Polls are actually pretty good. It’s just that people only really notice when they are “wrong.” At this time, they probably don’t mean much when it comes to the outcome of the election because we are so far out, but that doesn’t take away their value when it comes to taking the temperature of the American people.
It’s just that people only really notice when they are “wrong.”
they also get wildly misreported and speculated on. this is the source of the idea that “the polls were wrong” and “trump outperformed the polls” in 2016. The real truth is that the polls said that clinton wins three times out of four, but you had media outlets like HuffPo reporting that she had a 99% chance of winning, and they established the narrative that trump was a clown and the election was a foregone conclusion. Then the coin came up heads twice in a row, which is what a 25% chance represents in intuitive terms, and while Clinton was doing her preemptive victory lap in BlUe TeXaS he actually won the election.
Nothing can predict the election with 100% confidence, but polls are literally the best data we have to go off of. Sure, they can vary pretty wildly based on who the research agency is, but there’s no better predictor of election outcomes than a good meta analysis / aggregate. If the research is sound and the poll results shift, that’s typically a good indicator of actual voter intent.
Polls don’t mean shit, they’re wrong constantly and shift on a dime. Just write some good fucking policy and focus on the people
Polls are actually pretty good. It’s just that people only really notice when they are “wrong.” At this time, they probably don’t mean much when it comes to the outcome of the election because we are so far out, but that doesn’t take away their value when it comes to taking the temperature of the American people.
they also get wildly misreported and speculated on. this is the source of the idea that “the polls were wrong” and “trump outperformed the polls” in 2016. The real truth is that the polls said that clinton wins three times out of four, but you had media outlets like HuffPo reporting that she had a 99% chance of winning, and they established the narrative that trump was a clown and the election was a foregone conclusion. Then the coin came up heads twice in a row, which is what a 25% chance represents in intuitive terms, and while Clinton was doing her preemptive victory lap in BlUe TeXaS he actually won the election.
Nothing can predict the election with 100% confidence, but polls are literally the best data we have to go off of. Sure, they can vary pretty wildly based on who the research agency is, but there’s no better predictor of election outcomes than a good meta analysis / aggregate. If the research is sound and the poll results shift, that’s typically a good indicator of actual voter intent.