2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: There's a lot of me. UPDATED [View all]BainsBane
(53,175 posts)Because it makes you feel bad? Is that your argument?
I was in my thirties before I voted for a president who won. I grew up with GOP presidents all the fucking time. Still in my life, I have only three times voted for the victor. Everyone I knew was always a Democrat, but the Democrats didn't win the elections. It never occurred to me that everyone should have to suppress the news about polling or election results because I couldn't take them. I can't even imagine what it must be like to imagine everyone else needs to accommodate themselves to my views and that if popular opinion doesn't affirm them, it should not be expressed. That attitude, however, does seem to be common among supporters, not just young, of a particularly candidate.
I also think it unlikely that all of the polls coming out ignored young voters, even though they are the least likely to vote, particularly in primaries and even more so caucuses. I also doubt you have bothered to look at the demographic samples of all the polls.
Polls in the last two election cycles were reasonably accurate. At least at this current time, Sanders is so far behind in the polling averages that error cannot explain it all. No one poll is conclusive, but polling averages do tell a story. They don't predict who will win, but they provide a sense of voters' views at a moment in time. Also note that pollsters haven't yet switched to likely voter models, which will skew even older.
We all are surrounded by people who think like us. That is meaningless when it comes to elections. It's the overall vote that counts. Polls are not votes, and they are not fixed in stone. However, these polls suggest that Sanders has come up against a wall in broadening his support and Clinton is widening her lead.