Researchers involved in the usc dornside day break poll. Thank you for inviting me. Before we get into the experimental polling method, tell us, using that method right now, who would win the popular vote and who would win the Electoral College and hence the white house . We are actually part of a Research Team partnering with usc. Were skrg a panel of participants for their own intentions to vote and using several new methods were hoping the shed light on the election. In particular were asking people who they think their friends will vote for. According to this, biden still wins popular vote by a more narrow margin than most polls predict. When it comes to electoral votes, although our poll was not designed to do statelevel predictio predictions, there is a possibility that trump could win electoral vote or at least what were seeing is a very close race. All right. So i understand that unlike other polls where they kind of get at who would you vote for, youre asking, hey, who do you think people in your Social Circle would vote for and who two you think your state would vote for . Why do you think thats a more accurate way to read the tea looefls and really get at what is going to happen . From our previous work on social judgments and how people make judgments about other people, we realized people are pretty good knowing what their friends and family think about different issues. Thats normal because we need these people in our daily lives its only normal we know who knows what, who thinks what and so on. We thought maybe we could tap into this wisdom of crowds to try to understand better who people are going to vote for. We think by asking people about their friends, we might get Additional Information about people who are not in the poll some people wont answer the phone, but their friends might say who theyd vote for. Interesting. Sometimes people want to high who theyre voting for, but when you say who do you think your friends might vote for, youll come out and say who you probably would have voted for, too . We definitely see that. Some people maybe not embarrassed, but they feel harassment admitting they would vote for a less popular candidate in their social environment. The pollster doesnt know the name and number of their friends. Mirta, lets take a look at the graphs. This is on your website looking at the percentages. This one is showing traditional polling questions based on the traditional polling method. You can see the blue line is biden at 53 . The red line is trump at 42 . Under the traditional polling method, clearly that mirrors the National Polls were seeing biden wins. Now lets different graph. Look at that. That is a tie in terms of percentages. Wow, what a difference. We see people are expecting a very tight race. We think there are at least two reasons for that. One is people still remember 2016 election and how close it was and are afraid that there might be a lastmoment surprise for either candidate. Also, people expect that there are people who are not reporting their true intentions to the polls so theyre expecting especially a silent trump voters that will come out. When you look at who do you think your state will vote for, who do you think your Social Circle will vote for, it does look to be very close. How do you get from pretty much a tie to President Trump winning the Electoral College . Our main question that were paying more to is about who their Social Circles, friends will vote for. That question predicts a healthy margin provided in the popular vote, currently four or five Percentage Points which is not as much as the most i think the average poll is around eight Percentage Points, but still a win for biden. But if we look at the average of Social Circle reports in different states, then we see some states that are predicted by polls to go for biden might have according to the question, opportunity to vote for trump. Again, our vote has not been designed for we should take it with a grain of salt. I do understand this is an experiment youre looking at. Dorn side still has its more traditional method. Would this have predicted President Trumps surprise victory that most pollsters missed in 2016 . Youre correct. We actually tried this question in five elections so far. The first being 2016, u. S. President ial election. Thats when we actually predicted electoral vote for trump. Then we also tried this question in four other elections, in u. S. In 2018 and three european elections because we thought maybe there was something about the american voting size stem. Every time, Social Circle question predicts Election Results better than the question about own intentions in the same poll. Sometimes better than the overall polls. That said, its an experimental okay, mirta. My last question is whats next . Obviously youre testing this out, so what are you going to do with the Election Results and see where you go from there . Its going to be interesting to see whether Social Circle question will work as well as in last five elections because in the last half a year, all of our social life has changed dramatically. The Social Circle question relies on our knowledge about friends. But all of us are communicating differently with our friends than we did before. So were maybe more oriented towards a few close friends. We lost a lot of touch with our colleagues, people from the gym and so on. Maybe we spend more time on social media. All of this could affect the results of the Social Circle question and the accuracy of the predictions. Mirta galesic, one of the researchers involved in this usc dornside day break poll, this experimental look at your Social Circles and what you think about your state. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much. Well take a short break. When we come back, you know the stock market is tanking this week. Were talking to a financial expert about this and what you can do, plus youve been wondering about this probably. How do you travel to welcome back. The stock market is something that almost all of us are impacted by. Right now theres a lot impacting the market. The dow dropped 650 points yesterday and another 200 today. Joining us to talk about why and what we can do is chief strategist at interactive brokers, steve sosnick, thank you for joining us. