imo its been a bit disingenous of elex forecasters to say that lay ppl shouldnt dig into crosstabs when they regularly mine them to write "Biden in trouble w XYZ group" articles. Presently, toplines are built on crosstabs that are telling us some wild stuff that we arent seeing in actual elections.
Like the thing is, if black voters were 88-12 Biden, and they're 10% - 15% of any given poll, you have a wide leeway for screwing up your black sample, maybe even 70-30 Biden doesn't blow up the topline, but 65-35 Biden is probably too far!
Right. Nitpicking some crosstab weirdness around the margins isnt helpful, but what we're experiencing rn in polling isnt "the numbers are a little odd but shake out in the end," they are pitching us a radically different electorate than what is actually showing up to vote. Seems like a big issue!
I've said it a million times - you either believe the polls and there's a generational realignment in nonwhite voters, or you believe there's a sampling fuckup. One of these has never happened, and one happens with some regularity, so you know, choose your own adventure.
here’s the thing: it is easy to believe a sampling fuckup with hard to reach voters (PoC, youth)
it is much harder to believe a sampling fuckup with Olds
That's fair, but a good chunk of them were, and we saw the same polling error repeat in 2020, which was arguably responsible for a lot of polling error in Florida.
