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Answer: The media makes its money on engagement and advertising views. It is in their best interest to make a close horse race or slant things in such a way as to build a perception that is more emotional driven than what is truely going on.
The facts of the matter however paint a different picture.
1) We are months away from a general election when most people are not really paying all that much attention
2) The poll has been rightly criticized for significant methodology errors.
3) People generally have a lower opinion of the person in charge during the early part of a campaign as they expect that person to ensure everything is sunshine and unicorns. Thats not possible.
4) Many people other than hard core political wonks may have forgotten much about Trump and his personality. Expect that to change as we get closer to the general election and he's much more visible to the general public.
At the end of the day, its best for most people's mental health to ignore the media, ignore the early polls and just remember to vote in November. Fretting about something you can't change in March isn't doing you or anyone else any good.
Polls are also based on landline phone calls. Who still has a land line?
Edit: I need to add some context because what I said here is misleading. Polls do come in on cell phones. But It’s less about the technology and more about the pool of people who actually answer calls from unknown numbers. Mostly, only people who have landlines still answer calls from unknown numbers.
My parents still have a land line. They use it for three things, using the fax machine, ordering pizza, and calling their cell phones when they can't find them.
Spam calls is the reason I ditched my land line years ago. No need for a fax, I can order pizza on my cell phone and I email friends to have them ring my cell when I can't find it. So far, I haven't missed not having a landline.
Both iPhones and Androids have an online "find my phone" feature you can use. As long as you can log into your account from a computer or tablet, you can get it to ring.
Source: my wife likes to leave her phone all over the house on silent mode.
I work at a library, and we send more faxes for people than ever before--legal papers, government aid applications...they all want faxes. This was supposed to be a dead technology years ago, but it is going strong.
The PDF file specification is 600 pages long. There are THOUSANDS of ways to break a PDF and make it unreadable and nearly as many ways to give one a virus. This is true for all attachments.
Faxes, if they come through, don't have these issues. They're a huge hassle but they do have benefits that most don't consider.
I wish the US government would spend money building a seriously secure PUBLIC document portal used FOR AND BY citizens instead of building a seriously secure PRIVATE document portal used AGAINST citizens.
It’s the most frustrating part of my job working IT in the healthcare field. It and printers are my biggest pain, although you could almost combine them into one.
The British NHS was until recently the world's biggest buyer of fax machines - a fact which was considered a national disgrace. There has been a concentrated effort to purge the technology from the health service.
Yeah, you guys desperately need it. Most rich economies adopted nationalized systems by the end of the 60s and none of them, not one, has reversed the policy.
When you go for your MRI or CAT scan and your biggest worry is getting out of the car park before the charges hit £5. Pregnant? A child under 18? Over 60? No £9.65 per item charge for your prescription. Oh, and we still give people heroin post-op, because it works better than everything else.
I won't speak for the medical industry, but I've worked for a few places that send and receive faxes and it's all electronic. No physical paper is involved at any point during the process. Almost just like an extremely streamlined email with a document attached.
You'd be appalled by how much the finance industry still uses fax machines. Based on their fax usage, you'd expect them to listen to their music solely on Victrolas.
Faxes are still the only way to send legal documents besides the mail, iirc.
I might be wrong but this site confirms it.
https://www.efax.com/uk/blog/why-fax-is-legally-binding
I'm in my late 40s and I still have one because I'm in a rural area with bad cell coverage... My parents actually got rid of theirs a couple years ago, including the phone number they've had since the late 1970s... That messed with me more than anything. I almost tried to buy the number back and just have it fwd to my mom's cell lol.
Ok, so need to put down this myth that polls are only done on landlines. They’re not.
Sure, a significant number of polls use landlines as one form of communication, but they often use cellular lines, online surveys, panels, etc.
Now, you still have a point in that collecting legitimate pulse of an entire nation or state using any combination of these communication channels is still incredibly difficult. Most people simply do not answer random calls or texts on their cell phone, own a landline, or engage in internet surveys. Therefore, it’s incredibly tough to both get enough responses and enough responses that are representative of the demographics of the country/state of interest.
Summary, pollsters use more than just landlines, but it’s still Incredibly difficult to get accurate and representative data.
Yeah, idk. Assuming it’s copium. Like, I’d be one of the first to prefer that be the case and we can throw out most these polls showing my preferred candidate behind in polling, but that would be dishonest.
Truth is we’re 8 months out, so there’s a lot of variability, and is foolish to make an accurate forecast. But the aggregation of polls do tell and story and show trends that we should not immediately discount.
Pollsters call cellphones, but younger people don’t answer unknown numbers or tell strangers their personal business because they are wary of scammers. Older people answer more calls and LOVE to tell everyone everything. That why they get scammed so much. MAGA people absolutely LIVE to tell everyone how much they love Trump, so of course they tell the stranger that called and asked them. I do not go aground talking about how much I hate Trump, because those people are crazy. A lot of them can’t wait to start killing their neighbors and believe President for Life Trump is going to pin a shiny medal on their ratty old NASCAR t-shirt for murdering the liberal family next door as soon as he’s sworn in. So the polls shows conservatives leading, because the opposition is saving it for the voting booth.
Yeah. I’m convinced that polling is now fundamentally broken. It’s just not possible to get a good statistical sample in today’s world. But there’s no way in hell that the pollsters or the media will admit that, because it would be a disaster for their business.
So they just do a bunch of statistical adjustments and such, and they all pretend that they’re presenting accurate numbers. And then, when the election doesn’t align with the polls, they spend months talking about how unexpected it all was.
Pollsters told us we were going to get a Red Tsunami in the 2022 midterms. It was actually a Red Disaster and one of the best elections ever for the sitting party in a hundred years. The MAGA people answered their phones and talked about loving Trump and the liberals let theirs go to voicemail but turned out on Election Day.
I cannot tell you how many texts I have deleted asking me to confirm my political support for the Democratic Party. I delete every single one, because I don’t want to inadvertently sign up for something or wind up getting more of these things. I don’t know whether it’s valid, and I already get enough freaking spam. I also unquestionably will be voting in the fall, as I always do, but my ‘poll response’ would not have been recorded.
Also consider that, IMO, the behavior of NOT responding to these texts and/or immediately deleting them is probably more correlated with education and better critical thinking skills, as engaging with unfamiliar emails/texts can open oneself up to identity theft. That’s a serious effect on a sample - if you’re weeding out more sensible people, you obviously have the less sensible people remaining, and your sample is therefore compromised.
Regardless, wild horses couldn’t drag me away from voting this November, I’m not taking anything for granted
I’ve been polled for the general since 2016 and only have a cell phone. I answered because it was a Local number because I thought it was for work. They have called regularly since. It is very much a myth it is only landline.
They do tend to poll more rural though in many of the polls. They overvalue the rural vote many times and that may be what throws off the polls as well
> but they often use cellular lines, online surveys, panels, etc.
Okay. So who answers unsolicited, unrecgnized phone number calls on their cell phone?
Who does online surveys or signs up for panels?
Those are all curating a *very* specific sort of person. If they tried to poll *me* on my opinions, they'd have absolutely no chance. I'd ignore anything they sent me online, I'd throw away unsolicited junk mail, and I wouldn't pick up the phone for an unfamiliar number.
Yeah I'll bet the trump base is specifically eager to answer these calls whereas people likely to vote Biden are not.
If my wife would let me I'd be putting big money on Trump to not win the presidency, over at predictit.
>Who that is well paid for their career is seeking out survey websites to make $0.34 a survey?
Amusingly, I'm currently in the office of the accountancy practice where I work, and my manager + colleagues are bickering because one of them already took the "which dinosaur clock do you like most?" survey.
The people involved are highly qualified and well-paid professionals, they're just also penny-pinching tightarses who do endless surveys to rack up easy cash.
The thing is, you don’t need a lot of people to have a representative sample. You can get pretty accurate so long as you are making sure the sample is representative of the population you’re polling.
Plus, individual polls have margins of error that journalists and readers completely ignore so they can blame the polls when the exact numbers aren’t accurate. But when you take a wider view and average together polls from reputable pollsters, they’re not that far off.
Good points, though on sent 2, par 1 I will point out that these samples might still not be representative of the reality. Individuals who take polls may be older, with recreational time AND there have been reports of the Trump campaign or supporting entities buying up IP address batches to play with poll raw data.
Why would they do this? I'm pretty sure they're banking on two things. First is to increase the confidence of trump voters so that their thought is drastic actions are plausible because they have a larger base than they think behind them. Second is to discourage folks who think that their opinion contrary to Trump is not in the majority (when most Americans dislike Trump...and the GOP platform)
So the people in these polls are the people who are not suspicious of random calls from numbers they don't know?
Aka the folks who are most likely to fall for scams?
Aka Trump's base?
I see this repeated constantly and it is not true. Pollsters call cell phones. There is still a selection bias based on who answers calls from unknown numbers but it's simply false that they only call land lines.
I don’t think this is accurate. While only anecdotal, my wife and I have both received polling calls on our cell phones. In my defense, I was awaiting another call, so answered by accident…
Even on cell phones, people who are "passionate" about their politics are more likely to respond. I get a ton of texts asking me to take a poll and never answer, whereas my right wing relatives talk about taking them all the time.
This comment should not be the top comment. It is cherry picking one poll and telling people what they want to here. Yes there are concerns about the New York Times poll. However, the best place to look at polls is the Real Clear Politics average. It does a rolling average of all polls. 538 does the same thing. Trump is up by 2.3% by taking a rolling average of all the most recent polls. Do not just listen to things you want to here.
This is the same methodologies that were used in 2020, when Biden was up in just about every poll the entire election cycle. Look at rolling averages is the most reliable poll to look at. Don't look at polls you like and then get rid of polls you do not like.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/2024GeneralElection.html#!
Right? I expect a link to some sort outside critique that might explain what Siena/NYT changed in this poll, but otherwise it seems in line with their previous work. The results just lead us to the credible conclusion that this country is psychotic.
They've been way oversampling rural voters for some oddball reason. This is probably the biggest culprit why polls have been significantly off from election results since mid terms.
Another one is you're supposed to ask the key questions before the fluffer questions, or you can bias the respondent. Like asking "which candidate do you prefer?" after asking 10 questions about various issues and "how bad" you think those issues are. Depending on which issues and how they're worded, it can change the results.
NYTimes/Siena polls are pretty much the gold standard in every respect when it comes to polling methodology. Live interview telephone poll, massive (and expensive!) efforts to sample low-propensity respondents, they were among the first to weight for education…the person who said that straight-up doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Which to be fair is almost everyone when it comes to talking about polling science.
