Spirit Of '2016 Posting' Returns On Eve Of Election, As Woman Compares Pollsters Nate Silver And Anne Selzer To Feuding Aunt And Uncle

The spirit of 2016 Twitter returned just in time for the 2024 Presidential Election yesterday, as actress and comedian Amy Hoggart compared pollsters Anne Selzer and Nate Silver to an unhappily married aunt and uncle, with Selzer being the brilliant, beleaguered wife and Silver being the oafish uncle.

Over the weekend, Ann Selzer, a well-respected and highly accurate Iowa-based pollster, released a final preelection poll that had Kamala Harris three points up over Donald Trump in Iowa, a significant outlier poll that has been considered more or less a lock for Trump throughout the election cycle.

The poll was cause for celebration among Democrats because, should it even come close to accurately representing the final results in Iowa Tuesday night, it would mean middle-American voters in nearby key swing states Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are breaking for Harris in the closing weeks of the election.

Meanwhile, famous pollster Nate Silver has been drawing the ire of both sides for months, as his model has flip-flopped between giving Harris or Trump the edge throughout 2024. Currently, he is mostly in the crosshairs of Democrats, as his model is more bullish on Trump than the models of other organizations, and many believe Silver's analysis is compromised due to his being employed by current-events gambling site Polymarket, which is funded by conservative entrepreneur Peter Thiel.

Silver praised Selzer for publishing such a significant outlier poll, as he has recently voiced suspicion that the number of pollsters showing a virtually tied race suggests they're hedging their bets after getting embarrassed in 2016 and 2020.

Nevertheless, Selzer's bullish Harris poll and Silver's perceived pro-Trump bias led social media to compare the two, and in the case of Hoggart, depict Selzer as a brilliant aunt and Silver as a loudmouthed uncle.

Many elder Twitter users voiced that the tweet had a very "2016"-feel. During the 2016 election and in the years after it, there was a veritable epidemic of liberal celebrities and verified Twitter users discussing politicians and political analysts with hot takes that served more to reveal their own psychological hangups than offer enlightening insight.

Arguably some of the greatest* (worst*) tweets in site history came from this style of "libposting," such as the "Beto O'Rourke Sex Tweet." Hoggart's tweet gave people horrible flashbacks to that dark time in posting history.

With just one day until the election, it's almost comforting to see some old-fashioned libposting cringe — but let's hope humanity resolves to stop writing fanfiction about politicians, analysts and pollsters in the future.