there’s no evidence for “the polls are unreliable” in any historically special way either. even if you do the simon rosenberg thing and only count the longstanding reputable ones. you can theorize on why This Time Is Different and might even be right. but you’re just vibing, sorry
it’s a weird thing to see folks hyper-focused on any shift (or no shift) in polls and take them as gospel when the vibe was “the polls are unreliable” up until 5 days ago tbh
“what if they’re off 4 points?” great so you only lost wisconsin by 1 or you lost nevada (the actual tipping point i think) and it went to the house. but off by 4 is well into the norm
I mean you can quibble about magnitudes but all reports are that pollsters are trying to come up with ways to combat nonresponse bias and there is literally no credible way to do that that doesn't involve getting people to answer the phone
NYT's method literally just adds statistical bias, like... definitionally. If their weights weren't trimmed it would be pointless, and any effect that can be attributed *directly* to weight trimming can only be attributed to statistical bias
bsky.app/profile/john...
The more I think about the NYT/Siena decision to include partial respondents, the more silly it seems.
For those who aren't familiar: in the NYT/Siena poll, people who hang up partway through the call are now included in the final results.
I think I've bitterly disagreed with you in the past on the hellsite that it is Twitter, but for what it's worth now that I'm trying not to get "doompilled" and perhaps go literally insane I'm grateful for the measured voice of realistic optimism here.
This is standard for polls though. Polls never put out raw numbers, they always apply all kinds of weights and multipliers based on factors like that. You can dig into the methodology if you want but it’s a whole big field of study.
I’m sure if I devoted myself to understanding it I would come away with opinions about how different polls do things differently. I just don’t have a reason to spend the time on it. At the end of the day, no poll is going to give me certainty about the future, both candidates could plausibly win.
Extrapolations that only exist because of statistical bias. They could just bump Trump by a point or two and save everyone time reading their methodology
The people dissecting the crosstabs make some pretty good points but I refuse to become a Poll Truther. Biden's standing isn't so bad that his win would be shocking anyway.
