to everyone demanding splatfests be region locked again... just a reminder that while yes, there are many good japanese players, it is also a HUGE title in japan, and as such, has a LOT of younger, worse players as well. region locking isnt going to change anything. the system is the problem, not the players

aftg as cliche high school au

i got bored and was wondering how the foxes would work in american high school stereotypes and now i’m here so. yeah ignore it if it sucks <3

neil would of course be the popular-kid-who-doesn’t-wanna-be-popular

depending on who you are he could either be really nice to you or the biggest fucking asshole

he’s on the cross country team as well as soccer w kevin (duh)

he mainly hangs out w other ‘popular kids’ like matt allison seth dan and occasionally the vixens but like only because his group knows them

he also vibes with renee occasionally

andrew would be the quiet kid who’s actually an asshole especially to teachers and reads during class is that a stereotype? i think so

he’s also probably a gamer kid and he wears a bunch of rings yes youll see

i’ll get more about him later

aaron is that kid in biology who’s got an A+ throughout the whole class and it annoys the shit out of everyone because that shouldn’t be possible

kevin is a jock. yes he is

he plays soccer and does cross country (can you do those both at the same time) (i’m not a sports person)

(let’s say yes for the sake of this)

he’s also one of those history nerd kids 

you know who i’m talking about

nicky is a theater kid and he can actually sing really well

he just never stops

he knows he’s good at singing but it’s annoying walking out of math every day hearing a random song

seth and matt are both jocks and best friends (besides neil) but there are significant differences about them

yes they both were highlighters during middle school but that’s besides the point

seth is one of those kids who during gym is always like “dOnT bE a sOrE LoSeR” whenever your team loses but when his team loses he’s a pissbaby talking about how you cheated and just e w 

he also has pot brownies in the middle of class

he probably asks you for answers for the homework too

matt just vibes and probably accidentally hits the volleyball too hard but everyone loves him anyway

he absolutely sucks at most classes and will absolutely be like “ohHHH thank youu :D” when you help him like literally the puppy eyes give you no choice but to help him

allison is the regina. fuckin george of school

but like if you guys end up sitting together during chemistry and you aren’t a complete dickhead to her she’ll probably give you candy or just whatever she has on her

renee is quiet girl whos actually got good grades and popular girl (allison) highkey has a crush on her

dan is like middle ground like shes a sports girl

but shell willingly hang out with both quiet kids and popular kids

overall really nice

OKAYOKAY NOW

neil ended up getting set up with one of the vixens marisa

(i think that was that girl who neil took to the banquet and was like "why do i need your number" to ?)

anyways he keeps trying to be like "no." over and over but she simply Wont Have It

and then next thing you know hes running for homecoming king and hes this close to breaking his own arm to get out of it

so now. he has to find an outfit

meanwhile Quiet Goth™ andrew minyard and his twin brother aaron have their dad who has a fashion business (mom died in a catastrophic car crash)

and everyone knows this so theyre always asking for like. help and discounts and shit

he says no to all of them

except neil whos in need of an outfit and

very very pretty

like uhh who gave you the r i g h t to have that awkward smile ???

and those t h i g h s ?

so andrews like "eh whatever sure"

yes yes yes yes

and. they end up getting kind of close ?

it kind of astounds everyone

aaron hates it he has calculus with neil and neil has the audacity to be so good at math and just so happens to be the only person andrew helps ?

seth is confused because andrews the only person he cant beat in a good one v one of exy

but also andrew buys a bunch of pot brownies from him and ???? he doesnt know why bc he doesnt even look high most of the time

he gives them to security guards as bribery so he can keep his knives on him during school

and now neils just friends w him ????

and its going well

"so you don't wanna be popular" "...yeah" "then dont"

neil retorts with:

"so your telling me your dad runs a fashion business and you wear all black"

they go back and forth for like half an hour

andrew starts trying to teach neil how to play videogames

neil fucking sucks but he doesnt really care because andrews nice

and actually helping neil pick out his outfit is a fucking pain because he so pretty picky

andrew dies

anyways

neil starts opening up about how he doesnt actually like marisa and andrews like "tell her"

