politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
That's not how polling works.
Small sample size national polls are always the first line of polling.
They are not meaningless, even if they don't have the same precision as exit polling.
What I mean is, thanks to the electoral college, running a national poll as though it means anything is pointless.
We saw this in 2016 with Clinton. National polling showed her winning, and as far as the popular vote was concerned, she won.
Which means jack all in the electoral college.
I understand that, but you are just too black and white.
There is a middle ground of indicative truth between being 100% precise or totally wrong.
Polling showed Clinton as being most likely to win. The fact that she didn’t win doesn’t mean the polling is necessarily meaningless. Even if someone has a 90% chance of winning, it means they can not only lose, but 1 in 10 times you expect them to lose.
Exactly. The polls showed that Trump had a small chance of winning and he did. It's just like with the weather. When there's a 90% chance of rain and it doesn't rain, people say the weather person knows nothing, but that's not how it works.
Seems to me that your mistake is that you believe the purpose of polls is to predict an outcome, and/or tell you who is “winning” or “losing” at a given point in time. That is not their purpose.
Their purpose is to gauge the relative effectiveness of different campaign messaging strategies, and to give a rough order of magnitude of a campaign’s trajectory.
Here’s the most important part: polls contain no actionable data for voters. They shouldn’t influence whether or how much you volunteer or donate, and they absolutely must not influence how you vote.
They seem pretty meaningless to me, they've been way off the last couple elections.
Who is actually being polled, and how? I know damn well that neither myself nor anybody I personally know has been polled.