Polls re: Biden vs. Trump

@lynn You're in good company because our intuitives have predicted that Trump will be derailed somewhere along the 2024 election continuum. When that happens and why are still TBD.

I don't pay attention to polls because they are so unreliable. At this point in the race, I just see polls as a horse race near the beginning.  Whoever is ahead now in the polls, usually has little to do with who will win later.

But polls in general, no matter when they are conducted, are too unreliable to rely on. They can leave us overconfident, as in 2016 or discouraged and paralyzed, as some are feeling now. That's where I am with polls. 

And remember, in 2016, the most reliable gold standard for poll results, 538, said Hillary would win. 

Here are some facts about polls to consider before you put too much stock into them:

1. Polls would be useful if they were random representative samples of the people who are going to vote., right? They have to be random (i.e., each person selected has an equal chance as everyone else of being selected), there has to be a distribution of various types of people that equals the population,  and they have to be of people who are actually going to vote, the people have to be able to tell you how they actually will vote. None of these conditions is ever true, although some polls are are better than others. 

Margin of error: Even when you have a perfectly random sample, there is still a margin of error in your results. That margin can be calculated, and must always be considered. They never say, Biden is ahead by 4 points. They say, in the poll of 1000 people we called up on the phone, who answered their phones and were willing to talk to us, and told us the truth, the percentage of people who said they would vote for Biden was four percentage points higher than the people who said they'd vote for Trump, GIVE OR TAKE 5 points. Since the poll tells us that the TRUE percentage of people who will end out voting for Biden is between plus and minus 5 points, then Biden isn't ahead.  They are equal. So margin of error matters.The larger the sample size, the lower the margin of error. 

2. Randomness versus not random: Some polls are not in any way random so totally ignore them.. An example of a non random poll is one in which a website asks anyone who comes along to say who they are voting for. Totally useless results because no attempt has been made to select people randomly.  

3. Also, people lie when answering polls. (that's well known).  

       3a. They tell the poll taker what they think the polster wants to hear. The wording of the question influences people into seeing what the poll taker wants. 

       3b.  People lie about whether they are actually going to vote. They don't like to admit that they are too lazy or afraid  to get themselves to the polls, so they say, sure, I will vote.  Then they give their opinion and don't vote. 

       3c. 85% of undecided people don't decide until the week before the vote. 

4. If it's a telephone poll, then it's heavily biased by who picks up their phone and who agrees to be polled. (see @lovendures' post above). I don't answer my phone to strangers, and I never do polls. 

5. @tgraf66 has got it right that even if on the remote chance that a poll accurately reflects the mood of the voters at the time of the poll, it will change throughout the next 11 months. The economy affects how people vote. If it's good, people vote the incumbent, and visa versa if it is bad.

Thank you for taking the time to write such a comprehensive response. From all the generous feedback that I've received, I feel more educated regarding polling and better informed about media bias. Next time I read a panicked article about Biden's low polling, I'll put it in perspective and re-read all these responses.

@jeanne-mayell, I want to echo what Jeanne said. I've done non-random statistical work, and one of the things we learned is all the failings that come with polls, especially after the advent of the cell phone.  No matter how well or poorly questions are asked, telephone polls are an excellent barometer of the demographic that most likely will pick up the phone.  This tends to be white, over the age of 40, and probably a bit angry because they feel - sometimes with merit - that the world has passed them by.   This demographic tends to vote conservative and, more succinctly, against their own self-interest.  Ironically enough, these are the same people who will not want to do a census and will rail against it without realizing they are also acting against their own self-interest.  

Thus, while it makes for great viewership numbers and conversation points for pundits, in the end, they mean little.  

"Biden leads by six points among voters who participated in the 2020 election, while Mr. Trump holds an overwhelming 22-point lead among those who did not vote in 2020.
In our estimation, needless to say, 2020 nonvoters are less likely to vote in 2024, and that’s why we show Mr. Biden ahead among likely voters."

  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/upshot/poll-biden-trump-israel-youth.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

@lawrence I saw someone summarize this on Twitter nicely this morning too.

I finished the book "How Fascism Works" today on my Kindle and it was enlightening.  Everything @Jackofhearts said in his reply above is true.  What I took from my read is our best weapon is to spend every opportunity between now and election day point out the fascist parallels to our friends on the fence.  Those in camp T are too far gone to come back from it.  Anyone who wasn't turned off by 1/6 is never going to listen. There aren't enough of them to elect him, and I have a funny feeling (okay not a feeling, I've seen it twice in "Read the Future" nights) that RFK as a spoiler candidate backfires spectacularly.

I went to high school with Nate Silver (his brother was in my grade.  I wasn't friends with either of them) and when his model burst onto the scene I was one of the many who hailed it - but what it didn't keep up with was the cellphone age and as our reachability shifted, the models stayed the same - hence his spectacular inabilities to predict 2016, 2018, and 2020.  I wasn't surprised when 538 parted ways with him - if anything he's doubled down since then and is only coming off as an a$$ now, shilling for subscribers on Twitter. 

@dannyboy 

Yes, Nate is not so great. But I thought it makes a good point.

I read Biden is up substantially in all the swing states except Arizona. The national pools mean nothing. Not how elections are won with the electoral college, as we all know.

More importantly, I keep seeing T laying face down on the sidewalk in front of Trump Tower. Feels like January. May be symbolic of him accepting the reality and defeat of being financially destroyed the NY fraud case. His ego won't be able to deal with it.

Happy Holidays everyone!!

@lawrence Always so uplifting to read your posts. I did not know that Nate Silver was no longer with the polling site 538.com.  Thanks for that information and for the latest 2020 voter poll.

I am also encourged by the kinds of visions we had in the latest series of predictions (Dec 4) for 2025.  The reason we meditated for all of 2025 was to see what kind of year we would be having. If Donald Trump had won the 2024 election, then I don't think we would have seen such a  calm year in 2025.  I remember when in 2015 & 16 I was meditating on 2027 and 2018, and I had had the most volatile energy for those years.  I had seen Republicans tearing Hillary Clinton apart, like a pack of wolves. Well, that's what the Republican party has become - a pack of blood-thirsty wolves. And when recently meditating on 2025, I didn't see all that ugly drama.  It seemed calm to me. 

Last Saturday (Dec 16), I received a message from someone in our community (@Vestralux) who sent this vision:

"I was just vacuuming and got a sudden psychic newsflash (lol), seemingly apropos of nothing.

There’s going to be a federal raid of someone’s home or property. Feels like it happens sometime after the first of the year. It will happen in the wee hours of morning while it’s still dark, I think, and we’ll wake up to breaking news.

The target feels very strongly connected to Trump’s shenanigans … although I don’t think the raid is happening to him(?). Not yet anyway. It feels like someone high up in Washington, maybe a former member of his administration or a congressman. Any thoughts or impressions?"

@jeanne-mayell 

I flashed on the missing 10 inch binder of top secret information on Russian interference with the 2016 election, which boosted T.

And thanks for the lovely comment Jeanne.

@lawrence, I saw the same image.  

I’m not sure the entire binder is actually missing. Do any of you follow Empty Wheel? (Marcy Wheeler). She had an article on the subject reminding folks this info is not new. It was reported last September. Also there was a bag of thousands of loose papers that the  National Archives decided to call not releasable to Kash Patel because of classified markings on some pages. I think he and John Solomon know more about those documents Meadows had.

My other thought is some parts of that report (Crossfire Hurricane) had to include some things about Trump he would never want to get out. He can claim he wanted to show shenanigans but if he took parts of it to have Meadows burn or….? It was probably about him and his finances or something he previously did

@tybin https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/us/politics/trump-binder-classified-material-russia.html

If Meadows has all the information, he'll likely share (or already has) whatever he has with the feds as part of his own defense. Interesting is the timing of this article, since most of the contents of this binder have been known for some time. Could this be an intentional release intended to be followed by more information related to the 2016 election interference? I believe that one of our previous predictions indicated that Trump's 2024 campaign would be derailed because of "documents" but no specifics.