Dear Commons Community.

Far more teachers are getting professional development on artificial intelligence, but a majority still have received no training at all, according to new survey results from the EdWeek Research Center.  As reported by Education Week.

Forty-three percent of teachers said they have received at least one training session on AI, according to the nationally representative survey of 1,135 educators—including 731 teachers—conducted between Sept. 26 and Oct. 8. That’s a nearly 50 percent increase from the EdWeek Research Center’s spring survey, when 29 percent of teachers said the same.

The increase could be attributed to the fact that between March and October, there have been many opportunities for districts to provide professional development, such as during summer break or back-to-school preparations, said Tara Natrass, the managing director of innovation strategy for ISTE+ASCD.

But if 58 percent of teachers still have no training two years after the release of ChatGPT, then districts have a lot of work to do to get everyone up to speed, Natrass said.

AI is already getting embedded into many tools that students and teachers use daily, so experts say it’s increasingly important for teachers to learn about the emerging technology so they can use it responsibly in their work, as well as model appropriate use for students.

In open-ended responses to the survey, some teachers expressed that they want training on AI.

“I would really like to have some in-depth training on the use of some of the new educational AI tools,” said a high school math teacher in Colorado. “Our district has not provided anything at all and it is too expensive to pursue on my own.”

A high school English teacher in Kansas said, “I really don’t use it much, but I would be open to some PD on it to learn more.”

Why teachers aren’t using AI

The lack of knowledge and support is one of the top reasons why teachers say they aren’t using AI in the classroom, according to the EdWeek Research Center survey. The other top reason is that teachers have other more pressing priorities.

“I need to explore AI before I commit to it,” said a high school English teacher in New York in an open-ended response to the survey.

A high school social studies teacher in Ohio would like to know more about AI but the educator’s school district has been more focused on the “science of reading.”

“I feel that we are at a disadvantage,” the teacher said.

How some teachers are using AI

For teachers who are experimenting with AI tools, survey results show that they mostly use them for exploring new ideas for teaching and for creating teaching materials.

A middle school science teacher in Maine, in an open-ended response to the survey, reported “using AI to assist me in creating goal setting for my academic advising. I put in the parameters and AI gave me a fantastic start for this document. It saved me an incredible amount of time.”

A special education teacher in Pennsylvania responded in the survey that ChatGPT was “extremely helpful.”

“As a special ed teacher who has to help students across 20+ curriculums in grades 9-12, I frequently ask [ChatGPT] for background on pieces of literature, summaries of historical events. I have also asked it to write IEP goals that I can then use as ideas for writing ones specific to the student,” the teacher said.

Still, there are some teachers who believe that AI has no place in education.

“I personally feel that AI allows both students and teachers to find the easiest way to complete a task without learning or being challenged to learn anything at all,” said a high school social studies teacher in North Carolina. “No creativity or thought goes into completing a task.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Since dropping out of the 2024 race, President Biden has sought to adapt to a new role of finishing out his term while trying to avoid hurting Vice President Kamala Harris’s chances of defeating Donald Trump in November.

Over the past week, however, Biden has had trouble living up to that assignment to “Do no harm.”

‘Garbage’

On Tuesday, Harris delivered her closing argument speech before 75,000 people gathered at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., reaching out to undecided voters and vowing “to be a president for all Americans,” while also warning that Trump is “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance.”

But as the speech concluded, video clips were being circulated on social media of what appeared to be Biden calling Trump’s supporters “garbage” in a video call with a Latino voter registration group. That negative interpretation, however, rests on the view that Biden said “supporters” rather than “supporter’s” when he said, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his [supporters/supporter’s].”

Biden had been referring to the off-color joke made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe during Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday: “I don’t know if you know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

Hinchcliffe’s remark sparked outrage and could impact the results in states where people of Puerto Rican descent make up a significant percentage of the electorate. But to many voters, Biden’s words seemed to echo Hillary Clinton’s famous broad-brush description of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” With the election in a dead heat as the campaign heads into its final days, such insults can help motivate voters, and Biden quickly went into damage-control mode.

“Earlier today, I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage—which is the only word I can think of to describe it,” Biden said in a message posted to social media Tuesday night. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don’t reflect who we are as a nation.”

On Wednesday, as Trump’s supporters continued to insist that Biden had been going after them as a group, rather than simply calling out Hinchcliffe, Harris offered her own statement.

“Let me be clear: I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” Harris told reporters.

