Vote every time. Polls mean nothing. Vote.
Yep. Polls are getting less reliable anyway, because so many of them rely on landlines, and some segments of the population are less likely to respond to surveys than others.
Which is telling, because the land line polls tend to over inflate Conservative voices, and it still has Trump losing in a landslide.
Overinflating conservatism in the US is par for the course. See: the three-fifths compromise and the electoral college.
The polls showed him losing solidly to Clinton right up until he won though… The numbers are looking worse this time, but still.
From the article:
Interviews were conducted in English, and included 319 live landline telephone interviews, 480 live cell phone interviews, and 111 online surveys via a cell phone text
But you are right on polls not really meaning that much. Especially over a year away.
Also, you have to take into account the weirdos who answer unknown numbers on their cell phones
Also, national polls mean nothing. We don’t have a national election.
Trump lost in 2016 by 2.1%, he became President by winning in WI, MI and PA. 2 states Clinton failed to campaign in and a 3rd she alienated.
The total number of votes that elected Trump were just 22,748 in WI, 10,704 in MI and 44,292 in PA.
77,744 people made Trump a President. The rest of us knew better.
Trump became president because the Russian state interfered in our elections. Full stop.
Also true, but it wouldn’t have happened if Clinton had actually campaigned in states she took for granted and didn’t say stupid shit about coal.
I agree except for that last point
77,744 people made Trump a President. The rest of us knew better.
Sorry but that’s not how math works. 63 million people made trump president, and only 66 million of us knew better. That huge number of trump voters is the horrible reality of American politics weve had to come to terms with. Luckily some of the trump supporters learned from their mistake, but there’s still millions of them out there, not <100k
Millions out there, countered by millions of Democratic voters, and over votes on both sides in states like Texas and California.
It was the 77K in those three states that threw it to Trump, and note, in 2020, Biden did not repeat Clinton’s mistake.
I mean, pollsters actually do account for how elections work in their models. There are all sorts of actual reasons polls have failed to be reliable lately, but if you think it’s because they just count total responses across the country, that isn’t the case.
Not really, case in point is this very poll:
“In the national survey of 910 voters, 47% of voters said they would definitely or probably support Biden, while just 40% said they would back Trump.”
Which is meaningless, because unless 47% of voters flip the correct states, it won’t matter how much Biden wins.
Remember, Clinton won the popular vote. Gore won the popular vote AND Florida. It didn’t matter.
Pennsylvania. She gave a speech in neighboring Ohio where she said:
“We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
That echoed through coal country, and while nobody expected her to win states like West Virginia, it absolutely killed her in PA.
https://www.npr.org/2016/05/03/476485650/fact-check-hillary-clinton-and-coal-jobs
https://pagop.org/2015/08/03/clinton-pledges-to-continue-the-war-on-coal/
It was a self inflicted injury, which was so, so avoidable.
She COULD have rolled it into a victory like this:
“I’m going to tell you something right now that not a lot of people know… my great grandfather was a coal miner in Durham, England. Moved to Scranton with his six kids dreaming of a better life for all of them. I’d like to see a better life for your fathers, brothers, and sons that doesn’t involve risking their lives underground for a few scraps of coal that they’ll never share in the profits on.”
True story: https://www.palatinate.org.uk/hillary-clinton’s-great-grandfather-was-a-durham-miner-says-local-historian/
Instead? “Imma put a bunch of you out of work. U mad bro? LOL.”
Absolutely! If polls were deciding the outcome, Hilary would win in 2016.
Only twice in three elections. This means Trump had a one third chance to win that election. Which, sadly, he did.
If the weather forecast says 30% chance of rain and it rains do you question the validity of the forecast or do you think “I guess I ended up getting some of that rain”?