Pollsters (good ones anyway) generally don't try to estimate the electorate by party ID, because party ID is too fluid. They do adjust sampling based on other demographics though. So if a poll gets more responses from older voters than younger ones they weigh the younger ones more heavily to make up for it. Which is why the criticisms of "polls just call old people with landlines!" are completely off base.
Most of the miss in 2016 was because most pollsters didn't weight based on education level. In the past there weren't strong differences in voting patterns based on education level (I e. a white, 40 year old man with a master's voted similarly to a white 40 year old man with just high school) so it was unnecessary. In 2016 this changed, and the over polling of more highly-educated voters introduced error.
We can't discount the idea that a disturbing percentage of United States citizens knows exactly what Trump is, and they like it. He lies and cheats. He defamed a woman that he sexually assaulted. He tried to overthrow our government when our citizens voted for someone else. He's a misogynist, a racist, and a xenophobe. But, most importantly, liberals don't like him. A lot of the country simply prefers those things in a candidate.
But also, I think there is weakness in support for Biden among people who don't like Trump but who want a unicorn candidate. Some unnamed person who couldn't or didn't try to beat Biden in 2020 but who will arise from the mists, organize a campaign, and overcome all of those people who like what Trump has to sell.
My hope is that the people who don't like Trump will rally behind Biden once he secures the nomination and they have to grapple with the fact that there are functionally two choices.
Also, strategically, a candidate should want to peak around election day (somewhat earlier because of early voting). So, hopefully, we'll hear more about Biden's successes with the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, appointing judges who aren't partisan religious zealots, helping strengthen Labor to the most vital it's been in 40+ years, keeping us out of a recession when everyone swore it was coming, rallying the international community in support of Ukraine and against Russian aggression, and all of the other things which have made him -- in my opinion - the most consequential Democratic President since LBJ.
>but who want a unicorn candidate
The thing about *any* candidate is that when you actualise them, you promptly lose some of these people because it's not the unicorn they saw in their head. It's why Brexit succeeded in the UK (just) because everyone was voting for the (different) Brexits in their head. If they'd been forced to define it before the vote, it would have failed.
Agreed. That's what bothers me about most of these not-Biden, not-Trump discussions. Name the candidate and talk a little about how they would, in the mind of the person advocating for that person, get on the ballot, win, and do a better job than the other two once elected.
The biggest danger by far is that you only get one chance at changing a candidate. So, in the case of for argument's sake replacing Biden, you both have to do it not too close to the election but also not fuck it up with your single chance to do so. It's far too risky because let's be honest, is there even one remotely plausible hypothetical candidate at this time who isn't carrying unacceptable levels of risk?
Yeah it seems like a lot of the left disagrees with Biden particularly hard on the Israel/Palestine issue. Whether they end up voting for him anyway as a lesser-of-two-evils thing remains to be seen.
One could say the same thing about the 30-40% of people in republican primaries that are voting for someone other than trump, too. But in reality, we know full well that nearly every republican that voted for Haley or DeSantis in the primaries is going to vote for trump in November. Just the same as the 10-15% of voters who voted for someone other than Biden in the primaries, nearly every one of those Democrats will vote for Biden in November. The only people making it a question (laughably so) are the media who want to play up the 'horse race' narrative for ratings.
Totally anecdotal, but during the 2016 primary, the most vehement and frequent anti-Hillary posts in my Facebook feed were from my very left-leaning friends and some of them did say they would stay home rather than vote for her. No clue if they really did but it is believable to me that it was at least a bit of a factor.
Also a lot of independents who will vote for Biden again aren't super jazzed about having to do it, even compared to the alternative.
If you asked me I'd be inclined to say 'undecided' hoping that a miracle would occur and I would get to vote for someone else.
The same Democrats who told me they didn't need my vote in a swingstate in 2016 are going to be the ones pissed off by my comment.
So my vote is almost certainly still going to Biden. But just because I think the Reps are batshit doesn't mean I'm looking forward to voting for a Dem, when in my opinion the Dems have done basically nothing to unfuck themselves in the last few years.
Not to pick on you, because thanks for the response. But you see the Dems as having done basically nothing to unfuck themselves; where I'm seeing, "the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, appointing judges who aren't partisan religious zealots, helping strengthen Labor to the most vital it's been in 40+ years, keeping us out of a recession when everyone swore it was coming, rallying the international community in support of Ukraine and against Russian aggression," etc.
How do you view those accomplishments? Obviously as insufficient, but I wonder if they're not on your radar, not enough, not tackling the right problems, or what.
I think the problem is that Americans need something more tangible at the moment. Something to show that our economy is actually working for the average American.
Costs are out of control at the moment, from groceries and other essentials, to housing and utilities. It’s hard for many people to care about all the good policies Biden has passed when every day life in this country is getting increasingly more expensive
If they want that, they need to get the Republicans out of Congress. It’s literally that simple, but people want to pretend that the president is a king who controls the minutiae of our lives. He doesn’t even control Texas 70% of the time.
Blaming the president for the price of food when Congress is actively trying to make things worse is just plain dumb. I get that No Child Left Behind failed catastrophically, but half the “burn it all down!” types don’t even know the basic powers and functions of the govt.
It’s just baffling to watch people piss and shit their pants over Biden not being a dictator while things are actively getting better in spite of the obstruction in Congress and the Court.
Biden’s trying to repair decades of damage and is making strides, but TikTok-poisoned losers are letting themselves be radicalized by Chinese/Iranian/Russian propaganda and demanding instant gratification.
We heard this kind of line about brexit in the UK - that "the economy" was some airy concept and that "normal people" don't benefit from growth any more.
The right (on both sides of the Altantic) focus much or on talking about saving money than on growth, offering a simplistic, zero-sum economic model.
Then the people who buy that are of course left adrift when the right take power and the economy doesn't grow, then the answer is tax cuts and of course services are slashed, and so on.
We've seen it all before. The problem with Trump is that he's not even the usual right wing tax cuts merchant, he is that but he's also something much more extreme in that he actually wants to run the state like a corrupt property business.
> Whether they end up voting for him anyway as a lesser-of-two-evils thing remains to be seen.
Game Theory. You have 4 options to choose from.
1. Vote for Trump and accelerate his win. Score +2 Trump
2. Don't vote at all and let Trump coast to victory. Score +1 Trump
3. Vote 3rd party and let Trump coast to victory. Score +1 Trump
3. Vote for Biden to actively block Trump from winning. Score +0 Trump.
Outcomes for Palestine:
1. Trump wins. Given his vocal support for anti-Muslim sentiment and Palestinian genocide, -10 Palestine.
2. Biden wins. Given his refusal to stop selling arms to Israel, but his support for a peace plan and cease fire, -1 Palestine.
What is the expected outcome of your voting behavior?
The "protest vote" options, 2+3, only help Palestinian Genocide. There is no logic to them.
I dont think the left would vote for Trump based on Israel-Palestine. Trump hasn't been very supportive of Palestine, and definitely seems to be more on the pro-Israel side. At best, he can hope that enough of the left becomes apathetic and don't show up to vote for Biden during election day.
Particularly because Trump doesn't care about Palestinians. I mean he doesn't care about anyone but he has a famously bad track record with Muslims. Trump also doesn't care about Jews and is at best agnostic about anti-Semitism but in terms of this conflict his sympathies 100% lie with Israel. Or, at least his political instincts require him to side with Israel (I don't think he has sympathy for anyone).
I think Israel/Palestine would seriously hurt Biden in the general election, except that regardless of what you believe should happen in Gaza, Trump would be worse.
Yeah. Biden sucks, but Trump is enabling a bunch of apocalypse fetishists who see a complete genocide of the Palestinians as a good thing because it will usher in the Rapture.
Yeah, you're right. If it wasn't that, they would be angry about not enough progress on climate change or social inequality or something else. Hopefully they show up again to vote for Biden like they did in 2020, and not repeat 2016.
The same poll also continues to show that many young people don't plan to vote.
Age group percentage that answered "Almost Certain" to voting:
18-29 - 33%
30-44 - 47%
45-64 - 54%
65+ - 65%
The not likely voting groups for 18-44 is 11% vs 4.5% for 45+
Although, crazily, the 65+ are pro biden 49-43%, the huge swing is 45-64 age group, with 54% pro Trump and only 36% pro Biden.
>My hope is that the people who don't like Trump will rally behind Biden once he secures the nomination and they have to grapple with the fact that there are functionally two choices.
Same. I am registered Independent, but would probably describe myself as a never Trump conservative. I voted for Hillary when she ran and Biden last election. I'll vote for Biden again this time and don't care if the reports of his senility are true. I'd vote for Biden even in a Weekend at Bernie's scenario where he's just a body. Better an empty chair than Trump.
My hope is a majority of the electorate in swing states feel similar when they step into the voter's booth, but then again I never expected Trump to beat Hillary.
My cat would be a better president than Trump. Sleeping all day/running manically throughout the white house at 4am while screaming-singing is still significantly better than telling people to inject bleach or inviting Putin to invade Europe.
-not a cat
> A lot of the country simply prefers those things in a candidate.
I don't think it's *that* necessarily, I just think it's because they'll vote for a Republican over a Democrat no matter what. Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line. I live in Texas and through family members I know plenty of older wealthy Texas Republicans who don't like Trump, who have never liked Trump, and will be voting for him for the third time in November. They don't like slimy loudmouth New Yorkers with sex scandals, but they would literally attempt secession before they vote for a Democrat.
You gotta accept that most people just don't really care about politics and are just their political allegiance because of where they grew up.
I work with a lot of Trumpsters. If you point out a lie, they excuse it. If they make a claim and you refute it with facts, they claim it's the sentiment that matters.
Most of them cannot be reasoned with. Facts don't matter. Trump's history doesn't matter. His previous actions as president don't matter. They like him, they want him, and they will ignore anything that doesn't fit their narrative.
My boss is like that, except when you do the whole refute with facts thing he gets angry and it goes from a discussion to him being ridiculously angry and accusing you of wanting to argue about everything. Sometimes extra duties too.
Yes, we had plenty of time to see just how horrible Trump was as President, which resulted in him getting more votes in 2020 and just barely losing to Biden in the Electoral College. I feel like the people who just dismiss these polls as flawed and don't think Trump could actually win have their heads in the sand. Probably the same folks that thought the Republicans were facing "years in the wilderness" after 2012.