‘Lock him up’

The controversy over Biden’s “garbage” quip came one week after the president made headlines when talking about Trump to a group of Democrats in New Hampshire.

Referencing the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity and the powers it might give Trump if he is reelected, Biden told his audience, “I know this sounds bizarre — it sounds like if I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up. We gotta lock him up. Politically lock him up. Lock him out. That’s what we have to do.”

The Trump campaign wasted no time in criticizing Biden and Harris for what Trump later described as proof of “election interference.”

“Joe Biden just admitted the truth: He and Kamala’s plan all along has been to politically persecute their opponent President Trump because they can’t beat him fair and square,” Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, said in a statement Tuesday. “The Harris-Biden Admin is the real threat to democracy. We call on Kamala Harris to condemn Joe Biden’s disgraceful remark.”

Biden has largely refrained from discussing the legal cases brought against Trump, and Harris, a former prosecutor-turned-politician, often shuts down “Lock him up!” chants when they erupt at her campaign rallies by telling her audience, “The courts are gonna handle that. We’re going to beat him in November.”

But with Biden continuing to step on her message to voters — that she will “work every day to reach consensus and reach compromise” — that pledge is being put to an even greater test.

With only six days left before the election, Biden’s gaffe probably won’t mean much in terms of votes but why is it that the Democrats cannot help shooting themselves in the foot.

Tony

Kamala Harris at the Ellipse on Tuesday evening. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Dear Commons Community,

With just one week to go until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered yesterday what her campaign called a “closing argument address” from the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., in which she pledged to “always put country above party and above self.”

The Ellipse is the same spot where on Jan. 6, 2021, then President Donald Trump exhorted his followers to “fight like hell” and march to the Capitol building to protest the congressional certification of his Electoral College loss in 2020 to Joe Biden. A deadly riot ensued, with Trump watching the mayhem from the White House, that delayed the proceedings by several hours before Biden was officially confirmed as the 46th U.S. president.

With national and swing state polls showing Harris and Trump in a virtual dead heat, the vice president’s rally drew a massive crowd, estimated at 75,000 people, that filled the Ellipse and overflowed onto the National Mall. Here are the key takeaways from her speech courtesy of Yahoo News and other outlets.

Harris frames ‘the choice’

Harris began by framing the election as “a choice about whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American or ruled by chaos and division.”

“Look, we know who Donald Trump is. He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election, an election that he knew he lost,” Harris said.

“He has an enemies list of people he intends to prosecute,” she added. “He says one of his highest priorities is to set free the violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers on Jan. 6. Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him. People he calls ‘the enemy from within.’ America, this is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life better. This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.”

Telling her audience “that is not who we are,” Harris then espoused her own belief that the Latin phrase printed on U.S. currency, “E pluribus unum,” which translates to “out of many, one,” is “a living truth about the heart of our nation.”

“The fact that someone does not agree with us does not make them ‘the enemy within,’” she said, adding, “As Americans, we rise and fall together.”

Harris then portrayed her candidacy as a way to “turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division. It is time for a new generation of leadership in America and I am ready to offer that leadership as the next president of the United States of America.”

Later in her speech she pledged “to be a president for all Americans. To always put country above party and above self.”

Still introducing herself to voters

Harris acknowledged that “this has not been a typical campaign.” Her entry into the race came just three months ago, after concerns about Biden’s age prompted Democrats to try to convince him to exit the race. In the sprint that has followed, Harris has sometimes struggled to introduce herself to voters, “even though I’ve had the honor of serving as your vice president for the last four years,” she said Tuesday, adding, “But I know that many of you are still getting to know who I am.”

Harris then touted her work experience outside of Washington, mostly as the state of California’s attorney general, saying she has “always had an instinct to protect.”

“Here’s what I promise you. I will always listen to you, even if you don’t vote for me. I will always tell you the truth, even if it is difficult to hear. I will work every day to reach consensus and reach compromise to get things done,” she said in her pitch to voters.

“On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list,” Harris said. “When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list.”

Abortion rights

Harris rarely misses an opportunity to proclaim her intention of working to restore the right for women to receive an abortion nationwide, and she reiterated Tuesday that in the wake of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade “one in three women in American lives in a state with a Trump abortion ban, many with no exceptions for rape and incest.”

“Trump’s not done. He would ban abortion nationwide,” Harris said, “restrict access to birth control and put IVF treatments at risk and force states to monitor womens’ pregnancies.”

