Anyone who has taken a basic Statistics course knows a poll is only as good as the methodology used to create it. GIGO--garbage in garbage out. Organizations (yes, that includes the media like CNN) can have an agenda and conduct a poll to confirm what they want it to confirm.
I saw some reporting this week that said CNN conducted a poll showing Biden and ‘the former guy’ neck and neck to boost their ratings.
Perhaps we need to have the polling organizations also publish their polling methodology since we can’t trust them to do it properly? 😔
I wrote about the polls the other day. Many (most?) polls are conducted not to survey public opinion but to influence it. Robert Hubbell lays this out in a substack, One more time with feeling: Ignore the polls! September 4, 2023.
Once upon a time I heard "big box" cases. Statistics permit extrapolation of a valid statistical sample to a huge "population." I am not a statistician. Calculus almost had me in school. I would be presented with 2 experts who were well qualified, usually college professors in math, statistics or computer science. By law, I had to test their qualifications, and if well qualified, I could ask hypothetical questions to establish, usually, the validity of a proposed sample. In order to decide, I had to articulate legitimate reasons why I chose the sample.
None of the media polls, to my knowledge are peer reviewed.
The WSJ says it conducted “telephone and text-to-web surveys of 1,500 registered voters,” but the results reflect responses by only 750 voters—exactly 50% of those surveyed.
Hubbell comments that That round number is too tidy to be the result of chance. How is it that precisely half of the respondents ended up being included in the survey?
In push polling, survey design can “prime” respondents to express negative views of one candidate by asking questions that precondition the respondent. And survey design always works against the incumbent, who is held responsible for whatever challenges the nation faces at the moment.
In pushing, are the WSJ responders aware that we are close to a civil war? That Trump was twice impeached? Found liable for assaults? Flimflammed his students at Trump U? Set up a fake Trump Family Charity and stole donations from kids with cancer and veterans? Etc.
IMHO the respondents in the survey should have to read the David Brooks article. I am by no means a fan. If this is what a Republican toady says, I'd go one better.
A vote for Trump is a vote for the end of this country.
Daniel Soloman, I agree, but I would go further, a vote for any GOP Candidate is a vote for the end of this country, due to the GOP's current iteration, sadly.
Multiple thanks and likes for your post. I, like many Americans, am not a statistician either and quite honestly hate them all without the data of how they are done to truly evaluate the results obtained. I have had to use and create surveys to validate projects and know you set those up get the response you desire. So I try very hard to not listen to or take with “a grain of salt” all of the polling going on right now.
I to agree a vote for Trump and any GOP candidate at this time is a vote for the end our country. There isn’t a single GOP representative, state or federal who has spoken up about this madness loudly and consistently so my message to them is Sorry GOP, No Guts, No Glory. Vote Blue!
Daniel, you put it into words better than I could.Yes,
as with everything else in maga-world, polls aren’t
what they once were. Currently most, but not all polls inaccurately reflect how people intend to vote. Polls are now used as propaganda to sway voters who haven’t made up their minds about who to vote for. The psychology of it is that it’s human nature
to want to vote for a “winner.”
The only reason I know a little more about polling than the average person is because my husband has a PhD in math and he works with statistics because it’s fun for him. Personally, I don’t like statistics or math. But being married to a man who’s very good at it means I’m exposed to math whether I like it or not.
(As I’m writing this, my husband and I are watching the news. He just paused it to explain to me that
even though a reporter said the area being searched
for a man who escaped from prison has been cut in half, it was actually cut by 75%...and he went through the math to explain it.)
In order for a poll to be accurate and reflect exactly
what you want it to reflect, each question must be worded with great care and there’s math involved
that must be accurate. There’s very little to nothing magas do with great care. They aren’t interested in accuracy, they’re interested in using polls to persuade and manipulate people to think what magas want them to think.
There are only a few polls remaining that are still accurate, so it’s better to assume polling results are not accurate until and unless you find out otherwise.
I keep saying this: the people who are trying to destroy American democracy have been at it for decades, and they aren’t fooling around. Vladimir Putin-ex-KBG- is involved and has been involved
for years. KGB tactics like propaganda and disinformation are used to distort truth and pit us against each other.
You may wonder why anyone wants to pit
Americans against each other. It’s simple, in
addition to distorting truth, when we’re fighting
each other we’re distracted, and we fail to notice other things that are going on, like the removal of
all books from public schools.But more importantly, it results in distrust and hate for each other.
Disunity among the people of a country makes that country more vulnerable to a variety of things. The reason republicans refuse to pass serious gun control legislation is to continue the disunity, to
keep us fighting with each other, to continue the horror of children being killed in classrooms, people
being killed at grocery stores and malls and other things like transgender intolerance, the fake controversy that children are undergoing surgery
to change their sex, the pretense that parents have no rights at the public schools their children attend,
the insidious lie that newborns are murdered, are all
colossal lies designed to manipulate vulnerable
people and cause chaos.
If you’re on X, (formally known as Twitter) and
you come across vicious rhetoric personally
attacking someone, chances are the vicious person is being paid by either the republican party or Russia. Republicans have been and still are being lied to and manipulated to pressure the Biden
admin. to stop sending weapons to Ukraine. If the administration caves to that pressure, it makes it easier for Putin to completely destroy Ukraine and annex it as part of Russia. Putin did something similar in 2014. He annexed the Crimea which was
at the time was part of Ukraine.
If all of Ukraine falls and becomes part of Russia, Putin won’t stop there, he’ll invade another country in the area, and another, etc. The point is, he has to be stopped asap, because if he isn’t, it will affect
America negatively because we have an agreement
to help defend our allies in Europe via NATO.
We should look at polling critically and not automatically accept what any particular poll
Thank you, Daniel, great post. As I said in my response, if we were 330 million bacterial colonies, instead of 330 million Homo sapiens, I might be more impressed with polling.
In his podcast yesterday, Keith Olbermann explained how the CNN poll was biased. If I remember correctly, they polled about a third more Republicans than Democrats.
