Polls can’t predict – but they can warn. And I’m not sure our horserace-obsessed media are heeding the warning
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One of the things these numbers suggest is that the journalists are not getting the truth across to citizens on some key points (or if they are, that truth is being ignored).
The poll respondents claim that one of their big concerns is the economy. If that’s the case, they should be happy with Biden. Among the factors: low inflation, significant growth and low unemployment. Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate economist, wrote recently: “The economic news in 2023 was almost miraculously good.” (Even the cost of a classic Thanksgiving dinner, he notes, was down 4.5% last year.)
If the economy is that strong and that important to voters – and if Biden can take at least some of the credit – why isn’t it coming across? That’s something for the Biden campaign, primarily; but it’s also something for media people since journalists are supposed to be communicating information so that citizens can vote with knowledge. That should be a higher priority than generating profits, ratings and clicks, but one eventually despairs that it ever will be.
Another major voter concern, of course, is Biden’s age. He’s 81; Trump will be 78 in June. They’re both old; both have memory gaps and both exhibit confusion at times.
Only one of them, however, talks about some migrants as “animals” or predicts a “bloodbath” for the country if he loses. Only one is facing dozens of charges related to crimes including trying to overturn a legitimate election. Only one has promised to be a dictator on day one of his presidency and only one has allies that are meticulously plotting a radical revamping of how America works.
Polls weren’t wrong…
It’s just way too many people who call themselves “political experts” only looked at popular vote polls because they’re lazy and don’t know what they’re doing. If they did look at state polls, they had no idea what magin of error means, and people learn that in highschool math without ever taking a stats class.
The 2016 election results were literally in range of predictions for 2016.
Clinton was never a sure thing, but journalists like the one who wrote this article just kept screeching at anyone trying to explain that to them.
Just like this same journalist is still doing 8 years later when people say Biden isn’t popular.
They haven’t learned a fucking thing. And they never will.
Part of it is that people want to vote for the winner. So by repeating the narrative that there candidate will be the winner encourages others to want to vote for that person….
But the polls of Hillary versus actual outcome were absolutely within the margin of error
Nah.
They want blind loyalty to the party, zero criticisms allowed and 100% votes from every party member.
She’s no different than Faux News talking heads telling her viewers to disregard all science and only believe her opinion.
Just because she can’t understand polling doesn’t mean polling is worthless. But I’ve seen far too many people on here claim the same thing lately.
It’s dangerous to give these anti science nutjobs a platform, and statistics is a science no matter how much some people disagree with the results.
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The trick to the 2016 polls is that they assumed that the rust belt would be wholly democratic, as it had always been. The Hillary team ignored them completely and was trying to flip Texas. Biden got lucky in 2020 in the rust belt. Trump is spending a lot of time campaigning there again.
And the Democratic party brass are still focusing on flipping Texas, 8 years later.