Trump, however, has made no such pledges.

Harris did acknowledge that in order to restore abortion protections, she would need the support of Congress.

“When Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom nationwide, as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law,” she said.

‘Pathway to citizenship’ for some immigrants

Harris again promised that, if elected, she would sign a bipartisan border security bill — a bill that was torpedoed by Trump earlier this year — into law.

Saying she would “give border patrol the support that they so desperately need,” Harris added, “At the same time, we must acknowledge that we are a nation of immigrants, and I will work with Congress to pass immigration reform, including an earned path to citizenship for hard-working immigrants like farm workers and our Dreamers.”

Many Republicans oppose offering a path to citizenship. Trump has also promised the largest deportation of immigrants to the U.S. in the country’s history.

Good  luck, Kamala!

Tony

Jessica Tarlov

Dear Commons Community,

I rarely ever watch Fox News “The Five” mainly because it pits four right-wing commentators against one liberal commentator, Jessica Tarlov. Even though intellectually, 4-1 is an even match, the show is contrived to favor the right-wing view.  On Monday, it appears that Tarlov really zinged Jeannine Pirro.  Here is a brief recap courtesy of The Huffington Post.

“Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro expressed concerns about how Democrats might react if Donald Trump wins the election, and her liberal co-host Jessica Tarlov was quick to point out the hypocrisy.

During a segment on “The Five” about Americans’ election anxiety, Pirro said she’s “excited” for the vote, but “what I’m concerned about, in terms of stress, is the left’s reaction if Donald Trump gets elected.”

“I would like, if Donald Trump wins — and I’m hoping he wins — I would like that people just be calm and accept it,” she added.

Tarlov shot back, “January 6th would like a word,” and wrapped up the segment.

Many Americans are anxious about next week’s election in part because the last one led to a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Spurred by Trump’s lies that the 2020 vote was rigged, a mob of his supporters ransacked the halls of Congress in an attempt to overturn the results.

In the four years since, Trump and many of his supporters and allies have continued to push that lie incessantly. The Republican nominee has already laid the groundwork to claim the 2024 vote is fraudulent should he lose to Vice President Kamala Harris, sparking concerns of more political violence.

The former president has declined to commit to accepting the results of the election or to rule out the possibility of political violence if he loses.”

Hurrah for Tarlov!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I already blogged about the new Mitch McConnell biography,  The Price of Power by Michael Tackett. Below is a review by Jennifer Szalai of The New York Times which reveals a legislator for whom political survival has been a top priority — even when it means supporting a “sleazeball” for the presidency. This review gives more context to the book and to McConnell’s prioritizing political power over his personal convictions.

It is well-done!

Tony

—————————————–

Courtesy of ABC News.

Dear Commons Community,

Airlines in the United States are now required to give passengers cash refunds if their flight is significantly delayed or canceled, even if that person does not explicitly ask for a refund.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) says the final federal rule requiring that airlines dole out refunds — not vouchers — went into effect yesterday.  As reported by CNN and ABC News.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg made the announcement on X after he first presented the proposed rule back in April. “Today, our automatic refund rule goes into full effect,” Buttigieg posted. “Passengers deserve to get their money back when an airline owes them—without headaches or haggling.”

The new rule mandates that refunds are automatically processed by an airline if a passenger’s flight is “canceled or significantly changed, and they do not accept the significantly changed flight, rebooking on an alternative flight, or alternative compensation.”   The DOT says airlines must refund a passenger within seven business days if they bought a ticket on a credit card and within 20 calendar days if they used another form of payment.

Airlines can no longer decide how long a delay must be before a refund is issued. Under the new DOT rules, the delays covered would be more than three hours for domestic flights and more than six hours for international flights, the agency said.

DOT will also require airlines to give cash refunds if your bags are lost and not delivered within 12 hours.

The move has faced pushback from the airline industry. In July, Buttigieg told airlines that they must make clear to passengers when they are entitled to a refund.

In a statement, industry lobby Airlines for America said, “we support the automatic refund rule and are happy to accommodate customers with a refund when they choose not to be rebooked.”

This rule is long overdue!

Tony

Martha Strever, a math teacher at Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, N.Y. Flynn Larsen for Education Week.

Dear Commons Community,

This posting is taken from an Education Week article.

When Martha Strever began teaching 63 years ago, the home computer did not exist and the first human had yet to walk on the moon.

