Quinnipiac poll, best chance of beating Trump: Biden 46%, Warren & Sanders 10%, Buttigieg 6%,

[thesquanderer]

13. Agree and Disagree

re: "It's the single most important question IF you care about winning."

I agree electability may well be the single most important thing to consider. And to poll for. But polling for who people THINK is most electable (an entirely different question from who IS most electable) is dumb. Poll who they would vote for, and that actually tells you who is most electable. I don't care who these people think OTHER people will vote for.

re: "voters have every right, and every reason, to make assessments of electability, based on what they read and hear."

I agree, with that, too. I just (again) think it's a stupid thing to poll. Give us the facts, not what other people think the facts are.

re: "The people who complain about this question in polls are usually supporters of candidates who aren't faring as well when their electability is polled."

The leader in the pretty worthless "who is most electable" polls is... Biden. The leader in the actual, truly valuable head-to-head polls that tell us who really IS most electable, is, again... Biden. No difference. But one is a real measure, and one is a measure that is an amalgamation of people regurgitating those real measures and other things they have heard along with their own psychological feelings of how they think other people will feel about the canididates. Why do we care what people think OTHER people feel about the candidates, when we can just ASK those other people? The latter is what the useful polls do. And at least at the moment, the results are Biden either way, no difference there. Except in one case you're measuring Biden's actual strength, and in the other, you're doing a one-generation removed version where you're measuring, not Biden's actual strength, but people's psychological perceptions of Biden's strengths. Again, why do we need people's perceptions of something, when we can measure the thing itself?

All IMO, of course.