• givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Polls always matter, you just have to understand polls.

    This is with third party options and show Biden up 2% which is probably close to margin of error.

    It doesn’t mean Biden has it in the bag, but it means his chances are improved.

    But Biden risks the same dangers Hillary did in 2016.

    People don’t really want to vote for them, they just don’t want trump. So there’s a risk if Biden is polling too well (I don’t think it will be an issue) people will stay home thinking they don’t need to compromise their morals because trump will lose.

    It’s a dangerous game, and we wouldn’t have to play it if we ran a candidate popular with Dem voters.

    • bolexforsoup
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      6 months ago

      The margin of error for polls six months out from election, if memory serves, is about 14%.

      I think people are phrasing this wrong: it’s not that the polls are worthless, it’s that it does not tell you what’s going to happen on Election Day in any real sense. They’re useful for watching trends and gauging short term changes and impact. They are useful for telling you how things are going. They do not tell you anything remotely useful about how things will be.

        • bolexforsoup
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          6 months ago

          I mean Larry sabato just cited this stat days ago but I’m sure you’ll say he knows nothing.

          You can average the top performing polls to get this.

          • frog_brawler@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Math is math. In order to calculate the margin of error you need to know the sample size. The number of months involved is not a part of the calculation.

            • bolexforsoup
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              6 months ago

              Then it’s not margin of error, the predictive accuracy - whatever the term is - is far worse 6mo out from an election (5 now i guess) than the ones that are days or a week or so out. That’s the point. Polls now are useful but not for saying who will win in November. You may as well forget the top line numbers as soon as you see them unless you’re comparing them over time and/or looking at cross tabs for broad demographic trends, which is also limited but useful in some ways.

              • frog_brawler@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                Fair enough… if we both agree that “margin of error” has nothing to do with number of months; I have no argument.

        • Guy_Fieris_Hair@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          “Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall in love” old people (Republicans) vote, always, because they are retired. Democrats work and need to go out of their way to vote, so you have to convince them.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      So there’s a risk if Biden is polling too well (I don’t think it will be an issue) people will stay home thinking they don’t need to compromise their morals because trump will lose.

      That’s largely how Romney lost to Obama in 2012. Republican turnout sagged in a year when both candidates’ approval ratings were underwater. Mitt lost a bunch of midwestern states that a candidate like Bush or Trump could have won, thanks to his vulture capitalist career alienating blue-collar conservatives and his weird knock-off religion alienating evangelicals.

    • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Whoever on your account team wrote this one is funny. They’re right. But I love how they wrote that Biden will poll well, when the other guy has been spending weeks saying how bad he’s doing.

      Consistency my guys. Get your stories straight. Especially if you’re going to comment walls of text multiple times every hour every day. Don’t make it so obvious.