That is EXACTLY what i told my daughter the other day about these bogus polls. Of course they poll more Fascist Rethug voters than Democrats, the lying, bogus polls will reflect that it's either 50/50 or the Rethugs will be leading. These polls are nothing but Fascist propaganda. I am sick and tired of hearing about what polls say.
It’s not just the polls that are no longer accurate,
it’s also a ton of false information on the internet.
For example, it’s easy to make up a name for a “new” online magazine or newsletter, fill it up with false info by fake authors, then write articles contradicting mainstream media using those bogus online magazines as if they are credible sources for
more articles. Most people who read the articles
with false info won’t bother to check it with known, trusted sources.
The internet is where i have seen most of the false information, especially in the load of emails i receive every day. I get over 200 emails a day and i automatically delete half of them when i get online every night. This has gotten old to me, and i unsubscribe to many of them only to start getting them again in a few days. Most of the time i can tell by the title of the email that they are bogus and not worth my time to open them.
I was getting about 200 emails a day too. I finally blocked or unsubscribed to about 20 of them like you did, and like you a lot of them returned. I discovered many of these
“senders” use several different names and email addresses. So if you block one, it’s likely to show up in your in-box under a different name & email address. If I can’t tell who sent me an email or text
and what it’s about without opening it, I delete it.
The same thing is happening to me too, just like these robo phone calls. If you block their number, they will just call from a totally different number. I delete unknown email senders too as i have learned that some of them will have links that could possibly have computer viruses and malware embedded in the links. I have already had one computer ruined because i was fooled into calling a number that had a bogus Microsoft logo on it thinking it was an official Microsoft site. It was actually a hacker posing as a Microsoft employee and he tricked me into downloading a file that wiped out everything on the computer. He said he could fix my computer for $1,000 and i knew i had been hacked. I cursed him out and told him he was blackmailing me and when i refused to agree to his demands for the $1,000 he started yelling at me and actually threatened me. He had installed a ''Ransomware'' thing and ruined my computer and i had to end up buying a new computer. I was a fool for not having virus protection on the computer he ruined. I made sure i got virus protection on my new computer. I wish authorities could catch these extortionists and put them under a prison. Most of them are from third world nations and are very difficult to apprehend i have been told.
I too get 100-200 emails a day, most are not bogus. There are just too many organizations, charitable and political, doing pretty much the same thing. Candidate emails alone amount to a lot.
Exactly the same here.. i calculated if i just donated $3.00 for every organization, it would end up costing me $3,150.00 a month. I just cannot afford that as that would exceed my monthly income by $300.00. I sometimes get political emails that read, '' i am down on my knees, begging and pleading for just three dollars.'' I do however, donate to our two Democratic Senators here in GA occasionally, i think they deserve them. I would gladly donate a shoe box full of cat excrement to Donald TUMP. We have 12 cats at my house.
I've been participating in the Democrats groups and observing campaigns for a bit. I have two observations to share about how Reps are winning the long game.
They think like a business plan.
They hit my inbox offering constitute services over and over again.
They don't give up. They knock down, dust off, get up and try something else.
They are organized and tenacious.
They also keep the long game in mind.
Just an observation if anyone is thinking of running for office. They also keep an organized pipeline of candidates to step in the next pair of shoes too.
That's the critical difference in media polls and peer reviewed reports in legitimate journals. Sample, methodology, statistical treatment, degrees of freedom, margin of error, and that ever bothersome null hypothesis are the working parts that should be scrutinized..but are practically never mentioned. If we're lucky we get a sample size and margin of error written sideways in microscopic font.
HoTo Lie With Statistics has become a TV serial, a theater of deceit dressed up as an imitation of science.
Several things, one the MSM seems to be in the Bash Biden most of the time and report every one of Trump's farts everyday all day and night.
Maybe more importantly Polls are broken, so many will not respond or even answer a cell call because of experience with push polls and so much spam and fraud via cell phones.
I, too, get a lot of phone calls on both my landline and cell phones. IF I don't recognise the # or
the name is 'unavailable' I do not answer. And if there is NO message then I know I didn't
'need' to talk to them anyway. I also get a lot of 'spam' e-m's with 'survey' attached. I frequently answer their ??? but have noticed that most are persuasive or even extortionate in
how they are worded and have a follow up 'Donate//Contribute//Rush $$. I do NOT send $$,
aside from the fact I have NO $ to send, let alone $$$ $$$... And these kinds of - surveys -
use similar or same methodology across the board, whether political or animal rights (adding a
'sob' story to garner sympathy for sending $)...IMO, no matter the cause, I don't see how - mere $ can - solve these//their problems unless it's to buy more advertising to send out more
surveys//polls to elicite more $ $$ $$$... [[[[ huge sigh ]]]]
Biden is not surging ahead in the polls not because of any lack on his part or because Trump is so good at messaging, but because of a failure in our system of government that has relied on unwritten rules or codes that no longer function for the “Common Good” of the people. The situation of increasing wealth inequality, the inability of congress to function for the good of the people or even function at all except as a battle ground indicates the need to create a more advanced and equitable form of government from the ground up. Yes, this can be called “Utopian Thinking,” but we have been thinking and discussing in an increasingly smaller and smaller box. Now is the time to be willing to think outside that small box and the polls are only one more indication that the current box is not working.
Monopolization never supports true Democracies. Isn't that exactly why our OWN government broke AT&T up into a dozen Baby Bells in 1983? Our government stated at the time that AT&T had become a "dangerous telecommunications monopoly." Take a look at AT&T today. All neatly put back together and turned into an even MORE dangerous monopoly than it EVER was by untaxed oligarchs, both foreign and domestic. All neatly accomplished courtesy of our OWN utterly corrupted Supreme Court who created dark money bribery through their 2010 Citizens United decision. Creating an anonymous and unlimited cash flow made fully available to ANY politician, no matter their political persuasion, who is willing to sell both their personal ethics AND their VOTE to the highest bidder. THAT doesn't strengthen true democratic Republics either.
