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.
It was done entirely by phone. What person under, say, 60 answers an unknown call on their phone at this point? And if they left a voicemail to call them back, who would trust it? Basically, they’re getting extremely gullible people (i.e. mostly Trump voters) to respond to the poll.
I think the only way you can do successful polling at this point is focus groups with carefully selected demographics, and I would even be dubious there.
I participated in a few polls in 2020 and…yeah. I would pick them up because I was waiting for important calls. Why tf else would I pick up. I still get these calls sometimes, usually while waiting for a call back for a job.
Even if I did pick up the phone, which I doubt I would, I would think it was a scam.
I was waiting to hear back about a job then and answered a poll call about gambling. I very, very rarely gamble. And when I do it’s like $50 on blackjack or something cuz my friends want to go to the casino here. That was a fun call cuz my answers were like “never”, *rarely", “no”. Lol
Dunno why I felt the need to share. I’m still drunk from my friends birthday party last night I think lol
I’ve answered a poll about food security once when I was in Belgium. They were asking if goes many mean I’d skipped in the last month, if hunger was affecting my studies or work, if u was able to have vegetables or fruits in my diet …
I answered until the end because it just felt sad, I’m privileged and don’t have to worry about these issues but I wanted people working on the issue to have all the support needed.
It should also be said that polls are only responded to by people who a) have the time, and b) have something to say.
B alone is enough to make the respondents select for far more extreme than the average person. A also selects for… people who’ve got nothing else going on.
Because it’s very likely a scam or someone trying to sell me something. What is the advantage of answering one?
I do sometimes get important calls from some gov. office or something like that. As a example, I lost my wallet and a about a week later the office in charged of the found-lost things called to say someone had found it and I could pick it up.
But to be fair I only ever got 1 scam call and most people I know got the same one (Europolice scam last year)
Like, where I live scam/sell calls are just not a thing, so might be regional.
Buy yeah, thanks for the answer, I get you point now.
More bullshit from our bullshit media ~ “Can’t understand how a high plains grifter got elected!?”
Who the hell thought this headline idea is good wtf
It seems to be part of a series called “Politics With Charles P. Pierce”, which from the looks of it attempts to take a relaxed, informal take on an op-ed.
So the title seems fine for the context I think.
If anyone here is just joining the party, Charles Peirce was one of the few corporate news voices (all of whom were op-ed, very purposefully) who was allowed to say what we were actually seeing.
For a few years it was a crushing torrent of gaslighting and insanity and the corporate news just went with it. Jeff Tiedrich on twitter and Charles Pierce in Esquire were two loud voices saying wtf everytime some new batshit thing would happen. It was very helpful.
Those of you upset about the poor take on mushrooms, take five. The gist is that polls this bad shouldn’t be blowtorched onto the news cycle. Which us exactly what many of us were saying yesterday.
Because bullshit like this poll is how republiQans fool enough of the people to crack open the electoral college. It’s the 2016 playbook, being run again right in front of us like we didn’t just go through that hell. F that.
I have absolutely no intention of voting for Trump, but if you ask me on a poll about it, I might tell the pollster that I plan to vote for Trump. I don’t want people getting too comfortable with an assumed outcome ever again.
“You’d have to be on mushrooms to think Trump will become president” > an annoying lot of people pre-2016.
If the young people that actually go out to vote happen to be the ones that like Trump, Tate, Musk and the like, then yeah, he can pull 100% ahead of Biden.
