There is one field you could not pay me enough to enter right now and that is the realm of scientific polling, particularly the specialty of political polling. For so many reasons that profession is challenged. One very large reason is that people don’t answer calls from unknown numbers. I do, personally, because I keep thinking I might actually be chosen by a pollster. No luck, yet.
Beyond that, I think that finding the right pool of people, certain age, gender, educational level, all the qualifiers that must be met to make a poll worth anything is tremendously difficult. Plus, there’s plain old shock factor. I sincerely believe that a lot of people say they’ll vote for Trump just to be trolls. And actually, that’s working. Those of us who follow politics rigorously run the gamut every day from bemused to incredulous to downright depressed, looking at polls which come out. And we’re not the only ones obsessed. Two entities I can name right now are Fox News and Donald Trump.
Educated women & moms will show up in huge way for President Biden! They have no idea the wave that’s coming! 🌊💙
— Michelle R 🟧🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@Michell89253253) February 4, 2024
The GOP is not reading the tea leaves well these days. Time after time it’s been proven in recent years that safe, legal abortion is a major deal with voters, male and female. Plus, I also believe that Trump has underestimated the power of the E. Jean Carroll verdict. A lot of people in this country — again, men and women — are not sitting still for good ole boy Trump the rapist. And that is as it should be.
Now, on the other side of the polling universe, here comes Donald.
This is a daily event and will remain so probably the rest of the year. I find it so hard to believe that with Biden’s economy booming, and the fact that there was no recession, even though one was predicted due to the global recession due to Covid-19, that Trump is polling at 55% to Biden’s 33%. Again, my mantra is that I simply don’t know what to make of most polls nowadays.
And not just nowadays but for quite some time. In 2016 we were all blindsided. Hillary had a 96% chance of winning and well do I remember one day when it shot up to 98%. There were a few lone voices crying out in the wilderness, Michael Moore’s amongst them, crying out that Trump could win, would win. For the most part those voices were drowned out.
Bear in mind just a few rules: It’s the first week of February. Even in a normal election year, which this emphatically is not, polls should be taken with a grain of salt. Also, bear in mind all the variables. Trump has his indictments and trials coming up. March 25 is when Alvin Bragg’s hush money case goes forward.
We still don’t know how SCOTUS is going to rule on immunity. Anything can happen this year and something bizarre, many things bizarre, are certain to happen. We just don’t know what yet because there are too many variables. As things develop and we see how the 14th Amendment cases are going, how the SCOTUS decision comes down, how Trump’s trials are resolved, how Trump’s health, both mental and physical, holds or doesn’t — all of these things will have an impact on the November election.
So take a chill pill as you throw salt over your shoulder (I suggest gumball size grains) and just lay back and take it all in. The polls are not the indicators they used to be. And it’s early in the game. And the game itself is stupendously handicapped, like never before.
Remember the first telephone polling was way off because only urban or well off people had telephones. Today everyone has a phone but they won’t answer strange calls.
My University just opened a new polling center, they plan on doing phone interviews. I suppose you can’t use just cell phones, but what would be the result of sending out a text message to the person you plan to call to ask them to answer? That would make me much more likely to answer the phone. Telemarketers have basically made phones useless, mis dos centavos
I can’t imagine these polls are the least bit accurate. How many Democrats would answer affirmative to trumps economy vs Biden’s? It’s just not accurate. I’m still hearing many Republicans unwilling to vote for Trump under any circumstances. Now many may not vote at all, which could be a problem, but I can’t fathom him being up in the polls. I’m thinking only small town Republicans answer their phones. s/
Agree totally with you here………
And re the “many may not vote at all” that you present? You bet……….the whole breathless nonsense about Dems sitting it out, and particularly black men, Hispanics, black women, and Arab Americans threatening to sit it out? As Symone Sanders said the other day, this would be cutting our noses off to spite our faces and we’d pay the price.
Further, this makes no sense even in the vacuum chamber many leaning MAGA voters have retreated to–true MAGA, sure, they’ll vote for the orange mango, but those who aren’t certain? I think they are likely the ones who will sit it out rather than hold their noses and vote for Biden. Indeed, they may vote for Kennedy Jr……….which is also a very good “thang” for Biden.
I once took a class in statistical analysis. The measure of a study’s (or poll’s) accuracy is whether the results can be duplicated by another researcher (or pollster). In scientific journals, a study’s methodology, sample size, etc. are published so that readers can know how the results are obtained.
When polls are quoted in news shows, we are not told about how they were conducted. It certainly seems that at least some polls are skewed to produce certain outcomes, which are then used to manipulate news coverage. In other words, they’re worse than useless, they’re intentionally deceptive. As are the networks that promote them.
I’m going with Simon Rosenberg on this polling issue–he is absolutely brilliant, calm, resolute, and quite certain that the polling is so far off we’d do well to do as you say here–take them with a grain of salt. Or in my view, an entire handful of salt.
I don’t think most of us answer unknown callers–I don’t respond on either the house or cell phone and I’m probably not an outlier on this. Further, I do think the polls may be weighted for Trump due in part to trolling but also due to the actual makeup of a majority of his voters. Can’t prove this but it just makes sense to me.