There were 23 amendments to the constitution instead of the current 27, John F. Kennedy was president, and the civil rights March on Washington had not happened.

A lot has changed since 1961. But one constant is Linden Avenue Middle School’s math teacher.

Strever, now in her mid-80s, has been a fixture at the Red Hook, N.Y., school in the intervening 63 years, teaching thousands of students math—in some cases three generations of students from the same family—while navigating momentous changes in both the world around her and the education profession.

“I never could have imagined when I started some of the things we’d see and do in my career,” Strever said. “It has certainly been interesting.”

On Sept. 4, she began her 64th year of teaching, an incredible feat as districts contend with high levels of teacher burnout and turnover, with more than 40 percent of teachers leaving the profession in their first five years.

For Strever, it’s challenging work, just as it is for everyone else. But it’s also work that she’s molded her entire life around and that she’s as committed to as ever. She doesn’t plan to quit anytime soon.

“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” she said.

Strever had a love of teaching from a young age

Strever grew up in Hyde Park, about 20 minutes south of Red Hook.

When she was 7, Strever would sneak up to her parents’ room after school and stand in front of their full-length mirror, mimicking her favorite teachers.

She had already decided she wanted to follow in their footsteps.

It took Strever a few more years to figure out exactly what subject she wanted to teach, but once she dropped a high school social studies class midyear to make room for an additional math course, the answer was obvious—she was going to be a math teacher.

She received a few scholarships that made it possible for her to attend college, and she landed a student-teaching job at none other than Linden Avenue Middle School, about an hour south of Albany.

Strever was offered a full-time teaching job at the school after she completed her student-teaching stint. She took it despite attractive teaching job offers elsewhere.

In 1971, Strever became the first female department chair in the Red Hook district, overseeing math instruction, a position she held for 49 years, until the onset of the pandemic.

The biggest draw: The position allowed her to continue teaching.

Not being in the classroom “is a dealbreaker for me,” Strever said.

“There was another opportunity in another district, but it would have taken me out of the classroom, and that’s just where my heart is.”

Strever has taught multiple generations of students

Strever is well beyond teachers’ average retirement age of 59 and almost double the age of the average American educator (43).

In her career, she’s taught students after teaching their parents and their parents’ parents. Strever believes she’s also taught some more recent students’ great-grandparents.

She’s taught a district assistant superintendent, as well as a handful of other administrators, and at least one former school board member.

Stacie Fenn Smith took Strever’s math class 30 years ago, and remembers the teacher striking the right balance between strict and personable.

Fenn Smith remembers Strever as the type of teacher who expected students to show up prepared—she didn’t hand out spare pencils if someone showed up without one—and ready to spend the hour focused on their work.

But Strever also took the time to learn about her students and create a special bond with them, Fenn Smith said.

“She was very strict and serious as your teacher, but you also knew that that came from a place of wanting you to do well,” she said.

Fenn Smith is now the principal of Linden Avenue Middle School, where she is Strever’s boss.

In the decades since Fenn Smith was Strever’s student, Fenn Smith has worked alongside her as a teacher and assistant principal before taking the helm at the school in 2021. Over the years, she’s watched Strever evolve.

Early in her career, Strever taught advanced math classes, typically with students who needed less guidance to develop fundamental skills. In more recent years, Strever began co-teaching the math courses for students who need more help, working with students with disabilities and learning disorders, who often need more instruction and encouragement.

Christopher Wood, a special education teacher, has co-taught the higher-needs classes with Strever for the past four years. He said her structured disposition has “made a world of difference” for students because it provides routine, predictability, and clear expectations.

Her structure and “meticulousness” complement Wood’s more relaxed approach, he said.

The duo are quite different but somehow work in perfect tandem, Wood said, often finishing each other’s sentences or predicting what the other might need.

“It amazes me, the dedication she has to this profession and these kids, and all of the things she’s seen and done, but is still going strong,” Wood said. “It’s been really inspiring working with her.”

For Strever, once the strict teacher who pushed the highest-achieving students to new heights, said now focusing on helping struggling students find ways to excel “is the delight of my day, every day.”

For Strever, tackling new technology is a manageable challenge

In the 1970s, when personal computers came out, Strever had already been teaching for more than a decade. She didn’t really know anything about the technology but somehow later found herself tasked with training the school staff on how to use computers as they gained popularity.

Determined as ever, Strever spent hours with the staff at the local Radio Shack so she could lead the training.

“When I got my master’s degree in ‘66, these didn’t even exist,” Strever said.

