Don’t Trust The People Who Tell You Not To Trust The Polls

bidendefeatsbidenSometimes, we just try too hard to bend reality to our will.

Ken Falkenstein writes that polls ought not to be trusted, and for different reasons, one might be compelled to agree:

The take-away from this situation is to take the polls you see this year with a large grain of salt.  Polling might – might – be able to show large trends, like Trump comfortably leading the pack in NH and Bernie Sanders comfortably leading Hillary Clinton in the Democrat race, but they are all over the map where the races are closer.  And in Iowa, even the large trend consistently shown in most polls of Trump having a comfortable lead was not borne out at the caucuses.

In the absence of reliable polls, campaigns are going to be making strategic decisions that could end up fruitless or even backfiring.  But more importantly, the news media, who in modern times are more interested in making news than reporting it, are going to be crafting and incessantly hawking narratives that are based on unreliable polls.

So, don’t take this year’s polls too seriously, and don’t take the news media’s analysis of them seriously at all.

Of course, this was inspired by a previous post on a poll that indicated Bush was in 2nd place… or another that indicated Rubio was in 2nd, but Bush in 5th.  Or that the Dragon People have decided to consume the rest of the GOP field and install Donald Trump as SubOverlord of New Dragonia… I can’t keep it straight.

The bottom line is, polls have indeed become weaponized.  Not because there’s anything wrong with polling, mind you.  Polling was always an imprecise science designed to catch the changes within certain demographics at certain points in time.

…but that’s not what folks are whining about.

What folks are whining about is that Poll X shows my candidate down by 5pts, while Poll Y shows him up by 3pts.  Guess which one I’m going to believe (or tell others to believe)?

So if the whole world wants to break out rulers and measure out which poll is bigger than the others, feel free.  It’s a ridiculous game, played by the mediocre in order to sound credible.  Even the RCP aggregate polls are junk with that perspective, as you can have one solid poll mashed together with five or six “slant polls” — all with their various foibles and problems.

The good news is that there is one poll that matters.  Election Day.

The bad news is that prognosticators and folks too lazy to actually campaign are going to try to cheat their way towards hard work.  Manufacture a poll, sell it to the media as valid, whip people up, etc.  Or worse, attack a credible poll as flawed (because it tells you something you don’t want to hear), spin that to your bubble as valid, and whip people up, etc.

Besides that, don’t you think that (a) campaigns have figured out all these variables already?  Or (b) that pollsters — who make a living on being more accurate than the other guy — have figured this out already?  Of course they have… they’re operating with a different set of optics than the folks who spend five minutes considering these ideas when they’re driving to work and back.

It’s a game folks.  Your consent via vote is the prey.

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