We no longer have unbiased media using any medium. Generally, what we have is either religious and partisan based bullshit spreaders or people who pretend to be unbiased. Look to the ownership of the media and don't expect truth to come from those sources. And we have an abject failure of our public and private educational systems that have not found a way to teach idiots to think. These are probably the issues that bring down all democracies.
We must take into account the oncoming pressure of the rising awareness of climate crisis. While the ultra-right is messaging that there is no climate crisis, the population centers of the Northeast and the Bay area get blanketed with the unbreathable dense smoke of burning forests for the first time. One whole town and well over 100 people perished in a day from the fires cause by forests parched by climate change and millions of people have suffered through the hottest summer on record and the hurricanes tornados and record-breaking downpours keep coming. By denying the climate crisis that is not only is at our doorstep but entering our homes and destroying them, the clarity around the Republican climate deniers increases and so will the instability of our current government with a non-functional congress. This is much larger than the next presidential race. In the near term, Biden must win, but that is only a temporary fix for something much larger. We must see outside the box and utilize our collective desire to act for the common good to create a more just and representative system of governance that will not give rise to so much unaddressed discontent to be utilized by demagogues to amass power and wealth.
TUMP is good at messaging alright, messaging a constant stream of outright lies and blatant misinformation... and a large number of stupid, gullible, ignorant, people here in the United States. They believe everything he says is true, it makes no difference how outrageous the lies are that he spews. The worst thing about these mental midgets is that there are so many of them here is USA..
Yes, Biden could be a better communicator, but I fear that Americans have become very shallow, accustomed to being entertained rather than led. How sad, how frightening that America’s concept of leadership is now vaudevillian instead of substantive.
Yes, Biden walks like the old man that he is, but America once voted for a great leader who could not walk at all. It was his mind they focused on.
So I chose polls are wrong based on my experience as a market research interviewer leading up to the 2020 election.
I called voters all over the country and this is what I found:
Gen Z didn't want to talk to us pollsters, they'd hang up either right from the intro or a couple of questions in. Their answers don't count because the survey hasn't been completed.
Millennials identifying as Democrat don't want to answer questions because they're mad at their situations in life. Mad at everyone. Click. No complete, not counted
Republican identifying Millennials: Life sucks, candidates suck, Biden is failing, let's go with the other guy. Those completed count.
Boomers like me:: "Why are you calling so late? It's almost 8 p.m.!" Click
Strong Democrats: never Trump. Completed interviews count but these respondents are few and far between
Most of my completed interviews were with die-hard Republican seniors who were lonely or bored. They were eager to talk, speechifying the wonders of tRump and the disaster that is Pres. Biden
If this pattern happened with all the other interviewers, that would be a good reason the poll is NOT representative of the population.
BTW, almost all of those who did answer questions were white males
The system is rigged in favor of Trump and his ilk. Democrats should be saying this, persistently. In response to Rep. Jim Jordan's effort to interfere in her prosecution of Trump, Fulton County, Georgia D.A. Fani Willis wrote him a strong letter saying that all defendants are treated equally, and he should stop his efforts to obtain favorable treatment for Trump. Reading that letter was a high point of my week.
We're more than a year away from a national election -- and eleven plus months away from national conventions -- and three and a half months away from the Iowa Caucuses (which, while interesting, do not have their finger on the pulse of the vast majority of Americans). The opinion of Iowans, while important to some, means virtually nothing to me. Polls have their place, but with our election timeline, they don't matter at this stage in our endless national election cycle, as far as I'm concerned. We spend so much time, energy and money gauging opinions that will ebb and flow between now and November 2024. Can we please just give our concerns a rest until early January 2024? I don't expect many will agree with me, but it feels good to give the "mania" a brief rest.
Back in the day we had a half hour news show at the end of the day (give or take.) Today we have 24 hour a day news broadcasts that have to be filled with something called "news", hence poll data, tRump's daily/hourly farts, panic blurbs to sell air time, etc.
I use a farming analogy, having been raised on a dairy. It's like the media's news gathering machinery is attached to a 24 hour tractor and attached to that tractor is the world's largest manure spreader and what goes in is what comes out and manure is the result, not news.
Anne Gunn, i am one of them that agrees with you, i am ready to give this political circus a brief rest. I am usually in a good mood all day until i get online and read all this crap about TUMP and the insane Fascist Rethugs and hear about their childish behavior. All of this really puts me in a foul mood. More especially the lies and propaganda they tell and expect all of us to believe them. When you speak of ''mania'' it perfectly describes the Fascist Rethuglicans..
I feel confident there are many more who feel as we do. The arc of history is in our favor, even though there are days when it's easy to get discouraged. Thanks for believing in democracy -- messy but vital.
Sep 9, 2023Liked by Robert Reich, Heather Lofthouse
Thank you, friends Bob and Heather. You've improved the quality of the week to come. Particularly appreciated the "friends discussion". Coincidentally, yesterday I spoke to two friends (almost an hour each)...one a new friend who I rarely see in person, the other a best friend from childhood who lives in Eugene (OR) who called to check up on one of my friends from kindergarten in 1940. Made my day...really uplifting as I'll hit 88 next month. After having been an activist since college,I really appreciate your support of Biden...he's perfectly capable of handling things because of his years in Congress, etc. Trump is incapable of saying or doing anything supportive of democracy. I grew up "rich" but now I live paycheck to paycheck. In this country it's possible thanks to SS, but the majority of the poor struggle because of people who make too much money on their backs. Equality is our biggest problem right now. My father was one of the first Hollywood film industry union members in the '30s, so I've long been aware of the need for unions.
In addition, Dems NEED to quit harping on Biden's age and mental acquity. There are PLENtY of people who are his age, and older, who are sharp as tacks. PLUS, as a life long stutterer, he, like other stuttereers, needs to pause and choose his words. I have seen nothing to indicate he is less than razor sharp in his thinking, or in his responses. Saying "He's too old...He's not sharp anymore...etc..." is NOT HELPING. DO we ReALLY want to elect ANY of the possible GOP candidate wanna-bes? I think NOT!