That was the first time, but certainly not the last, when a new technology challenged Strever. There were also heated debates among educators about how calculators would affect children’s learning and academic progress, and the machines are now commonplace in American classrooms.

When Strever thinks about artificial intelligence, now the hot topic of education technology debates, she feels much like she did all those years ago about the calculator: “We all made a big deal about that and how it would ruin kids’ ability to think and problem-solve on their own, but it found its place, and I think AI is going to be the same.”

But when asked what has changed the most in education over the past 63 years, Strever said it’s students’ behavior and confidence.

There are far more disciplinary problems districtwide, she said, and fewer students truly believe in themselves and their abilities.

Research, surveys, and polls from recent years back her up.

In the classroom, this translates to students “not feeling as empowered to reach for the top goals,” Strever said.

“They’ll tell me it’s OK that they got a 65 on a test, and I say, ‘No it isn’t. I know you’ve got more. Give it to me,’” she said. “And when I push them, they start to do it.”

That belief in her students is what makes Strever so effective, Fenn Smith said.

“That idea that students know you believe they can do it, we know it is a huge marker for academic success, and you can certainly feel that in her classroom,” she said.

Strever’s career could break world records

On a hot Friday in August, Fenn Smith called Strever to talk about a potential recognition for her long teaching career. Strever picked up the phone, midway through staining the wishing well on her property. Yes, she was doing the job by herself.

In the summers, she mows her own lawn. In the winters, she shovels snow from the sidewalk.

This year, Fenn Smith recruited another staff member to help Strever set up her classroom, just to be safe. It’s not unusual to find Strever, who’s barely 5 feet tall, standing on a ladder to hang up a poster.

She’s quirky, too: There’s an “urban legend,” as Fenn Smith called it, that Strever has preplanned outfits for each day of the school year and doesn’t repeat attire. Strever said she recalls a former student who kept track of her outfits she wore by tallying them on the paper book cover of their math textbook.

It may have been true at one point, Strever said, but in recent years she’s occasionally had a repeat outfit, mostly because it’s difficult to find clothes that fit her petite frame. It is true, though, that Strever only wears dresses or skirts to school (and to do yard work). She wears pants just one day per year, on field day.

“Everybody knows when field day is just by my outfit,” Strever said.

Strever was an only child growing up, and never married or had children of her own. She has made her home at Linden Avenue Middle School.

“This is my family,” Strever said. “They’re so kind to me. This is where I want to be.”

So, it should come as no surprise that Strever has no plans to retire. And administrators want her to stay as long as she wants. It’s not out of loyalty or obligation to a longtime staff member, Fenn Smith said. It’s exactly the opposite: The staff and students benefit from Strever’s expertise, and she is highly respected.

When Strever speaks, people listen. When she teaches, students thrive.

“She sometimes worries if she should keep staying or if she might get pushed out eventually,” Fenn Smith said. “But I’ve told her: ‘I will not take your name off your board until you choose to take it off yourself.’”

Fenn Smith recently nominated Strever for two Guinness World Records, and the nominations are under review: longest teaching tenure in a single school and longest-tenured math teacher, both of which she appears to have beaten by several years. She is currently the longest-tenured teacher in New York state, according to state records, and among the longest-tenured in the United States.

Guinness World Records doesn’t officially track the record for individual countries, but some state teachers’ unions have said unofficially that a former social studies teacher from Florida who taught for 72 years likely holds that title.

Happy and healthy, and with no plans to retire, Strever could hold that title in due time, too.

Go for it, Martha!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

For the past several weeks, the news has been inundated with polls by any number of organizations, newspapers, and other media. With the actual election a week away, polling will shortly come to an end and the only poll that really matters (the election itself) will take place.  The Associated Press yesterday had a featured article entitled, “Will the polls be right in 2024? What polling on the presidential race can and can’t tell you!”. It provides a reality check on the reliability of polls. 

The entire article is below.

Tony

———————————————–

The Associated press

Will the polls be right in 2024? What polling on the presidential race can and can’t tell you

The presidential race is competitive.

That’s about as much as the national polls can tell us right now, even if it looks like Democrat Kamala Harris is down in one poll or Republican Donald Trump is up in another.

And that’s just fine.

Even though polls are sometimes treated as projections, they aren’t designed to tell you who is likely to win.

