than what the U.S. Census reports. A pollster typically makes small adjustments -- called post-stratification weights -- to bring the sample into line with known population characteristics such as age, gender, region and education.​

This is just one example of the type of weight that's applied. Smarter people than either of us have thought through these problems and solved them already. Yes, it's harder to reach some populations. It's not impossible. Pollsters oversample and weight to make sure the result is reflective of the opinion of all registered voters. It's not perfect, but it's generally not wildly off target.

 

[Dadstoys]

I didn't miss the point, it just seems like you didn't click through the links, so I'll help:

ADJUSTING FOR DEMOGRAPHICS

This adjustment is made because some demographic groups tend to be overrepresented or underrepresented in the sample. For example, young men are considerably harder to reach at home than older women. So unweighted data frequently include a larger proportion of older women and a smaller proportion of younger men than what the U.S. Census reports. A pollster typically makes small adjustments -- called post-stratification weights -- to bring the sample into line with known population characteristics such as age, gender, region and education.​

This is just one example of the type of weight that's applied. Smarter people than either of us have thought through these problems and solved them already. Yes, it's harder to reach some populations. It's not impossible. Pollsters oversample and weight to make sure the result is reflective of the opinion of all registered voters. It's not perfect, but it's generally not wildly off target.

Hillary in a landslide .
So much science , so little agenda .

 

[Freddy B]

Our opponents are using a strategy of incrementalism to gradually eviscerate our RKBA. When we excuse our purported allies participation in an incremental loss of our rights, we are complicit in this process.

 

[Buck F]

Our opponents are using a strategy of incrementalism to gradually eviscerate our RKBA. When we excuse our purported allies participation in an incremental loss of our rights, we are complicit in this process.

Lets forget about incrementalism and get it over with right away by having our few allies commit political suicide. It’ll still go down 135-18 but we’ll all feel better because all of our allies stuck with us, they didn’t lie to us, we can think we’re nobody’s fools.

 

[454MAG]

I dont post much on here but want to state that the so called 2nd amendment supporters who voted for this are not supporters but political prostitutes with no principles. For the guy saying that the only ones who voted for it live in safe political districts you are wrong. SHAUNNA OCONNELL voted NO despite representing Taunton which is an overwhelmingly democrat city where she faces a full on assault for her seat every race. Last election her oponent had congressman kennedy and the mayor holding signs at the polling place to defeat shaunna.
SHAUNNA knew full well that this vote willbeused to hammer her in the next election, but voted on principle. Those politicians who refuse to stand on principle deserve no respect or support. They were not there to support the 2nd amendment, or 4th when it counted.

 

[Boston4567]

Hillary in a landslide .
So much science , so little agenda .

The polls actually didn't say Hillary would win in a landslide, all the idiots on TV and writing articles said that because they wanted it to be so, and didn't understand how polling works. The smart money said it was about 65/35. A close but highly uncertain race.

My only agenda is bringing facts to the table so we don't make the same mistake the media and the Hillary people did, dismissing reality because it doesn't suit our preferred worldview. A scorched earth approach when we're badly outnumbered in hostile territory is only going to cost us resources we can't afford to lose. We can win battles here, but we have to be smarter about it.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe MA voters are actually strongly pro-2A.....

 

[Buck F]

I dont post much on here but want to state that the so called 2nd amendment supporters who voted for this are not supporters but political prostitutes with no principles. For the guy saying that the only ones who voted for it live in safe political districts you are wrong. SHAUNNA OCONNELL voted NO despite representing Taunton which is an overwhelmingly democrat city where she faces a full on assault for her seat every race. Last election her oponent had congressman kennedy and the mayor holding signs at the polling place to defeat shaunna.
SHAUNNA knew full well that this vote willbeused to hammer her in the next election, but voted on principle. Those politicians who refuse to stand on principle deserve no respect or support. They were not there to support the 2nd amendment, or 4th when it counted.

I sincerely hope she keeps her seat; if she doesn't and this was the tipping point we'll have lost another ally. For what? The law will still have passed in a landslide. I'd much rather my rep not take the risk when it's this lopsided because the alternative is far worse. Again, there's a reason GOAL publicly thanked Dooley and a couple of others for their efforts despite their votes in the end.

 

[Buck F]

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe MA voters are actually strongly pro-2A.....

Yeah... that's the ticket!

 

[Freddy B]

there's a reason GOAL publicly thanked Dooley and a couple of others for their efforts despite their votes in the end.

Curious that GOAL would do that. Where did you see that?

 

[Buck F]

Curious that GOAL would do that. Where did you see that?

