A Lawyer's Reasoning on why polling data right now is bogus

[lees1975]

https://pricebenowitz.com/blog/the-truth-about-polling-averages-and-how-misleading-they-are/

Marketing companies have the right to grab publicity. The surest way to get free publicity is to release a poll within two months of a presidential election. It hardly matters if the poll is accurate, because somebody will publish it.

Bad polls are put into polling averages and laundered like dirty money. The publicity encourages pollsters to produce numbers, certain that they too will get national attention if they call 600 people or say they do. Averaging polls gets publicity for those who average the polls. We won’t learn until 6 months from now who was right, if anyone bothers to look back.

Yet some in these polls must be wrong, even as the averages are used to make everyone look right. The average also creates a statistical bias towards a close race, which may or may not be correct, because it has to be based on some false data.

As I write this there are two recent polls on Arizona. One sponsored by a national broadcasting company, the other by an Arizona firm. Once says Biden is up 52-42 in Arizona. The other says Biden 47-44. Both were conducted over about the same period of time. Both will be “averaged” into various services. Both cannot be right.

[lees1975]

1. Key phrase, " if anyone bothers to look back."

There are plenty of defenders of the polls and composites, who like to point to how accurate they were predicting an election.

Of course they are, a week before the election, when polls tighten because now the pollsters are going to be held accountable. Even those who get it close are still just giving their best guess, and sometimes, with some pollsters and predictors, Michael Moore comes to mind, they're just reading public opinion as they see it and making a guess. When Moore, prior to the 2022 mid-terms, said that no red wave was materializing, and that the President's job approval ratings would be discredited by the outcome of the elections, I initially thought he was just opening himself up for criticism. And then, there was no red wave, and the exit polling showed that the President had a far better image than any poll claimed he did.

A week or two prior, and the results might look within the margin of error. Few people remember how skewed it was six weeks before, and how much "tightening" there was.

[Polly Hennessey]

2. Polls are propaganda used to promote the

marketing firm. Precisely. Every poll can’t be right. In my world every poll is wrong/bogus/laundering bad polls. Yet the DU Downers continue the poll onslaught (in particular the bad news polls for Democrats). Stop looking at them Polly or they will drive you mad.

[Beartracks]

3. "Standards matter and averaging bad data is not useful...

... for much more than entertainment and publicity."

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