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.
Msuhrooms sound real good, guess that’s a plan for the weekend.
They publish it to try and suppress voters to make them feel like there’s no chance. Then when they lose they can claim election fraud because the bogus polling had them winning. It’s a common tactic Conservatives use now to suppress votes. People need to show up no matter what the polling or news is saying.
Trump might not be 20 points ahead of Biden, but you’d better fucking turn out at the poll like he is.
Here’s a writeup by FiveThirtyEight that happens to now be a part of ABC but didn’t participate in this pill: How outlier polls happen — and what to do with them
These polls also don’t sample people who use call screening (Google Voice for me) to ask unknown callers to say their name, because this breaks most robodialers.
Don’t knock mushrooms. They actually help you clear your mind and make good decisions.