Austrian elections?!

[hollodero]

(10-13-2017, 03:15 PM)michaelsean Wrote: I forgot about that.  You're right it doesn't look like one, but the shape always stood out to me.  

If you look for penises in Europe, just look at the map on our coins... Skandinavia sans Norway.

[*michaelsean*]

Let's see how I do on the rest. I'm going to say Liechtenstein west of Austria in green. Germany blue and north of Austria. Switzerland to the west dark yellow. Belgium to the west of that light yellow. Then France in purples. Across the channel are England, Scotland Wales and Ireland. Spain in dark yellow to the west of France. I'm going to say Portugal in light yellow connected to Spain. Italy obviously the boot south of Austria. Hungary is one of the countries bordering Austria to the East. That's about it.

[*michaelsean*]

(10-13-2017, 03:22 PM)hollodero Wrote: If you look for penises in Europe, just look at the map on our coins... Skandinavia sans Norway.

Oh yeah that's dead on.

[hollodero]

(10-13-2017, 03:22 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Let's see how I do on the rest.  I'm going to say Liechtenstein west of Austria in green.  Germany blue and north of Austria.  Switzerland to the west dark yellow.  Belgium to the west of that light yellow.  Then France in purples.  Across the channel are England, Scotland Wales and Ireland.  Spain in dark yellow to the west of France.  I'm going to say Portugal in light yellow connected to Spain.  Italy obviously the boot south of Austria.  Hungary is one of the countries bordering Austria to the East.  That's about it.

:) Si tacuisses...  you are wrong on some of those. First, Liechtenstein is a tiny tiny country, hard to identify on this map. It's a pixel. The green country is in fact Switzerland. 

That dark yellow country isn't Switzerland... I guess you mean the Netherlands? The one north of Belgium facing the sea and being CC's probable first victim.

The rest is correct, so only two action points will be removed from your account.

[*michaelsean*]

(10-13-2017, 03:28 PM)hollodero Wrote: :) Si tacuisses...  you are wrong on some of those. First, Liechtenstein is a tiny tiny country, hard to identify on this map. It's a pixel. The green country is in fact Switzerland. 

That dark yellow country isn't Switzerland... I guess you mean the Netherlands? The one north of Belgium facing the sea and being CC's probable first victim.

The rest is correct, so only two action points will be removed from your account.

Who put the Netherlands there?  I didn't authorize that.  

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

Well shit, Hollo. Looks like Austria saw other countries going right in the latest round of elections and told them all to hold their beer.

[Millhouse]

To be fair to Americans and where Austria is on a map, most dont remember their geology class they took in high school.

[Benton]

(10-16-2017, 02:49 PM)Millhouse Wrote: To be fair to Americans and where Austria is on a map, most dont remember their geology class they took in high school.

[*michaelsean*]

(10-16-2017, 02:50 PM)Benton Wrote:

I think not remembering the name of the course proves his point.

And btw, if I had a blank map of the US and had to name the New England states I would fare far worse than my attempt at Europe.

[Benton]

(10-16-2017, 02:52 PM)michaelsean Wrote: I think not remembering the name of the course proves his point.

And btw, if I had a blank map of the US and had to name the New England states I would fare far worse than my attempt at Europe.

A friend of mine works for the government and was up for a job in Africa. We were at a bar trivia night and doing ok... until the second to last round where all the questions revolved around CAR and contiguous countries. We were the only team to get all the questions right, and it was all him. Was pretty cool. But outside of him, I don't think there was anyone on any team that got a question correct. One person next to our table said  "Republic? Africa's a continent."

America is great, but our knowledge of what happens outside our borders is pretty small. And that's only going to get worse as work schedules require more time in the office and disposable incomes shrink.

[*michaelsean*]

(10-16-2017, 03:04 PM)Benton Wrote: A friend of mine works for the government and was up for a job in Africa. We were at a bar trivia night and doing ok... until the second to last round where all the questions revolved around CAR and contiguous countries. We were the only team to get all the questions right, and it was all him. Was pretty cool. But outside of him, I don't think there was anyone on any team that got a question correct. One person next to our table said  "Republic? Africa's a continent."

