I dislike doubting polls, but there’s just some odd stuff in here.
- 10% go for RFK Jr, and it’s equal siphoning from both parties? 10%?!
- 20% more people blame Biden for Roe being overturned than Trump?
- They’re TIED with Gen Z voters? TIED?!
- After the absolute thrashing that Republicans have received on abortion, only like 50% of women would break for Biden?
This is a poll of just the 5 key states, but this part of their methodology gives me significant pause as well: "To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree. "
Emphasis mine. There could be a huge skew. And these results don’t make sense. The other NYT poll from several months ago was also incredibly unusual and had very weird findings – to the point that the Guardian wrote something was very fucky with the results.
This isn’t to say this can’t be what’s going on, but we need corroboration from other polling groups. And it isn’t summer yet, which makes polls rather inaccurate too.
TLDR: Something’s fucky, we need more information and to monitor this.
EDIT: I just want to use my bully pulpit here to say that my criticisms by no means disprove the poll results. There’s oddities, but that doesn’t make the results an impossibility. Don’t only give credence to criticism of polls. If someone has reasons they believe the poll is accurate, you should give equal attention to it. At the end of the day, we don’t know what the actual truth is, and we won’t until the election is over. Just remember that we don’t want to just win, we want to dominate. We want massive margins. And that means we need to see wins even in less than accurate polls.
A lot of polls have been putting RFK Jr at 10+ percent. There are a ton of low-information voters who see the name and not much else
I mean that’s pretty dismissive.
The largest cohort of people in this country want neither Biden nor Trump. Some of that cohort are willing to step out on a limb and support a third party.
It’s really hard to support somebody like Kennedy when you know his actual positions, and that they’re driven by the fact that a worm ate part of his brain
I’d vote for the worm before I voted for Kennedy, but whomever you are trying to convince isn’t listening. If you want to convince people of something, you need to understand them and why they do what they do.
Clearly at least 10% of voters see having a complete brain as less of a deal breaker than being either Biden or Trump. We should be curious as to why that is.
If you’ve been following the polling there is nothing different or unique about this one. It’s consistent with pretty much all polling over the past 400 days. Biden is losing. Polling is definitely still broken, but it’s consistent. There is no fuckery.
Biden needs to be up by 4-12 in those states if he wants to win.
See my posts in !data_vizualisations@lemmy.world . I make a map of the offset in polling Biden needs to win a given state based on the fact that polls consistently overestimate how well Biden will do, and underestimate how well Trump will do.
When you see these poll numbers, you should subtract 4 for Biden, and add 8 for Trump. That was the offsets we observed from the 2020 election.
So keeping in mind data you already have about Trump, Biden, polling and it’s departure from real election results, it’s not even a question. Mortgage you house and out all your money on Trump to win. You have a differential polling error of 12 points in a Biden Trump head to head. Biden needs to be in the mid to high fifties across the board to have a chance.
He’s in the low forties.
If you don’t end up clicking the link: Relative polling error for Biden V Trump, 2020.
If you’ve been following the polling there is nothing different or unique about this one.
They posted their methodology and to me, as an unqualified lay person, it’s clearly shit, and there’s no reason to think it’ll yield anything even resembling an accurate picture of how people are going to vote in the election. It’s not surprising to me that recent polls in general tend to be as inaccurate as you’re saying they are.
I would be interested to go back and look at some of the polling that led up to recent special elections where Democrats won, and see how the poll results compared with the election results – if you follow polling in detail (which again, I don’t), do you happen to know where I could look to find that?
They posted their methodology and to me, as an unqualified lay person (…)
So like, if you know the above statement to be true, that’s exactly where you should stop in your reasoning. This is something that I find Americans to be guilty if constantly, which is to have the humility to understand that they shouldn’t have an opinion, and the proceed to arrogantly have the opinion they just acknowledged they shouldn’t have. I think it’s a deeply human thing, that we evolved to have to deal with missing information and so our brain fills in gaps and gives us convincing narratives. However, you have to resist the tendency when you know you really don’t know: and even more so when your beliefs go against what the data is.
If you can find me some sources of data on special elections, I’ll happily analyze it for you. I think it would be interesting if nothing else to see the offset. I’m not on my desktop machine, but I’ll give you some sources for data since you asked.
Surely as a qualified non lay person you’ll be able to do a detailed takedown of all the criticism I arrived at for the poll’s methodology from like 2 minutes of looking, instead of just making a broad assertion that if the polling was wrong by a certain amount in a previous year we should add that amount to this year’s polling to arrive at reality, and that’s all that’s needed and then this year’s corrected poll will always be accurate.