Polls are better for some things than others. Tracking shifts in voter intention is hard to do with a survey, particularly when the number of truly persuadable voters is relatively small. Voters’ opinions can change before Election Day and they often do. Horse race polls can only capture people’s viewpoints during a single moment in time. Even then, a margin that looks like one that could decide an election — say, one candidate has 48% support and the other has 45% support — might not be a real difference at all.

When reporters at The Associated Press are covering the election, horse race polling numbers don’t take center stage. The reason for this is that the AP believes that focusing on preelection polling can overstate the significance or reliability of those numbers.

Election-year polls are still useful, particularly when they’re trying to assess how the public is feeling about the candidates or the state of the country. They told us quite clearly, for instance, that many Americans wanted Democratic President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 race. But they’re not the same thing as an election result, and even a poll conducted just before Election Day still reflects opinion before all ballots have been cast.

Even in high-quality polls, each finding is just an estimate

Polls are useful tools, but it’s important not to overstate their accuracy. After all, a polling organization can’t talk to every single person in the country. They instead rely on a sample to produce a statistically valid estimate of the views of all adults. Even though polls can give a reasonable approximation of the views of the larger group, the question is how much each finding could vary.

The margin of error, which all high-quality pollsters will share along with their results, helps capture some of that uncertainty. It means that in a poll with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, a finding that 47% of voters say they’ll support a particular candidate actually means that there’s a very good chance that anywhere between 50% and 44% of voters are supporting that candidate. If the other candidate has 45% support, which could really be anywhere from 42% to 48%, the 2 percentage point difference isn’t statistically meaningful.

That’s why the AP will only say a candidate is leading if that candidate is ahead by more than twice the margin of error.

When you’re looking at a subgroup, rather than a national sample, the potential error is even larger. The fewer people interviewed, the larger the margin of error. This means that state-level polls or polls that measure the views of a subgroup such as women, men, Hispanic Americans or Black Americans are subject to even more error than a national finding.

The margin of sampling error is not the only source of survey error. It is simply the only one that can be quantified using established statistical methods. But there are other factors, too. The wording and order of questions can affect how people answer. An interviewer’s skill can have an effect. Even in high-quality polls, some respondents may be less likely to answer, which means their views can be underrepresented.

Don’t forget about the Electoral College

National polls measure how voters all over the country are thinking about the election. But that’s not how we elect presidents.

The Electoral College system means that presidential elections are functionally decided by a small number of states. So in some ways, looking at polls of those states is a better way to assess the state of the race.

But state-level polls introduce their own challenges. They’re not conducted as frequently as national polls and some states get polled more often than others. Also, the number of people surveyed for state polls is often smaller than for national polls, which means the margin of error is broader.

What about polling averages?

Some media outlets or organizations publish polling averages or aggregates that combine the results of multiple polls into a single estimate. There are some organizations that create polling averages or models during elections that attempt to determine which candidate is leading in overall polls.

But averaging poll results does not eliminate polling error and it can introduce additional problems. Polling averages contain their own methodological decisions, such as which polls are included or receive greater weight. Some of them also include other factors such as the state of the economy to turn those estimates into forecasts.

In election polling, survey averages can provide a general sense of the state of a race. But it’s also important to not overstate the accuracy of an average or expect it to be a crystal ball into the election outcome. Sometimes the individual results of multiple different polls can provide a better sense of the potential array of outcomes than an average boiled down to a single number.

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd in her New York Times column yesterday entitled, How Bad Do You Want It, Ladies?, sets the presidential election up as coming down to a gender contest. She references Ari Emanuel and states:

“This election is gonna come down to probably 120,000 votes,” Ari said. “You probably have 60 percent of the male vote for Trump, and the female vote is 60-40 for Kamala. It’s a jump ball. We’re gonna find out who wants this more — men or women.”

Are we back to the days of Mars versus Venus? Or did we never leave?

It is the ultimate battle of the sexes in the most visceral of elections. Who will prevail? The women, especially young women, who are appalled at the cartoonish macho posturing and benighted stances of Donald Trump and his entourage? Or the men, including many young men, union men, Latino and Black men, who are drawn to Trump’s swaggering, bullying and insulting, seeing him as the reeling-backward antidote to shrinking male primacy.”

She concludes by quoting Barack Obama:

“Barack Obama punctured the MAGA macho myth at a rally with Kamala on Thursday. Putting down people is not “real strength,” he said. Real strength is standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. “That’s what we should want in our daughters and our sons,” Obama said. “And that’s what I want to see in the president of the United States of America.”

