Are the polls even reliable? Experts examine election polling predictions from 1980 to 2024

[marmar]

Are the polls even reliable? Experts examine election polling predictions from 1980 to 2024
After Biden's dismal debate against Trump, pundits turn to polls to learn America's future; what do they say?

By MATTHEW ROZSA
Staff Writer
PUBLISHED JULY 13, 2024 5:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) During the first debate of the 2024 election cycle, President Biden infamously flubbed his words, trailed off mid-sentence, stared off into space and otherwise acted every bit like a mentally incompetent 81-year-old man. With Biden's fellow Democrats determined to save democracy from an election-denying Republican — former President Trump — who was recently empowered by the Supreme Court to be a dictator, their experts are now turning to one place for information about the future: Polls

Yet can they be trusted?

If the polls are to be believed, Trump had held an almost uninterrupted lead over Biden for more than nine months before the debate; in its aftermath, both of the highest quality polls (CNN/SSRS and Wall Street Journal, New York Times/Siena College) show Trump ahead by six points among likely voters and with solid leads in the states key to winning the Electoral College. Nevertheless, in the same New York Times article where he issues a glum forecast for Biden based on polls, chief political analyst Nate Cohn acknowledges the polls from the 2020 election were "terrible," producing "the worst year for the polls in a competitive presidential race since 1980." One could fairly speculate that, since those polls had been skewed in Biden's favor and the pollsters no doubt compensated by increasing their share of Republicans, it is possible the polls are now inaccurately skewed to Trump.

....(snip)....

"Maybe not the most satisfying answer, but it is a bit of a mixed bag," Coleman said, referring Salon to an archive of Gallup polls going back to 1936. "In 1980, for instance, Carter was still quite competitive with Reagan, and was generally leading — Reagan was helped by a strong performance in the only debate of that year and sort of surged late." While the polls accurately showed Reagan with a comfortable lead for the duration of the 1984 election cycle "in 1988, George H. W. Bush was famously down 54%-37%" as of July (the same month which 36 years later shows Biden behind Trump by a much smaller margin) "but picked up steam later in the ​campaign." By the time of the 2020 election, things had not gotten much better. "According to FiveThirtyEight's aggregates, Biden had a roughly 51%-41% lead over Trump from May 2020 onwards. Biden got 51% of the vote, but Trump beat expectations, ultimately getting 47%. Another case that I often cite is 2008: it really wasn't until September (when the stock market crashed) that Obama really started to pull away from McCain—with that, Bush's disapproval numbers were going to be hard for any Republican to overcome." ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/07/13/are-the-polls-even-reliable-experts-examine-polling-predictions-from-1980-to-2024/

[Think. Again.]

1. Thanks...

...that article was even less definitive than political polls are.

[Demsrule86]

2. My sister was called by a pollster yesterday

He asked if she would vote for Trump or Harris. she said Biden. He replied not one of the choices and my sis refused to participate.Bullshit polls.

[Think. Again.]

3. Yep.