The weirdness of a poll that believes that morbidly obese Donald Trump is more physically fit than jogger/bicycler Joe Biden has been kicking around the news environment for a few days now. As I’ve mentioned here briefly, Politico made the observation early on that this was a random poll of voting age adults — not the usual poll of registered voters and/or likely voters. PoliticusUSA has done some research on this poll and is calling bull$hit, in essence.
I have participated in the ABC News/Washington Post Poll in the past, and one of the things that you need to understand first is that this is a random poll.
The polling company hired a call center and randomly called 1,006 Americans.
According to the poll’s methodology:
A dual frame landline and cell phone telephone sample was generated using Random Digit Dialing procedures by Survey Sampling International (SSI). Interviewers called landline and cellphone numbers, first requesting to speak with the youngest adult male or female at home. The final sample included 254 interviews completed on landlines and 752 interviews completed via cellphone, including 583 interviews with adults in cellphone-only households.
Here is how the poll is conducted.
A call center calls 1,000ish random Americans. The call center employee, who isn’t a pollster, but someone who may have been doing random calling for Xfinity or some other company or product an hour earlier, reads the questions. The respondent self-identifies as a Democrat, Republican, or Independent.
Since this isn’t a registered voter poll, the person asking the questions has no idea if the respondent is telling the truth.
The polling profession has been severely challenged since 2016 when Donald Trump came on the scene. I am sure that you remember all the polls that had Hillary winning by 96%. One poll I saw gave her 98%. It was at that time that the awful truth came out that Trump underpolled incredibly, and it was speculated that people just didn’t want to tell the truth, that they were voting for him.
Now, I think that it’s the opposite. I think that randomly polled people might be taking advantage of the situation to troll the pollster. I have no evidence of this, it’s just an instinct, based on the cockeyed and contradictory results of this particular poll.
The Poll Results Suggest Something Is Not Right
The ABC News/Washington Post Poll is full of weird results. Most respondents think Trump should be charged with crimes, but they also support Trump over Biden 49%-42%, so these respondents want to put Trump in jail and elect him as president.
It doesn’t make sense.
Even though Biden and Trump are only a few years apart in age, respondents are worried about Biden’s fitness for office, but not Trump.
Given what has been documented about Trump’s historic levels of unpopularity and the fact that his presence caused Republicans to underperform in the midterm election, I suspect that the data sample is flawed through no fault of the polling company. Polls based on random samples like the ABC News/Washington Post Poll are notoriously volatile and inconsistent.
The Media Treats All Polls As Equal, And That Is A Problem
The media knows little about polling and doesn’t care to get educated. The press only wants a topline number that they can make a headline out of. It is disappointing that ABC News/Washington Post decided to run with a poll with many red flags.
The corporate media uses polls to validate their coverage and create their own news, which is why media companies should not be polling. An inherent conflict of interest leads companies to publish results that will generate the most headlines, which is what ABC News/Washington Post appears to have done.
This essay is well thought through and the facts it brings to bear make a lot of sense. Trumpty Dumpty, of course, is having a field day with it. You knew he would, right?
I thought he was supposed to be testifying right now in NY? pic.twitter.com/h6ZRcz8pJ4
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 8, 2023
Nobody is more out of it than Mr. Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV. You do remember that feat of cognitive achievement, do you not?
I hate to say ignore all the polls. But after what we went through in 2016, that might just be the best advice.
Whomever is ahead in a poll, Biden or Trump, I think the operant way to behave is that we always act like we’re fifteen points down and work all that much harder. That’s the only way to guarantee victory.
Polling is a science and when PROPERLY done usually yields reasonably accurate results. Properly is of course the operative word. It’s incredibly challenging to construct the questions as well as train those who will ask them to administer them to the people they reach – and discard respondents that trigger certain indicators of deception that will skew the results. Another big challenge is the polling sample. Getting the right mix of people to represent the state in question or the country as a whole. That’s gotten increasingly difficult in the last couple of decades.
As you say not all polls are created equal. Some news organizations make a decent effort to ensure polling they report on is accurate as in properly conducted and with a properly sampled portion of the electorate. Sadly, I’m not surprised that two formerly well respected news outlets contracted/reported such a shoddy poll.
I’ll keep saying it until the sun dies and swallows up the earth in that final expansion – as a whole journalism is lazy and doesn’t want to do actual in-depth investigative reporting. It’s hard work. Far easier to go with “LOOK! SQUIRREL!” and baffle folks with bullsh!t. Not to mention controversy sells. So does a close election. It’s sooooo much easier for journalists to spend their time speculating (more like blathering) about the “horse race” than to do in-depth reporting on what candidates propose, how they might get their proposals enacted (or what might stop them) and what it will mean for people. So, if there’s no actual horse race they (journalists – and if they don’t want to their bosses will ORDER them to) to cover they will goddamn well move heaven and earth to create one.
so, ex-prez word salad is more on the ball upstairs than President Biden? Did the people doing the calling only dial numbers with MS area codes? Such stupidity could be explained if this is so.