I would love to see the Dems make the case that Biden and Trump are both Senior Citizens, but Biden knows how to do the job, while Trump is an incompetent criminal.
I certainly agree that the TFG is a criminal, and that while both Biden and TFG are "senior citizens", only one, Biden, is competent, and MORE than competent! Let us not forget that the 14th Amendment bars ANYONE who has given comfort to an insurrection may NEVER hold office in our government. *cough cough* TFG...
So, let's say a partisan wants a red wall. Well, the partisan will open red paint and paint the wall red. This is exactly what happens when pollsters want to say Trump is ahead - they make a poll that shows Trump is ahead. The can of paint they open, meaning the people they ask to weigh in, are chosen to be the ones who will answer that Trump is ahead. Also, the way the questions are asked can lead to the way the answers are answered and interpreted. The only poll that counts is the one on election day!
Polls are a constant source of social confusion. They give a vague sense of what people are thinking on a particular subject at any given point in time. Their main problem is they usually don't represent an actual slice of public opinion because the people being ask aren't a true cross section of how all of us feel on an issue. Polls are good people but as far as understanding how the public views a subject public opinion polls are less than adequate. They give a peak but they rarely tell.
@Donald. Respectfully disagree. Polls reflect the motivated thinking of the pollsters AND the motivated thinking of those who decide to answer. Lots of people won’t answer a poll. Only people who are more politically motivated will answer and they will give the answer they want to push. Pollsters are often motivated too. They only ask the questions they want to showcase AND they construct the questions to “lead” the respondent to the answer they want. For example instead of “which of the following 5 candidates do you favor” they ask “do you like Trump or Bider better”. Whatever else you know about that question you can see the answer is “shaped”.
Ben--I see your point but polls only reflect the thinking of those who have been polled. These hit and miss slices of our society are in no way an accurate means of deciding anything.
Ben--A poll is a meager attempt to get an idea of how the public feels about a given subject. People that have land line phones are the targets of most pollsters. This at the onset gives an unacceptable result. Then you have people that don't want to be bothered wasting their time giving strangers information they are uncomfortable relaying in the first place. Polls are simply incomplete snippets of how the public is feeling on a given subject. Like I said earlier, they give a peak but they don't tell. You could say they are good kissers.
Thank you, Bob and Heather for another stimulating discussion. In response to your title; What do polls mean anyway? Not a damned thing. If we were 330,000,000 bacterial colonies I would believe polls, but we aren't. Some of us have the ability to think and reason. As Jean L and Daniel Solomon state, Polls aren't used to determine influences, they are used to influence.
I absolutely agree that Biden is the most progressive President we have had in a very long time. And his approved legislation has all been for the betterment of ordinary Americans not for the rich and famous. I did and do admire Barack Obama and his lovely family, but as a President I was disappointed. He seemed more interested in gaining the respect of Legislators, many of whom are racist nitwits, than of passing meaningful legislation for all Americans - with the exception of the Affordable Care Act - which did help millions and could have helped more if not for the racial prejudices of the real Deep State - the sparsely populated States. Being way older than you and Heather, or Biden for that matter, my gold standard for Presidents is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Joe Biden comes closer to that standard than anyone.
Musk is a contagious, poisonous worm. Like Trump I see nothing good in him. If, as I hope, we not only re-elect Biden but gain control of both Legislative Houses, and they can give up begging for donations long enough to do some legislating, perhaps we can file the fangs of the oligarchy by reinstating the anti-trust, anti-monopoly regulations of the early 20th century,
We don’t “give Biden any credit for the good economy” is simple...if you’re a regular person like me, it’s NOT a good economy. I think you are as out of touch with us as the Administration is. Sadly
I think that Bob and many other plumping for Biden mean well but live in a particular economic stratum that insulates them from the ongoing hardships wrought by the pandemic and subsequent corporate gouging and supply chain issues.
It's a bad look when the administration tells so many Americans, "Hey, you're doing great -- you just don't know it. You aren't really in pain."
My grocery bills are through the roof, and rents were just raised for the second time in less than 18 months as property owners seek to grab everything they couldn't at the height of the pandemic, recoup what they feel they've lost (since when is a right to get rich off of providing housing?) . . . for the last two weeks I've watched several families and couples moving out, leaving. Every single day there have been moving vehicles and former neighbors working with friends, piling their belongings into pickups and vans.
The contention that Americans just don't "get" how god Biden/Bidenomics is, is absurd.
Not that long ago, or at least within living memory, government regulatory agencies --perhaps spurred by a more forceful C-in-C-- would have been all over this gouging. Biden does nothing.
My energy bill doubled this year while my consumption went down. My food bill doubled this year while my consumption remained the same. I used to do recreational travelling and now I can barely afford one tank of gas a month. And two years ago, I got a 9% increase in my social security. I am getting too slow to steal and too old to beg.
It was definitely refreshing to hear the reality regarding the Clinton/Obama administrations' propping up of Wall Street. While you say Biden is more progressive in this respect, the bar is set pretty low. Let's see how the admin response to the upcoming UAW strike plays out. But thank you for the analysis.
Anyone who has taken a basic Statistics course knows a poll is only as good as the methodology used to create it. GIGO--garbage in garbage out. Organizations (yes, that includes the media like CNN) can have an agenda and conduct a poll to confirm what they want it to confirm.
I saw some reporting this week that said CNN conducted a poll showing Biden and ‘the former guy’ neck and neck to boost their ratings.
Perhaps we need to have the polling organizations also publish their polling methodology since we can’t trust them to do it properly? 😔
Worse, Jean, they use polls to persuade rather than report. I'm sure some can be valid, but they need to be tested.
Robert is right. Biden is the best president since LBJ. Even right wing Republicans have to admit that "somehow our economy is among the strongest in the world. Our economic competitors stumble and fall; we stumble, and somehow bounce back.." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/07/opinion/economy-china-america-decline.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&fbclid=IwAR3CVve7oWe2lZP7LYiWtra_b6UI2g_q1GJ9WCZkocR7sMlakQJ-9yHSKy8
I wrote about the polls the other day. Many (most?) polls are conducted not to survey public opinion but to influence it. Robert Hubbell lays this out in a substack, One more time with feeling: Ignore the polls! September 4, 2023.