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. In the grand scheme of market movements down 80, 900 points in the last couple days is not to panic, but there is a sense of worry. What is driving that . I think there was a sea change in sentiment yesterday. Its very strange when it happens all at once. I think the market sort of came to a realization that it put a lot of hospitals on a fiscal stimulus package and it wasnt coming. A lot of us have been thinking how are they going to do this, if the white house and Speaker Pelosi keep talking and leader mcconnell doesnt want to participate, they cant get it done, and i think the market kind of came to that realization yesterday. Its not happening any time soon, and now its up to the election. As your last guest said, theres only clarity to a point and people in the market dont have that clarity that they need to be confident about. All right. Whats happening this week may have a lot to do with the stimulus thats not coming. How does the market typically behave in the week leading up to a president ial election . Markets are really good at predicting things that are market related like company earnings, sales, et cetera. Political events, markets are not that great. What we see is volatility. Think about four years ago when the consensus was, if hillary wins, the market is going to hip higher. If trump wins, the market is going to crash. The crash happened for about six hours overnight and then its rallied more or less every time since. Markets dont have a great way of getting this right. A lot of traders use options which i dont want to get too technical here, but a lot of traders use options steve, well see if we can get you back. Youre back. We lost your signal for about ten seconds. I want to move on to the next question which is a lot of eyes are on thursday. Whats happening on thursday, especially with regard to tech stocks which here in Silicon Valley we care so much about . All right. Sorry about that folks. Im sorry. Youre back. Well give it one more try. Im sorry about that. Whats happening on thursday . Well, you have what i would call the mother of all earnings day. You have apple, amazon, facebook and you have alphabet or google all reporting about the same time. Thats a huge percentage of the market capitalization of the nasdaq 100 index and a pretty big percentage of the s p 500 index. If they all move together, you can get a huge move in the market as a result of it. Typically, one stock goes up, one stock goes down. Thats a very risky Time Thursday night into friday for market participants, and youre seeing a lot of people hedging against this. Markets Vice President been all that friendly. Microsoft released very good earnings today and the stock is down a percent or two in the afterhours trading. This would actually be the crucial time to be watching on thursday. Those earnings are going to have to be darn good for it to move the stock upwards at this point. I want to ask you about you said the market is not great predictor of president ial Election Results, but i want to ask you, does this show anything about the sentiment right now. Solar stocks have been falling and you think you would invest in solar if you thought biden was going to win. Does this suggest any change in the perception by investors who might win, or is this Something Else . Its funny because first solar released earnings after the close and that stock zoomed. Youre right. The markets change on a dime. This is the problem. Theyre very fickle. So i think right now the trade got the crowded everybody moved into the green energy type of stocks being one bellwether of it. When it gets too crowded think about if youre on a tour boat, one runs to one side of the boat and then to the other side. Thats kind of what happened. Again, that shows the lack of clarity that markets have with the political process. They dont know any better than anybody else. They often think they do. Its not so good for the little guy, the average investor with a 401 k to run to one side when everybody is running to one side of the boat. Thats not going to win anything for you long term. Whats your advice for people . I would say think about what it is that you like to be investing in. Right now its very hard to get yields. There are some real bluechip stocks that have very high yields and actually can earn that kind of money. Theyre a bit out of favor right now. I cant give specific recommendations. Thats not what im allowed to do. But basically dont go running from one side of the boat to the other. Think about whats working for you. Think about if it seems what theyre doing is sustainable. If you can see sustainable earnings and hopefully some dividends in an era where you cant really get much of a return on capital in terms of income doing much else, theyre out of favor, and sometimes i want to be on the side of the boat that nobody is on. Thats your dividend stocks right now. Your better quality bluechip oldfashioned names to a certain extent, the ones that are still bringing in good earnings. Steve, great advice. Thank you so much. Chief strategist with interactive brokers. A few technical issues, but still a great conversation. Take good care. Thank you, kristen, you, too. Coming up, well shift gears. I bet youve been wondering what its like to travel to hawaii. Well talk to someone here at abc 7 news who did just that recently. You dont want to miss that, his for members like martin. An air force veteran made of doing whats right, not whats easy. So when a hailstorm hit, usaa reached out before he could even inspect the damage. Thats how you do it right. Usaa insurance is made just the way martins family needs it with hasslefree claims, he got paid before his neighbor even got started. Because doing right by our members, thats