Because to me, that sounds initially plausible but then when you look at it for a little bit longer you say, oh wait hang on, if that was all that was needed the professional pollsters could just do that, and their answers would always be right. And you wouldn’t need to look closely at the methodology at all, just trust that “it’s a poll” means it’s automatically equal to every other poll (once you apply the magic correction factor.)
To me that sounds, on close scientific examination, like a bunch of crap once you think about it for a little bit. But what do I know. I’m unqualified. I’ll wait for you to educate me.
I think the right answer is to do what you described, in the aggregate. Don’t do it on a pollster to pollster basis, do it at the state level, across all polls. You don’t do this as a pollster because that isn’t really what you are trying to to model with a poll, and polls being wrong or uncertain is just a part of the game.
So it’s important to not conflate polling with the meta-analysis of polling.
I’m not so much interested in polls or polling but in being able to use them as a source of data to model outcomes that individually they may not be able to to predict. Ultimately a poll needs to be based on the data it samples from to be valid. If there is something fundamentally flawed in the assumptions that form the basis of this, there isn’t that much you can do to fix it with updates to methods.
the -4, 8 spread is the prior I’m walking into this election year with. That inspire of their pollsters best efforts to come up with a unbiased sample, they can’t predict the election outcome is fine. We can deal with that in the aggregate. This is very similar to Nate Silvers approach.
This is quite interesting, thanks for sharing!
My only critique is that I don’t think 2020 skew is valid anymore. After Dobbs, the landscape seems to have significantly changed. 2022 was predicted to favor Republicans by a strong margin, but it ended up being a tie pretty much. And a lot of special elections have had surprising results too.
My personal opinion is that polling methodology may have overcorrected for 2020, and we’re getting a picture now that’s skewed right, versus left from beforehand.
It’s really hard to say though. There weren’t a lot of great polls to start with in 2022, and special elections don’t have significant polling either. It’s a weird position where the only good data set we have is from 2020, but there have been so many changes in the national environment that we have reason to doubt the skews from 2020 are still valid. But at the same time, what else do we have? Vibes and feelings and anecdotes. And the engineer in me dislikes dismissing data in favor of vibes. It’s important to consider still I think, because none of this is infallible. But I honestly couldn’t tell you what the “right” outlook to have is. Maybe I’m onto something, but maybe I’m just letting optimism bleed into my better judgement.
All I know is that I don’t know.
I mean if we’re stepping off the data into editorialism, Trump out performed all other Republicans in 2020, like he also did in 2016. As well, Trump endorsed candidates struggled in 2018, and 2022, and special elections. My read of this evidence and I’ve seen it suggested elsewhere, is that whatever property it is that causes Trump to consistently over perform isn’t transitive. So evaluating how well Trump will perform against how well Republicans are performing is misguided. You should evaluate candidates individually, and that would agree with their performance.
Also, this is one poll. The aggregate of polling agrees with this one poll. The minor methodological changes they make from year to year are infact extremely minor and they are doing the appropriate statistical accounting afaict. There is nothing weird or wonky about these polls: Biden is just performing very very poorly. I’ve been saying this for months to an onslaught of downvotes from people who simply don’t want to believe this to be the case.
Finally, I’ll argue that the ‘right’ outlook is always the one that aligns most closely with the data. We should believe stories we tell about data less than data itself. There is nothing to suggest that this election will really be anything that different than the 3 previous, and in terms of landscapes, the best proxy appears to be 2016 in terms of contested states. You should believe the data that is telling you that Joe Biden is losing this election. Biden has been setting up to lose the upper Midwest since December. These are the same states Hillary lost.
maybe I’m just letting optimism bleed into my better judgement
I agree. It’s also what the political pundit class did when they completely wiffed on 2016, and it’s what they’re doing right now. 90% of Lemmy also agrees with your sentiment, and in both Lemmy’s and the punditry’s refusal to be critical of Biden, to drag him towards more popular policies, they’re setting Trump up for victory.
New York Times doing its thing again
Presenting the poll results for registered voters, with candidates limited to Biden or Trump with no RFK involved, both of which are decisions which will swing things towards Trump and away from reality, is a decision that I’m hard pressed to explain any other way than that they’re looking for the worst numbers they can present.
It’s not even like the answers to the more accurate question were even any better for Biden. To me they look more or less the same (i.e. serious trouble for Biden). My only explanation is that a lot of these likely voters don’t know their ass from their elbow (e.g.