America is great, but our knowledge of what happens outside our borders is pretty small. And that's only going to get worse as work schedules require more time in the office and disposable incomes shrink.

Yeah because before when Frank could leave the textile mill before dark, he'd hurry home to his beloved Atlas.  

[hollodero]

(10-16-2017, 02:24 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Well shit, Hollo. Looks like Austria saw other countries going right in the latest round of elections and told them all to hold their beer.

We usually do that, yep. Our constant consuming of beer does play a role in that, as does our tendency to literally ask someone else to hold it while we do stuff like the opposite of drinking. Rome was built on seven Hills, Austria on seven beer cans.

In the more figurative sense of the word, our people are often more narrow and primitive then people in other countries. I do not equal being right with being primitive, mind you, being right does not mean anything like that in the first place (most parts of our left don't get that, which is why they are kinda primitive in the end as well). The problem is rather that in Austria being primitive means being right, hardly anyone else would define himself being "right" here. Why don't I have a nice job, a cool car, a decent looking girlfriend and money? It's mot me, it's refugees (asylum seekers, foreigners... all swear words in those circles) taking away from me what would appertain to me for being Austrian, that's why. Easy answers.

People voting for that substanceless "hate group" called FPÖ, to at least 75% guaranteed, don't think any more complex than that. They believe refugees get free Iphones from a state taking the money for that away from decent citizens. They believe anything anyone pulls out of his sit-upon if it only mirrors what they already feel is the truth in the first place. Austria is the primary candidate for idiocracy, where you do not have to do anything more than to spread these rumors (be it about free stuff for refugees or mass crime being swept under the rug by state media etc.) and offer the solution (vote for FPÖ). I am not oversimplifying that, that's the whole concept.
Even AfD in Germany is ten times as sophisticated, while of course comparable overall. Sad.

Associating things like Trumpism with that would be oversimplifying things - the roots are similar though. Unlike the US, our right-wing populism didn't use the conservative shell, but rather a separate party. At this point though, our conservative party moved far into that territory to gain votes, making the ideas behind it more main-stream. What Austria got now is an anti-muslim, anti-immigration majority with little (conservatives) to none (the original FPÖ) additional substance.

Our election winner (the conservative one, not the FPÖ one) is a 31-year-old professional politician and former foreign minister who brags about having single-handedly closed down refugee routes. Which of course is ridiculous. When asked anything, he could get there within 11 words though, always. He's no Macron, although I read that comparison in US media. He's rather the hypothetical love child of Macron and Trump. I tried hard to find some additional ideas or visions, there were none to see. We will get a right-wing government, that won't bring much change (our politicians hardly run the country, it's more the bureaucracy), will be widely avoided internationally and probably will bring down the FPÖ again for several years (because as a purely destructive force, they have no one who could do any constructive work or anything else but hateful speech and immediately starting munching at the troughts of power without a shred of discretion; and even the primitive voter base figures that out after some years).

Until then --- super phun thyme.

The really sad thing for me is that it could have been even worse and in a sense one needs to be relieved.

(10-13-2017, 01:45 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Are the polls showing FPÖ that much of a lead? Last I saw, ÖVP was ahead, with SPÖ and FPÖ close together but behind, and SPÖ a little further ahead of FPÖ.

...and so it indeed happened. You cannot even rely on the unreliability of polls any more.

[hollodero]

(10-16-2017, 03:14 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Yeah because before when Frank could leave the textile mill before dark, he'd hurry home to his beloved Atlas.  

Yeah, that's how Frank rolls...! 

...he does have a point though. I don't know which boy it was who was turned dull by all work and no joy, but most Americans do work too much and have too little spare time. That seldomly is good for gaining insights and additional knowledge, and be it just accidentally.