whats right. Usaa. What youre made of, were made for. Usaa slowly but surely people are exploring what its like to go on vacation. One of the most popular and desirable locations in the u. S. Is hawaii which lifted its twoweek quarantine requirement providing you have a negative covid test. Abc 7 news anchor larry beil just got back from hawaii, tan and all. Aloha, larry. Aloha. Kristen, i thought i would dress for the occasion since i dont get to wear a lot of hawaiian shirts on local tv. We had a great trip. I just got back. It was fantastic. Thats awesome. You and i have been talking about this for months, like how to go to hawaii, do it safely. You finally did it. I admire you. Walk us through the process that you had to go through to get approved, get tested before you left and what happened when you landed. Walk us through it. First thing you do, you decide, were going to hawaii. You have to jump on your computer or phone, tablet and go to the state of hawaii website. You can just type in to google safe travels hawaii, it will take you to travel. Hawaii. Gov. Create profile, user name, password, what flight you intend to be on, where youre going to visit, all that good stuff. Then youre set. Thats part one. Its mandatory. Youve got to do that on the website. Then it starts to get a little trickier. Okay. Before we get to the tricky part, when you land, Rebecca Delgado wants to know how was the actual plane trip, the plane ride . It was fine. We were on hawaiian airlines. Theyre still keeping some seats open so you have some space. Pretty much everybody wore masks all the way through the flight except when they were eating. The flight was fantastic. We had no problems at all flying over and on top, everything all good. Okay. But then you landed. Tell us what the airport scene was like processing visitors. What was your personal hiccup . So then you land and then youre kind of like cattle going into various lines. So that is a little bit slow at the airport. They had some issues with it initially, but if you had your test done and you have your results back, then youre going to breeze through. Youll meet with a couple of people. Youll show them your phone designating with a qr code that you tested negative, and youll breeze on through and then youll be going to the beach in no time or wherever you want to go. I dont want to interrupt you, but just looking at the video, youre looking at larry getting a secondary test, right . Tell us about that, after you got there, you had to take it again . No, you dont have to. This is a voluntary thing. Theyre screening about 10 of all passengers and you can choose to opt in or opt out. I chose to opt in, mostly because family members, in as much as they may love me thought, you might kill us if youre positive, so go get a second test. We dont love you that much. So i volunteered and theres a secondary Surveillance Testing Program thats run by dr. Dewolf miller, an epidemiologist. What the results are showing so far, theyre catching basically everybody. Its less than 1 of people entering the state are positive. So theyre catching everybody with that first wave of testing to the point where they may not continue doing the Surveillance Program because its really its less than a quarter of a percent that have turned up positive. Thats that part of the testing. Thats reassuring. You had to quarantine just a little bit while you waited for your negative result to come back so you could upload it and all. Tell us how they handled that at the hotel level. Lets say youre quarantined, how does that work in the hotel . Thats one of the two glitches that i was going to mention. Let me go back. This first thing is really important. After you do the whole business with the website, you have to locate a trusted partner of the state of hawaii. Its on the website. I think theyve got about 16 of them. It could be a cvs, walgreens, quest. Around the country there are various health care providers. The key is you have to have a test within 72 hours before you depart for the state of hawaii. The glitch is when the trusted partner cant return your result back to you in time which is what happened to me. I was in on the second day that this program started, one of approximately 5 of all travelers inbound who did not get their result back. My wife got her test back before we took off. Mine was somewhere in the universe. So i got to the hotel, as you mentioned, and they say like hotel california, you can check out but you can never leave. Youre in your room. Its a onetimeonly key. You can get in the room but then youre stuck there until you can produce a test from the lab, pdf, whatever it is they send you that says you are negative, you are okay. So thats the glitch. You have to be sure that the states trusted partner will be able to deliver their results within 72 hours or then you could end up looking out the land nye at tai to be out. Wishing you paid for the ocean view so you can at least see the ocean instead of whatever youre looking at. You lost one day. Thats too bad. Do you know some people who lost more days quarantining . Yeah, there have been some of those. The state is working feverishly to try to fix that. Thats where the second glitch comes in. Because the app website is not doing a great job right now of getting all the data uploaded so you can get the negative test result back so you can go down to the front desk and go, here it is, i got my qr code, im negative. Im free to go. Some people are having a hard time because theyre getting these notices that say verification in progress. And my sisterinlaw and brotherinlaw have been waiting for three or four days now to actually get verified. Theyre negative. They know they have negative test results, but they cant rent a car until they get certification from the state, the qr code that says youre good to go. You sometimes have to improvise. Ive been talking to the people that run the program back in the state of hawaii, and theyre trying their best and theyre throwing everything they can at this b