I agree with Dowd’s assessment.

The entire column is below.

Tony

————————————————————————–

The New York Times

How Bad Do You Want It, Ladies?

Oct. 26, 2024

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist, reporting from Washington

Usually, I get political wisdom from Rahm Emanuel, not his brother Ari.

But a quote from Ari, the Hollywood macher, to Puck’s Matthew Belloni about the gender chasm in 2024 caught my eye.

“This election is gonna come down to probably 120,000 votes,” Ari said. “You probably have 60 percent of the male vote for Trump, and the female vote is 60-40 for Kamala. It’s a jump ball. We’re gonna find out who wants this more — men or women.”

Are we back to the days of Mars versus Venus? Or did we never leave?

It is the ultimate battle of the sexes in the most visceral of elections. Who will prevail? The women, especially young women, who are appalled at the cartoonish macho posturing and benighted stances of Donald Trump and his entourage? Or the men, including many young men, union men, Latino and Black men, who are drawn to Trump’s swaggering, bullying and insulting, seeing him as the reeling-backward antidote to shrinking male primacy.

Drilling into the primal yearnings of men and women — their priorities, identities, anger and frustration — makes this election even more fraught. When I wrote a book about gender in 2005, I assumed that, a couple of decades later, we’d all be living peacefully on the same planet. But no Cassandra, I. The sexual revolution intensified our muddle, leaving women in a tangle of dependence and independence in the 21st century. The more we imitated men, the more we realized how different we were.

Progress zigzags. But it was dispiriting to see the fierce backlash to Geraldine Ferraro, Anita Hill and Hillary Clinton’s co-presidency and candidacy.

In Kamala Harris’s case, the backlash is evident even before the election. Surveys reflect the same doubts about a woman in the White House that I saw covering Ferraro in 1984. Many men — and many women — still wonder if women are too emotional to deal with world leaders and lead the military.

Other countries overcame this stereotypical thinking about women leaders, but there is still a thick strain of it in America.

Harris is running way behind where Joe Biden was in 2020 with both white and Black men. It would sting if Black men sunk the chance for the first Black woman to become president, just as enough white women spurned Hillary in 2016 to tip the balance.

It is sad that women had to be stripped of their basic right to control their bodies — and to be threatened with the loss of lifesaving medical care — for Kamala to even have a chance to get the votes of enough women to offset losing the votes of so many men.

Trump is running a hypermasculine campaign — with Chief Bro Elon Musk bizarrely bouncing up and down — that is breathtakingly offensive to women. Trump is exploiting the crisis among Gen Z men, a crisis driven by loneliness, Covid isolation, economic insecurity, a lack of purpose and a feeling that the modern world seems more accommodating to young women.

Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist, told Vanity Fair that straight, white, Christian males are tired of being painted as colonizers, noting, “They want to be part of a political movement that doesn’t hate them.”

Trump is a renowned predator and groper who has been found liable for sexual abuse. But he has the gall to cast Kamala as “retarded,” “lazy as hell” and a “bitch” and ask, “Does she drink? Is she on drugs?”

At a Trump rally in Georgia on Wednesday, Tucker Carlson gave a rant that became an instant classic of perversion.

In a shrill tone, he spun out a metaphor in which America is like a house where the children are misbehaving. The toddler is smearing feces on the wall; a 14-year-old is lighting a joint at the breakfast table.

“There has to be a point at which Dad comes home,” Carlson said ominously, to raucous applause. “Yeah, that’s right. Dad comes home, and he’s pissed!”

He’s most pissed at the 15-year-old daughter, who has flipped off her parents and stormed to her room. Playing the dad, Carlson intoned: “You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl. And you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now.”

When Trump came out, some screamed, “Daddy’s home!” and “Daddy Don!”

Somehow, Carlson was even more creepy and retrogressive than JD Vance, with his denunciations of “childless cat ladies” and his dissing of postmenopausal women.

Trump is phallocentric — always a sign of insecurity. At a rally in Latrobe, Pa., he rhapsodized about Arnold Palmer’s anatomy.

“This is a guy that was all man,” Trump said, adding, “When he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh, my God, that’s unbelievable.’”

Barack Obama punctured the MAGA macho myth at a rally with Kamala on Thursday. Putting down people is not “real strength,” he said. Real strength is standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. “That’s what we should want in our daughters and our sons,” Obama said. “And that’s what I want to see in the president of the United States of America.”