Seems logical to me. Biden presents as ancient and infirm, with his gaunt face, white hair, and unflattering suits. Trump spends enormous amounts of money hiding his age and weight. It’s all fake, but appearances matter in the court of public opinion.
I disagree. One photo of Fat Donnie in white golf shorts that where two sizes too small should have made it clear how not fit try is. He cannot even walk.down a ramp. He uses,a golf cart when he hits the links. I doubt he could 18 holes.
I know. Let’s see Donnie ride a bike. A real.bike,not a,stationary one. Two.blocks would leave him wheezing and unable to continue.
You nailed it in one sentence, Ursula: I stopped lending any credence to polls after 2016.
So, who are they calling? People that still have hard wired telephones? The computer illiterate and those born before 1940?
Dumb f4cks like grassley?
Did you read the article at all? If you had, you wouldn’t have posted such an inane comment. In case you missed it:
“Interviewers called landline and cellphone numbers, first requesting to speak with the youngest adult male or female at home. The final sample included 254 interviews completed on landlines and 752 interviews completed via cellphone, including 583 interviews with adults in cellphone-only households.”
So, 254 landline interviews compared with 752 cellphone interviews. Only 1 in 4 interviews was with people “that still have hard wired telephones.” As for the “computer illiterate,” that still seems a better choice of interviewees than someone who can’t manage to read an article before posting a comment that was answered IN THE ARTICLE. What’s YOUR excuse for YOUR “illiteracy?” (Oh, and as for your apparent ageist comment, just remember that Joe Biden was born in 1942–two years is not that vast a difference especially when so many of the “polled” people feel that the “born in 1942” is somehow a concern about “fitness.” Wouldn’t you think that people “born before 1940” would find Biden’s age to be OF NO CONCERN since he’s younger that they are?)
wake up on the wrong side of the bed, old timer?
The poll also oversampled Republicans which automatically invalidates it.
Considering the poll ASKED THE RESPONDENTS HOW THEY IDENTIFY, it didn’t “oversample Republicans.”
It’s next to impossible for a poll to call people based on their actual voting records and, if you’re taking a RANDOM poll, when you ask the person “Do you identify as Democrat/Republican/Independent,” you have to take the answer they give. *IF* too many respondents identify in one direction or the other, then your poll will be invalid (unless the poll is developed for specifically partisan purposes such as for a primary election) and you have to start over. Since this poll only had a difference of 42 more “lean Republican” respondents compared to “lean Democrat,” that’s well within the realm of validity.
I am glad this poll came out. I want people to panic and vote. Democrats win when it’s a big turn-out. We don’t need another 2016 that had low voter turnout & we thought we had it in the bag.
“I am sure that you remember all the polls that had Hillary winning by 96%. One poll I saw gave her 98%.”
Um, Ursula? *I* don’t remember ANY of those polls (much less “all the polls”). I think you miswrote something, somewhere. A win BY 96% would mean Hillary would’ve gotten 98% of the vote (with Trump and getting 2%–or Hillary getting 97%, Trump getting 1% and everyone else getting 1%) and a “98%” margin would mean Trump got only 1% of the vote.
I think I remember polls with Hillary winning by like 10% or so but if there really were polls such as you described, they were completely delusional (even more than this Biden-Trump poll) because that quarter century of Clinton-bashing by the right-wing media (and loads of help from the “liberal media”) kept Hillary from even being guaranteed of 95% support from Democrats, much less 96-98% of ALL voters. (According to exit polling after the 2016 election, Hillary only got 89% of all Democratic voters and only 84% of all “liberal” voters.)
I remember those polls, old timer. Clinton was supposed to win all of those states that she didn’t campaign in. like Michigan for instance….
take a chill pill.
After looking at the other questions asked by the poll, especially on the abortion issue, I’m really shocked that the same people who gave Trump such good numbers were willing to call out the Supreme Court justices as “voting their personal political views” rather than following the law and strongly opposing the Dobbs decision. And it was also funny that a majority of respondents felt that Trump SHOULD face charges for his part in the insurrection and that the debt ceiling shouldn’t have any connection to budget matters. Even more hilarious was that while both Biden and Trump are viewed negatively regarding trustworthiness and honesty, Trump is seen as even less trustworthy and honest than Biden (Trump is viewed as NOT honest and trustworthy by 63% while Biden is viewed that way by just 54%) and yet these people would prefer Trump over Biden.
I quit using landlines for surveys in the early nineties. Who are the dumb fucks supporting this kind of irresponsible surveying and reporting? This is just more fucking idiots on parade.