You trust CD polls a lot more than I do.
I do not have 100% percent confidence in any polls unless they have a real confidence coefficient of 100% over their confidence interval.
I am not sure what each Congressional District poll uses for their confidence coefficient to find their confidence interval (margin of error), but I suspect it is around 95%.
Depending on their methodology, each CD poll could have decrease its real confidence coefficient to an estimated 85%.
For the CD polls, my personal real confidence coefficient for is about 90% over a [34%,49.5%] confidence interval for Jon Ossoff's results.
I was fairly confident that Jon Ossoff would win with a non-majority plurality.
I was fairly confident that he had around 5% chances of not proceeding to the runoff and winning with a majority.
For the CD polls, what is your personal real confidence coefficient, confidence interval, and rationale?
Jameson,
There were two possible ways to win in the first round: get over 50%, or get both of the top two slots. These were incompatible. They were close to achieving the first.
They were not that close to getting over 50%.
The average of the polls in April was 42.6% with Ossoff's best poll (including the top margin of error) at 49.5% and worst poll (including the bottom margin of error) at 34%.
Actually, Ossoff impressively exceeded every poll's expectation with 48.1%.
Realistically, they should have expected narrowly missing 50% and hoped that Republican voters would not consolidate their support around Handel.
It should have been apparent from Trump's victory that Republican voters are good at consolidating support for pretty much any R candidate.
Attempting the second, either from the start or as a last-minute thing, would have come with a set of risks — angering voters, provoking counterstrategy, or just getting it wrong.
Those risks have been analyzed in earlier posts.
Is there political science research on the statistical risks of using a "clone" strategy?
From my personal perspective:
Angering Voters - If I was going to vote for Ossoff (and I wish I could have) and he told me to vote for a "clone" candidate to assure a Democratic runoff, then I would be happy that I supported a smart, unselfish candidate and vote for the "clone". Perhaps, some indecisive voters would humorously vote for the "Clone Wars" candidate.
Provoking Counter-strategy - If I were a Republican and the Demorats tried an "An Attack of the Clones" ad blitz on the day before voting, then I would follow whatever instructions that were tweeted by Trump who was inspired by Fox News.
Just getting it wrong - What have Democratic strategists gotten right recently?
There is no need to posit anti-progressive conspiracies to explain the fact that they stuck with the first, even though it happened to fail.
I do not believe that there is some well-coordinated anti-progressive conspiracy, but there is unfortunate infighting between party factions.
For example, I voted for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Iowa Caucus and think that the leaked DNC e-mails show behavior that is shameful but not conspiratorial.
I was using "conspiracy theory" as a framework to discuss a potential outcome of using the "clone" strategy.
Thus, the smart 'Democratic Strategists' would rather risk a Republican representative than risk a Progressive revolution!
becomes:
Thus, the Democratic strategists would rather play it safe than experiment with innovative strategies.