If the polling is this wacky, why bother publishing it at all?
Over the weekend, ABC and the Washington Post published the results of a poll that made both operations look like its results were the product of a month-long exercise with a Magic 8-Ball. The way you know it was an embarrassment is the Post story about the poll began by telling us all we should probably ignore it completely.
The Post-ABC poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, although the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier.
It was done entirely by phone. What person under, say, 60 answers an unknown call on their phone at this point? And if they left a voicemail to call them back, who would trust it? Basically, they’re getting extremely gullible people (i.e. mostly Trump voters) to respond to the poll.
I think the only way you can do successful polling at this point is focus groups with carefully selected demographics, and I would even be dubious there.
I participated in a few polls in 2020 and…yeah. I would pick them up because I was waiting for important calls. Why tf else would I pick up. I still get these calls sometimes, usually while waiting for a call back for a job.
Even if I did pick up the phone, which I doubt I would, I would think it was a scam.
You guys are answering the unknown caller? Wow.
Why? Like, don’t.
Every time I get a call from an unknown number I let it stop ringing and immediately add it to the block list. I imagine I can’t be the only one that does this.
Being on the job hunt is miserable. Is it a scammer? Is it a bill collector? Is it the job I applied to? They all start the conversation by asking me who I am instead of telling me who they are (you know, the normal thing you do when you are the initiator of the call), so if I pop off on them thinking it’s the bill collector for the 3rd time today with a different number, and it’s the job, I’ve lost myself the opportunity.
You definitely have my sympathies. Best of luck on the job hunt. I hope you find something great.
I was waiting to hear back about a job then and answered a poll call about gambling. I very, very rarely gamble. And when I do it’s like $50 on blackjack or something cuz my friends want to go to the casino here. That was a fun call cuz my answers were like “never”, *rarely", “no”. Lol
Dunno why I felt the need to share. I’m still drunk from my friends birthday party last night I think lol
What if it was the employer calling to see if you gamble?
Sounds like they gave good answers, unless they were applying to a casino.
I’ve answered a poll about food security once when I was in Belgium. They were asking if goes many mean I’d skipped in the last month, if hunger was affecting my studies or work, if u was able to have vegetables or fruits in my diet …
I answered until the end because it just felt sad, I’m privileged and don’t have to worry about these issues but I wanted people working on the issue to have all the support needed.
It should also be said that polls are only responded to by people who a) have the time, and b) have something to say.
B alone is enough to make the respondents select for far more extreme than the average person. A also selects for… people who’ve got nothing else going on.
After watching The Telemarketers, I’m even less inclined to pick up the phone than ever. And it was already at the “almost never” point.
or you know mass texting
Maybe. I’d still wonder if that was a scam and probably not reply.
Seriously a random text from “ABC News” asking for a response? Um, no. Not in a million years. That stuff is for batshit morons who don’t know a . . . ahhhh, right.
Serious: why wouldnt you answer an unknown number?
Because it’s very likely a scam or someone trying to sell me something. What is the advantage of answering one?
I do sometimes get important calls from some gov. office or something like that. As a example, I lost my wallet and a about a week later the office in charged of the found-lost things called to say someone had found it and I could pick it up.
But to be fair I only ever got 1 scam call and most people I know got the same one (Europolice scam last year)
Like, where I live scam/sell calls are just not a thing, so might be regional.
Buy yeah, thanks for the answer, I get you point now.
Europe may be different, but I get a good 12-14 probably scam/spam calls a week here in the U.S. I can tell because they’re never in an area code I’m familiar with or one from a place where I moved away from and don’t know anyone anymore.
Shrooms have nothing to do with mass delusions. In fact, they may help cure them.
Yeah, a really stupid headline by someone who doesn’t understand mushrooms.
Probably ate a few grams at a party one time and had a panic attack.
The more relevant drug is probably “huffing sister’s farts while engaging in incest in back woods like perfect GOP voter”
“You’d have to be on jenkem to believe THIS”
“Mmmmm! Conspiracies go better with JENKEM™! “
I was thinking datura, since it apparently makes people very suggestive to things as well as having a horrible trip in many cases. To the US, the Trump presidency was probably the political equivalent of “a 72-hour psychedelic nightmare from which you may never recover.”
“You’d have to be out of your goddamned mind” got poo-poohed by the editorbot.