Once upon a time I heard "big box" cases. Statistics permit extrapolation of a valid statistical sample to a huge "population." I am not a statistician. Calculus almost had me in school. I would be presented with 2 experts who were well qualified, usually college professors in math, statistics or computer science. By law, I had to test their qualifications, and if well qualified, I could ask hypothetical questions to establish, usually, the validity of a proposed sample. In order to decide, I had to articulate legitimate reasons why I chose the sample.
None of the media polls, to my knowledge are peer reviewed.
The WSJ says it conducted “telephone and text-to-web surveys of 1,500 registered voters,” but the results reflect responses by only 750 voters—exactly 50% of those surveyed.
Hubbell comments that That round number is too tidy to be the result of chance. How is it that precisely half of the respondents ended up being included in the survey?
In push polling, survey design can “prime” respondents to express negative views of one candidate by asking questions that precondition the respondent. And survey design always works against the incumbent, who is held responsible for whatever challenges the nation faces at the moment.
In pushing, are the WSJ responders aware that we are close to a civil war? That Trump was twice impeached? Found liable for assaults? Flimflammed his students at Trump U? Set up a fake Trump Family Charity and stole donations from kids with cancer and veterans? Etc.
IMHO the respondents in the survey should have to read the David Brooks article. I am by no means a fan. If this is what a Republican toady says, I'd go one better.
A vote for Trump is a vote for the end of this country.
Daniel Soloman, I agree, but I would go further, a vote for any GOP Candidate is a vote for the end of this country, due to the GOP's current iteration, sadly.
Folks need to know,,if they vote 'R',they're voting for autocracy!
More like a Corportocracy and/or Kleptocracy
That is too kind. They are fascists.
Multiple thanks and likes for your post. I, like many Americans, am not a statistician either and quite honestly hate them all without the data of how they are done to truly evaluate the results obtained. I have had to use and create surveys to validate projects and know you set those up get the response you desire. So I try very hard to not listen to or take with “a grain of salt” all of the polling going on right now.
I to agree a vote for Trump and any GOP candidate at this time is a vote for the end our country. There isn’t a single GOP representative, state or federal who has spoken up about this madness loudly and consistently so my message to them is Sorry GOP, No Guts, No Glory. Vote Blue!
Daniel, you put it into words better than I could.Yes,
as with everything else in maga-world, polls aren’t
what they once were. Currently most, but not all polls inaccurately reflect how people intend to vote. Polls are now used as propaganda to sway voters who haven’t made up their minds about who to vote for. The psychology of it is that it’s human nature
to want to vote for a “winner.”
The only reason I know a little more about polling than the average person is because my husband has a PhD in math and he works with statistics because it’s fun for him. Personally, I don’t like statistics or math. But being married to a man who’s very good at it means I’m exposed to math whether I like it or not.
(As I’m writing this, my husband and I are watching the news. He just paused it to explain to me that
even though a reporter said the area being searched
for a man who escaped from prison has been cut in half, it was actually cut by 75%...and he went through the math to explain it.)
In order for a poll to be accurate and reflect exactly
what you want it to reflect, each question must be worded with great care and there’s math involved
that must be accurate. There’s very little to nothing magas do with great care. They aren’t interested in accuracy, they’re interested in using polls to persuade and manipulate people to think what magas want them to think.
There are only a few polls remaining that are still accurate, so it’s better to assume polling results are not accurate until and unless you find out otherwise.
I keep saying this: the people who are trying to destroy American democracy have been at it for decades, and they aren’t fooling around. Vladimir Putin-ex-KBG- is involved and has been involved
for years. KGB tactics like propaganda and disinformation are used to distort truth and pit us against each other.
You may wonder why anyone wants to pit
Americans against each other. It’s simple, in
addition to distorting truth, when we’re fighting
each other we’re distracted, and we fail to notice other things that are going on, like the removal of
all books from public schools.But more importantly, it results in distrust and hate for each other.
Disunity among the people of a country makes that country more vulnerable to a variety of things. The reason republicans refuse to pass serious gun control legislation is to continue the disunity, to
keep us fighting with each other, to continue the horror of children being killed in classrooms, people
being killed at grocery stores and malls and other things like transgender intolerance, the fake controversy that children are undergoing surgery
to change their sex, the pretense that parents have no rights at the public schools their children attend,
the insidious lie that newborns are murdered, are all
colossal lies designed to manipulate vulnerable
people and cause chaos.
If you’re on X, (formally known as Twitter) and
you come across vicious rhetoric personally
attacking someone, chances are the vicious person is being paid by either the republican party or Russia. Republicans have been and still are being lied to and manipulated to pressure the Biden
admin. to stop sending weapons to Ukraine. If the administration caves to that pressure, it makes it easier for Putin to completely destroy Ukraine and annex it as part of Russia. Putin did something similar in 2014. He annexed the Crimea which was
at the time was part of Ukraine.
If all of Ukraine falls and becomes part of Russia, Putin won’t stop there, he’ll invade another country in the area, and another, etc. The point is, he has to be stopped asap, because if he isn’t, it will affect
America negatively because we have an agreement
to help defend our allies in Europe via NATO.
We should look at polling critically and not automatically accept what any particular poll
reflects. A good source for accurate polling
results is “Hopium” on Substack.
Thank you, Daniel, great post. As I said in my response, if we were 330 million bacterial colonies, instead of 330 million Homo sapiens, I might be more impressed with polling.
Solomon
Thank you for this post.
In his podcast yesterday, Keith Olbermann explained how the CNN poll was biased. If I remember correctly, they polled about a third more Republicans than Democrats.
That is EXACTLY what i told my daughter the other day about these bogus polls. Of course they poll more Fascist Rethug voters than Democrats, the lying, bogus polls will reflect that it's either 50/50 or the Rethugs will be leading. These polls are nothing but Fascist propaganda. I am sick and tired of hearing about what polls say.
