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A Cure for Mad Poll Disease [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-09-29
Horse race polls are opinion journalism, not science. Stop following them, and start turning out the vote.
washingtonmonthly.com/…
(On September 24, 2023), an ABC/Washington Post poll gave us all heart attacks when it showed President Biden trailing former President Trump by ten percentage points. Responsibly, the Post and ABC took pains to say that that result was an “outlier.” But, more than a year before the 2024 election—before any of Trump’s trials or jury verdicts, before House Republicans do or don’t impeach Biden, before another sure-to-be-controversial Supreme Court term, and who knows what else—pretty much every major media outlet has weighed in with headline-grabbing polls showing Trump and Biden to be running even. All of this has created enormous panic – both from Democratic partisans, and from everyone else who dreads a second (and forever) Trump Administration. Could it really be true that Americans are more likely to elect Trump after he tried to overthrow the election than before? If you share this panic, you might be suffering from Mad Poll Disease. Symptoms include anxiety, problems sleeping, loss of affect, and feelings of helplessness about the future of democracy, which are only exacerbated by frantic Twitter exchanges about polling methodology and sample bias. Today, (the author, Michael Podhorzer) wants to show that, regardless of the methodology, pollster, or publication, horse race polls— more formally known as “trial heats,” which ask respondents whom they intend to vote for—are worse than useless. This is especially true more than a year ahead of the election. . . but. . . it’s also true in the weeks and months before.
(Since the article is very long, I’ll sum it up in headers. Go to the link for further explanation and charts— BR)
washingtonmonthly.com/…
1) Horse Race Polling Is Punditry in Disguise
2) Horse Race Polling Can’t Tell Us Anything We Don’t Already Know
3) A popular vote landslide is very unlikely.
4) The Electoral College is too close to call.
5) Whether the anti-MAGA vote turns out again in the battleground states will determine the winner.
6) (The Media Can) Never Tell Us the Odds
7) (Is This About) Margin of Error or Margin of Effort?
To begin to cure Mad Poll Disease, make this your mantra: Horse race polling can’t tell us anything we don’t already know before Election Day about who will win the Electoral College. Enough of the statistical stuff. Stressing over polling makes us think election outcomes are like the weather—something that happens to us. In reality, election outcomes are what we make happen—especially in the battleground states, which are so evenly and predictably divided. Remember: any election within the margin of error is also within the margin of effort—the work we must always put in to get enough of those who dread a MAGA future to turn out to vote. The only FDA-approved cure for Mad Poll Disease is to pay attention to what matters: the ongoing MAGA threat.
And: VOTE and GET. OUT. THE. VOTE.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/29/2196254/-A-Cure-for-Mad-Poll-Disease
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