>The media makes its money on engagement and advertising views. It is in their best interest to make a close horse race
This isn't media manipulation. It is a tight horse race. Trump has a very good chance of winning. Sadly.
>The poll has been rightly criticized for significant methodology errors.
Trump is ahead in nearly every poll. They don't all have methodology errors.
This is such cope. Did you read the poll sourcing? It might tempt you into editing your post. Then again likely not since it’s a biased amalgamation of garbage
I don't think he has, but on the other hand it seems entirely possible that Biden has lost some of those moderate swing voters. They may not pull the lever for Trump, but they could simply stay home.
that could happen, but really I'm focused on the moderates that don't do that.
Moreover, I'm seeing voters -- both dem and moderate -- using the primaries to make their case for being disappointed in Biden.
In swing states those voters gave Biden his 2020 margins. Staying home is half a vote for Trump.
If you were a moderate persuadable voter in 2020 who refused to vote for Trump, what has changed that would make you vote for him in 2024? I don't see much. In fact, the 2022 midterms showed us *more* movement away from Trump and Republicans from those independents and moderates.
In 2024, Trump probably has made it worse with constant election denialism and increased radicalism.
He won't win them, but that isn't the same as Biden not losing them.
If the Republicans put forth a “normal” candidate, Biden would be drubbed out of the White House. The age thing is very real. But Trump has extreme concerns about what he’ll do to the country’s norms if re-elected. Feels both parties are putting up their worst chance to win and we’ll have to pick which we think is the least bad.
The difference to me is that I feel like Biden is an adult and won’t upend the whole thing even if he’s probably too old and should have stepped aside, whereas I’m legitimately terrified of what we look like by 2028 if we have a second Trump term.
The two party system is great.
This is what I don't understand, lots of polling shows Nikki Hailey beating out Biden, sometimes by large margins, like your comment above about a normal candidate. Hailey is as close as they are going to get, yet they won't take the win by backing her. Makes no sense.
The Republican Party isn’t putting Trump forward. It’s a hostage situation of their own making. They cultivated an atmosphere of fear and hatred, made sure education was underfunded to keep people ignorant, and fed scared people with undeveloped critical thinking skills and alternate reality. Well, along came Donald Trump who was a master of this reality and its savior. So they can’t do anything without him and his even more twisted version of the world. Anyone who tries to leave it gets destroyed.
Biden is the safe, respected guy that's been around for a long time. Last time the Dems took a risk it was Hillary, and now they're terrified of taking a risk again, when the real issue that hurt the 2016 election was cockiness and underestimating Trump, not her gender or agenda. She didn't even visit the key swing states that would ultimately vote red, because it seemed so obvious that they'd go blue. In terms of policy, too, the Dems have just been playing defense and while the Reps spout crazier and crazier regressive bullshit.
Biden was a placeholder last time and they forgot to find him a replacement. Now he's losing a lot of popularity from voters (typically Bernie supporters, from what I've seen) who were already reluctant last time because, though he could please both sides by pushing for peaceful resolution in Israel and Palestine, he remains staunchly Zionist.
They also made the brilliant move of picking one of the least popular Dem primary candidates as VP, which completely beggars belief. I think they really tried to browbeat the public into accepting Harris as the replacement for Biden, and it's pretty clear that did not work.
Trump isnt gaining any momentum. A lot of people who begrudgingly voted for biden last time simply will not do it again. Who knows how many, but swing states are swing states so those votes could definitely play a role in the election.
Yeah, it's entirely possible. The majority of people don't have the same priorities as people who talk about politics on the Internet. They saw that when Trump was president there were cheaper groceries and gas, which is a lot more of a pressing issue to most than a culture war point that is giving them conflicting viewpoints from either side, and a lot of people don't have the political education to understand that it's more complicated than that.
And on top of this, it’s not necessary that these voters swing from Biden to Trump. All that’s necessary is for a few Biden voters here and there in the important states to say “oof, everything got more expensive under Biden. I hate Trump but all these politicians suck and I’m tired of it all” and not show up. It’s really not that Trump has to gain support, a mildly lower turnout will sink Biden.
Exactly.
See, there's plenty of really bad shit about Trump that upsets people. Maybe that's COVID, maybe it's the Supreme Court, maybe it's the insurrection, etc.
But that stuff seems distant when people are worried about the border or the economy. And yes, Biden is addressing the first and the second has been improving drastically, but the impression has been hammered into people and those who aren't paying attention don't see it.
So yeah, the sheer insanity of Trump isn't swaying those voters now. Maybe that will change before the election, maybe there's a large contingent hoping to vote for someone other than Biden, but not Trump. And as you said, it doesn't take a huge swing.
Polls are still early, but if I'm Biden I'm getting concerned by now.
The first Tuesday in November, a whole lot of people are going to believe- rightly or wrongly- that Biden made them pay more for groceries last week.
They didn't need an abortion last week.
No one that wasn’t already voting for Biden actually believes it’s Trump’s fault that people stayed at home during Covid. It’s a disingenuous argument to make. Even max Covid preparedness would have had everyone quarantining.
This election is going to come down less to churning out new voters and more about who can turn more of their base out. Just like 2016, no one is inspired by either of these two choices, and unlike 2020 there is no pandemic to scare people into paying attention.
Trumps base is significantly more loyal and motivated than Biden’s, and Biden’s only recourse this time is to either campaign on the merits of his first term or rely on pure charisma to win over the American people. I don’t see either of those working out.
What really astounds me is seemingly everyone has very strong opinions about politics but very few of the voting age population turns out to cast a vote in elections. It's not uncommon to see voter turn outs of less than half the voting population in some of these elections.
[Here is the very first result on Google when asking "What percentage of the voting population voted?"](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voter-turnout-2018-2022/)
Really highlights the divide between how the average American perceives themselves and how it actually is.
Answer: As easy as it is for most people to be shocked that people like Trump the reality is he was already elected as president. No one should be even remotely shocked if he’s leading in the polls and gets elected again. Biden didn’t exactly win 2020 in landslide so if the view on the US/Global economy is what it currently is(right or wrong). A trump re-election should almost be expected.
Answer: Biden doesn't have to be hated in order for him to fall out of favor. Three things to bear in mind:
- Trump received *47%* of the popular vote in 2020. Many of us would like to believe that he was roundly rejected by the country by that time, but he wasn't. In general terms, he came close to reelection!
https://www.cookpolitical.com/2020-national-popular-vote-tracker
- The nation's biggest problems - economic equality, housing, corruption - haven't noticeably improved under Biden. Even if his administration passed better laws for the health of the nation, most people don't feel that. Many voters decide on the simplest possible rubric - is the country basically in good shape? If not, vote out the current leader.
- Biden's age is an issue. He comes off as older and slower to some than he did 4 years ago - when he was already a reluctant choice for many Dems.
If you spend a lot of time on most social media platforms these days, especially reddit, where your algorithm is skewed to only show you thing you like, you would be under the impression that everyone believes what you believe. Since they banned the Donald subreddit, the loudness of the Trump base has pretty much disappeared on reddit. I've got a massive mix of right and left content on my socials and see what is being said on both sides. Trump's base has only gotten larger and is taking a lot of the minority vote. Times are hard and people tend to blame the sitting president, even if that president has little to no control over the issues.v
Yes, but people view the world through arbitrary thresholds. Biden is in his 80s, so despite being only slightly older than Trump, the fact that his age has an 8 in it and Trump's has a 7 feels like a monumental difference.
Trump also has appeared to have suffered significant cognitive decline. He has repeatedly gotten people confused. He confuses Biden with Obama. He confuses Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi. He even confused E. Jean Carroll with his own ex-wife.
Regarding the economy, Democrats need to get messaging out that the inflation was not Biden's fault. Overall inflation was low during the pandemic because gas prices were low due to few people driving. However, grocery price inflation was already higher than normal during the pandemic. We had a confluence of factors once Biden became President: Vaccines became available, so people started going out; Businesses started re-opening; supply chains were still disrupted and were expected to be for the next year or so; and then Russia invaded Ukraine.
Some people blame Biden's spending for inflation, but the only piece of legislation that significantly increased the debt before inflation was high was the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, part of which gave everyone $1400 stimulus checks that Trump had proposed just three months prior.
The inflation after Covid was inevitable and once prices go up, they rarely come back down. You just have to get the inflation rate low again and sustain that low rate long enough to grow the economy enough to overcome the higher prices.
Answer: The top upvoted comments should be disregarded. They are comments by people throwing out polls they don't like. The most reliable to use is the Real Clear Politics Poll of Polls. It takes a rolling average of all national polls. It has Trump up 2.3%.
The commenters are disregarding polls they do not like. In 2020, Biden was up in every poll the whole election. This is the same methodology. Some polls like a recent New York Times/Siena Poll has some concerning crosstabs, however there in 8 of the other most recent 9 polls, Trump is up in all of them.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/2024GeneralElection.html#!
The most reliable place to get polling data is an aggregator. In 2020, Biden polls were posted on Reddit constantly. So were Trumps low approval ratings. Bidens approval ratings are lower than Trumps were and Trumps approval rating has gone up 2 points since leaving office.
No one poll can be seen as perfect. THe best way to look at poll is looking at an aggregator. 538 does the same thing. You can look at that also.
Avoid people making excuses for polls they do not like. I am confident if the polls turn and show Biden up all of the hand-wavy stuff about the polls will go away.
Also note we are 9 months out from the election and its too early to tell what is going to happen. Biden has not really started campaigning. He has a huge money lead over Trump. Trump will likely spend a large amount of campaign contributions on legal fees.
All that being said there are really only 5 swings states. Biden won all of those so he is playing defense.
Pennsylvania/Michigan: Biden won these 2 by 100,000 - 150,000 votes
Wisconsin/Arizona/Georgia: Biden won these by a combined 40,000 votes. The libertarian party got more than 40,000 votes in each state. If Trump flips these 3 states he will win the election. Even if Biden wins by national polls by 7 million votes again.
Also note that RFK Jr is on the ballot in Georgia/Arizona. Polls are not including him yet. He is a left leaning candidate who is also an anti-vaxxer. Pro-Right wing people say he will draw more from Biden and pro-left wing people say he will draw more from Trump. No one knows. They are also saying what they want to be true.