This is from the GOAL email last Thursday, May 24. The three circled reps voted yes in the end but argued hard on our behalf.

 

[slipknot]

Before they cow-towed and voted yes, did they read the 43rd amendment that was added last?

https://malegislature.gov/Bills/190...ction=asc&sortColumn=AmendmentNumber&keyword=

no shortage of actual criminals breaking existing laws out there and they need to make up new ones against law abiding to appease snowflakes, oppressors are going to oppress

 

[Dadstoys]

The polls actually didn't say Hillary would win in a landslide, all the idiots on TV and writing articles said that because they wanted it to be so, and didn't understand how polling works. The smart money said it was about 65/35. A close but highly uncertain race.

My only agenda is bringing facts to the table so we don't make the same mistake the media and the Hillary people did, dismissing reality because it doesn't suit our preferred worldview. A scorched earth approach when we're badly outnumbered in hostile territory is only going to cost us resources we can't afford to lose. We can win battles here, but we have to be smarter about it.


But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe MA voters are actually strongly pro-2A.....

I beg to differ nearly every poll had her winning by big margins and the media was gleefully quoting them ad nauseum.
It was a large part of the mental meltdowns following the elections .
They were convinced beyond a doubt by the pollsters she was a shoe in.
When reality hit it was like a hammer blow to the head.

When surrounded and outnumbered there are two options , surrender on your knees or scorched earth and win or die trying .

 

[drgrant]

They dont just have a couple guys in a room calling random numbers and putting them into an Excel spreadsheet; they employ statisticians and data scientists to make sure they are calling a representative but random sampling of people, then apply appropriate weighting and adjustments. See, for example:

Why Sampling Works - AAPOR
Weighting - AAPOR

If you start digging into a lot of these "surveys" though, particularly the ones run by "Public health MDs" (AKA doctors that sucked too much to work on actual people) you'll find that a lot of these surveys, particularly ones regarding politically sensitive issues, often have flawed methodology or other tomfoolery going on which clouds the field enough so that they can produce the desired outcome.

Random my ass- lol- the entire notion of a telephone survey is flawed from the beginning, it has the built in bias of only getting a sample of people that actually answer a telephone. Even that alone right out of the gate, in 2018, is going to poison the results of the survey. Basically these days, anyone who has anything resembling a "life" isn't going to answer that phone for some number they don't know. You really have to do something expansive to get rid of a lot of the built in error.

A telephone survey probably had a lot of relevance a decade or so ago, now it's probably garbage, unless you're targeting the viewpoints of the 65 plus crowd. Hell even then it's terrible. Both of my parents are long retired and they don't answer
random phone calls, either. And they have plenty of time to do it if they really wanted to.

-Mike

 

[Boston4567]

I beg to differ ne
arly every poll had her winning by big margins and the media was gleefully quoting them ad nauseum.
It was a large part of the mental meltdowns following the elections .
They were convinced beyond a doubt by the pollsters she was a shoe in.
When reality hit it was like a hammer blow to the head.

When surrounded and outnumbered there are two options , surrender on your knees or scorched earth and win or die trying .

Yes, the media and liberals deluded themselves into thinking she was a shoe-in. They highlighted the polls that had her farthest in the lead. But the smug tone of their predictions was driven by bias and was not borne out by the numbers at the time. The polls only missed the final result by about 2 points, and the smart money said more like 65/35 right up until the end, see here from late Oct/early Nov: Election Update: Why Our Model Is More Bullish Than Others On Trump | Election Update: Don’t Ignore The Polls — Clinton Leads, But It’s A Close Race.

I've been reading stuff from that guy for about a decade, he's a statistician who's done work on everything from economics to sports to politics, and he knows his stuff.

If you start digging into a lot of these "surveys" though, particularly the ones run by "Public health MDs" (AKA doctors that sucked too much to work on actual people) you'll find that a lot of these surveys, particularly ones regarding politically sensitive issues, often have flawed methodology or other tomfoolery going on which clouds the field enough so that they can produce the desired outcome.

Random my ass- lol- the entire notion of a telephone survey is flawed from the beginning, it has the built in bias of only getting a sample of people that actually answer a telephone. Even that alone right out of the gate, in 2018, is going to poison the results of the survey. Basically these days, anyone who has anything resembling a "life" isn't going to answer that phone for some number they don't know. You really have to do something expansive to get rid of a lot of the built in error.

A telephone survey probably had a lot of relevance a decade or so ago, now it's probably garbage, unless you're targeting the viewpoints of the 65 plus crowd. Hell even then it's terrible. Both of my parents are long retired and they don't answer
random phone calls, either. And they have plenty of time to do it if they really wanted to.