"i hav she just doesnt. listen >:("

andrew offers to but neil knows about the frog knives (yes the frog knives) and hes like hah nice try

they still have nights on the roof and cigarettes and secrets shared

so everything happens and it finally gets to marisas head that neil doesnt wanna go to homecoming (with her. that is)

its like 4 days before homecoming and he jsut snaps

"yaknow i get it—"

she ends up crying but neil doesnt care at this point shes finally off his back

lets face it he would not care that man has zero morals

and so its homecoming night and neils this close to simply Not Going

but matt and seth are on the football team and they have their game and he spent hours looking for a suit

so he goes to the game and he hangs out with the upperclassmen

deliberately avoids the team because theres ways vixens nearby and he cant deal with marisa rn

so he hangs out

he sees aaron in the stands and asks if andrews around aaron just shrugs

useless

and the games over matts team wins yay !!!

everyones happy

now its time for the dance

neils dreading it

he goes and tries to avoid the general public because Ew People

and he sees andrew hiding from the noise in a hallway with no people

theyre quiet until neil follows andrew out to the back of the school and to the middle of the empty soccer field

"you werent at the game"

andrew shrugs "i didnt care about the game"

"and you care about the dance?"

"aaron doesnt have his own car"

"mhm"

andrew rolls his eyes

its quiet and neils just looking at andrew

he kinda had a realization the other night with matts help

andrew simply stares back

"yes or no"

"yes"

kith :)

the school doesnt notice they’re a thing until andrew shows up to school one day wearing what may or may not be one of those wrist. sweatband thingies

im dumb i forgot what theyre called

and neil always has one of andrews rings on him and hes always fidgeting with it

anyways i might write a fic who knows not me❤️

quick lore question if you happen to have a moment - I was reading maiev's will article and apparently in one of the books she had a plot to straight up murder malfurion and almost did it. am I reading this right/is this canon? if so, why does the alliance still trust her? why are we so friendly with her in legion?

bruh omg my elf lore is so shitty… ughgghg youll have to excuse me i just woke up and i think i have strep throat… the most i remember about maiev mercn people was in wolfheart but i didnt even finish that book past the point where garrosh was crowdsurfed to safety because it was AWFUL to get through. i picked up wolfheart hoping it would be about varian and 90% of the book was elves arguing. knaak always makes it about ELVES!!! this is also why my elf history is so poor: the majority of elf-related books and old warcraft history are written by knaak, whose writing i find to be a trudge to get through. 

lucky for me it’s actually in wolfheart, the ONE knaak book ive read, where she plots to kill malfurion on the heels of killing all the other highborne. she’s still pissed that malfurion let illybeans get away and was merciful to him and also kinda cursed her with this ‘vengeance of the hunt’ or some shit, like maiev just has to compulsively be on the hunt now or some garbage, i dont know. blizzard.

so this is kinda convoluted, but bear with me here (it is ten thousand years of history after all). 

Maiev has a brother named Jarod Shadowsong. After the war of the ancients (10k years ago), Jarod left in “self-imposed exile” with his wife, who was a priestess, and lived with her gallivanting around in the forest all that time. He didn’t like the schism happening between the night elves and Highborne and—like his sister—didn’t agree with Malfurion declaring “nature magic is best magic” and kicking out the Highborne. So 10k years go by and all of a sudden they hear rumors that night elves are mortal now (thanks Archimonde) and Jarod finds out it’s true when his priestess wife starts getting old and dying. He’s like, oh fuck. And she’s like “bler bler i want to die in tyrande’s arms with the other priestesseseses” or some shit. So he comes back after [illidan voice] TEN THOUSAND YEARS to bring his dying wife to Darnassus. 

