Here Comes The Polls

[Silent3]

50. "Narrative" and "polls are meaningless" aren't the same thing

You seem to be using the word "useless" to say, "Unless polls are always accurate and 100% predicative of the outcome of an election, they're useless!" which is simply the wrong way to look at polling.

As for the way-off results of some polls: OF COURSE that happens. First of all, there are badly run polls, either bad methodologically, or vanity polls that are deliberately inaccurate. But that can be sorted out with some effort, and looking at averages across multiple polls helps. I totally reject the conspiratorial narrative that some people ascribe to that the entire polling world is a scam rigged to create a specific narrative.

I think poll modeling of so-called "likely voters" is something that can skew results across multiple polls, since modeling is based on past elections and something can change in the electorate that hasn't yet been captured in polling models. For instance, it's definitely possible the abortion issue has revved up Democrats in a way that still has been modeled correctly. (I sure hope the Gaza mess doesn't have an opposite effect!)

Even when polling is well done, there will always be outliers you can point to and say, "Hah! Look how way off that polls was!". The expect occurrence of outliers also does not render polling "meaningless", however.

Think of polling like a weather forecast. We all know sometime the weather forecast is ends up way off. Nevertheless, weather forecasts are still good enough that people use them to plan their activities, governments use them to brace for disasters, etc.

Now, perhaps what you mean is polls are useless to you personally. Fine then. Useless for you doesn't mean useless for everyone.

Again, FORGET THE POLLS. GOTV.

Forget the polls if you wish. I'll pay attention to the polls, and still GOTV. Which is exactly what nearly all campaign operations do. They pay attention to the polls AND do everything they can to get out the vote. In fact, paying attention to the polls is how they allocate not-unlimited resources to most effectively GOTV. Attention to polls and GOTV are not mutually exclusive.

Polls don't vote, people do.

Which is like saying "Weather forecasts don't rain. Clouds do!". True, but also lacking in any useful point.