It’s not just the polls that are no longer accurate,
it’s also a ton of false information on the internet.
For example, it’s easy to make up a name for a “new” online magazine or newsletter, fill it up with false info by fake authors, then write articles contradicting mainstream media using those bogus online magazines as if they are credible sources for
more articles. Most people who read the articles
with false info won’t bother to check it with known, trusted sources.
The internet is where i have seen most of the false information, especially in the load of emails i receive every day. I get over 200 emails a day and i automatically delete half of them when i get online every night. This has gotten old to me, and i unsubscribe to many of them only to start getting them again in a few days. Most of the time i can tell by the title of the email that they are bogus and not worth my time to open them.
I was getting about 200 emails a day too. I finally blocked or unsubscribed to about 20 of them like you did, and like you a lot of them returned. I discovered many of these
“senders” use several different names and email addresses. So if you block one, it’s likely to show up in your in-box under a different name & email address. If I can’t tell who sent me an email or text
and what it’s about without opening it, I delete it.
The same thing is happening to me too, just like these robo phone calls. If you block their number, they will just call from a totally different number. I delete unknown email senders too as i have learned that some of them will have links that could possibly have computer viruses and malware embedded in the links. I have already had one computer ruined because i was fooled into calling a number that had a bogus Microsoft logo on it thinking it was an official Microsoft site. It was actually a hacker posing as a Microsoft employee and he tricked me into downloading a file that wiped out everything on the computer. He said he could fix my computer for $1,000 and i knew i had been hacked. I cursed him out and told him he was blackmailing me and when i refused to agree to his demands for the $1,000 he started yelling at me and actually threatened me. He had installed a ''Ransomware'' thing and ruined my computer and i had to end up buying a new computer. I was a fool for not having virus protection on the computer he ruined. I made sure i got virus protection on my new computer. I wish authorities could catch these extortionists and put them under a prison. Most of them are from third world nations and are very difficult to apprehend i have been told.
I too get 100-200 emails a day, most are not bogus. There are just too many organizations, charitable and political, doing pretty much the same thing. Candidate emails alone amount to a lot.
Exactly the same here.. i calculated if i just donated $3.00 for every organization, it would end up costing me $3,150.00 a month. I just cannot afford that as that would exceed my monthly income by $300.00. I sometimes get political emails that read, '' i am down on my knees, begging and pleading for just three dollars.'' I do however, donate to our two Democratic Senators here in GA occasionally, i think they deserve them. I would gladly donate a shoe box full of cat excrement to Donald TUMP. We have 12 cats at my house.
wow.
I've been participating in the Democrats groups and observing campaigns for a bit. I have two observations to share about how Reps are winning the long game.
They think like a business plan.
They hit my inbox offering constitute services over and over again.
They don't give up. They knock down, dust off, get up and try something else.
They are organized and tenacious.
They also keep the long game in mind.
Just an observation if anyone is thinking of running for office. They also keep an organized pipeline of candidates to step in the next pair of shoes too.
Let's win some back with progressive Dems.
That's the critical difference in media polls and peer reviewed reports in legitimate journals. Sample, methodology, statistical treatment, degrees of freedom, margin of error, and that ever bothersome null hypothesis are the working parts that should be scrutinized..but are practically never mentioned. If we're lucky we get a sample size and margin of error written sideways in microscopic font.
HoTo Lie With Statistics has become a TV serial, a theater of deceit dressed up as an imitation of science.
Good idea. I don't pay attention to them.
👍
I absolutely agree, Jean, I particularly like your last sentence
Biden has done so much under the radar - quietly putting together his big deals with the expertise gleaned from his vast experience with people.
Trump does nothing loudly.
Several things, one the MSM seems to be in the Bash Biden most of the time and report every one of Trump's farts everyday all day and night.
Maybe more importantly Polls are broken, so many will not respond or even answer a cell call because of experience with push polls and so much spam and fraud via cell phones.
I, too, get a lot of phone calls on both my landline and cell phones. IF I don't recognise the # or
the name is 'unavailable' I do not answer. And if there is NO message then I know I didn't
'need' to talk to them anyway. I also get a lot of 'spam' e-m's with 'survey' attached. I frequently answer their ??? but have noticed that most are persuasive or even extortionate in
how they are worded and have a follow up 'Donate//Contribute//Rush $$. I do NOT send $$,
aside from the fact I have NO $ to send, let alone $$$ $$$... And these kinds of - surveys -
use similar or same methodology across the board, whether political or animal rights (adding a
'sob' story to garner sympathy for sending $)...IMO, no matter the cause, I don't see how - mere $ can - solve these//their problems unless it's to buy more advertising to send out more
surveys//polls to elicite more $ $$ $$$... [[[[ huge sigh ]]]]
👍 🙄
Biden is not surging ahead in the polls not because of any lack on his part or because Trump is so good at messaging, but because of a failure in our system of government that has relied on unwritten rules or codes that no longer function for the “Common Good” of the people. The situation of increasing wealth inequality, the inability of congress to function for the good of the people or even function at all except as a battle ground indicates the need to create a more advanced and equitable form of government from the ground up. Yes, this can be called “Utopian Thinking,” but we have been thinking and discussing in an increasingly smaller and smaller box. Now is the time to be willing to think outside that small box and the polls are only one more indication that the current box is not working.
Monopolization never supports true Democracies. Isn't that exactly why our OWN government broke AT&T up into a dozen Baby Bells in 1983? Our government stated at the time that AT&T had become a "dangerous telecommunications monopoly." Take a look at AT&T today. All neatly put back together and turned into an even MORE dangerous monopoly than it EVER was by untaxed oligarchs, both foreign and domestic. All neatly accomplished courtesy of our OWN utterly corrupted Supreme Court who created dark money bribery through their 2010 Citizens United decision. Creating an anonymous and unlimited cash flow made fully available to ANY politician, no matter their political persuasion, who is willing to sell both their personal ethics AND their VOTE to the highest bidder. THAT doesn't strengthen true democratic Republics either.