Maiev is FUCKING PISSED. because what’s she been doing for the last 10k years? Guarding and subsequently hunting down Illidan (after Tyrande released him from the prison that Malfurion—HER HUSBAND—put him in!), losing many of her watchers (who she considered family) in the process, killing demons, being imprisoned and tortured back and forth, and basically going crazy over the fact that she wouldn’t even have to DO this shit if Malfurion wasn’t such a dickhead and just executed his brother, or if he worked with the Highborne and the arcane to preserve their world tree (and therefore their immortality) instead of deciding he knew what was best. Had Jarod not left because of his discomfort with the schism, he would have easily become leader of the night elves and changed the course of history. 

like basically, yknow how people were like “boy if thrall just stayed warchief instead of ducking out to start a family or whatever, the horde would have avoided like SO much conflict”? That’s essentially what the deal was with jarod. Incidentally, this is all happening at the same time: Thrall steps down from being warchief, Highborne mages and worgen are welcomed in darnassus, jarod’s wife is dying, and maiev and her watchers are bearing witness to it all.

you’ll notice that night elf mages were not playable until cataclysm, and it’s because of the kaldorei vs highborne spat as to why this is so. previously all the highborne either:

sipped the demon jungle juice with azshara and plunged into n’zoth’s fishland (which is new lore btw lmao, previously it was the demonic energies of xavius’ arrival that disfigured and transformed the highborne into naga but now it’s a pact azshara makes with straight up fuckin n’zoth)

OR they were holed up with the shen’dralar in eldre’thalas/dire maul where they were grounded by papa malfurion for using that horrible no good arcane magic

OR they were highborne who did not become naga, later becoming quel’dorei that subsequently became sin’dorei (blood elves).

but then when deathwing fucked everything up and the twilight’s hammer were trying to use their scary magic, the night elves were like “oh fuck lmao” and invited the (night elf) highborne back into darnassus and, ultimately, the alliance. (this is why void elves are like… just so funny to me. purple alliance elf becomes blue-eyed neutral elf becomes green-eyed horde elf becomes more different purple alliance elf. nature is amazing.)

SO, hearing that jarod is back in town and being pissed that the highborne are chilling in darnassus, maiev goes around killing a bunch of highborne. She throws all her own Watchers under the bus to do so, but it lures Jarod toward her, and the two of them end up looking for each other while searching for the murderer. Jarod goes “Maiev is the leader of the watchers; she’ll know who’s behind this!” and Maiev is like “yes, come to me you lil bitch”. they’re like “who dun it maiev?” and she’s like “me lmao” and backflips out of there. nobody catches her, but with her watchers dissolved and her relationships with her brother and the rest of the night elves strained, they essentially let her go.

FLASH FORWARD TO LEGION

the burning legion attacks! again! but like really bad this time!!! they plunder the shit out of the vault of the wardens and run off with illybeans’ corpse. maiev BIG mad. she comes out of the woodwork to team up with khadgar in the broken isles and overpowers gul’dan. then she goes “oh fuck, i gotta go to the vault and help them” but goes missing along the way. she’s later found imprisoned in black rook hold, where her brother JARRROOODDDD is back on the scene and frees her. he felt bad for going awol for 10k years while his sister was being tortured by illidan and driven insane and wants to make it up to her. 

Ultimately, when illidan joins the brigade as the “chosen one” by xe’ra, it’s generally accepted that the two of them are the only ones who can keep each other in line (nor would maiev ever let illidan out of her sight again), and all things considered maiev is incredibly powerful. She’s also responsible for freeing all of the demon hunters from the vault (essentially having no choice but to do so after the vault is ransacked) and is the best at handling illidan. After illidan flies off to space to fight sargeras for eternity or whatever, maiev is kept in check by jarod. She doesn’t exactly join the alliance again but she’s one of the people who helped find the old text with the night warrior ritual for tyrande in BFA, and agreed to stymie the assault on darkshore. 

