BellGab.com Archive

First off the North American Union lives in FIFA was that great new nation of MexUsCan won the bid to host 2026 World Cup

But for the 2018 World Cup first game was an Illuminati oily dream come true as Russia stomped Saudi Arabia 5-0 with the highlight being the awkward interaction of Putin, FIFA leader and Saudi Prince. I wonder which of those three had most people killed 

I know we have a Trump and Hillary thread that getting a lot of traffic, but with a 100 days left, we don't have a general election thread as we can talk about the election as a whole. I think this is a good place to talk about it. My first thoughts is to write up about polls, polls analysis is one of the most frustrating thing for me by media and supporters. When there's a positive poll, the supports take it as a huge sign and be-all and end-all. If there's a negative poll it's automatic accusations of bias. Media is not much better as running with whatever poll comes out last and taking every individual poll as "a sign". I have always been a numbers cruncher, and I do find numbers fascinating and follow election polling for a while. First off I don't care about bias, or who runs it all my opinion is how strong a polling firm is, is their track record.

Lets look at who predict the best in 2012.... Obama won 51% to 47% Romney. Let's look at the top 10 polling firms that came closest all with Obama winning
1) public policy polling. 51-47 - Not the most famous name but give them credit they hit it totally on the money
2) Democracy Corp 49-45 - Hasn't polled this election. Not a huge name but got the margin of victory right in 2012
3) Ipsos Reid/Reuters 48-44.5 - Best of main stream media polling
4) Angus Reid 51-48 - They haven't polled yet this election season, but did very well last time
5 Pew Research 48.5-43.5 - The only polling company in top 10 that gave Obama a larger margin of victory than the actual outcome
6) AssociatedPress/GFK  - 46-43.5
7) YouGov/Economist    49-47 - Another one of those none big names that did very well
8 )CNN/Opinion Research 49.5-48.5 - CNN was the best of the TV  outlets in predictions of the numbers.
9) Gallup  49-48 -
10) ABC/WashPost 49-48

Few interesting things about 2012 polling. First it removes the myth of liberal bias, most of them underestimated Obama winning margin of 4% and only Pew overestimated Obama win by a single point. Most polling companies even out of the 10 ten had Obama by a single point. Now lets look where we are at 2016 looking at the top 5 polling companies from the previous year that polled in the last month and see where we stand currently

Public Policy Polling  Clinton 48% - 43% Trump (7/30) [average 2 way and 4 way]
Ipsos Reid /Reuters  Clinton 43% - 35% Trump (8/1)  [2 way race]
AP/GFK                   Clinton 40% - 36% Trump (7/11) [4 way race)
YouGov/Economist  Clinton 43.5% - 39.5 Trump (8/1) [2 way and 4 way]
CNN/ORC               Clinton  48.5% - 40% Trump   (8/1) [2 way and 4 way]
MY AVERAGE      CLINTON 44.5%  - 39%  TRUMP (butting extra weight on PPP and Ipsos)

By my numbers Hillary is up by 5.5%. I had a difficult decision with the third party candidates as there's mostly polling for 2 way races and 4 way races and I was split on which I should focus as there's a good argument for both. The argument for it is that both Hillary and Trump are unlikable and there's a good chance people will vote for another option. The argument against 4-way polling is that recently history has shown that third party candidates always poll higher than actual results (for example in 2012 there's a poll that 7% of people will vote for an alternative, it ended up being less than 2% voted for an alternative) I decided for now to split the difference and average the 2-way and 4-way numbers out. 

I am actually curious, how many here actually got MITD on Terrestrial Radio during the Art Bell run?

Second part if you did, is it still playing MITD after Art left? If not how long did it take for them to cut the cord on the show? What did they replace it with?


I was lucky a local station went with Art on Day 1. After Art officially left they stayed with it for a week or two but switched to "best of" from local hosts from during the day.