Yeah mushrooms don’t deserve to be brought into this
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Specifically you need to vote for Biden to avoid a Trump presidency. If you don’t give a shit about who is president, then I don’t know what to tell you. The realistic choice though is Trump or Biden and no one else is going to come close to having enough votes to get the Presidency, they’ll only play spoiler at this point and split the vote one way or the other.
Commenting to emphasize this for the people who weren’t paying attention in 2016. If you vote for an alternative to what would normally be your candidate, it’s pretty much the same as voting for their competitor. That is, if you vote for a third party alternative to Biden, you’re basically voting for Trump (and if you vote for a third party alternative to Trump, assuming he wins the primary, it’s like voting for Biden).
If there are no candidates running who you are happy with, but there is a candidate that you think would be especially destructive, you should vote for that candidates main competitor. Otherwise you’re contributing to the destructive candidate winning.
I voted for Bernie, and I love him, but I would probably vote for a cunt that I hate in hindsight to avoid Trump if I could go back. Not because I think it’s the right thing to do, I just know that so many people won’t do the right thing, that my doing the right thing actually becomes an overall negative. Ranked voting is the ultimate choice and would make this whole fucked up system so much better, but since the pieces of shit we call representation will never make that a reality here, the best option is to go with the lesser of two devils that you know the most idiots are going to gravitate to. Bernie should have won, but I know now that was never even possible and wish it had been Clinton.
Yep, I think you’re 100 percent right. Counting wasn’t my choice in the primary - I wanted someone more progressive and felt she had some other flaws - but I sure as hell voted for her in the general.
It’s theoretically possible for a third party or independent candidate to win, but it’s so colossally unlikely, we’ve never really come that close. From the Wikipedia article:
Only once has one of the two major parties finished third in a presidential election, when not the result of a realignment: in 1912, the Progressive Party, with former president Theodore Roosevelt as their presidential candidate obtained 88 electoral votes and surpassed the Republicans.[1] In fact, Roosevelt ran one of the most successful third-party candidacies in history but was defeated by the Democrat (Woodrow Wilson) and the Progressive party quickly disappeared while the Republicans re-gained their major party status. The last third-party candidate to win states was George Wallace of the American Independent Party in 1968, while the most recent third-party candidate to win more than 5.0% of the vote was Ross Perot, who ran as an independent and as the standard-bearer of the Reform Party in 1992 and 1996, respectively.
It’s really a two party system, so the effort needs to be on getting the right candidate to win the primary. So many people stayed home rather than vote for Clinton that we ended up with Trump.
That sounds like a Biden problem, DNC runs a weak shit candidate that no one wants to run, if he loses they are to blame.
Sure, the dnc is to blame, but we lose
If liberals support the party’s chosen candidate thats been forced on them then thats the outcome. It doesnt look like all that talk of ‘push him left after the election’ worked out so well
We also didn’t have the whole government apparatus burnt down by a mental three year old. I know it’s not a great choice, but it is a clear one.
Its only a clear choice for those afraid of change, that have a certain level of comfort which the status quo brings them
Before I launch into a diatribe, I have a simple question that often works to separate rational arguments from articles of faith: What could someone say, what evidence could they give, to convince you that your assumption of the left as the problem in American electoral outcomes, is incorrect? Is there anything?
I live in NY. We’re unlikely to go red, and if we do, by some awful magic, there are bigger problems than my vote. I’m going to vote my conscience. And if I lived in a swing state, I’d vote for Biden. Though I will say, it’s getting harder to take people seriously when they keep blaming the left for their losses and not actually paying attention to their policy preferences. (I hope you realize Dem partisans have used this argument in every election of my lifetime…I’m 38.)
No party is owed one’s vote. It has to be earned with policies. The Dems couldn’t protect women (and other people with uteruses); I had to get my tubes removed to sleep at night when I visit family in the shittier states. When a mutual-defense pact fails to protect one of its largest and most powerful constituent groups, it naturally starts a slow collapse. Imagine where NATO would be if Russia bombed a German city and NATO “allies” did nothing. I used to make arguments like yours; I was a left-leaning Dem until my mid-20s. But in addition to the Dems’ repeated disappointments (repeatedly bringing policy papers to gunfights), climate change has made clear that there are times where selecting better or worse doesn’t matter, because both are inadequate.
None of you dumb 3rd party people has ever even heard of primary elections, I swear.
I had to get my tubes removed to sleep at night when I visit family in the shittier states
What.
