this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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electoralism
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I am absolutely with you, polls dont mean shit its all bullshit
i dont get why libs have so much faith in a poll from iowa, like they arent even a swing state
People always treat polls like an almost divine revelation or like they're horse crap. They're just a ballpark estimate based on calling people. They'll be roughly correct +/-3% so they can't tell you one way or the other unless it's a damn near certainty and even then with the electoral college they don't really matter nationally. They're a flawed tool but they can still be a useful one under the right conditions. Just don't treat them like they come from God like newscasters do.
Pointing, screamng "THE AMERICAN CIVIC RELIGION! THE AMERICAN CIVIC RELIGION!"
A bunch of technocrat wonks using arcane statistics methods to tell the future is extremely on the nose for ACR beliefs.
Truly, how do they even do these polls in the clusterfuck state of information transversal? Landlines, text messages, online shit?
I would be very curious to compare the accuracy of polls pre-21st century to what we’re dealing with today
Depends on the polls really. Mostly calling people and having nerds figure out the best way to call people. How many in this or that zip code and trying to keep track of the response rate. Online polls do happen but aren't as reliable because on the internet nobody knows you're a dog.
I would too. I remember on the 538 website they had the favorablility tracker for Trump/Biden and you could see other presidential terms. It seemed like there were barely any polls for like Truman so it was really blocky for the first few post war presidents. It probably just took time for people to get phones and for pollsters to get setup. Regardless, they were probably about as reliable if they had good methodology.