ULTIMATELY, maiev has always had her allegiance to her people at heart. she has always wanted the best for the night elves and has seen too much ruin come to them to let injustice continue. With the rest of the alliance’s reluctance to assist them and the continuous assaults from the horde encroaching on what little remains of their homelands, the night elves are pulling out all the stops to protect what they have, even if that means puttin the bitch who wanted to murder your husband at the helm of the resistance. 

tyrande hungers for vengeance for the night elves, and there is no better paragon of that than maiev shadowsong.

Event Two: Straight Flush

CA: if thats howw shits gotta be i get it CA: i really do CA: just lettin you knoww youre gonna regret this. CA: and by the time you realize wwhat a fuckin mistake youvve made in pushin me awway CA: ill be far beyond your reach

-- caligulasAquarium [CA] has left the memo! --

By this point in Eridan Ampora’s life, he knew space as lonely and fickle. He knew that the gaps between stars yawned millennia, and trolls at the top clawed and stabbed each other in the back at every opportunity. As a graduate of the Fleet Academy, Eridan knew this very well. What he hadn’t been prepared for was all the fucking paperwork.

Eridan stared at the blinking cursor on the scheduling spreadsheet in front of him, but no matter how hard he crossed his eyes the numbers never started making sense. As a well-established Dreadnought Condescension team, the DC Reichenbach’s crew all possessed equally established habits and schedules. Needless to say they didn’t take too kindly to an uppity new Head Admin coming in and shuffling shit around.

Eridan leaned back in his chair, lifting his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. The ship had one of its usual hiccups then, the lights flaring as an energy shift took place. Wonderful. With his free hand Eridan fumbled for the intercom button. “Get back in the helm, Riesse.”

After a pause a light blinked on the callbox at Eridan’s side, indicating an incoming call. “Yo, it’s been a perigee. Use my name or I riot,” said Riesse.

“Oh, funny, I can’t see Shakes anywhere on your file Riesse.”

“C’mon.”

“No.”

“Errrridan.”

Eridan rested his head on his desk, staring at the floor as he tried to gather himself.

“Shakes. You’ve got a break from the helm tomorrow, we can’t keep usin’ antimatter engines like this. You know that the maintenance for it costs a fuckin’ fortune-”

“Mmmmyeah we can,” Riesse or Shakes or whatever the fuck that fucking brown’s name was. Eridan was tired of battling about it, but he still felt an obligation to protest. “I got shit to do with Bricks.”

“And the captain, and the Chief Intelligence Officer,” Eridan said. Further slouching caused his glasses to slip right off his nose onto the floor. “You can’t all take a break at the same time every week.”

“Yeah, we can,” said Shakes. “God, haven’t you ever heard of like, free time and social bonding? You should join us sometime. Bricks’ got a rad as hell campaign set up and Illhal said she might be transferring. We’ve got an open spot. Table’s big enough for one mooore. Loosen up, holy shit.”

Eridan hung up the call. “Uppity fuckin’ mudfucker,” he said, picking up his glasses from the floor. “Oh wow, let’s just stick a bulge in the captain, get free breaks just whenever.” 

Ever since the helming techs had come out with mobile helmsman upgrades, highbloods who had quadrants with psionic lowbloods were crawling all over it. Some lowblood sympathetic fleet captains and helming techs and docterrors had written essays about the benefits of this new technology, which boasted alleged benefits such as increased helmsman longevity and better synchronization to the ship’s systems. The technology actually meant that those lowbloods with highblood quadrants were guaranteed the ability to move if their quads got their own ship and the rank of fleet captain, and it also meant that said lowbloods came with a hefty pair of globes to match.

Eridan tried to assure himself that he shouldn’t have been surprised. The Reichenbach’s captain was a piece of work to say the least, and her matesprit was such a cocky bastard with no respect for his blood superiors. As blood equals, with Captain Nekara as his superior in age and rank, Eridan kept his mouth shut to humor her smug piece of shit matesprit who jittered with ridiculous amounts of excess psionic energy.

