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The pathetic state of "win forcasts" in US politics -check out this graph

Edit: Changed from polls to win forecasts to be more clear, although the former is used to generate the latter.

This isn't a pro-sanders post. This is a "wow, the polling system is broken, misleading, and outdated" post.

This is a screenshot from five-thirty-eight (argued to be the "most accurate&quot




On March 29th according to them, Clinton had a 85% chance of winning to Sander's 15%.

On April 1st, Sanders now has a 58% chance of winning.

The problem is that such polls are used politically and in news constantly. There is a sense that they are "mostly accurate except for the margin of error that they provide." The margin of error seems to imply "Ok, so its not exactly correct but its close." The problem with margin of error is that its a mathematical calculation that assumes the data is correct. The real margin of error in these polls is the methodoogy and/or datasets.

In this case, the margin of error of the polls was around 4 points. The margin of error in the data and methodology was 43 points. I'm oversimplifying here at bit (There wasn't enough data, but that didn't prevent them from making graphs and talking about it as if there was enough data to assume certainty).

The point is this: Have we come to a point were polling numbers are entirely arbitrary media tolls that accidentally (or intentionally?) do a lot of harm to democracy? I realize such claims have been made countless times for many years, but I have never seen anything like that chart until today.

Hello!

Hello DU. Been reading this site for a long time. I finally decided to start participating more.