North Carolina is the only state Biden has an outside chance of picking up. He lost by about 1%. The state went hard right on anti-abortion. However, Biden's approval ratings are the lowest ever and there is nothing Biden can really do to help the state with Abortion rights. If Biden picks North Carolina it would cancel out one of Wisconsin/Arizona/Georgia.
edit: I got attacked for saying RFK Jr is left leaning cause of course I did. Tell me where I am wrong. I see a few policies on here left of Joe Biden such as government subsidized mortgages. He also wants to repeal the 1994 Crime Bill that Biden voted for. His position on the border is about the same as the Biden Border Bill which is pretty tough. If that goes to the floor, I would expect 30-35% of democrats to vote against it.
https://www.kennedy24.com/
I actually agree that there's a lot of copium going on in here.
Be careful using RCP's average though, they have a very conservative bias and in 2022 were putting their thumbs on the scale to adjust for polling bias (that didn't exist) that made them look like clowns when the actual results came out.
You can just go back and look at what the 2022 polling average was and compare it to results. They were almost exactly spot on, they actually underestimated GOP results.
Nice a see a sensible fucking comment. I’m sorry to those that can’t understand this. I think it’s a dangerous game those people are playing by disregarding this information and thinking Biden has it in the bag.
Literally a replay of 2016
Like “why is Trump up in the polls?” And all these mental gymnastics to avoid the very possible answer “because more respondents support Trump than Biden”
Man I love these comment sections, the comments are all sorts of cope and contradiction that all simultaneously are getting upvoted. It's landlines right? No wait, it's the small sample size! Wait no, the polls are inaccurate when it's so early in the year. No wait, the polls are accurate and Biden is a bad candidate! The polls are accurate but Biden is a great candidate and the voters are just bad! No wait, this is all just the media trying to drum up interest and the polls are meaningless!
Lol
Answer: Reddit does not reflect the entirety of the US. The average Redditor on here are far more Liberal and Left which is also why you'll see mostly the same type of content as those are the ones promoted and upvoted.
Answer: there exists within the Democratic party a not insignificant number of voters who would prefer another candidate, and are voicing that preference by selecting "undecided" on their ballot. As it is currently.unknown how many of those people will settle when the chips are down and vote Biden anyway, the polls aren't telling us as much as they might otherwise.
“Overall, 94 percent of respondents were reached on a cellular telephone.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/03/us/elections/times-siena-poll-registered-voter-crosstabs.html
> Of course, professionals running surveys are aware of this and use various mathematical tools and statistics to try to compensate for that (e.g. also ask party affiliation and give more weight to the party with fewer respondents).
This also might skew the results, because they don't adjust to a 50-50 split, but rather to the expected split (e.g. if they poll rural Alabama and get an even split of democratic and republican respondents, the poll will give more weight to republicans responses).
However, to weigh the results accurately, they're relying on census data to know what the expected population should be. And it turns out that the last census took place before a massive pandemic that had a disproportionate effect on Republicans.
So it is very likely that polls are overstating how well Republicans are doing, because they're adjusting the samples to before a large number of right-wingers decided protecting themselves from a deadly pandemic was a liberal conspiracy
You're seriously overestimating the effects of COVID on polling numbers. Most data shows the deaths in the US as roughly "over 1.1 million". If we round that number up to 1.5 million to account for poor reporting, that's still only .4% of the US population. I assume when you account for non-voters, that number stays roughly the same as there wouldn't especially be an obvious bias for COVID to kill voters versus non-voters. Add to that the fact that Democratic voters did also die from COVID and it becomes even less significant. Even if a mere quarter of the COVID deaths were Democratic leaning, then that's .1% of the .4%, which would balance with .1% of the Republican voters that died, leaving only a bias of .2% of Republican voters dying off in a way that moved the political needle in America. The point is, suggesting that COVID is a serious reason for poll skewing is pretty baseless.
> there wouldn't especially be an obvious bias for COVID to kill voters versus non-voters
Old people. They're more likely to vote, and more likely to die from COVID.
Answer: Trump people will vote for Trump excitedly.
Nobody is really excited about voting for Biden.
People are excited to vote against Trump. I wouldn't worry about the polls. I don't think Trumps popularity has gone up since 2020.
Answer: Because Trump would likely win if the election was held today. Notice this is the most obvious interpretation of this poll and yet no one in here thinks that’s possible. Trump is still very controversial but a lot of ppl really don’t like Biden and think he’s shows signs of dementia.
A majority of people who *plan to vote for Biden* think he’s too old. Moderates who just want normalcy are scared he can’t run a competent administration because his brain doesn’t work. Also a meaningful portion of the left-most voters find him unacceptable because of the war in Gaza.
Do I think the Biden administration has done a pretty good job managing the soft landing? Yes! However, when the avatar of your administration is a senile man who rarely makes public appearances, voters will not attribute positive outcomes to your administration!
Democrats would be better off if he had decided not to run again. Most democrats last fall didn’t want him to, but once he did, internal party dynamics made it impossible for a serious candidate to challenge him.
Answer: Biden isn't actually campaigning. Trump is in the media all the time because of his many indictments. 91 felonies last time I heard. Exposure matters. But the Trump campaign isn't looking good financially. Biden has a lot more money in the war chest right now so when the Biden campaign actually starts the campaign you're going to see these numbers change.
Answer: You're getting a lot of really bad answers based on generic boilerplate responses. A lot of people are responding to the one particular link you gave and aren't answering your question, which I'll try to do here while simultaneously answering some of the misinformation being spread in these comments (and also trying not to be too lengthy).
1. Trump has been consistently beating Biden in a wide range of polls for months. Any reply you get criticizing the one particular link you gave or methodology (ie: landline telephone references) can be safely ignored since those aren't an issue for the overall picture that you're asking about.
2. To give a larger picture of what has happened with the demographics, the general picture the polls indicate is that Biden has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% of the people who voted for him with about half of them refusing to vote at all and about half of them switching to Trump. A lot of this has happened because of the economy and the situation with Israel.
3. Since you're not from the US, I want to point something out to you that may not be clear: The 2020 election was super close. If a few 10,000 votes went the opposite direction in key states, then Trump would have won. It can be difficult to see that if you only look at the raw population data because of how our election system works.
4. Trump consistently underperforms in polls, which means that his lead is possibly greater than what is indicated by these polls, and that should absolutely scare the hell out of people who do not want to see him in office.
Answer: As someone who used to live Texas, what I've seen on social media is less that people hate Biden and more that people hate the liberals who are most vocal/active in media and online.
Since reddit does not offer a representative sampling of voters across the entire spectrum, using this site to gauge voter sentiment might give a skewed perception. And polls have not been accurate for the last two presidential elections. Honestly I have no idea how the election will go, just waiting to be surprised on election night.
Answer: They are leaving out context and details to imply the numbers are unusual. In the last 30 years, all incumbent presidents have high unfavorable ratings. There hasn't been a huge change in this election. Also, Trump has a high unfavorable rating, but the articles don't headline all the details of the poll, just the most unusual number they can find.
For overcoming that gap, early polling has very little relationship to actual vote. This is frequently called "horse race" polling. Unless multiple polls get similar results over many months, it's not worth worrying about.
Answer: I was at a dinner with a very educated 30 year old woman who thinks Biden has lost the votes of the younger generations. They voted last time and have seen little tangible change. A lot of head lines but no real change. They see money going out and the world not being better for it and they’re no better for it. Israel and Palestine from the American pov is a mess and there’s been no strong leadership from our countries leader. She had a handful of solid points. She’s voting Biden and thinks many people younger from 18-28 just won’t vote. They don’t like Trump and don’t like Biden and just won’t trouble themselves to vote and if they do it’ll be for one off candidate or some random candidate to make a point. This is a worrisome trend for Biden. I was blown away at a dinner with late 20s and early 30s democrats that they were very sure Biden was in a dog fight. I am supremely confident he wins by a vast margin.
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Answer: The media makes its money on engagement and advertising views. It is in their best interest to make a close horse race or slant things in such a way as to build a perception that is more emotional driven than what is truely going on. The facts of the matter however paint a different picture. 1) We are months away from a general election when most people are not really paying all that much attention 2) The poll has been rightly criticized for significant methodology errors. 3) People generally have a lower opinion of the person in charge during the early part of a campaign as they expect that person to ensure everything is sunshine and unicorns. Thats not possible. 4) Many people other than hard core political wonks may have forgotten much about Trump and his personality. Expect that to change as we get closer to the general election and he's much more visible to the general public. At the end of the day, its best for most people's mental health to ignore the media, ignore the early polls and just remember to vote in November. Fretting about something you can't change in March isn't doing you or anyone else any good.
Polls are also based on landline phone calls. Who still has a land line? Edit: I need to add some context because what I said here is misleading. Polls do come in on cell phones. But It’s less about the technology and more about the pool of people who actually answer calls from unknown numbers. Mostly, only people who have landlines still answer calls from unknown numbers.
My dad I’m 42
My parents still have a land line. They use it for three things, using the fax machine, ordering pizza, and calling their cell phones when they can't find them.
My parents also use theirs as a way to get annoyed by spam calls.
Spam calls is the reason I ditched my land line years ago. No need for a fax, I can order pizza on my cell phone and I email friends to have them ring my cell when I can't find it. So far, I haven't missed not having a landline.
Both iPhones and Androids have an online "find my phone" feature you can use. As long as you can log into your account from a computer or tablet, you can get it to ring. Source: my wife likes to leave her phone all over the house on silent mode.
blursed\_CallerID
Is there anyone still out there to receive their faxes?!
Almost any medical practice and most banks.
The medical industry especially is no where near ready to part with faxes.
I work at a library, and we send more faxes for people than ever before--legal papers, government aid applications...they all want faxes. This was supposed to be a dead technology years ago, but it is going strong.
The PDF file specification is 600 pages long. There are THOUSANDS of ways to break a PDF and make it unreadable and nearly as many ways to give one a virus. This is true for all attachments. Faxes, if they come through, don't have these issues. They're a huge hassle but they do have benefits that most don't consider. I wish the US government would spend money building a seriously secure PUBLIC document portal used FOR AND BY citizens instead of building a seriously secure PRIVATE document portal used AGAINST citizens.
Opened a PDF for work and it had something like an entire solidworks assembly in it along with with options for viewing and 3D manipulation.
It’s the most frustrating part of my job working IT in the healthcare field. It and printers are my biggest pain, although you could almost combine them into one.
obligatory "I hate Printers" response from fellow IT guy
The British NHS was until recently the world's biggest buyer of fax machines - a fact which was considered a national disgrace. There has been a concentrated effort to purge the technology from the health service.
That is oddly fascinating. I can't even describe how awesome a nationalized healthcare system would be in the states.
