Polling is broken, right? Or is it the news? Or all of the US?

Politics & Elections
1

Someone explain this to me like I’m 12:

Trump is getting booed in southern stadiums.

Reports show that Truth Social’s users are at least 30% bots and even the bots can’t keep his post numbers up,

His rallies are getting emptier and emptier to the point where he could not fill a 7.000 seat venue,

As per Ballotpedia “As of October 2022, 48 million registered voters in these areas identified themselves as Democrats. At 38.78%, Democrats represented the single largest share of registered voters in the states and territories that allow voters to indicate partisan affiliation on their registration forms”.

And yet poll after poll show him leading Biden for president. This rape-y, Nazi quoting, lying thief. It’s been a while since I’ve ventured out of Cafe Society, be nice (she says after calling someone a rapist thief).

2

They say polls are meaningless at this point, but, yeah, I’m with you. I don’t see how Trump is doing this. It’s insane. Polling has to be broken or something.

Recent polls show Trump leading in Michigan. Michigan, where Dems swept the governorship, AG and SoS, as well as re-taking both chambers of the legislature and securing abortion rights into the state constitution just a year ago. IT MAKES NO SENSE!

3

I think people are less literal when they answer polls now. They’re simply trying to send some kind of message.

4

This is just my take, but I’ll try.

Polls taken this early in the election cycle are notoriously unreliable. It’s not that they’re broken, but people haven’t tuned in yet.

It’s hard for people who pay attention all the time to recognize that not that many people do. So I think when people answer polls, they answer reflexively, without having really delved into the issues. The pollster asks, “Will you vote for a Democrat or a Republican in 2024?” And if they’ve always been a Republican, that’s the answer.

Polls can easily be manipulated for particular outcomes. They’re not all wrong, but when you read one that seems crazy out-of-step with everything else you know, there’s likely a reason.

Because polls are so wildly unreliable this early, I don’t pay attention to them. What I do pay attention to are the little off-year elections and ballot measures taking place across the country. Those have proved to be much better indicators of what will happen in a presidential election. So far, they are much better aligned with your perceptions – and mine.

ETA: I think some pollsters concoct their polls for a particular outcome intended to frighten people into voting, too. Complacency is what got us Trump the first time. Best to keep the majority shit scared it could happen again if they don’t get to the polls and vote.

5

I don’t think a year from the election is that far away, but this does make sense AND makes me feel a little better. 2016 did a number on me, though. That’s when I realized I didn’t live in the country I thought I did.

6

It did that to a lot of us, I think. I do hope more people are tuning in earlier than before, but polls so far indicate… no.

7

I don’t believe this, either. Yes, I believe there is a hard core right that would vote for him even if he was campaigning from Hell, but there are too many swing voters who, unless they are deaf and blind, can’t possibly be supporting him at this point in time.

I think polls are like “news” (air quotes) in general, distorted and dramatized at best and outright lies at worst.

8

I believe the news outlets promote polls. And polling outfits poll anyway. The thing about pollsters is that they seem to compare their own polls to previous polls they took. They seem to have some confidence about their polls in that way.

Polls a year before elections are not much good. I don’t quite understand it but a large group of voters seem to insist on voting. Yet their info on the candidates is basically just the news about two weeks before the election. Sometimes just the day before election.

Making polls the news somehow is preferred to reporting bad news about Trump actions. “Because we are tired of Trump news.”

9

It should also be pointed out that the entire purpose of polls isn’t to predict the outcome of the eventual election but to provide feedback to pundits and campaigns onto how appealing candidates and their polices are at any point. Campaign managers and analysts pay keen attention to the response of polling to announcements and developments to steer their campaign in a favorable way. Polls are also a statistical sampling, both getting an unbiased sample and producing a statistically valid assessment from what is often a small population of respondents is more of an ‘art’ than a science, hence why early polls in particular tend to swing wildly and disagree with one another.

