The polls aren’t “rigged”. Jesus. This is such a dumb narrative.
You know that when something is a 90% probability, that means that 10% of the time it’s not going to happen, right? The last, best poll gave Trump a 29% chance of winning, and he did win, because he outperformed in key swing states, even though he lost the popular vote by a wide margin. Then he lost both the popular vote in 2020–by a wide margin–and the key swing states.
The way in which most polls are conducted is often biased towards older voters as they’re often phone calls. How many young people are answering phonecalls from unknown numbers? Also the sources pollsters get their numbers from are also often biased as well.
The way in which most polls are conducted is often biased towards older voters as they’re often phone calls.
People that follow this have discussed this at length. There are a number of polls that are done on-line (YouGov being one of the ones I know of off the top of my head), and those tend to be biased as well. The people conducting the polls understand the biases inherent in their polling, and reputable polling companies will do their best to correct for biases. Metapolling will aggregate and weight polls so that they can get a better understanding of how people both feel, and how they’re likely to act.
Again: this isn’t a “rigged” system. “Rigging” a system would be setting it up intentionally to function–or fail–in a specific way. Inherent biases that you’re trying to remove to the best of your ability isn’t “rigging” a poll.
And here’s a report from journalists that doesn’t profit from polling
Nate Cohn was, I believe, a pollster before he became a journalist. He’s a frequent contributor to fivethirtyeight (I think I was listening to him just a few minutes ago talking about Trump’s speech at the RNC). Him saying that they don’t know how issues polling connects to actual behavior–versus ““horse race” polling”–doesn’t say that the polls themselves are the problem. Rather, the problem is connecting those polls on issues with how people will actually vote. (I’ll have to find the rest of that newsletter, since it cuts off just as he’s getting really interesting.)
Fundamentally, you’re asking about issues polling, rather than which candidate a given person is likely
My apologies, I wasn’t paying attention to user names, and I assumed you were the person that made the top level comment about polls being rigged. That’s entirely my fault.
The polls aren’t “rigged”. Jesus. This is such a dumb narrative.
You know that when something is a 90% probability, that means that 10% of the time it’s not going to happen, right? The last, best poll gave Trump a 29% chance of winning, and he did win, because he outperformed in key swing states, even though he lost the popular vote by a wide margin. Then he lost both the popular vote in 2020–by a wide margin–and the key swing states.
The way in which most polls are conducted is often biased towards older voters as they’re often phone calls. How many young people are answering phonecalls from unknown numbers? Also the sources pollsters get their numbers from are also often biased as well.
Here’s a report from Pew Research who make their money from polls, so this is the rosiest of takes on it https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/09/21/does-public-opinion-polling-about-issues-still-work/
Here’s a take from the Times and what they’re trying to do about it. I’ve pasted the archive.is link https://archive.is/sQ5Vi
And here’s a report from journalists that doesn’t profit from polling https://theweek.com/politics/2024-election-polls-accuracy
People that follow this have discussed this at length. There are a number of polls that are done on-line (YouGov being one of the ones I know of off the top of my head), and those tend to be biased as well. The people conducting the polls understand the biases inherent in their polling, and reputable polling companies will do their best to correct for biases. Metapolling will aggregate and weight polls so that they can get a better understanding of how people both feel, and how they’re likely to act.
Again: this isn’t a “rigged” system. “Rigging” a system would be setting it up intentionally to function–or fail–in a specific way. Inherent biases that you’re trying to remove to the best of your ability isn’t “rigging” a poll.
Nate Cohn was, I believe, a pollster before he became a journalist. He’s a frequent contributor to fivethirtyeight (I think I was listening to him just a few minutes ago talking about Trump’s speech at the RNC). Him saying that they don’t know how issues polling connects to actual behavior–versus ““horse race” polling”–doesn’t say that the polls themselves are the problem. Rather, the problem is connecting those polls on issues with how people will actually vote. (I’ll have to find the rest of that newsletter, since it cuts off just as he’s getting really interesting.)
Fundamentally, you’re asking about issues polling, rather than which candidate a given person is likely
I said nothing about a rigged system. Just that polls have an inherent bias.
My apologies, I wasn’t paying attention to user names, and I assumed you were the person that made the top level comment about polls being rigged. That’s entirely my fault.
It’s a contentious topic, I understand.