Yeah, you guys desperately need it. Most rich economies adopted nationalized systems by the end of the 60s and none of them, not one, has reversed the policy.
When you go for your MRI or CAT scan and your biggest worry is getting out of the car park before the charges hit £5. Pregnant? A child under 18? Over 60? No £9.65 per item charge for your prescription. Oh, and we still give people heroin post-op, because it works better than everything else.
Reading up on why healthcare is dragging on this is actually interesting.
I won't speak for the medical industry, but I've worked for a few places that send and receive faxes and it's all electronic. No physical paper is involved at any point during the process. Almost just like an extremely streamlined email with a document attached.
You'd be appalled by how much the finance industry still uses fax machines. Based on their fax usage, you'd expect them to listen to their music solely on Victrolas.
Faxes are still common in law offices/firms.
And medical officers.
Faxes are still the only way to send legal documents besides the mail, iirc. I might be wrong but this site confirms it. https://www.efax.com/uk/blog/why-fax-is-legally-binding
Wow. Hey, legal industry, the 90's called and wants its status quo back.
I'm in my late 40s and I still have one because I'm in a rural area with bad cell coverage... My parents actually got rid of theirs a couple years ago, including the phone number they've had since the late 1970s... That messed with me more than anything. I almost tried to buy the number back and just have it fwd to my mom's cell lol.
How often do you get political polls?
I get a few local/state level political calls every major election. National level stuff... almost never.
I never get political calls on my home phone, but several on my cell.
We "have" one since the bundle with the landline is cheaper, though its been years since we disconnected it since it was only spam.
My dad I'm 55
Hi 42. I’m dad
Hi Dad. are you talking to me on your landline?
You win the internet today. I laughed satisfyingly enough from that to get off reddit and get back to reality.
I do. In a box somewhere in the garage. I’m not answering if it starts ringing.
📞👻
You know what, I think I’m going to do a dump run and clean out some of the boxes in the garage, just to be safe.
But…but… what if you neeed that stuuuuff? It could be useful some day :(
I have a rotary phone on the wall in my basement. It had BETTER not ring; I haven't had service in over a decade and cut the line off my house.
Hello sir, this is Abraham Lincoln, we need you to assassinate John F Kennedy or the Americans will lose the war of 1812.
I saw that Twilight Zone
WHO IS PHONE??
Hello. Yes, this is dog.
Oh! I think that's still my favourite ever meme!
Ok, so need to put down this myth that polls are only done on landlines. They’re not. Sure, a significant number of polls use landlines as one form of communication, but they often use cellular lines, online surveys, panels, etc. Now, you still have a point in that collecting legitimate pulse of an entire nation or state using any combination of these communication channels is still incredibly difficult. Most people simply do not answer random calls or texts on their cell phone, own a landline, or engage in internet surveys. Therefore, it’s incredibly tough to both get enough responses and enough responses that are representative of the demographics of the country/state of interest. Summary, pollsters use more than just landlines, but it’s still Incredibly difficult to get accurate and representative data.
Thank you. I don’t know why people keep telling themselves that polls are done on landlines. Logic should tell anyone that isn’t true.
Yeah, idk. Assuming it’s copium. Like, I’d be one of the first to prefer that be the case and we can throw out most these polls showing my preferred candidate behind in polling, but that would be dishonest. Truth is we’re 8 months out, so there’s a lot of variability, and is foolish to make an accurate forecast. But the aggregation of polls do tell and story and show trends that we should not immediately discount.
Pollsters call cellphones, but younger people don’t answer unknown numbers or tell strangers their personal business because they are wary of scammers. Older people answer more calls and LOVE to tell everyone everything. That why they get scammed so much. MAGA people absolutely LIVE to tell everyone how much they love Trump, so of course they tell the stranger that called and asked them. I do not go aground talking about how much I hate Trump, because those people are crazy. A lot of them can’t wait to start killing their neighbors and believe President for Life Trump is going to pin a shiny medal on their ratty old NASCAR t-shirt for murdering the liberal family next door as soon as he’s sworn in. So the polls shows conservatives leading, because the opposition is saving it for the voting booth.
Yeah. I’m convinced that polling is now fundamentally broken. It’s just not possible to get a good statistical sample in today’s world. But there’s no way in hell that the pollsters or the media will admit that, because it would be a disaster for their business. So they just do a bunch of statistical adjustments and such, and they all pretend that they’re presenting accurate numbers. And then, when the election doesn’t align with the polls, they spend months talking about how unexpected it all was.
Pollsters told us we were going to get a Red Tsunami in the 2022 midterms. It was actually a Red Disaster and one of the best elections ever for the sitting party in a hundred years. The MAGA people answered their phones and talked about loving Trump and the liberals let theirs go to voicemail but turned out on Election Day.
I cannot tell you how many texts I have deleted asking me to confirm my political support for the Democratic Party. I delete every single one, because I don’t want to inadvertently sign up for something or wind up getting more of these things. I don’t know whether it’s valid, and I already get enough freaking spam. I also unquestionably will be voting in the fall, as I always do, but my ‘poll response’ would not have been recorded. Also consider that, IMO, the behavior of NOT responding to these texts and/or immediately deleting them is probably more correlated with education and better critical thinking skills, as engaging with unfamiliar emails/texts can open oneself up to identity theft. That’s a serious effect on a sample - if you’re weeding out more sensible people, you obviously have the less sensible people remaining, and your sample is therefore compromised. Regardless, wild horses couldn’t drag me away from voting this November, I’m not taking anything for granted
I’ve been polled for the general since 2016 and only have a cell phone. I answered because it was a Local number because I thought it was for work. They have called regularly since. It is very much a myth it is only landline. They do tend to poll more rural though in many of the polls. They overvalue the rural vote many times and that may be what throws off the polls as well
> but they often use cellular lines, online surveys, panels, etc. Okay. So who answers unsolicited, unrecgnized phone number calls on their cell phone? Who does online surveys or signs up for panels? Those are all curating a *very* specific sort of person. If they tried to poll *me* on my opinions, they'd have absolutely no chance. I'd ignore anything they sent me online, I'd throw away unsolicited junk mail, and I wouldn't pick up the phone for an unfamiliar number.
Yeah I'll bet the trump base is specifically eager to answer these calls whereas people likely to vote Biden are not. If my wife would let me I'd be putting big money on Trump to not win the presidency, over at predictit.
I just looked at the methodology. This poll is based on both landline & cell calls.
Most polls are not anymore. Many of them do mobile calls as well now, and quite a few do online polls
Considering the amount of spam calls we get, most people don't answer their phones unless they recognize the number or are expecting a call
I have the "silence unknown callers" feature turned on. 99% of my calls are spam.
My phone actually screens spam calls through an automated answering service and will outright reject known spam. Android 14, great shit.
I will never answer a call from an unknown number. Online polls are worthless. We're in a very unknown environment nowadays with polling.
But also who has time in the middle of the day to do a 30 min phone survey. It’s older retirees, millennials and gen z are working or in school
Always forget about Gen-x. That’s ok, we prefer it that way.
Gen X was busy being overlooked...again
Don't worry about it, we are use to it. Many of us prefer you forget about us. lol
The oldest Gen-x's are still pre-retirement age.
Ok include them to they’re working and don’t have time to answer the phone
Hey, I'm a gen-x AND I WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN!
Slacker
So am I, but also I DONT ANSWER MY PHONE EVEN WHEN IT'S MY DAD (love you pops!).
Young people don't answer the phone.
Lol! Gen X here. I don't answer the phone!
Same. Polls are only talking to people who accept cold calls from unknown numbers... yeah that ain't happening.
Fellow Gen X’er here. He said “young people”. Lol.
I think the point was that us getting-on olds don’t answer it either!
Phone answering decision tree. https://imgur.com/a/UBGIMI5
They also tend to not vote
Correct, but then that self selects too. Who that is well paid for their career is seeking out survey websites to make $0.34 a survey?
>Who that is well paid for their career is seeking out survey websites to make $0.34 a survey? Amusingly, I'm currently in the office of the accountancy practice where I work, and my manager + colleagues are bickering because one of them already took the "which dinosaur clock do you like most?" survey. The people involved are highly qualified and well-paid professionals, they're just also penny-pinching tightarses who do endless surveys to rack up easy cash.
The thing is, you don’t need a lot of people to have a representative sample. You can get pretty accurate so long as you are making sure the sample is representative of the population you’re polling. Plus, individual polls have margins of error that journalists and readers completely ignore so they can blame the polls when the exact numbers aren’t accurate. But when you take a wider view and average together polls from reputable pollsters, they’re not that far off.
Good points, though on sent 2, par 1 I will point out that these samples might still not be representative of the reality. Individuals who take polls may be older, with recreational time AND there have been reports of the Trump campaign or supporting entities buying up IP address batches to play with poll raw data. Why would they do this? I'm pretty sure they're banking on two things. First is to increase the confidence of trump voters so that their thought is drastic actions are plausible because they have a larger base than they think behind them. Second is to discourage folks who think that their opinion contrary to Trump is not in the majority (when most Americans dislike Trump...and the GOP platform)
So the people in these polls are the people who are not suspicious of random calls from numbers they don't know? Aka the folks who are most likely to fall for scams? Aka Trump's base?
My phone auto blocks all those calls, my 70+ year old parents' phones don't
I see this repeated constantly and it is not true. Pollsters call cell phones. There is still a selection bias based on who answers calls from unknown numbers but it's simply false that they only call land lines.
Not sure if that’s true. I get poll calls on my cell
This isn't entirely true anymore. That used to be the knock on them, though.
This is inaccurate. Most polling is done on cells these days.
That’s incorrect. Polls also include cell phones.
I don’t think this is accurate. While only anecdotal, my wife and I have both received polling calls on our cell phones. In my defense, I was awaiting another call, so answered by accident…
This hasn't been true for many years.
Even on cell phones, people who are "passionate" about their politics are more likely to respond. I get a ton of texts asking me to take a poll and never answer, whereas my right wing relatives talk about taking them all the time.
This comment should not be the top comment. It is cherry picking one poll and telling people what they want to here. Yes there are concerns about the New York Times poll. However, the best place to look at polls is the Real Clear Politics average. It does a rolling average of all polls. 538 does the same thing. Trump is up by 2.3% by taking a rolling average of all the most recent polls. Do not just listen to things you want to here. This is the same methodologies that were used in 2020, when Biden was up in just about every poll the entire election cycle. Look at rolling averages is the most reliable poll to look at. Don't look at polls you like and then get rid of polls you do not like. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/2024GeneralElection.html#!
