Here Comes The Polls

[BumRushDaShow]

86. You conceded to why I am doing this

Who here is defending misinformation or selective use of polls?

It's May. Be patient.

I'm not.

The fact that you even thought that I ever said that you did is perhaps telling?

So why do you imagine the best way to attack misinformation and selective use of polls is the inaccurate mantra "polls are meaningless"?

The "polls" offered no value ( "meaningless" ) when one has a preset story to promote.

As soon as you need to add that much qualification to what you mean by "meaningless", you've pretty much thrown away the real meaning of the word.

On the contrary. What I wrote was clear.

Oh, and a tangential topic: Yes, we all know about the failed "red wave" of the 2022 elections. We also should know that was mostly (perhaps not completely) an artifact of spin, not raw polling data itself. (I put spin and narrative in a separate box from raw polling data. I don't care how much you wish to toss out that distinction as an annoying distraction to your crusade against polling.)

The "spin" in the narrative includes the term "polls" attached to it to justify their prognostications and write their headlines or run chyrons at the bottom of the screen. I gave you an image of the perfect example with CNN.

Do you actually know that this false narrative did any harm to anything but the reputations of pundits? Since the red wave didn't materialize, despite so much punditry and prognostication to the contrary, then there's no evidence that the false narrative suppressed Democratic votes. Perhaps it even increased turn out.

The only one who seemed to take a "hit' was Nate Silver, who was "laid off" (supposedly as a cost cutting measure) from his own org, which had moved from the NYT to ESPN-ABC after the 2012 election. He had gotten into twitter pissing matches when called on some things after awhile.

His arrogance during the 2022 election, was well known -

Link to tweet

Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
·
Follow
I'd rather gouge my eyes out than debate the merits of individual election polls or pollsters. Take the average and trust the process.
2:21 PM · Sep 10, 2022

"Trusting the process" meant accepting that he insisted on loading up GOP-leaning pollsters into his aggregates and even giving voice to 2 sets of high school student polling firms (one of them local to here in the Philly area) -

Link to tweet

David Brauer
·
Dec 31, 2022
@dbrauer
·
Follow
“The skewed red-wave surveys polluted polling averages, which are relied upon by campaigns, donors, voters & the news media. It fed the home-team boosterism of right-wing media outlets … And it spilled over into coverage by mainstream news organizations, including The Times …”
jimrutenberg
@jimrutenberg
About That Red Wave
W/⁦@kenbensinger⁩ ⁦@SteveEder⁩ https://nytimes.com/2022/12/31/us/politics/polling-election-2022-red-wave.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
David Brauer
@dbrauer
·
Follow
“Other pollsters lacked experience, like two high-school juniors in Pennsylvania who started Patriot Polling and quickly found their surveys included on the statistical analysis website 538 — as did another high school concern based at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.”
9:34 AM · Dec 31, 2022

Meanwhile the talking heads are still talking and spinning.

You are, of course, free to imagine that there would have been even more Democratic turnout without the red wave myth, but I doubt you can support that counterfactual.

Again the mantra of "Polls don't vote, people do" is exactly what is needed for people to realize it's all spin, and it gives that extra push for people to IGNORE the negative and VOTE. But that "extra push" takes a lot of time and resources and at some point, you will have some people "break" because they are sick of it because they are constantly battling against a stiff headwind of garbage.

Just as the "weather models" have extreme difficulty dealing with the huge "variable" that is "climate change" and -

Just as the "economic models" CONTINUE to have extreme difficulty dealing with the huge "variable" that is the fallout from, the changes that occurred during, and the aftermath of the pandemic, we now see that -

The election algorithms are having extreme difficulty dealing with something as simple but powerful as the huge "variable" that is the overturning of "Roe v. Wade", and the dismissal of that being a voting driver has started up again naturally.