Polls always matter, you just have to understand polls.
This is with third party options and show Biden up 2% which is probably close to margin of error.
It doesn’t mean Biden has it in the bag, but it means his chances are improved.
But Biden risks the same dangers Hillary did in 2016.
People don’t really want to vote for them, they just don’t want trump. So there’s a risk if Biden is polling too well (I don’t think it will be an issue) people will stay home thinking they don’t need to compromise their morals because trump will lose.
It’s a dangerous game, and we wouldn’t have to play it if we ran a candidate popular with Dem voters.
The margin of error for polls six months out from election, if memory serves, is about 14%.
I think people are phrasing this wrong: it’s not that the polls are worthless, it’s that it does not tell you what’s going to happen on Election Day in any real sense. They’re useful for watching trends and gauging short term changes and impact. They are useful for telling you how things are going. They do not tell you anything remotely useful about how things will be.
Nor are they even remotely reliable to gauge things in the short term.
The methodology of collecting this data can be so heavily bias that the pollers can get whatever result they’re looking for, if they’re pursuing a narrative. I could write a poll that leads the poll takers to just about any desired conclusion by choosing very targeted questions with bad faith multiple choice options, and by conducting the polls targeting specific demographics. It’s a trivial thing to do.
Instead, you have to deep dive into the polling methodology, have a deep understanding of the quality of the poll operators, etc, to have any idea of if the poll was even trustworthy.
I, for one, dismiss polls entirely. There is too much disinformation, too many bad actors, whose entire goal is to “prove” their own biases in favor of their narrative, that the amount of shit buries the truth. So it seems a pointless exercise to sift through the shit to find the nuggets of truth, particularly when good faith polling isn’t at all reliable in the first place.
Exactly, also the expert in the article says basically the same thing in more diplomatic language:
However, speaking to Newsweek Todd Landman, a professor of political science at Nottingham University in the U.K., said it was “still too far out from the election” to read much into swing state polls.
He said: “The race remains highly volatile, and it is still too far out from the election to make any firm conclusion from changing polls across these swing states.”
Math is math. In order to calculate the margin of error you need to know the sample size. The number of months involved is not a part of the calculation.
Then it’s not margin of error, the predictive accuracy - whatever the term is - is far worse 6mo out from an election (5 now i guess) than the ones that are days or a week or so out. That’s the point. Polls now are useful but not for saying who will win in November. You may as well forget the top line numbers as soon as you see them unless you’re comparing them over time and/or looking at cross tabs for broad demographic trends, which is also limited but useful in some ways.
“Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall in love” old people (Republicans) vote, always, because they are retired. Democrats work and need to go out of their way to vote, so you have to convince them.
So there’s a risk if Biden is polling too well (I don’t think it will be an issue) people will stay home thinking they don’t need to compromise their morals because trump will lose.
That’s largely how Romney lost to Obama in 2012. Republican turnout sagged in a year when both candidates’ approval ratings were underwater. Mitt lost a bunch of midwestern states that a candidate like Bush or Trump could have won, thanks to his vulture capitalist career alienating blue-collar conservatives and his weird knock-off religion alienating evangelicals.
Whoever on your account team wrote this one is funny. They’re right. But I love how they wrote that Biden will poll well, when the other guy has been spending weeks saying how bad he’s doing.
Consistency my guys. Get your stories straight. Especially if you’re going to comment walls of text multiple times every hour every day. Don’t make it so obvious.
Polls always matter, you just have to understand polls.
This is with third party options and show Biden up 2% which is probably close to margin of error.
It doesn’t mean Biden has it in the bag, but it means his chances are improved.
But Biden risks the same dangers Hillary did in 2016.
People don’t really want to vote for them, they just don’t want trump. So there’s a risk if Biden is polling too well (I don’t think it will be an issue) people will stay home thinking they don’t need to compromise their morals because trump will lose.
It’s a dangerous game, and we wouldn’t have to play it if we ran a candidate popular with Dem voters.
The margin of error for polls six months out from election, if memory serves, is about 14%.
I think people are phrasing this wrong: it’s not that the polls are worthless, it’s that it does not tell you what’s going to happen on Election Day in any real sense. They’re useful for watching trends and gauging short term changes and impact. They are useful for telling you how things are going. They do not tell you anything remotely useful about how things will be.
Nor are they even remotely reliable to gauge things in the short term.
The methodology of collecting this data can be so heavily bias that the pollers can get whatever result they’re looking for, if they’re pursuing a narrative. I could write a poll that leads the poll takers to just about any desired conclusion by choosing very targeted questions with bad faith multiple choice options, and by conducting the polls targeting specific demographics. It’s a trivial thing to do.
Instead, you have to deep dive into the polling methodology, have a deep understanding of the quality of the poll operators, etc, to have any idea of if the poll was even trustworthy.
I, for one, dismiss polls entirely. There is too much disinformation, too many bad actors, whose entire goal is to “prove” their own biases in favor of their narrative, that the amount of shit buries the truth. So it seems a pointless exercise to sift through the shit to find the nuggets of truth, particularly when good faith polling isn’t at all reliable in the first place.
Exactly, also the expert in the article says basically the same thing in more diplomatic language:
What horseshit… you need to know the number of people polled in order to know the margin of error.
I mean Larry sabato just cited this stat days ago but I’m sure you’ll say he knows nothing.
You can average the top performing polls to get this.
Math is math. In order to calculate the margin of error you need to know the sample size. The number of months involved is not a part of the calculation.
Then it’s not margin of error, the predictive accuracy - whatever the term is - is far worse 6mo out from an election (5 now i guess) than the ones that are days or a week or so out. That’s the point. Polls now are useful but not for saying who will win in November. You may as well forget the top line numbers as soon as you see them unless you’re comparing them over time and/or looking at cross tabs for broad demographic trends, which is also limited but useful in some ways.
Fair enough… if we both agree that “margin of error” has nothing to do with number of months; I have no argument.
It’s wild, but it raining on election day might have more an effect than anything that’s happened recently.
Fuck.
I think I know who won’t be discouraged by a little rain.
It can’t rain everywhere all day though right?
Are you invoking The Crow?
Hah. No. but I get the reference. wasn’t it “it can’t rain all the time” ?
True, but since you refused to run this year we’ve had to make do with Joe.
Literally all the dems have to do is not be shitbags.
Weird that Republicans are never held to such standards.
“Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall in love” old people (Republicans) vote, always, because they are retired. Democrats work and need to go out of their way to vote, so you have to convince them.
That’s largely how Romney lost to Obama in 2012. Republican turnout sagged in a year when both candidates’ approval ratings were underwater. Mitt lost a bunch of midwestern states that a candidate like Bush or Trump could have won, thanks to his vulture capitalist career alienating blue-collar conservatives and his weird knock-off religion alienating evangelicals.
Whoever on your account team wrote this one is funny. They’re right. But I love how they wrote that Biden will poll well, when the other guy has been spending weeks saying how bad he’s doing.
Consistency my guys. Get your stories straight. Especially if you’re going to comment walls of text multiple times every hour every day. Don’t make it so obvious.
If a group of people are intent on spreading misinformation why would more than one of them use the same account?
Each of them would have many accounts.
Have you read any of their comments? They’re all over the place claiming contradicting things.
That’s not an answer though?
Am answer to what, you taking something too literally? Why would I answer that.
because you’re making bizarre assertions about teams of people using accounts?
🙄