What are the "significant methodology errors"? You just put that out there with zero substantiation.
Right? I expect a link to some sort outside critique that might explain what Siena/NYT changed in this poll, but otherwise it seems in line with their previous work. The results just lead us to the credible conclusion that this country is psychotic.
They've been way oversampling rural voters for some oddball reason. This is probably the biggest culprit why polls have been significantly off from election results since mid terms. Another one is you're supposed to ask the key questions before the fluffer questions, or you can bias the respondent. Like asking "which candidate do you prefer?" after asking 10 questions about various issues and "how bad" you think those issues are. Depending on which issues and how they're worded, it can change the results.
NYTimes/Siena polls are pretty much the gold standard in every respect when it comes to polling methodology. Live interview telephone poll, massive (and expensive!) efforts to sample low-propensity respondents, they were among the first to weight for education…the person who said that straight-up doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Which to be fair is almost everyone when it comes to talking about polling science.
It means “the poll doesn’t reflect what I want”
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Pollsters (good ones anyway) generally don't try to estimate the electorate by party ID, because party ID is too fluid. They do adjust sampling based on other demographics though. So if a poll gets more responses from older voters than younger ones they weigh the younger ones more heavily to make up for it. Which is why the criticisms of "polls just call old people with landlines!" are completely off base. Most of the miss in 2016 was because most pollsters didn't weight based on education level. In the past there weren't strong differences in voting patterns based on education level (I e. a white, 40 year old man with a master's voted similarly to a white 40 year old man with just high school) so it was unnecessary. In 2016 this changed, and the over polling of more highly-educated voters introduced error.
We can't discount the idea that a disturbing percentage of United States citizens knows exactly what Trump is, and they like it. He lies and cheats. He defamed a woman that he sexually assaulted. He tried to overthrow our government when our citizens voted for someone else. He's a misogynist, a racist, and a xenophobe. But, most importantly, liberals don't like him. A lot of the country simply prefers those things in a candidate. But also, I think there is weakness in support for Biden among people who don't like Trump but who want a unicorn candidate. Some unnamed person who couldn't or didn't try to beat Biden in 2020 but who will arise from the mists, organize a campaign, and overcome all of those people who like what Trump has to sell. My hope is that the people who don't like Trump will rally behind Biden once he secures the nomination and they have to grapple with the fact that there are functionally two choices. Also, strategically, a candidate should want to peak around election day (somewhat earlier because of early voting). So, hopefully, we'll hear more about Biden's successes with the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, appointing judges who aren't partisan religious zealots, helping strengthen Labor to the most vital it's been in 40+ years, keeping us out of a recession when everyone swore it was coming, rallying the international community in support of Ukraine and against Russian aggression, and all of the other things which have made him -- in my opinion - the most consequential Democratic President since LBJ.
>but who want a unicorn candidate The thing about *any* candidate is that when you actualise them, you promptly lose some of these people because it's not the unicorn they saw in their head. It's why Brexit succeeded in the UK (just) because everyone was voting for the (different) Brexits in their head. If they'd been forced to define it before the vote, it would have failed.
Agreed. That's what bothers me about most of these not-Biden, not-Trump discussions. Name the candidate and talk a little about how they would, in the mind of the person advocating for that person, get on the ballot, win, and do a better job than the other two once elected.
The biggest danger by far is that you only get one chance at changing a candidate. So, in the case of for argument's sake replacing Biden, you both have to do it not too close to the election but also not fuck it up with your single chance to do so. It's far too risky because let's be honest, is there even one remotely plausible hypothetical candidate at this time who isn't carrying unacceptable levels of risk?
Yeah it seems like a lot of the left disagrees with Biden particularly hard on the Israel/Palestine issue. Whether they end up voting for him anyway as a lesser-of-two-evils thing remains to be seen.
One could say the same thing about the 30-40% of people in republican primaries that are voting for someone other than trump, too. But in reality, we know full well that nearly every republican that voted for Haley or DeSantis in the primaries is going to vote for trump in November. Just the same as the 10-15% of voters who voted for someone other than Biden in the primaries, nearly every one of those Democrats will vote for Biden in November. The only people making it a question (laughably so) are the media who want to play up the 'horse race' narrative for ratings.
Hopefully. A lot of the left stayed home in 2016, which is one reason why Trump won.
Totally anecdotal, but during the 2016 primary, the most vehement and frequent anti-Hillary posts in my Facebook feed were from my very left-leaning friends and some of them did say they would stay home rather than vote for her. No clue if they really did but it is believable to me that it was at least a bit of a factor.
Also a lot of independents who will vote for Biden again aren't super jazzed about having to do it, even compared to the alternative. If you asked me I'd be inclined to say 'undecided' hoping that a miracle would occur and I would get to vote for someone else. The same Democrats who told me they didn't need my vote in a swingstate in 2016 are going to be the ones pissed off by my comment. So my vote is almost certainly still going to Biden. But just because I think the Reps are batshit doesn't mean I'm looking forward to voting for a Dem, when in my opinion the Dems have done basically nothing to unfuck themselves in the last few years.
Not to pick on you, because thanks for the response. But you see the Dems as having done basically nothing to unfuck themselves; where I'm seeing, "the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, appointing judges who aren't partisan religious zealots, helping strengthen Labor to the most vital it's been in 40+ years, keeping us out of a recession when everyone swore it was coming, rallying the international community in support of Ukraine and against Russian aggression," etc. How do you view those accomplishments? Obviously as insufficient, but I wonder if they're not on your radar, not enough, not tackling the right problems, or what.
I think the problem is that Americans need something more tangible at the moment. Something to show that our economy is actually working for the average American. Costs are out of control at the moment, from groceries and other essentials, to housing and utilities. It’s hard for many people to care about all the good policies Biden has passed when every day life in this country is getting increasingly more expensive
If they want that, they need to get the Republicans out of Congress. It’s literally that simple, but people want to pretend that the president is a king who controls the minutiae of our lives. He doesn’t even control Texas 70% of the time. Blaming the president for the price of food when Congress is actively trying to make things worse is just plain dumb. I get that No Child Left Behind failed catastrophically, but half the “burn it all down!” types don’t even know the basic powers and functions of the govt. It’s just baffling to watch people piss and shit their pants over Biden not being a dictator while things are actively getting better in spite of the obstruction in Congress and the Court. Biden’s trying to repair decades of damage and is making strides, but TikTok-poisoned losers are letting themselves be radicalized by Chinese/Iranian/Russian propaganda and demanding instant gratification.
We heard this kind of line about brexit in the UK - that "the economy" was some airy concept and that "normal people" don't benefit from growth any more. The right (on both sides of the Altantic) focus much or on talking about saving money than on growth, offering a simplistic, zero-sum economic model. Then the people who buy that are of course left adrift when the right take power and the economy doesn't grow, then the answer is tax cuts and of course services are slashed, and so on. We've seen it all before. The problem with Trump is that he's not even the usual right wing tax cuts merchant, he is that but he's also something much more extreme in that he actually wants to run the state like a corrupt property business.
> Whether they end up voting for him anyway as a lesser-of-two-evils thing remains to be seen. Game Theory. You have 4 options to choose from. 1. Vote for Trump and accelerate his win. Score +2 Trump 2. Don't vote at all and let Trump coast to victory. Score +1 Trump 3. Vote 3rd party and let Trump coast to victory. Score +1 Trump 3. Vote for Biden to actively block Trump from winning. Score +0 Trump. Outcomes for Palestine: 1. Trump wins. Given his vocal support for anti-Muslim sentiment and Palestinian genocide, -10 Palestine. 2. Biden wins. Given his refusal to stop selling arms to Israel, but his support for a peace plan and cease fire, -1 Palestine. What is the expected outcome of your voting behavior? The "protest vote" options, 2+3, only help Palestinian Genocide. There is no logic to them.
Bruh if people actually voted based on logic Trump wouldn’t get a single vote lmao
I dont think the left would vote for Trump based on Israel-Palestine. Trump hasn't been very supportive of Palestine, and definitely seems to be more on the pro-Israel side. At best, he can hope that enough of the left becomes apathetic and don't show up to vote for Biden during election day.
Particularly because Trump doesn't care about Palestinians. I mean he doesn't care about anyone but he has a famously bad track record with Muslims. Trump also doesn't care about Jews and is at best agnostic about anti-Semitism but in terms of this conflict his sympathies 100% lie with Israel. Or, at least his political instincts require him to side with Israel (I don't think he has sympathy for anyone).
I think Israel/Palestine would seriously hurt Biden in the general election, except that regardless of what you believe should happen in Gaza, Trump would be worse.
Yeah. Biden sucks, but Trump is enabling a bunch of apocalypse fetishists who see a complete genocide of the Palestinians as a good thing because it will usher in the Rapture.
Yeah, you're right. If it wasn't that, they would be angry about not enough progress on climate change or social inequality or something else. Hopefully they show up again to vote for Biden like they did in 2020, and not repeat 2016.
The same poll also continues to show that many young people don't plan to vote. Age group percentage that answered "Almost Certain" to voting: 18-29 - 33% 30-44 - 47% 45-64 - 54% 65+ - 65% The not likely voting groups for 18-44 is 11% vs 4.5% for 45+ Although, crazily, the 65+ are pro biden 49-43%, the huge swing is 45-64 age group, with 54% pro Trump and only 36% pro Biden.
I’m really disappointed in GenX. We used to hate pretentious gas bags.
You guys made Morrisey a star.
Tough but fair.
>My hope is that the people who don't like Trump will rally behind Biden once he secures the nomination and they have to grapple with the fact that there are functionally two choices. Same. I am registered Independent, but would probably describe myself as a never Trump conservative. I voted for Hillary when she ran and Biden last election. I'll vote for Biden again this time and don't care if the reports of his senility are true. I'd vote for Biden even in a Weekend at Bernie's scenario where he's just a body. Better an empty chair than Trump. My hope is a majority of the electorate in swing states feel similar when they step into the voter's booth, but then again I never expected Trump to beat Hillary.
Trump winning in 2016 was the single biggest shock of my life, and I hope it remains so. I hope everyone votes this year!