Oooooh
This is interesting.
Look at the question “What one issue is most important in deciding your vote this November?”
It leads off with:
- The economy (including jobs and the stock market)
- Inflation and the cost of living
- Abortion
- Immigration
- Crime
- Gun policies
… and then, way down below, is “The state of democracy/corruption” (with 6% still bucking the trend to vote for it), and “The Middle East/Israel/Palestinians” (2%).
Lo and behold, a whole lot of people voted for one of the first two options, and also tended to answer questions about how they felt about the economy overall, and whether they felt overall happy with how things were going, accordingly.
I would be interested to see how this poll was presented exactly (especially whether written or verbal, and what order for the questions), and what the numbers would be if there was a similar weight of questioning and emphasis given to “The state of democracy/corruption” as a major issue. Maybe the results would be the same. Maybe not. I’d be interested to see it.
(Edit: Someone else sussed it out better than I did; their methodology was actually much worse and more explicitly slanted than that.)
I would be interested to see how this poll was presented exactly
Have you tried the article?
If that doesn’t answer your questions, it links to the poll questions and breakdowns…
But it seems like you just don’t believe in polls, which is weird because I honestly can’t remember presidential polling not getting in the margin of error of the real result.
This is the same shit that happened in 2016 and 202:
The polls say my favorite isn’t winning! Polls are lying! Everyone ignore the polls and act smug we’ll win!
If you’re somehow actually a Biden supporter, these polls should have you working harder to do the only thing that can help him beat Trump:
Pull him to the left.
Or you could spend the run up to the election telling people not to listen to polls and instead…
I dunno? Read tea leaves? What is exactly is your alternative?
Pretend we’re ostriches and stick our heads in the sand? We won’t be able to see any warning signs but you’re gonna ignore them anyways. So sure, you go first and the rest of us will stick our heads in the sand right after you, promise.
Just you go first.
Read tea leaves? What is exactly is your alternative?
Other people in other threads have found more of the fucky things about this poll; it was a phone poll which 2% of people answered the phone for, which made no attempt to correct for “what ideological mentalities are likely to answer the phone to random numbers”, and then on top of that explicitly made adjustments like increasing the weight of non-college-educated people for some pretty dubious reason.
Polls sound great. The fact that the election is even within 10 points, or 20, should lead to alarm in the Biden camp, and cause some deep soul searching for what went so wrong in the American system that we could be talking about electing Lex Luthor mayor and people are taking it seriously as an idea and it’s even a question of who is going to win the election. I think education and media are the main culprits. Concrete things Biden is doing are not unrelated, exactly (especially on aid for Israel), but they honestly don’t seem to make all that much difference, and a lot of people who are voicing concerns about him seem totally unaware of concrete things he’s been doing.
I’m by no means saying don’t be alarmed. I think we should be very alarmed. But yes, also, I think we should call out bullshit polls when they are as clearly bullshit as this one is (as part of examining the reasons why a respectable news outlet would even be reporting a close poll between Biden and Trump as anything other than the absolute looming catastrophe that it objectively is.)
If you’re somehow actually a Biden supporter, these polls should have you working harder
That’s actually a really good point – I’ll try to come up with some concrete things I can do to help Biden win sometimes later today. I just went to verify that I’m registered to vote (I still am), and I think maybe a good thing politically overall would be a little informational thing about who to vote for in Congress. Presumably some little tool already exists that can tell if your congresspeople have been voting for aid for Israel, inform your voting accordingly instead of just blindly checking the D box, things like that, but I don’t know all that much about it.
IDK, I’ll see what I can come up with later on today if I have some time. It’s a good reminder that talking on the internet without some sort of action isn’t always a good investment of time.
The fact that the election is even within 10 points, or 20, should lead to alarm in the Biden camp,
But…
It’s within 1 or points…
Unless… Are you ignoring everything but popular vote polls across the whole country?
If you’re doing that and not understanding why it’s a bad idea, then that explains why you think polls are bad, but you’re still wrong. Your just looking at polls that don’t matter because those are the ones you agree with
The president has little say on the laws that Congress passes. Vote for your local senators and representatives! The only way to realize change is to vote in your local elections!
It is local and state government that is important to making changes! Republicans have figured this out decades ago and have been gerrymandering and packing courts for decades.
The president can’t waive a magic wand and make any change he wants.
The president has little say on the laws that Congress passes.
