Just to clarify: have people decided they like polls again?

[brooklynite]

They’re likely to go back and forth for awhile, so it might make sense to pick a position and stick with it.

[dweller]

1. Make a poll

✌🏻

[brooklynite]

2. Touche...

[dweller]

11. allez

✌🏻

[TwilightZone]

4. Nice.

Well played. That made me laugh.

[TwilightZone]

3. The ones where our candidates are ahead are accurate.

The ones where our candidates are behind are complete shit and paid propaganda.

Yes, this is sarcasm.

[Elessar Zappa]

26. Who has said that?

DU has many members, people saying they believe polls are accurate might not be the same people saying they were inaccurate a month ago.

[Funtatlaguy]

28. It's human nature to react this way to good/bad news.

[TwilightZone]

33. True.

We tend to take it to extremes, however.

[Fiendish Thingy]

5. Not a particular fan of individual polls, especially ones with flawed methodology that consistently produce outliers

But I am keenly interested in polling trends (movement, not averages), and so far, the movement seems to be trending in our favor.

[Ohio Joe]

12. That is the answer

[elocs]

6. People tend to like polls when they favor or trend to favor their candidate,

and dislike them when they do not.

[obnoxiousdrunk]

17. This.

[getagrip_already]

7. No, they are still garbage

And before long, the pollsters will move the baseline and we will be behind again.

Its all based on turnout models, and they just diddle the numbers to get the result they want.

Still garbage.

[WheelWalker]

8. Not I.

For the record.

[hlthe2b]

9. I love watching the discomfort of Fox anchors having to report positive polls for Harris--especially in the battleground

states.

Other than that, I pretty much take them as background noise...

[TheKentuckian]

10. I'm still in the same place on them so it makes it easy.

A tool to get a snapshot of the electorate in particular time and place that we can neither ignore or completely rely on because the art portion of them is in a lot of flux.

Some of the hate is seemingly based on a tenuous grasp of probabilities that causes some folks to think 100% at some point in the odds despite them being below 100% and sometimes by quite a bit.

[LostOne4Ever]

13. Polls are just a tool

Like any other they have their pros and cons as well as uses and misuses.

Overall, they are not super accurate but they are the best way to get an idea of the general public’s opinion on issues and candidates outside of actual voting.

IOW it is good to pay attention to them but don’t take them as the gospel truth.

[Deek1935]

14. Um, no. The polls are virtually meaningless. What do they now show? A CLOSE RACE and NOTHING else.

Last edited Sat Jul 27, 2024, 07:48 AM - Edit history (1)

The election is months away. It's all non predictive. It's all just a snapshot. It's all within the margins of error. It all shows a statistical tie. Pretty much the same as before with some slight movement. They go up, they go down, bla bla bla. Totally non predictive of what will happen on election day. Polls, age, debates, VP picks, and campaign tricks don't matter. Doesn't hurt to have more "enthusiasm" but at the end of the day it is a referendum mainly on the GOVERNING STRENGTH of the White House party.

[honest.abe]

23. "referendum mainly on the GOVERNING STRENGTH of the White House party"

Nope. It’s going to be a match of character, charisma and experience between Harris and Trump. Which Harris wins easily.

[LeftInTX]

15. Not when they're used to force a president off the ballot!

But I think it was the right decision.

Polls can be volatile.

Altogether, I tend to trust polls. Even the bad ones that Biden had.

I just hope they don't force Kamala off the ballot if polls don't look good.

[cachukis]

16. You are good at what you do.

[Metaphorical]

18. Not especially

Polls are only as good as their sample size and sampling methodology. Even if there is no intentional bias, getting good sample populations can be difficult at the best of times, and I have no doubt that some polls (and consequently poll aggregates) are being deliberately manipulated.

[stopdiggin]

19. well put! Seem to be popping up with some regularity here of late

despite off expressed disdain ...

[totodeinhere]

20. LOL. I noticed that too.

When polls shows the Democrat leading people are all over it. But if it shows a Republican leading then they don't believe the poll. And for what it's worth the aggregate of polls right now shows that it's pretty much a dead heat. Myself I continue to maintain it it will be a very close election decided one way or the other by a few thousand votes in a few swing states.

[DontBelieveEastisEas]

21. I love poll aggregates, and prediction models like 538 had. nt

[Kaleva]

22. People accept that which reinforces their world view

Polls that challenge their views are questioned or outright rejected.

One sees this happening here often on many topics.

"Confirmation bias, people’s tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with their existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision making is largely unintentional, and it results in a person ignoring information that is inconsistent with their beliefs. These beliefs can include a person’s expectations in a given situation and their predictions about a particular outcome....