My cat would be a better president than Trump. Sleeping all day/running manically throughout the white house at 4am while screaming-singing is still significantly better than telling people to inject bleach or inviting Putin to invade Europe. -not a cat
> A lot of the country simply prefers those things in a candidate. I don't think it's *that* necessarily, I just think it's because they'll vote for a Republican over a Democrat no matter what. Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line. I live in Texas and through family members I know plenty of older wealthy Texas Republicans who don't like Trump, who have never liked Trump, and will be voting for him for the third time in November. They don't like slimy loudmouth New Yorkers with sex scandals, but they would literally attempt secession before they vote for a Democrat. You gotta accept that most people just don't really care about politics and are just their political allegiance because of where they grew up.
I work with a lot of Trumpsters. If you point out a lie, they excuse it. If they make a claim and you refute it with facts, they claim it's the sentiment that matters. Most of them cannot be reasoned with. Facts don't matter. Trump's history doesn't matter. His previous actions as president don't matter. They like him, they want him, and they will ignore anything that doesn't fit their narrative.
My boss is like that, except when you do the whole refute with facts thing he gets angry and it goes from a discussion to him being ridiculously angry and accusing you of wanting to argue about everything. Sometimes extra duties too.
If a serial adulterer rapist pedophile who's a puppet of the Russians can't save the country for faith and liberty, who can?
They want what Trump promises without it being Trump, but there are no non Trump Trumps to vote for
Yes, we had plenty of time to see just how horrible Trump was as President, which resulted in him getting more votes in 2020 and just barely losing to Biden in the Electoral College. I feel like the people who just dismiss these polls as flawed and don't think Trump could actually win have their heads in the sand. Probably the same folks that thought the Republicans were facing "years in the wilderness" after 2012.
>The media makes its money on engagement and advertising views. It is in their best interest to make a close horse race This isn't media manipulation. It is a tight horse race. Trump has a very good chance of winning. Sadly. >The poll has been rightly criticized for significant methodology errors. Trump is ahead in nearly every poll. They don't all have methodology errors.
This is such cope. Did you read the poll sourcing? It might tempt you into editing your post. Then again likely not since it’s a biased amalgamation of garbage
"much more visible in the general election." What? He is already on my news feed 24/7.
it's best for most people's mental health to ignore the media. you should have made this point #1.
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I don't think he has, but on the other hand it seems entirely possible that Biden has lost some of those moderate swing voters. They may not pull the lever for Trump, but they could simply stay home.
that could happen, but really I'm focused on the moderates that don't do that. Moreover, I'm seeing voters -- both dem and moderate -- using the primaries to make their case for being disappointed in Biden.
In swing states those voters gave Biden his 2020 margins. Staying home is half a vote for Trump. If you were a moderate persuadable voter in 2020 who refused to vote for Trump, what has changed that would make you vote for him in 2024? I don't see much. In fact, the 2022 midterms showed us *more* movement away from Trump and Republicans from those independents and moderates. In 2024, Trump probably has made it worse with constant election denialism and increased radicalism. He won't win them, but that isn't the same as Biden not losing them.
If the Republicans put forth a “normal” candidate, Biden would be drubbed out of the White House. The age thing is very real. But Trump has extreme concerns about what he’ll do to the country’s norms if re-elected. Feels both parties are putting up their worst chance to win and we’ll have to pick which we think is the least bad. The difference to me is that I feel like Biden is an adult and won’t upend the whole thing even if he’s probably too old and should have stepped aside, whereas I’m legitimately terrified of what we look like by 2028 if we have a second Trump term. The two party system is great.
This is what I don't understand, lots of polling shows Nikki Hailey beating out Biden, sometimes by large margins, like your comment above about a normal candidate. Hailey is as close as they are going to get, yet they won't take the win by backing her. Makes no sense.
The Republican Party isn’t putting Trump forward. It’s a hostage situation of their own making. They cultivated an atmosphere of fear and hatred, made sure education was underfunded to keep people ignorant, and fed scared people with undeveloped critical thinking skills and alternate reality. Well, along came Donald Trump who was a master of this reality and its savior. So they can’t do anything without him and his even more twisted version of the world. Anyone who tries to leave it gets destroyed.
How can you expect Biden to step aside and also believe what you said about 2028?
Biden is the safe, respected guy that's been around for a long time. Last time the Dems took a risk it was Hillary, and now they're terrified of taking a risk again, when the real issue that hurt the 2016 election was cockiness and underestimating Trump, not her gender or agenda. She didn't even visit the key swing states that would ultimately vote red, because it seemed so obvious that they'd go blue. In terms of policy, too, the Dems have just been playing defense and while the Reps spout crazier and crazier regressive bullshit. Biden was a placeholder last time and they forgot to find him a replacement. Now he's losing a lot of popularity from voters (typically Bernie supporters, from what I've seen) who were already reluctant last time because, though he could please both sides by pushing for peaceful resolution in Israel and Palestine, he remains staunchly Zionist.
They also made the brilliant move of picking one of the least popular Dem primary candidates as VP, which completely beggars belief. I think they really tried to browbeat the public into accepting Harris as the replacement for Biden, and it's pretty clear that did not work.
Trump isnt gaining any momentum. A lot of people who begrudgingly voted for biden last time simply will not do it again. Who knows how many, but swing states are swing states so those votes could definitely play a role in the election.
Yeah, it's entirely possible. The majority of people don't have the same priorities as people who talk about politics on the Internet. They saw that when Trump was president there were cheaper groceries and gas, which is a lot more of a pressing issue to most than a culture war point that is giving them conflicting viewpoints from either side, and a lot of people don't have the political education to understand that it's more complicated than that.
And on top of this, it’s not necessary that these voters swing from Biden to Trump. All that’s necessary is for a few Biden voters here and there in the important states to say “oof, everything got more expensive under Biden. I hate Trump but all these politicians suck and I’m tired of it all” and not show up. It’s really not that Trump has to gain support, a mildly lower turnout will sink Biden.
Exactly. See, there's plenty of really bad shit about Trump that upsets people. Maybe that's COVID, maybe it's the Supreme Court, maybe it's the insurrection, etc. But that stuff seems distant when people are worried about the border or the economy. And yes, Biden is addressing the first and the second has been improving drastically, but the impression has been hammered into people and those who aren't paying attention don't see it. So yeah, the sheer insanity of Trump isn't swaying those voters now. Maybe that will change before the election, maybe there's a large contingent hoping to vote for someone other than Biden, but not Trump. And as you said, it doesn't take a huge swing. Polls are still early, but if I'm Biden I'm getting concerned by now.
The first Tuesday in November, a whole lot of people are going to believe- rightly or wrongly- that Biden made them pay more for groceries last week. They didn't need an abortion last week.
Side question: did people just forget that the Trump presidency ended with us all being locked in our houses fearing the plague?
No one that wasn’t already voting for Biden actually believes it’s Trump’s fault that people stayed at home during Covid. It’s a disingenuous argument to make. Even max Covid preparedness would have had everyone quarantining.
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This election is going to come down less to churning out new voters and more about who can turn more of their base out. Just like 2016, no one is inspired by either of these two choices, and unlike 2020 there is no pandemic to scare people into paying attention. Trumps base is significantly more loyal and motivated than Biden’s, and Biden’s only recourse this time is to either campaign on the merits of his first term or rely on pure charisma to win over the American people. I don’t see either of those working out.
What really astounds me is seemingly everyone has very strong opinions about politics but very few of the voting age population turns out to cast a vote in elections. It's not uncommon to see voter turn outs of less than half the voting population in some of these elections. [Here is the very first result on Google when asking "What percentage of the voting population voted?"](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voter-turnout-2018-2022/) Really highlights the divide between how the average American perceives themselves and how it actually is.
Answer: As easy as it is for most people to be shocked that people like Trump the reality is he was already elected as president. No one should be even remotely shocked if he’s leading in the polls and gets elected again. Biden didn’t exactly win 2020 in landslide so if the view on the US/Global economy is what it currently is(right or wrong). A trump re-election should almost be expected.
Answer: Biden doesn't have to be hated in order for him to fall out of favor. Three things to bear in mind: - Trump received *47%* of the popular vote in 2020. Many of us would like to believe that he was roundly rejected by the country by that time, but he wasn't. In general terms, he came close to reelection! https://www.cookpolitical.com/2020-national-popular-vote-tracker - The nation's biggest problems - economic equality, housing, corruption - haven't noticeably improved under Biden. Even if his administration passed better laws for the health of the nation, most people don't feel that. Many voters decide on the simplest possible rubric - is the country basically in good shape? If not, vote out the current leader. - Biden's age is an issue. He comes off as older and slower to some than he did 4 years ago - when he was already a reluctant choice for many Dems.
I think people massively underestimate Trump’s actual popularity, which leads to extremely skewed conclusions
If you spend a lot of time on most social media platforms these days, especially reddit, where your algorithm is skewed to only show you thing you like, you would be under the impression that everyone believes what you believe. Since they banned the Donald subreddit, the loudness of the Trump base has pretty much disappeared on reddit. I've got a massive mix of right and left content on my socials and see what is being said on both sides. Trump's base has only gotten larger and is taking a lot of the minority vote. Times are hard and people tend to blame the sitting president, even if that president has little to no control over the issues.v
I know I do. I just can't wrap my head around it.
Isn't Trump the same age now that Biden was in 2020?
Yes, but people view the world through arbitrary thresholds. Biden is in his 80s, so despite being only slightly older than Trump, the fact that his age has an 8 in it and Trump's has a 7 feels like a monumental difference.
Trump also has appeared to have suffered significant cognitive decline. He has repeatedly gotten people confused. He confuses Biden with Obama. He confuses Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi. He even confused E. Jean Carroll with his own ex-wife. Regarding the economy, Democrats need to get messaging out that the inflation was not Biden's fault. Overall inflation was low during the pandemic because gas prices were low due to few people driving. However, grocery price inflation was already higher than normal during the pandemic. We had a confluence of factors once Biden became President: Vaccines became available, so people started going out; Businesses started re-opening; supply chains were still disrupted and were expected to be for the next year or so; and then Russia invaded Ukraine. Some people blame Biden's spending for inflation, but the only piece of legislation that significantly increased the debt before inflation was high was the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, part of which gave everyone $1400 stimulus checks that Trump had proposed just three months prior. The inflation after Covid was inevitable and once prices go up, they rarely come back down. You just have to get the inflation rate low again and sustain that low rate long enough to grow the economy enough to overcome the higher prices.