Eridan’s palmhusk started beeping then, letting him know about breaktime, and he cast a defeated look to the stark and empty crew schedule. Normally he’d just work through his break, considering he never had other obligations. This time, he tried something new.

[Welcome to Poker Palace Server 2022A, caligulasAquarium, apocalypticTreeswing, circuitryCloser, torpidAnnihilator! Please read the rules and have fun! Currently there are 40 viewers of this game.]

AT: aw (fuck) aw beans aw no AT: playing with (fucking) TA?????? CC: hhehhe get wrekt dood CA: wwhat CA: do you knoww each other AT: nah dude’s a (damn) bot or whatever and wins every (fucking) time AT: shoot i wanted to bet money on this match too CC: just bet on TA man CC: thhey’re like always online ur going to make a hHELLA profit AT: my pride tho CA: wwhat pride AT: DUDE :*C

Poker didn’t seem too labor intensive, especially when Eridan could theoretically still work on the schedule on the other monitor. As time progressed he instead found that the match he’d gotten roped into took all his focus after the user torpidAnnihilator wiped the floor with all of them as apocalypticTreeswing had warned. Users could theoretically stay for infinite matches, and so a rematch began.

TA won again.

And again.

Over and over TA called bluff after bluff, and unveiled hand after winning hand after intimidating everyone else, even as AT and CC left and were replaced by other users. Each user expressed dismay at seeing TA there, but something in Eridan had been awoken.

He needed to win. So he kept playing even as his break ended, eyes flicking from schedule to poker match as he continued to lose over and over. He could have fun and loosen up, totally. He just had to win first.

[Welcome to Poker Palace Server 3014C, caligulasAquarium, torpidAnnihilator, gentrificationAwaiting, corporealTone! Please read the rules and have fun! Currently there are 67 viewers of this game.]

CA: ready to lose fucker CA: you cant wwin forevver CT: ...what CA: do i look like im talkin to you GA: i mEan it’s an opEn chatroom, so GA: if you’rE talking to TA good luck haha, CA: ivve been goin at it for four perigees hes gotta lose sometime CT: ...lol GA: LOL, GA: i’vE bEEn playing for tEn swEEps!! GA: thEy don’t losE!  CA: wwell wwere gonna see about THAT noww wwont wwe CA: if youvve got a penchant for believvin anyone that isnt the empress can be infallible youre sadly fuckin mistaken CA: one wway or another im gonna fuckin provve it and then youll eat your fuckin wwords. chumps

TA said nothing as per usual, but this silence stopped bothering Eridan long ago. He had become used to the empty silence that filled the digital lobby during games. Every muscle in Eridan’s body tensed as time went on and he focused, watching everything unfold as he kept his cards close to his virtual chest. The match concluded as it usually did, with GA and CT folding and TA refusing to show their hand. After playing this long, however, Eridan had learned to take his chances. If they needed to, TA usually folded or called a bluff second. This time they’d held onto their cards.

CA: bluff you dont havve shit CT: ...we both got shit hands you know hes got a good one CA: still callin it

With the bluff called, TA’s hand flipped over to reveal a four, two fives of separate suits, and an eight. Not necessarily a bad hand, but not a good one. The entire world stopped and Eridan felt a funny lurch in his digestive sack. He lurched to his feet, staring at the screen for a good minute.

For so many perigees, Eridan had worked towards this very moment. Each second that he stood there taking slow, shaking breaths to comprehend what had just happened felt like an eternity of downright euphoria. He’d done it.

However the world, and more importantly the game, wouldn’t wait forever. He moved his shaky hands to type out the damning words.

CA: straight flush CA: i wwin

A silence followed, and Eridan felt so fucking giddy, like there were clouds below his feet. He hadn’t felt this good in perigees. The commenters who had been gossiping about the inevitable outcome of the match had lapsed into shock with the other players also at a loss. TA, as always, remained silent. Finally, GA and CT began to type, almost in unison.