We no longer have unbiased media using any medium. Generally, what we have is either religious and partisan based bullshit spreaders or people who pretend to be unbiased. Look to the ownership of the media and don't expect truth to come from those sources. And we have an abject failure of our public and private educational systems that have not found a way to teach idiots to think. These are probably the issues that bring down all democracies.
Every single authoritarian religion and government that has ever existed for any length of time knows that "ignorant people are easier to manipulate".
We must take into account the oncoming pressure of the rising awareness of climate crisis. While the ultra-right is messaging that there is no climate crisis, the population centers of the Northeast and the Bay area get blanketed with the unbreathable dense smoke of burning forests for the first time. One whole town and well over 100 people perished in a day from the fires cause by forests parched by climate change and millions of people have suffered through the hottest summer on record and the hurricanes tornados and record-breaking downpours keep coming. By denying the climate crisis that is not only is at our doorstep but entering our homes and destroying them, the clarity around the Republican climate deniers increases and so will the instability of our current government with a non-functional congress. This is much larger than the next presidential race. In the near term, Biden must win, but that is only a temporary fix for something much larger. We must see outside the box and utilize our collective desire to act for the common good to create a more just and representative system of governance that will not give rise to so much unaddressed discontent to be utilized by demagogues to amass power and wealth.
Yes, and I remind us that we can USE the system to fix the system. Let’s not let the malcontents manage to blow it up!
Marc - I agree with your analysis and if you have methods to see outside the box to move that collective desire to action, please share them.
TUMP is good at messaging alright, messaging a constant stream of outright lies and blatant misinformation... and a large number of stupid, gullible, ignorant, people here in the United States. They believe everything he says is true, it makes no difference how outrageous the lies are that he spews. The worst thing about these mental midgets is that there are so many of them here is USA..
Yes, Biden could be a better communicator, but I fear that Americans have become very shallow, accustomed to being entertained rather than led. How sad, how frightening that America’s concept of leadership is now vaudevillian instead of substantive.
Yes, Biden walks like the old man that he is, but America once voted for a great leader who could not walk at all. It was his mind they focused on.
Bingo!
Who exactly is supposed to do the messaging and how?To me any public comments reference the issues is just that.
So I chose polls are wrong based on my experience as a market research interviewer leading up to the 2020 election.
I called voters all over the country and this is what I found:
Gen Z didn't want to talk to us pollsters, they'd hang up either right from the intro or a couple of questions in. Their answers don't count because the survey hasn't been completed.
Millennials identifying as Democrat don't want to answer questions because they're mad at their situations in life. Mad at everyone. Click. No complete, not counted
Republican identifying Millennials: Life sucks, candidates suck, Biden is failing, let's go with the other guy. Those completed count.
Boomers like me:: "Why are you calling so late? It's almost 8 p.m.!" Click
Strong Democrats: never Trump. Completed interviews count but these respondents are few and far between
Most of my completed interviews were with die-hard Republican seniors who were lonely or bored. They were eager to talk, speechifying the wonders of tRump and the disaster that is Pres. Biden
If this pattern happened with all the other interviewers, that would be a good reason the poll is NOT representative of the population.
BTW, almost all of those who did answer questions were white males
As a silent/boomer I really had to laugh at their responses. So so true. Thanks for humor for today.
I'm happy to have made you laugh. We all need to be able to laugh sometimes during these trying times :)
The system is rigged in favor of Trump and his ilk. Democrats should be saying this, persistently. In response to Rep. Jim Jordan's effort to interfere in her prosecution of Trump, Fulton County, Georgia D.A. Fani Willis wrote him a strong letter saying that all defendants are treated equally, and he should stop his efforts to obtain favorable treatment for Trump. Reading that letter was a high point of my week.
Fani Willis no shrinking violet that's for sure. Hope she decides to run for office after she gets the RICO thugs behind bars.
We're more than a year away from a national election -- and eleven plus months away from national conventions -- and three and a half months away from the Iowa Caucuses (which, while interesting, do not have their finger on the pulse of the vast majority of Americans). The opinion of Iowans, while important to some, means virtually nothing to me. Polls have their place, but with our election timeline, they don't matter at this stage in our endless national election cycle, as far as I'm concerned. We spend so much time, energy and money gauging opinions that will ebb and flow between now and November 2024. Can we please just give our concerns a rest until early January 2024? I don't expect many will agree with me, but it feels good to give the "mania" a brief rest.
Back in the day we had a half hour news show at the end of the day (give or take.) Today we have 24 hour a day news broadcasts that have to be filled with something called "news", hence poll data, tRump's daily/hourly farts, panic blurbs to sell air time, etc.
I use a farming analogy, having been raised on a dairy. It's like the media's news gathering machinery is attached to a 24 hour tractor and attached to that tractor is the world's largest manure spreader and what goes in is what comes out and manure is the result, not news.
Anne Gunn, i am one of them that agrees with you, i am ready to give this political circus a brief rest. I am usually in a good mood all day until i get online and read all this crap about TUMP and the insane Fascist Rethugs and hear about their childish behavior. All of this really puts me in a foul mood. More especially the lies and propaganda they tell and expect all of us to believe them. When you speak of ''mania'' it perfectly describes the Fascist Rethuglicans..
I feel confident there are many more who feel as we do. The arc of history is in our favor, even though there are days when it's easy to get discouraged. Thanks for believing in democracy -- messy but vital.
I totally agree,but some calm,rational laying of groundwork would be in order.
Thank you, friends Bob and Heather. You've improved the quality of the week to come. Particularly appreciated the "friends discussion". Coincidentally, yesterday I spoke to two friends (almost an hour each)...one a new friend who I rarely see in person, the other a best friend from childhood who lives in Eugene (OR) who called to check up on one of my friends from kindergarten in 1940. Made my day...really uplifting as I'll hit 88 next month. After having been an activist since college,I really appreciate your support of Biden...he's perfectly capable of handling things because of his years in Congress, etc. Trump is incapable of saying or doing anything supportive of democracy. I grew up "rich" but now I live paycheck to paycheck. In this country it's possible thanks to SS, but the majority of the poor struggle because of people who make too much money on their backs. Equality is our biggest problem right now. My father was one of the first Hollywood film industry union members in the '30s, so I've long been aware of the need for unions.