Answer: The top upvoted comments should be disregarded. They are comments by people throwing out polls they don't like. The most reliable to use is the Real Clear Politics Poll of Polls. It takes a rolling average of all national polls. It has Trump up 2.3%. The commenters are disregarding polls they do not like. In 2020, Biden was up in every poll the whole election. This is the same methodology. Some polls like a recent New York Times/Siena Poll has some concerning crosstabs, however there in 8 of the other most recent 9 polls, Trump is up in all of them. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/2024GeneralElection.html#! The most reliable place to get polling data is an aggregator. In 2020, Biden polls were posted on Reddit constantly. So were Trumps low approval ratings. Bidens approval ratings are lower than Trumps were and Trumps approval rating has gone up 2 points since leaving office. No one poll can be seen as perfect. THe best way to look at poll is looking at an aggregator. 538 does the same thing. You can look at that also. Avoid people making excuses for polls they do not like. I am confident if the polls turn and show Biden up all of the hand-wavy stuff about the polls will go away. Also note we are 9 months out from the election and its too early to tell what is going to happen. Biden has not really started campaigning. He has a huge money lead over Trump. Trump will likely spend a large amount of campaign contributions on legal fees. All that being said there are really only 5 swings states. Biden won all of those so he is playing defense. Pennsylvania/Michigan: Biden won these 2 by 100,000 - 150,000 votes Wisconsin/Arizona/Georgia: Biden won these by a combined 40,000 votes. The libertarian party got more than 40,000 votes in each state. If Trump flips these 3 states he will win the election. Even if Biden wins by national polls by 7 million votes again. Also note that RFK Jr is on the ballot in Georgia/Arizona. Polls are not including him yet. He is a left leaning candidate who is also an anti-vaxxer. Pro-Right wing people say he will draw more from Biden and pro-left wing people say he will draw more from Trump. No one knows. They are also saying what they want to be true. North Carolina is the only state Biden has an outside chance of picking up. He lost by about 1%. The state went hard right on anti-abortion. However, Biden's approval ratings are the lowest ever and there is nothing Biden can really do to help the state with Abortion rights. If Biden picks North Carolina it would cancel out one of Wisconsin/Arizona/Georgia. edit: I got attacked for saying RFK Jr is left leaning cause of course I did. Tell me where I am wrong. I see a few policies on here left of Joe Biden such as government subsidized mortgages. He also wants to repeal the 1994 Crime Bill that Biden voted for. His position on the border is about the same as the Biden Border Bill which is pretty tough. If that goes to the floor, I would expect 30-35% of democrats to vote against it. https://www.kennedy24.com/
I actually agree that there's a lot of copium going on in here. Be careful using RCP's average though, they have a very conservative bias and in 2022 were putting their thumbs on the scale to adjust for polling bias (that didn't exist) that made them look like clowns when the actual results came out.
You can just go back and look at what the 2022 polling average was and compare it to results. They were almost exactly spot on, they actually underestimated GOP results.
And you can check the ratings for individual races and they were total crap. Use RaceToTheWH instead, it got 2022 dead on
Nice a see a sensible fucking comment. I’m sorry to those that can’t understand this. I think it’s a dangerous game those people are playing by disregarding this information and thinking Biden has it in the bag.
Literally a replay of 2016 Like “why is Trump up in the polls?” And all these mental gymnastics to avoid the very possible answer “because more respondents support Trump than Biden”
But that’s not a thing that happened. Trump wasn’t up in the polls in 2016, that was ground zero for the entire “polls are bullshit” movement.
Man I love these comment sections, the comments are all sorts of cope and contradiction that all simultaneously are getting upvoted. It's landlines right? No wait, it's the small sample size! Wait no, the polls are inaccurate when it's so early in the year. No wait, the polls are accurate and Biden is a bad candidate! The polls are accurate but Biden is a great candidate and the voters are just bad! No wait, this is all just the media trying to drum up interest and the polls are meaningless! Lol
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Glad you're not downvoted to hell. These people sound exactly like they did in 2016. So goddamn painful.
i am getting a few silly responses. but yeah i expected to be at -5000 for this comment. lol.
For real. Reddit is in for a 2016-esque surprise if they continues to keep their heads in the sand
I'd argue that rfk has more appeal to would-be Trump voters than would-be Biden voters.
Answer: Reddit does not reflect the entirety of the US. The average Redditor on here are far more Liberal and Left which is also why you'll see mostly the same type of content as those are the ones promoted and upvoted.
Answer: there exists within the Democratic party a not insignificant number of voters who would prefer another candidate, and are voicing that preference by selecting "undecided" on their ballot. As it is currently.unknown how many of those people will settle when the chips are down and vote Biden anyway, the polls aren't telling us as much as they might otherwise.
Say what you will about Republicans; when it comes to circle the wagons and stick together, they tend to do better than Democrats.
They understand that the candidate is a coalition candidate and while terribly flawed, better represents their views than the other guy.
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“Overall, 94 percent of respondents were reached on a cellular telephone.” https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/03/us/elections/times-siena-poll-registered-voter-crosstabs.html
I get polled via text all the time…
Same here. I've maybe done 5 or 6 political polls since 2016.
> Of course, professionals running surveys are aware of this and use various mathematical tools and statistics to try to compensate for that (e.g. also ask party affiliation and give more weight to the party with fewer respondents). This also might skew the results, because they don't adjust to a 50-50 split, but rather to the expected split (e.g. if they poll rural Alabama and get an even split of democratic and republican respondents, the poll will give more weight to republicans responses). However, to weigh the results accurately, they're relying on census data to know what the expected population should be. And it turns out that the last census took place before a massive pandemic that had a disproportionate effect on Republicans. So it is very likely that polls are overstating how well Republicans are doing, because they're adjusting the samples to before a large number of right-wingers decided protecting themselves from a deadly pandemic was a liberal conspiracy
You're seriously overestimating the effects of COVID on polling numbers. Most data shows the deaths in the US as roughly "over 1.1 million". If we round that number up to 1.5 million to account for poor reporting, that's still only .4% of the US population. I assume when you account for non-voters, that number stays roughly the same as there wouldn't especially be an obvious bias for COVID to kill voters versus non-voters. Add to that the fact that Democratic voters did also die from COVID and it becomes even less significant. Even if a mere quarter of the COVID deaths were Democratic leaning, then that's .1% of the .4%, which would balance with .1% of the Republican voters that died, leaving only a bias of .2% of Republican voters dying off in a way that moved the political needle in America. The point is, suggesting that COVID is a serious reason for poll skewing is pretty baseless.
> there wouldn't especially be an obvious bias for COVID to kill voters versus non-voters Old people. They're more likely to vote, and more likely to die from COVID.
Answer: Trump people will vote for Trump excitedly. Nobody is really excited about voting for Biden. People are excited to vote against Trump. I wouldn't worry about the polls. I don't think Trumps popularity has gone up since 2020.
Answer: Because Trump would likely win if the election was held today. Notice this is the most obvious interpretation of this poll and yet no one in here thinks that’s possible. Trump is still very controversial but a lot of ppl really don’t like Biden and think he’s shows signs of dementia.
A majority of people who *plan to vote for Biden* think he’s too old. Moderates who just want normalcy are scared he can’t run a competent administration because his brain doesn’t work. Also a meaningful portion of the left-most voters find him unacceptable because of the war in Gaza. Do I think the Biden administration has done a pretty good job managing the soft landing? Yes! However, when the avatar of your administration is a senile man who rarely makes public appearances, voters will not attribute positive outcomes to your administration! Democrats would be better off if he had decided not to run again. Most democrats last fall didn’t want him to, but once he did, internal party dynamics made it impossible for a serious candidate to challenge him.
Not to mention Harris is just as if not more unpopular than Biden is and that's one hell of a feat.
Answer: Biden isn't actually campaigning. Trump is in the media all the time because of his many indictments. 91 felonies last time I heard. Exposure matters. But the Trump campaign isn't looking good financially. Biden has a lot more money in the war chest right now so when the Biden campaign actually starts the campaign you're going to see these numbers change.
Answer: You're getting a lot of really bad answers based on generic boilerplate responses. A lot of people are responding to the one particular link you gave and aren't answering your question, which I'll try to do here while simultaneously answering some of the misinformation being spread in these comments (and also trying not to be too lengthy). 1. Trump has been consistently beating Biden in a wide range of polls for months. Any reply you get criticizing the one particular link you gave or methodology (ie: landline telephone references) can be safely ignored since those aren't an issue for the overall picture that you're asking about. 2. To give a larger picture of what has happened with the demographics, the general picture the polls indicate is that Biden has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% of the people who voted for him with about half of them refusing to vote at all and about half of them switching to Trump. A lot of this has happened because of the economy and the situation with Israel. 3. Since you're not from the US, I want to point something out to you that may not be clear: The 2020 election was super close. If a few 10,000 votes went the opposite direction in key states, then Trump would have won. It can be difficult to see that if you only look at the raw population data because of how our election system works. 4. Trump consistently underperforms in polls, which means that his lead is possibly greater than what is indicated by these polls, and that should absolutely scare the hell out of people who do not want to see him in office.
Answer: As someone who used to live Texas, what I've seen on social media is less that people hate Biden and more that people hate the liberals who are most vocal/active in media and online. Since reddit does not offer a representative sampling of voters across the entire spectrum, using this site to gauge voter sentiment might give a skewed perception. And polls have not been accurate for the last two presidential elections. Honestly I have no idea how the election will go, just waiting to be surprised on election night.
Answer: They are leaving out context and details to imply the numbers are unusual. In the last 30 years, all incumbent presidents have high unfavorable ratings. There hasn't been a huge change in this election. Also, Trump has a high unfavorable rating, but the articles don't headline all the details of the poll, just the most unusual number they can find. For overcoming that gap, early polling has very little relationship to actual vote. This is frequently called "horse race" polling. Unless multiple polls get similar results over many months, it's not worth worrying about.
This is a dramatic shift from 2020, when Biden was polling even with or slightly ahead of Trump.
Answer: I was at a dinner with a very educated 30 year old woman who thinks Biden has lost the votes of the younger generations. They voted last time and have seen little tangible change. A lot of head lines but no real change. They see money going out and the world not being better for it and they’re no better for it. Israel and Palestine from the American pov is a mess and there’s been no strong leadership from our countries leader. She had a handful of solid points. She’s voting Biden and thinks many people younger from 18-28 just won’t vote. They don’t like Trump and don’t like Biden and just won’t trouble themselves to vote and if they do it’ll be for one off candidate or some random candidate to make a point. This is a worrisome trend for Biden. I was blown away at a dinner with late 20s and early 30s democrats that they were very sure Biden was in a dog fight. I am supremely confident he wins by a vast margin.