Over the weekend, ABC and the Washington Post published the results of a poll that made both operations look like its results were the product of a month-long exercise with a Magic 8-Ball. The way you know it was an embarrassment is the Post story about the poll began by telling us all we should probably ignore it completely.
The Post-ABC poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, although the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier.
Looking at some of the support levels among different demographic and political groups also points to reasons for caution on this finding. For example, in the new poll, men favor Trump by 62 percent to 32 percent, a margin of 30 points. In May, Trump’s margin among men was 16 points. Among voters under age 35, Trump leads Biden in the new Post-ABC poll by 20 points. Some other recent public polls show Biden winning this group by between six and 18 points. In 2020, Biden won voters under age 35 by double digits. Among non-White voters, the poll finds Biden leads by nine points. In four other public polls, Biden’s lead among non-White voters ranges from 12 points to 24 points.
You'd have to be on mushrooms to believe that the former president* leads the current president by 20 points among younger voters. Some of these numbers are so bizarre that you would be justified in wondering why the Post and ABC published the results at all, rather than trying to figure out what ghost was at play in the machine and then putting another one in the field. Media outlets have been too dependent on in-house polling for decades now. Often, it seems to the casual observer that in-house polling is just another way of covering the horse-race, which has been at the heart of the dry rot afflicting our political coverage. This is just another example.
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AccomplishedScale362 on September 25th, 2023 at 22:25 UTC »
The poll was conducted Sept. 15-20 from a national sample of 1,006 adults, using the ABC/Post poll’s longstanding methodology. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points.
How many young voters were represented in the 1,009 people? Also their polling methodology was developed in 2010 using land lines, but updated in 2015 to include some cell phone calls. How many young, tech-savvy people are going to answer a call from 888…or “spam”/blocked numbers, lol.
ETA- Here is the poll with results and methodological details. They claim 75% of calls were to cell phones.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/0cc7a4b2-8e80-46f3-9c78-3ff36f7a08ee.pdf
ddubyeah on September 25th, 2023 at 21:54 UTC »
Pretty sure mushrooms are a cure for conservatism.
1900grs on September 25th, 2023 at 21:37 UTC »
Yup. Rage bait and weak stories are cheaper and drive clicks easier than in-depth reporting.