In addition, Dems NEED to quit harping on Biden's age and mental acquity. There are PLENtY of people who are his age, and older, who are sharp as tacks. PLUS, as a life long stutterer, he, like other stuttereers, needs to pause and choose his words. I have seen nothing to indicate he is less than razor sharp in his thinking, or in his responses. Saying "He's too old...He's not sharp anymore...etc..." is NOT HELPING. DO we ReALLY want to elect ANY of the possible GOP candidate wanna-bes? I think NOT!
I would love to see the Dems make the case that Biden and Trump are both Senior Citizens, but Biden knows how to do the job, while Trump is an incompetent criminal.
I certainly agree that the TFG is a criminal, and that while both Biden and TFG are "senior citizens", only one, Biden, is competent, and MORE than competent! Let us not forget that the 14th Amendment bars ANYONE who has given comfort to an insurrection may NEVER hold office in our government. *cough cough* TFG...
I've been saying this since his campaign,don't underestimate JOSEPH ROBINETTE BIDEN!
Amen, sister!
So, let's say a partisan wants a red wall. Well, the partisan will open red paint and paint the wall red. This is exactly what happens when pollsters want to say Trump is ahead - they make a poll that shows Trump is ahead. The can of paint they open, meaning the people they ask to weigh in, are chosen to be the ones who will answer that Trump is ahead. Also, the way the questions are asked can lead to the way the answers are answered and interpreted. The only poll that counts is the one on election day!
Polls are a constant source of social confusion. They give a vague sense of what people are thinking on a particular subject at any given point in time. Their main problem is they usually don't represent an actual slice of public opinion because the people being ask aren't a true cross section of how all of us feel on an issue. Polls are good people but as far as understanding how the public views a subject public opinion polls are less than adequate. They give a peak but they rarely tell.
@Donald. Respectfully disagree. Polls reflect the motivated thinking of the pollsters AND the motivated thinking of those who decide to answer. Lots of people won’t answer a poll. Only people who are more politically motivated will answer and they will give the answer they want to push. Pollsters are often motivated too. They only ask the questions they want to showcase AND they construct the questions to “lead” the respondent to the answer they want. For example instead of “which of the following 5 candidates do you favor” they ask “do you like Trump or Bider better”. Whatever else you know about that question you can see the answer is “shaped”.
Ben--I see your point but polls only reflect the thinking of those who have been polled. These hit and miss slices of our society are in no way an accurate means of deciding anything.
Ben--A poll is a meager attempt to get an idea of how the public feels about a given subject. People that have land line phones are the targets of most pollsters. This at the onset gives an unacceptable result. Then you have people that don't want to be bothered wasting their time giving strangers information they are uncomfortable relaying in the first place. Polls are simply incomplete snippets of how the public is feeling on a given subject. Like I said earlier, they give a peak but they don't tell. You could say they are good kissers.
Ben--Cool.
Thank you, Bob and Heather for another stimulating discussion. In response to your title; What do polls mean anyway? Not a damned thing. If we were 330,000,000 bacterial colonies I would believe polls, but we aren't. Some of us have the ability to think and reason. As Jean L and Daniel Solomon state, Polls aren't used to determine influences, they are used to influence.
I absolutely agree that Biden is the most progressive President we have had in a very long time. And his approved legislation has all been for the betterment of ordinary Americans not for the rich and famous. I did and do admire Barack Obama and his lovely family, but as a President I was disappointed. He seemed more interested in gaining the respect of Legislators, many of whom are racist nitwits, than of passing meaningful legislation for all Americans - with the exception of the Affordable Care Act - which did help millions and could have helped more if not for the racial prejudices of the real Deep State - the sparsely populated States. Being way older than you and Heather, or Biden for that matter, my gold standard for Presidents is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Joe Biden comes closer to that standard than anyone.
Musk is a contagious, poisonous worm. Like Trump I see nothing good in him. If, as I hope, we not only re-elect Biden but gain control of both Legislative Houses, and they can give up begging for donations long enough to do some legislating, perhaps we can file the fangs of the oligarchy by reinstating the anti-trust, anti-monopoly regulations of the early 20th century,
We don’t “give Biden any credit for the good economy” is simple...if you’re a regular person like me, it’s NOT a good economy. I think you are as out of touch with us as the Administration is. Sadly
I think that Bob and many other plumping for Biden mean well but live in a particular economic stratum that insulates them from the ongoing hardships wrought by the pandemic and subsequent corporate gouging and supply chain issues.
It's a bad look when the administration tells so many Americans, "Hey, you're doing great -- you just don't know it. You aren't really in pain."
My grocery bills are through the roof, and rents were just raised for the second time in less than 18 months as property owners seek to grab everything they couldn't at the height of the pandemic, recoup what they feel they've lost (since when is a right to get rich off of providing housing?) . . . for the last two weeks I've watched several families and couples moving out, leaving. Every single day there have been moving vehicles and former neighbors working with friends, piling their belongings into pickups and vans.
The contention that Americans just don't "get" how god Biden/Bidenomics is, is absurd.
Not that long ago, or at least within living memory, government regulatory agencies --perhaps spurred by a more forceful C-in-C-- would have been all over this gouging. Biden does nothing.
My energy bill doubled this year while my consumption went down. My food bill doubled this year while my consumption remained the same. I used to do recreational travelling and now I can barely afford one tank of gas a month. And two years ago, I got a 9% increase in my social security. I am getting too slow to steal and too old to beg.
You might be onto something.
It was definitely refreshing to hear the reality regarding the Clinton/Obama administrations' propping up of Wall Street. While you say Biden is more progressive in this respect, the bar is set pretty low. Let's see how the admin response to the upcoming UAW strike plays out. But thank you for the analysis.
Hear, hear on THAT!!
People often do not poll the way they vote.
A poll is. not a vote.
The only "poll" that really counts is the one made on election day.