Not that having more free time did help in my country though, so that's a bit of a counterpoint.

[Dill]

(10-16-2017, 03:46 PM)hollodero Wrote: People voting for that substanceless "hate group" called FPÖ, to at least 75% guaranteed, don't think any more complex than that. They believe refugees get free Iphones from a state taking the money for that away from decent citizens. They believe anything anyone pulls out of his sit-upon if it only mirrors what they already feel is the truth in the first place. Austria is the primary candidate for idiocracy, where you do not have to do anything more than to spread these rumors (be it about free stuff for refugees or mass crime being swept under the rug by state media etc.) and offer the solution (vote for FPÖ). I am not oversimplifying that, that's the whole concept.
Even AfD in Germany is ten times as sophisticated, while of course comparable overall. Sad.

Funny, according to my sources, Austrians are very tolerant and accepting of other cultures. LOL


RIP Deix. Austria never needed you more!  

[Belsnickel]

(10-16-2017, 03:46 PM)hollodero Wrote: ...and so it indeed happened. You cannot even rely on the unreliability of polls any more.

It's all because you're interacting with someone who actually understands polling and can reliably infer information from it.

[hollodero]

(10-16-2017, 04:50 PM)Dill Wrote: Funny, according to my sources, Austrians are very tolerant and accepting of other cultures. LOL


RIP Deix. Austria never needed you more!  

Manfred Deix is your source?
...also, you know who Deix is. There is clearly something going on here. - I actually never liked him too much, our country was split between Deix lovers and Haderer lovers when it comes to caricature, and I always was of the latter group. I just mention that because you know who Deix is, which still puzzles me.

(10-16-2017, 05:02 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: It's all because you're interacting with someone who actually understands polling and can reliably infer information from it.

Is that so. Could you answer me two questions then, a) who are those people actually giving answers to pollsters and how can they possibly be representative and b) did you also foresee our green party falling out of parliament.

With our polls, maybe there was some distinct quality control going on after recent incidents that can only be described as embarrassing prediction debacles.

[Belsnickel]

(10-16-2017, 05:26 PM)hollodero Wrote: Is that so. Could you answer me two questions then, a) who are those people actually giving answers to pollsters and how can they possibly be representative and b) did you also foresee our green party falling out of parliament.

With our polls, maybe there was some distinct quality control going on after recent incidents that can only be described as embarrassing prediction debacles.

A: No, I didn't see that coming, though it would've been tough based on polling. PILZ, NEOS, and GRÜNE were all polling similarly. NEOS and PILZ ended up with results not to far off what the average polling said, but GRÜNE underperformed. I have a feeling this may be a result of some voters moving to parties not listed in some polls. Without going through each and every poll, though, that'd be hard to say for certain. I would've expected PILZ to be the underperforming one, given the new kid on the block status. Regardless of that, I think the results were well within the margins for all of them.

B: Each poll is different, but when we poll we strive for a representative sample. You start off with a large number of people, which gets smaller. Pew sees about a 9% response rate for their polls, for instance. That 9% may be several thousand people, though. Then you use demographic questions to categorize those responding to the questions. Once you have them categorized, you use the responses themselves to come up with the statistics. What you see as the margin of error (the +/- amount) is a calculation that is based upon how representative the sample is and how the respondents in those categories answered. So the more a sample deviates from the population, the greater the margin of error.

When I look at polls, I look at longstanding, reputable firms. I also, though, like to look at aggregated polling averages. What this does is help to even out some of the inherent biases, whether it be selection bias, bias in the wording of the question, or maybe what questions they ask at all. When you look at these averages of multiple polls, it gives you a great picture of what the public opinion is on a topic. It's essentially looking at the statistics of statistics of public polling, which gets a little meta, but it's fun. In the field I study in, we use this to gauge how politically viable a policy idea may be. We can write up a policy proposal that is heavily evidence based and is air tight in that it will benefit society in a large number of ways, but if public opinion is against it then it has to be shelved until the environment is more friendly and it can become more viable in the political arena.