People give special treatment to information that supports their personal beliefs. "

https://www.britannica.com/science/confirmation-bias

[honest.abe]

24. What I like is the positive movement of the polls since Harris became our presumptive nominee.

The actual numbers may be off but the trends are great.

[Elessar Zappa]

25. My opinion on polls stays the same.

I take them with a grain of salt, whether the number is good or bad for us. I don’t believe they’re purposely throwing the numbers, but since 2016 it seems like they’ve had a hard time with accuracy. This probably has something to do with people not answering their unknown numbers as well as groups telling the pollsters false info.

[Doc Sportello]

27. Things were fresher around here a couple of weeks ago

Then a few days ago they turned sour again. Wonder why.

[moniss]

29. I don't like them because they are too easily manipulated and erroneously presented

and that's why I tell people to not be lulled by them and to always work as hard as you can for getting out the vote etc. How many more people would have gotten out in 2016 if there weren't polls around saying Hillary was comfortably ahead by an average across polls of nearly 4%? Instead we had voter turnout for 2016 as a percentage of eligible voters at a 20 year low.

[DFW]

31. I haven't liked them for years, now

They tend to encourage or discourage, depending on what the reader wants to hear. Any given poll might be accurate, or not. That’s not good enough for me.

If it shows 70-30, OK, the preference is clear, even if it is off by ten in either direction. But if it shows 49-48, that might be accurate, or it might not. It indicates that things are close, but it could also be off by five points or more either way. All a poll like that tells me is that I don’t know, and neither does anyone else. Chances are, I already figured out that much.

[gab13by13]

32. I have always believed in polls, for example:

The WSJ just came out with a poll showing Kamala trailing TSF by 2 points. I just do the math and that poll tells me that Kamala is leading by 4 points.

Why is it that when elections are over, the vast majority of the polls overestimated the Republican?

How the fuck can I believe in polls when I look back at history when Gallup was the king of polls and had Romney winning the election over Obama. Gallup, the #1 polling organization, used bad data in its formula. Imagine that.

Polls are used for propaganda and TSF has been caught paying polls to benefit him.

Has TSF stopped paying people to do favorable polls for him? How many polls are being paid off by TSF?

When the final poll of polls comes out at the end of the election cycle, right before the election. I will take Kamala Harris for 100 dollars for charity to beat the poll of polls. Anyone who wants to show how much they believe in polls can PM me to work out the details. No margin of error bullshit. If the final polling says Kamala wins by 1 point and she wins by 2, I win the bet.

[waterwatcher123]

34. Election polls are 95% confident but only 60% accurate, Berkeley Haas study finds

https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/research/election-polls-are-95-confident-but-only-60-accurate-berkeley-haas-study-finds/#

[Doc Sportello]

42. Thank you

And the accuracy gets worse the farther out from the election you go.

A snip:
"Analyzing the polls in seven-day batches, they found a steady decline in accuracy the farther from an election the poll was conducted, with only about half proving to be accurate 10 weeks before an election. This makes sense, since unforeseen events occur—such as former FBI director James Comey announcing an investigation into Clinton’s emails just a week before the 2016 presidential election. Yet most polls, even weeks out, reported the industry standard 95% confidence interval."

[gab13by13]

35. I do believe in exit polling.

Exit polling can determine if the vote count matches what voters are saying.

I believe it was the 2020 election, the one where Susan Collins was up for reelection. Exit polling showed anomalies in 3 states, Florida, Kentucky, and Maine. The one thing in common in those 3 states was the predominant use of ES&S voting machines.

[Johonny]

36. Only at the strip club

[alarimer]

37. Yes, they're telling us what we want to hear now

Before, they weren’t. Maybe something actually has changed, but I still don’t think polls are terribly reliable at this point.

[edisdead]

38. I take polls with a grain of salt

good news is welcome.

But feel free to chide the community.

[ColinC]

39. No fuck em

Polls where you are winning are certainly more palatable but they are stil meaningless

[mucholderthandirt]

40. I still don't.

I do find it interesting that these polls haven't given Trump a post-debate bump, a post-convention bump, or a post-assassination attempt bump.

In fact, it seems he can hardly reach 50% on any vaguely reliable poll, ever. Hm. What's up with that? I think he's reached the top of what he can achieve in polling, meaning it's likely he's not nearly as popular as people claim, and that they aren't polling properly to begin with.

[Silent Type]

41. Polls seem more "predictive" when one likes the results.

[BannonsLiver]

43. Winning hearts and minds again.