Why you can ignore all the polls about Trump and Biden this far ahead and why this election is likely as hard to use polls to predict as in 2016 and 2020 or more so
The main thing is you can ignore all polling this far ahead of the vote. It may begin to be clearer after the debate at the end of June but it’s mainly after the debates in the fall that the situation becomes clearer. Then because many people influenced by Trump don’t answer pollsters, there are some things that may never become clear as we’ll see, until voting day and the exit polls.
There are many things make this especially hard to predict.
You can’t find an answer when the people you are polling haven’t even thought much about it and don’t know themselves how they will vote.
You also can’t find an answer if the people who you most want to find out about don’t answer polls.
This video helps explain:
Full video:
Some of her main points:
Section starting at: 11:09
QUOTE: But because the news media are operating on shoestring budgets while also needing to fill 24 hours of news cycles every day, and because of the increasing pressure to be the first to report on something, that means they are looking at every new survey that comes out and reporting on it as if it is hard and fast data, as if it means anything other than what it is:
a snapshot in time of what pollsters guess the majority of Americans are feeling,
based on answers given to them by a sample size of probably one to two thousand Americans,
any number of whom might not even end up voting come November.
She goes on to explain why it is especially hard to predict votes for Trump against other candidates.
Pollsters need to adjust for people who don’t answer the questions at all
However conservatives who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 typically don’t like to answer polls
So it is impossible to poll the most important group deciding who wins in 2024
midterms are far easier to poll for because Trump isn’t on the ballot
She gives the examples of the 2016 poll and the 2020 poll both got it very wrong.
Perhaps a silly example may help understand this. Suppose that nobody ever answered polls if they live north of the Arctic circle? We could use the votes of people south of the circle and census data about people living north of the circle to estimate how they might vote. But since the people north of the Arctic circle don’t answer polls, perhaps they differ in some other way for instance in whether they vote for Trump. If so then how can we allow for that?
It is however much easier to poll for public sentiment for instance about the economy and to look at trends rather than absolute figures.
This shows a big boost in optimism about the economy since 2022.
Section starts at Video: 19:42
This is optimistic for Biden.
She says to ignore the polls right now as they are meaningless.
When it gets closer to the date pay most attention to the top pollsters:
Look out for the margin of error often larger than the difference between the candidates. And also if they don’t share the methodology or margin of error it’s a big red flag to ignore them.
Section starting at: 20:33
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
When it gets closer to election date look out for:
1. Reputable source?
- use 538 list of most and least accurate pollsters
2. Margin of error?
- no margin of error is a big red flag
- often larger than the difference between candidates
3. Methodology
- no methodology is a big red flag
- limitations of poll.
There are ways to try to get around that issue of Democrats being more likely to respond to polls than Republicans. One way is to ask about their past vote, if they voted Democrat or Republican in 2016 or 2020. That then can be compared with the number of people who actually voted in those elections for each party to compensate for this bias.
However that runs into a problem that perhaps 1 in 10 of people forget who they voted for. Of those, many think they remember but remember incorrectly. They are also more likely to guess that they voted for whichever president won.
QUOTE But that's sometimes easier said than done; while pollsters can use voter files to see if someone voted in a previous election, they can't see who that person voted for and have to rely on self-reporting. "I think weighting on past vote has a lot of intuitive appeal and a lot of practical difficulty," Collins observed. "It's been known for a long time that not everyone recalls this perfectly. Some people recall voting, some don't recall at all. And some people who recall voting are more likely to recall voting for the winner”
…
As Nate Cohn at the New York Times recently noted, historically, roughly one-quarter of presidential election voters didn't vote in the last presidential contest. That churn results in part from younger voters entering the electorate and older ones leaving it, but also reflects the participation of less engaged voters who bounce in and out of the electorate from year to year. "Good pollsters have to be thoughtful about how they account for those people," McPhee said, as weighting by recalled vote isn't an available option with new voters.
..
Pollsters have identified many challenges that have consistently arisen in recent years and made adjustments to overcome the hurdles in their path, but how their methodological changes affect their estimates relative to actual vote tallies won't become apparent until after the election.
. Polling isn't broken, but pollsters still face Trump-era challenges
The main concern amongst scared people is about impossible things that some far right Republicans claim he could do as president,. for that see this post:
As for Trump’s chances, then the polls are meaningless so far. They may make more sense after the June debate when people start thinking about how they will vote. But it’s usually more like September that people think about such things, so is an early debate in June really going to influence them?
It might not be until the second debate in September that Americans really start to think about who to vote for.
I cover other issues in predicting the president here, especially protest polling. It doesn’t actually make sense to vote for Trump for a voter who cares about Palestinian rights. He would be far worse for Palestinian rights than Biden.
Here is a Vox article about it
Biden has put only inconsistent pressure on Israel; Trump would have put none.
Everything we know about the former president, from his extensive policy record on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to his top advisers’ statements on the war, suggests he would have no qualms about aligning himself completely with Israel’s far-right government. While Biden has pushed Israel behind the scenes on issues like food and medical aid to civilians — with some limited success — it’s hard to imagine Trump even lifting a finger in defense of Gazan civilians whom he wants to ban from entering the United States.
. Biden has been bad for Palestinians. Trump would be worse.
We will see as they set out their platforms and manifestos and what response it gets.
I talk here about how Trump has to win over the moderates and undecideds in the swing states.
BLOG: Why Trump can’t win if he loses the moderates in the swing states as he seems bound to do
And remember that Biden won against Trump in 2020 when Trump was doing mass rallies with large numbers of supporters and Biden did small physically distanced rallies keeping to COVID restrictions.
So - it’s not the mass rallies that decide the votes.
Trump is undoubtedly good at appealing to the far right. But what will the moderates and undecideds and never Trumpers do?
That’s what’s hard to predict. Plus the turnout. And many people just aren’t very political. Just like 1 in 10 voters can’t remember who they voted for last time, 1 in 10 will not be thinking that hard about who to vote for this time. That’s a lot of voters.
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