Vetoes
Executive Orders
Judicial Appointments
Fundraising for Congressional Candidates
An Attorney General that can argue against legislation in federal courts
An enormous administrative bureaucracy that authors internal policy under broader federal mandates
A Vice President who breaks ties in a Senate split 48(D)/3(I)/49®
But other than that…
Republicans in the courts and the legislation block anything that helps those key demographics the article talks about
“bIdEn IsN’t DoInG eNoUgH!!”
It would have been the easiest dunk of his life to go to Manchin or sinema’s districts and hold a rally for legislations that they are blocking and would have garnered support from younger people because he is actually trying and applying pressure. Not just making a statement and saying “owell I tried”.
You want Biden to go into ruby red districts where a dem-in-name-only got into power by the skin of their teeth, and campaign for Democratic policies, and you think those people will welcome him? You think it will be easy??
You’re in a bubble, dude. There’s no silent majority of progressives out there. Just because all of your friends are doesn’t mean the whole nation is.
Manchin got elected because he blocked Dem policies. Not in spite of it.
Then fuck Manchin. If you don’t want to play ball the dems should do everything in their power to make you toe the line. Run as a republican if you want to vote against dem policies.
He DID play ball. That’s why we keep him.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62328875
Manchin is better than a Republican because we can work with him sometimes. You don’t want him to be able to hold up bills? Don’t give us a bare bones Senate majority. Get more Dems in Congress.
Dems have a majority in the Senate but we need to “VoTe HaRder”. Nah you neolibs will come up with every excuse to be goo lite and cry and piss your pants when people don’t want your shitty crumbs anymore.
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it again and again; of course you don’t like the Democrat candidate; but you’ve got to swallow your damned medicine or the outcome will be exponentially worse.
Yeah, I voted for Hillary. I hate her so goddamn much. But you know who I hate more? The orange asshole. So I did what I had to do, I swallowed my anger and voted for the bitch. No protest vote, no skipping out on it, just sucking it up and doing what had to be done. If more people had followed my example, and the example of many others, we wouldn’t be rapidly watersliding dowe the lubed-up slope to outright, unapologetic fascism.
of course you don’t like the Democrat candidate; but you’ve got to swallow your damned medicine
Tincture of Mercury and a regular bloodletting will give us the strength we need to fight off the Trump Virus.
So I did what I had to do
You did, but when the Dem Party regained office in 2020 they didn’t.
Dems had an opportunity to give DC statehood in 2021. Two free senators, a house seat, and an easy 3 EC votes. This legislation was queued up and ready to go and the Dem majority just… didn’t do it. So now 660k Americans are once again going into 2024 fully disenfranchised, in an election when every vote counts.
This isn’t the only way in which the Dems sabotage their own success. But it can’t be ignored how a party that zealously backed guys like Henry Cuellar and Bob Menendez during primaries, long after they’d been outed as crooks and frauds, are the biggest threats to their own success. Never even mind the horrifying genocide in Palestine or the slavish devotion to fossil fuel subsidies or the shameless pandering to crypto-bros.
If more people had followed my example, and the example of many others, we wouldn’t be rapidly watersliding dowe the lubed-up slope to outright, unapologetic fascism.
Every election gives the fascist party larger voter turnout. This isn’t an issue of apathy, but of escalating tensions. Election turnout over the last six years has been reaching century-long highs but its a two-edged sword. Republican activists have been very successful in building up their own local majorities.
More people are following your example. Even in the face of gerrymandering. Even in the face of voter caging. Even in the face of shameless criminal-but-unprosecuted efforts at disenfranchisement.
But that includes conservatives. More and more of them, every year, as Trump drives an enthusiasm for the GOP I haven’t seen since Reagan.
40% of voters are Gen Z or Millenial…
Throw in Gen X and it’s the majority
I wish the DNC started treated them as the main chunk of Dem voters and not a bunch of spoiled children for wanting politicians that represent them instead of their grandparents
It should be comically easy to beat trump, but people just don’t like elderly neoliberals, because of their policies, actions, and often lack of actions.
Gen X does not vote with Gen Z and millennials. They tend to vote alongside the boomers. Therefore, we get Biden.
That is completely unbelievable and I would be very surprised to see a source instead of just an opinion that Genx are Biend supporters with boomers.
Hell, boomers don’t even vote for Biden, most of them go trump.
The Democratic party’s main base has always been the youth, but the party fucking hates them because their more liberal than someone 60 years older.
If the party embraced them, we’d never have another Republican president.
I looked at that article and it doesn’t seem at all related to your claim…