GA: what CT: ...holy shit GA: arE you fucking serious no WAY you’rE cheating! CA: if this wwere anythin but an online servver i wwould be less insulted CA: i cant code my wway out of a wwet paper bag CT: ...still theres no way you couldve beaten him of all people CA: look a lot of this game is luck okay wwhat the fuck are you talkin about CA: havve you evven played poker before in your life TA: Huh. TA: Well, thII2 II2 a 2urprII2e. TA: ThII2 game wa2 quIIte refre2hIIng, thank you. CT: ...hhhhhhhooooh my god

The match closed itself then, leaving Eridan staring at his victory screen. Something about that quirk seemed familiar, but he shook the thought away. The one he’d known with that quirk had disappeared a sweep before Eridan himself had left the rebellion. He had to be dead by now. Friend requests started pinging on his poker profile as he sat there, viewers of the match itself enamored by the new champion. More than a few angry messages popped up, considering TA’s popularity in betting circles. Only one private message caught Eridan’s attention.

TA: Let me know IIf you would lIIke to play me agaIIn 2ometIIme. TA: II am very aware you have been 2talkIIng 2erver2 lookIIng for me and that would 2ave 2ome ha22le on your end II thIInk. TA: That was the mo2t fun II have had for a whIIle. TA: II may have two quIIt 2oon con2IIderIIng your mo2t deft humIIlIIatIIon, but fIIndIIng a new hobby II2 laborIIou2.

Eridan reread the messages at least five times to absorb just what the mysterious reigning champion of the poker ring was actually offering. There was an odd little flutter in his chest, something he’d thought he’d never feel again. Pride, and a well-earned, well deserved sense of pride at that. Acknowledgement by an ever-supreme master at a craft, even for something as little as poker, meant worlds to him. He couldn’t help the grin that crossed his face, still on a euphoric high  at the sudden turn of events.

CA: uh wwoww okay CA: look evveryone loses evventually unless youre hackin or wwhatevver CA: surprised no one else called you out TA: The thIIng about garnerIIng a reputatIIon IIn onlIIne communIItIIe2 II2 IIntimIIdatIIon and people fallIIng on your bulge in terror ju2t come2 wIIth the whole package. TA: And a2 you know, that II2 the name of the game. CA: i thought it wwas poker TA: What? TA: Oh, very funny. CA: oh my god you talk like a fuckin loser howw old are you TA: That II2 a very rude que2tIIon. TA: II wIIll 2ee you agaIIn, ErIIdan. All haIIl the Empre22. CA: all hail i guess

TA logged off then. Eridan continued to bask in his own victory before freezing, eyes scanning over the last few messages TA had sent.

That couldn’t be possible.

He took a moment, eyes fixed on that one sentence in the chatlog again before he flipped over to his personal profile. No, nothing there. He had made sure not to put any identifying information on his profile apart from his blood color code, which more than a few members did. His name wasn’t anywhere on the site.

Swallowing hard, Eridan closed the poker site down for now and opened this week’s schedule and maintenance logs. Only victory mattered, and he’d accomplished that. What could some random nobody on the internet do to him?

Maybe Shakes’ D&D session would be a little less nerve-wracking.

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

When a presidential race that was supposed to be won by a mainstream moderate instead ends being captured by a far-right gadfly, you better believe pollsters are gonna get some scrutiny. But when this situation took place in the first round of French elections in 2002, bumping the incumbent prime minister from the final round, it wasn’t just the failure of prediction that led to a polling protest. Instead, people were concerned that opinion polling, itself, had caused the outcome.

Twenty-four years earlier, France had muzzled opinion polling, banning the publication of poll results for a week before any election out of fear that voters were following the polls, rather than the other way around. That changed in 2001, and the 2002 election was the first time since the 1970s that French voters had been able to make their choice knowing what their neighbors were likely planning to do.