Of course, we’re nearly a year away from an election. Biden isn’t exactly at the height of popularity, either, and recent developments in the Israel/Palestine conflict has peeled off a non-consequential portion of the Democratic base. If the economy gets worse, or there are major natural/climate disasters that are mishandled, or any of a number of hypothetical problems or scandals (real or convincingly manufactured) could potentially tank Biden to the point that even a marginally popular Trump could have the advantage. And remember, Trump doesn’t need to win the popular vote (and never has); he just needs the electoral votes. He may be unpopular now because of public fatigue about politics, but we’ll see how he does as 2024 progresses. Counting out Trump as being an inept buffoon who could only attract the radical disaffected fringe of alt-righters was a mistake in 2016, and it is a mistake, especially when a “rape-y, Nazi quoting, lying thief” is something the mainline GOP has decided to get behind.

I hate to keep making this reference because people often take it as hyperbole but the NDSAP in Germany was also not especially popular (finally winning a plurality of seats at 33% in the 1933 elections) and that was with the public fear generated over the Reichstag Fire. That was sufficient to freeze the Reichstag from forming a government, and then used the Ermächtigungsgesetz to essentially give Hitler and his senior leadership the ability to circumvent the legislature. It’s something that should not have been able to happen without a lot of machinations and people (i.e. von Papen and Hugenberg) believing that they could control Hitler, but in a decade Germany went from being one of the most progressive parliamentary democracies in Europe to a complete dictatorship where political opposition was banned, imprisoned, and not infrequently killed. When fascism and that slippery slide into autocracy occur, they happen at breakneck speed, not waiting for the color commentary of political pundits to sink in.

Stranger

10

Horrible example. How can anyone answer without knowing the candidates?
Biden vs Murkowski? Republican
Harris vs any of the Pubs that have announced? Democrat
Biden vs Trump? Gunshot to the head (After Biden pays off my student loans)

11

I wholeheartedly agree, and I do feel it’s far from assured that Biden will prevail. People do need to be scared of a Trump outcome, and they should vote accordingly.

The GOP and their allies – including Russia, Iran and North Korea (I’m less sure about China) – are pulling out all the stops to prevail in 2024. They very well could win. Between backing candidates like RFK Jr. (currently polling at more than 22% among Blacks and young people) and whoever heads up the No Labels candidacy, together with the fucked up Electoral College potency in comparatively few states, this election is far from assured to go to Biden. I chalk up the, “Biden is old,” argument to Republican propaganda that has predictably seeped into what passes for Democratic debate – but it is very effective.

I do not take your German references as hyperbole. I think you are right to continue to point out the similarities. Especially considering how Trump has adopted the tactics of successful fascists everywhere.

12

It is precisely because it is a horrible example that I used it as an example. There really are polls that are this bad, and they are used for the purpose of obtaining a particular outcome. I’m sorry you misunderstood this.

13

I don’t think this reference is hyperbole at all. trump and his Goebbels-like advisor Stephen Miller showed in his first term just how flimsy and easy to knock down many traditional political ‘guardrails’ were. And that was amidst the chaos and utter fecklessness that marked the first term. Now trump and company are planning their Big Revenge Tour if he gets reelected, saying out loud in public interviews things like how he plans to weaponize the Justice Department to indict his political enemies. Not even when they commit crimes, that is, however real or imagined; but whenever trump so deems it necessary: “…if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, 'Go down and indict them.”

I’ve heard the arguments that polling a year out is unreliable to the point of being practically worthless, and I hope to God the current polls are wrong, but the fact that trump is polling well at all, even among Republican candidates, let alone the general election; hell, the fact that he is still a political force to be reckoned with at all, and not a washed-up has-been or imprisoned by now, is nutballs crazy to me.

14

The answer is yes.

  • Polls are clearly having some issues but its complicated, and hard to predict which way they will be inaccurate (and there is some evidence they have improved since 2020)
  • The news media is at fault for reporting polls a year out from the election even though they are historically a bad predictor of outcome. And thats in a normal year where one candidate doesn’t have multiple serious felony trials coming up.
  • The US is clearly clearly very broken. Trump is a candidate who was caught on tape admitting to habitually committing sexual assault, has been found liable for rape, is facing multiple felony charges, and has done countless other things that (alone) should make him no longer a serious candidate for high office. The fact there is a remote chance of him becoming president means the US is really really broken.
15

But anyone who wants to “send a message” by telling a pollster, “I’ll vote for Trump” is most likely a real Trump voter. What motive would a non-Trump-voter have to tell pollsters that?