[StLucieBengal]

https://online.seterra.com/en/vgp/3007

Europe map quiz

[hollodero]

(10-16-2017, 05:50 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: A: No, I didn't see that coming, though it would've been tough based on polling. PILZ, NEOS, and GRÜNE were all polling similarly. NEOS and PILZ ended up with results not to far off what the average polling said, but GRÜNE underperformed. I have a feeling this may be a result of some voters moving to parties not listed in some polls. Without going through each and every poll, though, that'd be hard to say for certain. I would've expected PILZ to be the underperforming one, given the new kid on the block status. Regardless of that, I think the results were well within the margins for all of them.

Well, I could add some context, but that would lead straight into overall very uninteresting depths of Austrian politics. So just shortly. PILZ is named after a former green party member named Peter Pilz, the green party more or less split up. The Pilz founder is a well-known decade-long political figure, so he was not really a "new kid on the block".

There aren't many relevant parties aside the polled ones. We do have communists and christian parties and some widely content-free projects, but they don't account for much, 2% overall tops.

And yes, the results of the polls were quite accurate. I can admit that.

(10-16-2017, 05:50 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: B: Each poll is different, but when we poll we strive for a representative sample. You start off with a large number of people, which gets smaller. Pew sees about a 9% response rate for their polls, for instance. That 9% may be several thousand people, though. Then you use demographic questions to categorize those responding to the questions. Once you have them categorized, you use the responses themselves to come up with the statistics. What you see as the margin of error (the +/- amount) is a calculation that is based upon how representative the sample is and how the respondents in those categories answered. So the more a sample deviates from the population, the greater the margin of error.

You make that sound so cool...  

(10-16-2017, 05:50 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: When I look at polls, I look at longstanding, reputable firms. I also, though, like to look at aggregated polling averages. What this does is help to even out some of the inherent biases, whether it be selection bias, bias in the wording of the question, or maybe what questions they ask at all. When you look at these averages of multiple polls, it gives you a great picture of what the public opinion is on a topic. It's essentially looking at the statistics of statistics of public polling, which gets a little meta, but it's fun. In the field I study in, we use this to gauge how politically viable a policy idea may be. We can write up a policy proposal that is heavily evidence based and is air tight in that it will benefit society in a large number of ways, but if public opinion is against it then it has to be shelved until the environment is more friendly and it can become more viable in the political arena.

Yeah right, but although I get you have a certain affinity for European politics you did not really look at aggregated polling averages for the Austrian election :) At least I think so, there are limits. I guess I widely understand what you say. My claim would be that the systematical error in polls seems high, I do not doubt the math behind the gathered numbers. I also get these systematical errors can be taken into account with suitable qualifiers; only the final results lately were quite far away, which lead me to questions like, ok who actually answers to some dude asking what he'd vote for and why (because I certainly wouldn't, and I guess many demographies are more unlikely to do it than others).

Since the latest polls did ok (unlike the first actual post-election projections, that differed so much that party members displayed whole different kinds of moods on the different stations), I guess our institutes bettered their efforts. As necessary. I didn't actually make a meta-poll out of all the available polls though; sample size would be small.

As for the rest, that's sure an interesting field of study... but doesn't it sometimes frustrate you when good ideas have to be shelved because they don't sell with the lazy, easily influenced mind that is the public. Or asked more directly, do you see it strictly professional or do you often reach the conclusion that the public opinion is quite stupid.  

[Dill]

(10-16-2017, 05:26 PM)--hollodero Wrote: Manfred Deix is your source?. . . I actually never liked him too much, our country was split between Deix lovers and Haderer lovers when it comes to caricature, and I always was of the latter group

He popped into my mind when you were going on about the "primitive" Austrians.


LOL maybe from the "***** Austriacus Neanderthalensis" series. 

Haderer is fantastic too, but I thought he was German. (Please don't be angry.)