As hard as it may be for some of us to imagine (especially readers of this website), laws limiting when opinion polls can be published before an election are pretty common. Of the 216 countries whose election rules are tracked by the United Nations-backed Electoral Knowledge Network, 92 have some kind of regulated blackout period where polls cannot be published. Even after its 2002 rule change, France still has a 24-hour blackout period before the vote. Experts say most of these laws are based around the same premise: Polls can influence votes. If you know that most of your fellow citizens are planning to pick a specific candidate, you might decide to be part of the winning team. If you know the person you’d pick is so far ahead that there’s no chance of them losing, maybe you’ll chill out and stay home on election day.

Election poll blackouts are common outside the U.S.

Number of countries per opinion poll blackout duration

Length of Poll Blackout Number of Countries 1 day before election 21

–

–

2-3 days 31

–

–

4-5 days 11

–

–

6-7 days 8

–

–

8-9 days 2

–

–

10 or more days 19

–

–

Not applicable* 33

–

–

No information available 91

–

–

* “Not applicable” includes countries that have no regulations limiting the publication of polls, as well as countries that don’t conduct public polling and ones that don’t have elections.

Source: The ACE Electoral Knowledge Network

But despite the power this fear has to shape law and fuel media narratives, the evidence supporting it is complex. Polls probably do influence how people vote in some situations, experts say. But it’s not anything like a universal, definitive effect. What’s more, some of them told me they aren’t sure that would be a bad thing. The question isn’t just whether polls determine outcomes, it’s also a debate over how people should decide their vote.

Looking through the published research on how polling might influence elections, the first thing you find is that the risk has a name — “the bandwagon effect.” The second thing you find is that paper after paper seeks to figure out if the bandwagon effect is real. How could a thing have a name but still need proof of its existence? “It’s very difficult to get at and isolate this effect,” said Tom van der Meer, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Like many social science questions where the outcome is often determined by interactions between more than one factor, this is not an easy effect to study. Laboratory settings tend to show a bandwagon effect in action, van der Meer said. But these are spaces where research subjects look at pretend poll results and place hypothetical votes, which may not reflect the real world. Observational studies — looking at the outcomes of real elections — are thickets of potential causal factors, nearly impossible to hack your way through. How do you determine whether it was the polls themselves that shifted the vote, or the polls that shaped media coverage that, in turn, shifted the vote? You can see the problem.

But, on the whole, experts say the bandwagon is real. How real, though, depends on the context. “Are we talking about turnout, voting for a particular candidate, support for an issue …?” said Todd Hartman, a professor of quantitative social science at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. “Depending on what area you’re talking about, the effects are stronger or weaker.”

For example, in 2013, researchers used a change in French law to get an idea of the potential impact of polls on voter turnout. Prior to 2005, citizens of France who lived in territories west of the country didn’t get to vote until after the mainland election had ended. Thus, they had the chance to see exit polls before they even went to cast their ballots. That changed after 2005, so researchers could compare several years worth of elections and see how knowledge of the presumed winner changed voter behavior. The result: After 2005, there was a nearly 12 percentage point increase in voter turnout. Far more people in those overseas territories voted when they didn’t already know who the winner was — a finding that has big implications for countries like the United States, where time zone differences mean voters in one part of the country can see the completed exit polls from earlier in the day.

But the effects aren’t always that distinct. A different paper, published in 2016, involved a series of experiments that sorted more than 20,000 Dutch voters into groups that were then exposed to different kinds of polling data. Surveys showed that the people given just poll numbers didn’t change their vote intention at all — they looked no different than the group that received no polling information. But a third group, which was presented with a narrative-style interpretation of the polls showing one party gaining ground over time, did change their intended vote, becoming 2 percentage points more likely than the control group to vote for the party that was surging. That’s a small effect, but it could matter in a tight race.

Another study showed that American voters with strong partisan preferences alter their votes to conform to opinion poll results that show what their preferred party likes or doesn’t like — but won’t do the same to match overall American opinion. Likewise, while polls won’t affect every voter, they can, in aggregate, become self-fulfilling prophecies that heighten how people feel about a given issue.

