If the polling is this wacky, why bother publishing it at all?
If the polling is this wacky, why bother publishing it at all?
Over the weekend, ABC and the Washington Post published the results of a poll that made both operations look like its results were the product of a month-long exercise with a Magic 8-Ball. The way you know it was an embarrassment is the Post story about the poll began by telling us all we should probably ignore it completely.
The Post-ABC poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, although the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier.
Don't get complacent. That's the most important takeaway. We need to not only beat Republicans, but to give them massive losses. We want them to lose by double digit margins so they realize fascism has no place in the US, and MAGA can ma-get the fuck out of here.
I'm really curious to read more about the poll itself later, just with how unusual this is. What in the methodology screwed it up? Or do they just have an incredibly wide confidence interval?
It's also worth remembering I think, polling was very wrong in the midterms. They suggested at best that Republicans would win by a little bit, and at worst the "red tidal wave". And we know now it was a trickle, that they can't even claim as a total victory. Dems gained a Senate seat, and a lot of important state government positions in swing states.
There's a few causes for this mismatch I believe:
There's a lot of shitty Republicans pollsters these days that provide a lot of low quality data.
Analysts overcorrected their models after 2020 and it undercounts Democrats.
The huge backlash for overturning Roe isn't being captured in polls for some reason. Abortion continues to be a huge issue that's benefitting Democrats. The economy and inflation were thought to be the largest drivers for the midterms, but if they were, people saw Democrats as the solution for that.