Maybe this can be a catch-all thread to post and discuss the latest findings, methodology, etc.
Reuters-Ipsos has a pretty interesting new poll out: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/12/1525/1504/2019%20Reuters%20Tracking%20-%20Democratic%20Primary%20Poll%2006%2005%202019.pdf
The most eye-catching is the trial heats against Trump. Biden leads by a whopping fourteen points there, while Warren is only ahead by five; worse yet are Buttigieg (two) and Harris (three).
You need to discount all polls today because of the name recognition factor. Biden has it, Buttigieg doesn’t. That will change over a year’s intensive coverage, chance for gaffes, and performance in debates.
It would certainly be interesting if these results don’t change over the next year, but that’s not likely.
Right now they’re as meaningful as predictions of the 2020 NBA finals. Try not to get your hopes - or fears - up.
At this point in the last Presidential election, Bush was the leading Republican candidate with 13% in the polls. Followed by Walker, Rubio, Carson, then Paul. (cite)
And 8 years before that, Hillary was leading with 34% vs. Obama at 24%.
Hey Slacker, I already started a thread for this. It’s fallen a ways down the front page now, but it’s there.
And I just love how people say “Polls 17 months before the election shouldn’t be considered completely reliable predictors of the results!” as though they’re saying something profound. It’s like if you tell someone the Raptors are leading the Warriors 4-0 one minute into the game and instead of saying “thanks for the information”, they chide you as though you’d claimed the Raptors were inevitably going to win.
Does not look good for Buttigieg, he might not be able to beat trump. In fact, in the heartland, once they find out he’s gay, I expect that to get worse. That’s sad, but it’s the way it is. Warren- she could whup trump in debates and do better. Or she could put her foot in her moth again, like her silly DNA test.
It’s impressive that Biden will pull 10% of Republicans. :eek:
Why are the candidates in the order they are in the poll? I can’t figure out how they’ve decided to arrange the candidates on the page. It doesn’t go by order of percentage or alphabetical. Is there another sorting system I’m missing?
So what do you think is the value of the polls 17 months before the election? It’s pretty clear that it’s a poor indicator of with the eventual outcome of the primary. What is it an indication of?
You think? I think if anyone knew anything about Buttigieg, it’s that he’s gay.
I say we simply can’t make this point often enough or firmly enough.
The forum and the internet are replete with posts about these meaningless polls treating them as if they have some secret information that we can parse out if we only try hard enough. People are desperate for signs that the Trump interregnum will be ending. They are overreading and overreacting to any indications that might give an answer. A gentle reminder that no answers are to be had is not a bad thing at any time.
The only thread I see that you started is Is Joe Biden the new Ed Muskie? and it resembles this thread in no way. What are you referring to?
My thread is called 2020 Polls, and it hasn’t had any posts in a while.
It allows us to follow the general shape of the race and see how candidates are doing. Like Buttigieg has gone from nothing to about 10% in a relatively short time. That means he should be taken more seriously than someone like Hickenlooper who started at nothing and has stayed there.
So your contention is that polls are completely meaningless and that there is no way whatsoever to predict the outcome of the election at this point?
Tell you what, I’ll make you a bet. I’ll take Biden to win the nomination and you take John Hickenlooper. I’ll even give you 2-1 odds! Do we have a deal? If not, why not?
I think my sports analogy above was a good one. If you know the score after the first quarter, you won’t be able to predict the winner with perfect accuracy, but you’ll do much better than you would without that information.
Maybe things have changed since then (due perhaps to his cannily picking a fight with Pence). But in the first week or so of the Buttigieg boom, I didn’t know he was gay (and I follow politics very closely), and I couldn’t figure out why this young small-city mayor was getting any attention. Was it really his ability to speak Norwegian, I wondered? Then I finally found out about his being gay, and things clicked into place. But most articles about him were pretty coy.
Sorry: I looked for something similar and didn’t see it.
But yeah, I agree. I’m a huge consumer of polling, listening to the weekly (or more frequent at times) podcasts from 538 and “The Pollsters” (Kristin Soltis-Anderson, a “Never Trump” Republican pollster, and Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster). Nate Silver has said that although it is obviously still early, polls this early do have more predictive power than the nabobs would have us believe.
Here’s what I found just now, on the 538 website: We Analyzed 40 Years Of Primary Polls. Even Early On, They’re Fairly Predictive.
Yes, not since May 16. You must use a different default for the front page than I do.
Nor does your sport analogy work for me. The primaries are not between two supposedly equal opponents playing the same game. If you must use a sport analogy, then why not golf? Yes, the better players do win more than the weaker ones. But we recently went through a four or five year period in which just about every major was won by a different player, many of them winning for the first time.
I’ll restate my point. Don’t depend on the polls doing your work for you. If you want a particular candidate to win, go be active. Staff a call bank, do door-to-door volunteering, donate money. If you don’t want particular candidates to win, then do the same but shift the emphasis. No matter who your personal favorite is, support the candidate with exactly as much time, energy, money, and fervor. This is true for every election at every level. #NotOneRepublican
Just don’t let the polls guide your actions. Especially this early, with an unprecedented number of candidates, in a new era when the party is split into more factions than ever.
Exapno, you can feel free not to let the polls guide *your *actions. It’s a free country! But don’t tell us not to let them guide *our *actions if we so choose.
I disagree. I think it just measures name recognition at this point. Buttigieg is polling better because he has been in the news more than Hickenlooper. It’s not the other way around.
I’m not telling you. I’m pleading with you.
Deaf ears. La-la-la! 
Very interesting analysis of polls crossmatched with 2016 and 2018 voter files:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/04/politics/trump-voters-switch-to-democrats-in-2018-2020/index.html
An excellent Twitter feed about polling and related issues: