In Reply to: The national polling numbers don't mean much. posted by Gainsborough on October 08, 2024 at 16:03:45
Not exactly of course, not always, history has shown us that 2-4% win nationally can indeed in certain cases result in a loss in the EC. Usually not, but lately it has happened (what, twice in our lifetimes? three? Hill, yeah, but Bidens EC win was in line with his national vote win historically. Obama's were as well) But anything above that has always resulted in an EC win. A 7% win nationally is an easy EC win bordering on a blowout. The critical mass of people in WI/MI/AZ/NC/GA are just not that different from people in WA/OR/CA/CO/etc. People in Dumfukistan are, but they don't have enough EC votes to overcome the blue and swing states.
From what I see the real problem with polling as it is today is
1) correct me if I'm wrong, but all the "good" or "quality" polls are landline polls and who still has a land line? To me this seems important because one candidate/party is far more likely to do well with folks who don't have a landline.
2) the good/quality polls rely on modeling of what happened before, how many Dems turned out vs how many GOPutins turned out, or voter turnout within each party, or how many of each ethnic group, and how they voted before, etc, etc. And the most accurate ones rely on the likely voter screen, which if you've just registered and thus never voted before, or your rights were not previously overturned by the GOPutin USSC so you've never voted before, you're not a likely voter, and you will be excluded from the poll. But if any of that changes the model is wrong and then so is the poll.
And they don't have in the model potential changes in turnout.
So if one party or candidate has been working hard to successfully register new voters, and is enjoying a new vibe enthusiasm thing with their base, and has a superior GOTV operation, it's likely the polls won't account for that and that party/candidate will outperform the polls. And I believe one party has the advantage is all of that.
Having said that I have little hope there are people that are embarrassed to say they're voting for Harris and so they tell a pollster they're voting for trump. If anything I see that as going the other way. But I think pretty much everybody is honest with the pollster. No reason not to be. I think most folks think it's best to have your party/candidate look good in the polls and really do want to tell people, pollsters included, what they think.