Unless it’s for lulz, or some Democrats want to show Biden how disgruntled they are with his administration (but still planning to vote for Biden anyway in Nov-2024.)

16

This is more IMHO than evidenced based debate, but I think right now we’re got a lot of inertia (especially among Republicans) and a lack of enthusiasm (especially among Democrats). If you ask someone right now and they lean Republican, they’re going to say Trump - because that’s 90% of the Fox News Cycle. Outside actual enthusiasts, they don’t hear much if anything about the other candidates other than, maybe, DeSantis. But is the enthusiasm the same as in 2016/2020? Well, that’s what the smaller venues and rallies tie into. But Trump looms large in the mind.

As for Biden, most Democrats I know aren’t enthusiastic about him. Almost all feel that he’s the best candidate right now, but more for lack of someone more interesting but with less baggage that enrages Republicans (read female, of color, gay, or non-Christian). So, and especially in light of the crisis in the Middle-East (NOT going to discuss this because I can’t be fully even-handed) - lots of Democrats may be rating their likelyhood of voting for him lower than the norm.

I think as we get closer to the key date, if we’re extremely lucky a number of Republicans who answered reflexively for the flashy Trump will be tired of all the lawsuits and scandal and not bother to find the time to vote (the cultists will of course), and the hate and bile spewing from said candidate will remind Democratic voters that while Biden may be a bit boring, he’s so much better than the alternative.

If we’re very lucky. :crossed_fingers:

17

What appalls and terrifies me is that people can be disinterested in an existential crisis, or that they are so unworldly that they don’t understand, in addition to the domestic concerns, the very real threats posed by Russia, China and the middle east. If the west stops supporting Ukraine, that would be disastrous, yet a lot of people don’t seem to understand that.

18

When voters talk about the economy they mean high food prices, high gas prices, high home and rental prices. And they look at jobs, their availability, their desirability, their stability.

Of these indicators, all but gas prices are unfavorable to the bast majority of voters, especially young ones. And young voters hate Biden’s age, which is continually forced down their throat not just but right-wing sources but left-wing as well. Every late-night show feels that it’s their duty to make some jokes about Biden and his age is the easiest target.

Nate Cohn is the election wonk for the NYTimes. He sends out a regular newsletter. Today’s hits this spot.

Could President Biden and Donald J. Trump really be locked in a close race among young voters — a group Democrats typically carry by double digits — as the recent Times/Siena polls suggest?

To many of our readers and others, it’s a little hard to believe — so hard to believe that it seems to them the polls are flat-out wrong.

Of course, it’s always possible that the polls are wrong. I’ve thought our own polling might be wrong before, and I would be very apprehensive if it were just our poll out on a limb. But this isn’t about one Times/Siena poll: Virtually every poll shows a close race between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump among young voters.

The polling itself could be bad, but he shows that those answering correspond extremely well to what the breakdowns predict. Bad polls aren’t the issue.

In our polling, the problem for Mr. Biden isn’t too few young Democrats. It’s that many young Democrats don’t like him. Mr. Biden has just a 76-20 lead among young voters either registered as Democrats or who have previously voted in a Democratic primary. It’s just a 69-24 lead among young nonwhite Democrats. The dissent exists among self-identified Democrats, Democratic-leaners, Biden ’20 voters, and so on.

He doesn’t give numbers for young Republicans, but the assumption should be that they break heavily for Trump.

Cohn emphasizes that early polls do not predict results a year out. He says outright that he doesn’t see these numbers holding up. The findings do show that Biden must win over more young Democratic voters. Maybe the stark choice between Biden and Trump will move them. I think that’s likely. I also think we’ll be seeing endless youth-oriented policies, advertising, and speechifying in the coming months.

19

Yet I heard a GOP senator on the radio just yesterday say that “Biden is an existential threat to our nation” and the Republicans had to stop lying to America about the last election and start focusing on 2024.

20

I’ve wondered if there’s a bit of atheist effect going on. At some point, you stop mentioning you’re an atheist when religion comes up because you don’t want to spend yet another hour debating religion with someone that can’t be influenced by reason. So if I’m a white person in KY stopped by a pollster at the mall, surrounded by MAGA hats, am I going to say Trump’s bat-shit crazy or just mumble that I might vote Republican again and scamper to my F-150?