I agree with you in that “we have to vote for Biden to avoid armageddon” is ridiculous. After all, we should aim higher than plainly “avoiding armageddon” because we see the Dems as an escape from the whatever the right see as this week’s Boogeyman. The Dems don’t care for social issues AT ALL, while still giving the rich and big corporations handouts.
What could someone say, what evidence could they give, to convince you that your assumption of the left as the problem in American electoral outcomes, is incorrect?
You could have read their comment before asking a BS leading question about something they never said in the first place. Why would you expect anyone to engage with your bad faith assumptions?
In any first past the post election anything more than 2 candidates means there is a spoiler.
At this point Biden is the spoiler
Underestimating this discarded foreskin is what got us here in the first place.
Don’t get complacent.
This is deeply insulting to mushroom users, particularly given that people tend to be more empathetic because of those experiences, not less.
Shrooms specifically were a weird choice for the headline for sure. But it’s just another variation on “drugs make you stupid and only teetotallers have an accurate perception of the world”. It’s really no less offensive than if they’d gone with “only a woman would believe…” or “you’d have to be a middle-school dropout to believe…”. Like why? Why target some random group and call them out as idiots incapable of seeing what’s right in front of their faces, when it has absolutely 0 to do with the content of the article? You’d have to be on PCP to believe this is a good way to write a headline :D
You’re reading way too much into it. The point is that you’d have to have a warped sense of reality, which is something mushrooms are known to do. No random groups were targeted.
Don’t get complacent. That’s the most important takeaway. We need to not only beat Republicans, but to give them massive losses. We want them to lose by double digit margins so they realize fascism has no place in the US, and MAGA can ma-get the fuck out of here.
I’m really curious to read more about the poll itself later, just with how unusual this is. What in the methodology screwed it up? Or do they just have an incredibly wide confidence interval?
It’s also worth remembering I think, polling was very wrong in the midterms. They suggested at best that Republicans would win by a little bit, and at worst the “red tidal wave”. And we know now it was a trickle, that they can’t even claim as a total victory. Dems gained a Senate seat, and a lot of important state government positions in swing states.
There’s a few causes for this mismatch I believe:
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There’s a lot of shitty Republicans pollsters these days that provide a lot of low quality data.
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Analysts overcorrected their models after 2020 and it undercounts Democrats.
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The huge backlash for overturning Roe isn’t being captured in polls for some reason. Abortion continues to be a huge issue that’s benefitting Democrats. The economy and inflation were thought to be the largest drivers for the midterms, but if they were, people saw Democrats as the solution for that.
We want them to lose by double digit margins so they realize fascism has no place in the US, and MAGA can ma-get the fuck out of here.
These fascists aren’t going to suddenly become sane democratic loving colleagues if MAGA falls out of fashion. Even if they put their masks back on, they’re still going to be fascists.
The republican party needs to die. Scorched earth, razed to the ground. Democrats need a super majority, and then subsequently split into 2 or more parties to become the new 2 party system, or preferably ranked choice and have to work as a coalition.
Edit - and there needs to be a public education attempt at making the cultists masses understand the dangers of fascism, and that it’s wrong. We currently have a culture war trying to rebrand the civil war and nazism as misunderstood. The parallels on nazi Germany are not hyperbole. We need public accountability and public education to aggressive stave this off before its too late.
I completely agree with everything you’ve said. My view is that if the Republicans lose big, they’ll abandon the fascist wing and see it as a liability to winning elections. If they get absolutely crushed, their turn towards fascism and Trump becomes completely repudiated, and they’re going to try and distance themselves from it. These dregs will always exist, we just need to teach conservatives what happens when you ally with them – you lose, big time.
I think the party would be likely to fragment on a loss. You’ll have the fascist freedom caucus on one end, and the more moderate Republicans on the other. Neither however will be large enough to win elections, especially as they’ll compete for the same voters. My prediction is the Republicans die in all but name, and those closer to the middle join Democrats.
There’s a few causes for this mismatch I believe:
Also keep in mind the sampling bias of only including people willing to take part in polls.
Unknown number? Stranger knocking at my door? I’m not answering.
Yeah this is the Achilles heel of polling. You need a sample as close to random as possible, but that’s hard if 75% of those people don’t respond.
Don’t get complacent.
This was a good start. But then you finished by giving loads of reasons to remain complacent.