-Mike

I think there are a few things here that are getting mashed together. I agree that "public health" studies regarding anything other than communicable diseases is mostly a bullshit pseudoscience. It's just a vehicle for doctors to lend the credibility of their titles to "scientific research studies" promoting statist policies that elevate extending life above living it.

Then there's "push polls", those being conducted by a group with an agenda. Those are also BS for obvious reasons.

On the other hand, there's opinion polling conducted by professional polling firms. Again, yes, there is sampling bias, but that's why they ask a multitude of demographics questions. After collecting the responses, they adjust for things like age, sex, race, ideology/party ID, etc. They have hard data on the makeup of the registered voter population from publicly available sources. If 40% of survey takers are registered Democrats and 35% of actual registered voters are Democrats, they adjust accordingly.

Whether or not you buy all of that, the proof is in the pudding. Polls are about as accurate as they've ever been:

But here’s a stubborn and surprising fact — and one to keep in mind as midterm polls really start rolling in: Over the past two years — meaning in the 2016 general election and then in the various gubernatorial elections and special elections that have taken place in 2017 and 2018 — the accuracy of polls has been pretty much average by historical standards.

You read that right. Polls of the November 2016 presidential election were about as accurate as polls of presidential elections have been on average since 1972. And polls of gubernatorial and congressional elections in 2016 were about as accurate, on average, as polls of those races since 1998. Furthermore, polls of elections since 2016 — meaning, the 2017 gubernatorial elections and the various special elections to Congress this year and last year — have been slightly more accurate than average.
[...]
The media narrative that polling accuracy has taken a nosedive is mostly bullshit, in other words. Polls were never as good as the media assumed they were before 2016 — and they aren’t nearly as bad as the media seems to assume they are now. In reality, not that much has changed.

 

[drgrant]

Yes, the media and liberals deluded themselves into thinking she was a shoe-in. They highlighted the polls that had her farthest in the lead. But the smug tone of their predictions was driven by bias and was not borne out by the numbers at the time. The polls only missed the final result by about 2 points, and the smart money said more like 65/35 right up until the end, see here from late Oct/early Nov: Election Update: Why Our Model Is More Bullish Than Others On Trump | Election Update: Don’t Ignore The Polls — Clinton Leads, But It’s A Close Race.

I've been reading stuff from that guy for about a decade, he's a statistician who's done work on everything from economics to sports to politics, and he knows his stuff.


I think there are a few things here that are getting mashed together. I agree that "public health" studies regarding anything other than communicable diseases is mostly a bullshit pseudoscience. It's just a vehicle for doctors to lend the credibility of their titles to "scientific research studies" promoting statist policies that elevate extending life above living it.

Then there's "push polls", those being conducted by a group with an agenda. Those are also BS for obvious reasons.

On the other hand, there's opinion polling conducted by professional polling firms. Again, yes, there is sampling bias, but that's why they ask a multitude of demographics questions. After collecting the responses, they adjust for things like age, sex, race, ideology/party ID, etc. They have hard data on the makeup of the registered voter population from publicly available sources. If 40% of survey takers are registered Democrats and 35% of actual registered voters are Democrats, they adjust accordingly.

Whether or not you buy all of that, the proof is in the pudding. Polls are about as accurate as they've ever been:

I don't buy any of it- again, if this is a phone only survey, the sampling method itself is inherently polluted. You've now contaminated your survey with the archetype of the respondent being someone who is dumb enough to pick up a phone call of a number they don't recognize. In 2018 that's pretty dumb. That's excluding an entire class of
people from your survey, that will never be sampled.

Also these were the same types of polls that said that Shitlery was going to be president, right?

It's pretty obvious to me that the methodology needs to change for the margin of error to go down.

I read that article, and all it seems to actually tell me, between the lines, is that polling actually kinda sucks. Their main thesis is (again, reading between the lines) that "well it doesn't suck any more than it did before" and that's great but that doesn't change the fact that it still kinda sucks.

I just don't think a telephone survey with like a sample set of 1000 people is indicative of much of anything.

ETA: I'd be more liable to trust that kind of a survey if they exit polled voters in the 2016 gen. election. Say like 100 people at 2 polling stations in each town. That's flawed too but at least it would make up a better quality sample. You could at least better link opinions/mindsets to political districts vs the "cuz its science and you should trust our extrapolation methods" excuse.

-Mike

 

[Junior314]

People still use landlines in their homes?

 

[CAESAR]

Fing Cuckservatives

 

[JohnZ]

People still use landlines in their homes?

I have one and recently had to make a change with verizon. At the end of the call, the guy said "don't text and drive."