But while the experts I spoke to generally agreed that bandwagon effects exist under certain conditions, they weren’t as certain about the implications of those effects and what, if anything, we should do about it. They even disagreed with themselves at times. “It’s a hard question,” said Neil Malhotra, professor of political economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

On the one hand, he told me, you don’t want people making choices in elections based on the kind of herding behavior that leads to a mediocre restaurant having a line down the block for no reason other than that there’s always a line there. Sometimes, popularity isn’t actually a proxy for quality. On the other hand, polls can provide voters with valuable information that allows them to vote strategically, especially in primaries where you’re less likely to know a lot about the candidates. Say you’re a Democratic primary voter who likes both Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg. A poll can help you decide which of those two candidates is most likely to benefit from your vote.

Hartman was also conflicted. “People will use whatever information is available to them,” he said. “In an ideal democracy, we’d like to see people making decisions based on the issue platforms. But we also know that many voters are low-information voters, and they’re going to use whatever cues they can to sort out which candidate to vote for.” Those might be endorsements. It might be party affiliation. They might be poll results. In that sense, bandwagons aren’t exactly good or bad. They just exist.

Which means the media has a large role to play in how voters hear about which bandwagons to jump on. Van der Meer’s research on those Dutch voters suggests that raw information doesn’t seem to shift votes, but narratives about the information do. In that case, he said, the media needs to be extra careful how it presents polling data.

Which, of course, brings FiveThirtyEight into the mix. As a publication that presents a lot of polling data to the public, we’re as much a part of this story as we are reporters of it. Nate Silver, our editor in chief, certainly thinks about bandwagons. But he doesn’t consider them to be that big of a deal, he told me. That’s because Silver doesn’t really see the choice as being between poll-informed voting and policy-informed voting. “Without polling, there’s a vacuum filled by punditry and media assumptions,” he said. Banning polls doesn’t necessarily mean people vote smarter. In fact, from Silver’s perspective, it means they’re likely to vote even dumber — basing a choice on speculation instead of data.

In the end, the question of whether polls influence voters might be less important than the question of whether voters have a right to access information they want. Consider, again, the 2002 French election. Analysis after the fact suggests that polling results did make a difference in that upset — leading voters to assume a mainstream runoff was so certain that it was safe to cast a ballot for a more extremist candidate, just to send a message to the winners. If enough people do that, their assumptions about who the winners will be won’t be accurate.

But that outcome didn’t make the French switch back to a longer poll blackout. They couldn’t. That’s because the whole reason the blackout was shortened was that the country’s highest court found it to be an infringement of an article of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prevents public authorities from interfering with people sharing their opinions. Polls may well have changed the outcome of an election in France. But that was a choice the voters had the right to make.

Title: The Complete iOS 11 & Swift Developer Course - Build 20 Apps The Complete iOS 11 & Swift Developer Course - Build 20 Apps pdf download

What Will I Learn?

Develop any iOS app you want

Become a professional iOS developer

Build apps for your business or organisation

Get app development jobs on freelancer sites

What Will I Learn? Develop any iOS app you want Become a professional iOS developer Build apps for your business or organisation Get app development jobs on freelancer sites Description *** Now Updated For Xcode 9 Beta 6 - 24th August 2017 *** Dreaming of developing an app? Maybe youve got a vision, some inspiration and youre ready to learn? Or maybe, youre looking to get ahead at work? Become an expert coder… be star of the show… Or, maybe youre looking for a complete career change? Either way, youre here because you wanna make something BRILLIANT… life changing…. IMMENSE… Then congratulations!! Nick Walter and I have built The Complete iOS 11 Developer Course just for you. I mean, check out what Apple says about iOS 11… “iOS 11 sets a new standard for the worlds most advanced mobile operating system. Your apps can now become more intelligent using the power of machine learning with Core ML. You can create incredible augmented reality experiences with ARKit. 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