Polticial polls have to adjust for turnout and that is extremely difficult to get right. But it is a nailed on guarantee that Trump fans will turn out. Dems should be worried that the polls (in general, not just this one) are very close. Biden’s presidency has been somewhat better than expected from a progressive perspective but is still too beholden to the kind of Dem that lost it in 2016 by appealing solely to rich people instead of the tens of millions of voters with no one to vote for. They will struggle to enthuse the people they need to enthuse and that is showing up in the polls.
Don’t get complacent. Don’t push narratives that encourage complacency.
The second part of my comment is more of an academic exercise in trying to determine why the polls might be off. I’m curious as to what’s throwing them off.
That’s why I opened by saying we shouldn’t get complacent. It’s worthwhile to figure out why this isn’t going right, but irrespective of the answer, we can’t let our guard down.
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Because young people aren’t fucking idiots?
They know Biden tried to have more forgiven and deferred, but the supreme court stopped him. The same supreme court which overturned roe. Abortion in itself is enough really.
Oh, and young people fucking loathe Republicans, so there’s that too!
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I suggest you do a considerable bit of research. There is no big national election this year. And the legislation which mandated the restart date chose the exact same restart date that the department of education had already set. There was absolutely no change there.
The Supreme Court wasn’t about a law, but an action that Biden tried to take, and the Court said he couldn’t do (which legally really makes no sense if you read the relevant constitutional passages).
Didn’t they stop payments on student loans and try to forgive them completely?
Immediately before … spiking the federal reserve rate.
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Who the hell thought this headline idea is good wtf
It’s kind of slanderous to mushrooms
Libelous. Slander is spoken. Libel is written.
Yes, that’s true. I read it aloud to myself though.
People that haven’t ever actually done any drugs before.
It seems to be part of a series called “Politics With Charles P. Pierce”, which from the looks of it attempts to take a relaxed, informal take on an op-ed.
So the title seems fine for the context I think.
If anyone here is just joining the party, Charles Peirce was one of the few corporate news voices (all of whom were op-ed, very purposefully) who was allowed to say what we were actually seeing.
For a few years it was a crushing torrent of gaslighting and insanity and the corporate news just went with it. Jeff Tiedrich on twitter and Charles Pierce in Esquire were two loud voices saying wtf everytime some new batshit thing would happen. It was very helpful.
Those of you upset about the poor take on mushrooms, take five. The gist is that polls this bad shouldn’t be blowtorched onto the news cycle. Which us exactly what many of us were saying yesterday.
Because bullshit like this poll is how republiQans fool enough of the people to crack open the electoral college. It’s the 2016 playbook, being run again right in front of us like we didn’t just go through that hell. F that.
Shrooms make you more perceptive, not less.
They also can make people hallucinate, which was the point.
I just want to make it clear to everyone that being on mushrooms would not in any way make you think that. In fact, it’s pretty stupid to think that any drugs would do that. Anyone who believes in Trump probably needs some drugs
All the drugs. They need them all.
All the drugs, all at once. 😈
Putting aside a LOT of other issues, the reason we’re seeing more polls that are very clearly nonsense is twofold:
- spam calls have proliferated to an absolutely absurd degree, to the extent that most people refuse to pick up the phone unless it’s a known contact - and even that’s not necessarily a sure bet, because caller id can be trivially spoofed.
- the mainstream media “outrage narrative”, which drives engagement/addictive consumer behavior/ad views - it behooves media networks who sell ads to present as many situations as possible as a toss-up, regardless of whether or not that’s an accurate representation, simply in the interest of profit.
My phone literally doesn’t ring unless it’s a known contact. I don’t even see the call coming in to answer if I wanted to.
Everyone else can leave a message and get a call back if it’s something I care about.
why mushrooms and not opioids? or crack?
Mushrooms don’t deserve this. They’ve proven beneficial and healthy in defeating depression, properly coping with trauma, cognitive decline, etc. This negatively associates mushrooms with idiocy and it’s irresponsible and unwarranted.
Can confirm, I eat mushrooms, and I still can’t believe this shit.
The only way to get those numbers is through hallucinations.
Maybe it should say, you should take mushrooms if you think […]
Nailed it.
You’re god damn right!
Trump might not be 20 points ahead of Biden, but you’d better fucking turn out at the poll like he is.
Fuck Trump. He belongs in prison.
Don’t insult mushrooms like this, lmao, what did they ever do to hurt you?
“You’d have to be on mushrooms to think Trump will become president” > an annoying lot of people pre-2016.
If the young people that actually go out to vote happen to be the ones that like Trump, Tate, Musk and the like, then yeah, he can pull 100% ahead of Biden.
