If the polling is this wacky, why bother publishing it at all?
Over the weekend, ABC and the Washington Post published the results of a poll that made both operations look like its results were the product of a month-long exercise with a Magic 8-Ball. The way you know it was an embarrassment is the Post story about the poll began by telling us all we should probably ignore it completely.
The Post-ABC poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, although the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier.
Don’t get complacent. That’s the most important takeaway. We need to not only beat Republicans, but to give them massive losses. We want them to lose by double digit margins so they realize fascism has no place in the US, and MAGA can ma-get the fuck out of here.
I’m really curious to read more about the poll itself later, just with how unusual this is. What in the methodology screwed it up? Or do they just have an incredibly wide confidence interval?
It’s also worth remembering I think, polling was very wrong in the midterms. They suggested at best that Republicans would win by a little bit, and at worst the “red tidal wave”. And we know now it was a trickle, that they can’t even claim as a total victory. Dems gained a Senate seat, and a lot of important state government positions in swing states.
There’s a few causes for this mismatch I believe:
There’s a lot of shitty Republicans pollsters these days that provide a lot of low quality data.
Analysts overcorrected their models after 2020 and it undercounts Democrats.
The huge backlash for overturning Roe isn’t being captured in polls for some reason. Abortion continues to be a huge issue that’s benefitting Democrats. The economy and inflation were thought to be the largest drivers for the midterms, but if they were, people saw Democrats as the solution for that.
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I completely agree with everything you’ve said. My view is that if the Republicans lose big, they’ll abandon the fascist wing and see it as a liability to winning elections. If they get absolutely crushed, their turn towards fascism and Trump becomes completely repudiated, and they’re going to try and distance themselves from it. These dregs will always exist, we just need to teach conservatives what happens when you ally with them – you lose, big time.
I think the party would be likely to fragment on a loss. You’ll have the fascist freedom caucus on one end, and the more moderate Republicans on the other. Neither however will be large enough to win elections, especially as they’ll compete for the same voters. My prediction is the Republicans die in all but name, and those closer to the middle join Democrats.
Also keep in mind the sampling bias of only including people willing to take part in polls.
Unknown number? Stranger knocking at my door? I’m not answering.
Yeah this is the Achilles heel of polling. You need a sample as close to random as possible, but that’s hard if 75% of those people don’t respond.
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Because young people aren’t fucking idiots?
They know Biden tried to have more forgiven and deferred, but the supreme court stopped him. The same supreme court which overturned roe. Abortion in itself is enough really.
Oh, and young people fucking loathe Republicans, so there’s that too!
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I suggest you do a considerable bit of research. There is no big national election this year. And the legislation which mandated the restart date chose the exact same restart date that the department of education had already set. There was absolutely no change there.
The Supreme Court wasn’t about a law, but an action that Biden tried to take, and the Court said he couldn’t do (which legally really makes no sense if you read the relevant constitutional passages).
Didn’t they stop payments on student loans and try to forgive them completely?
Immediately before … spiking the federal reserve rate.
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