2020 Presidential Election

[BullDog]

Okay. I hadn't seen that one poll but it's just one poll and I'm not worried. I also cited a poll that looked good for the swing states - it also is just one poll at one point in time. I've seen other swing state polls that are similar and those are the polls I'm paying the most attention to. The bottom line is it comes down to the swing states.

Anyway, there's a long way to go. With the horrible way that Trump is handling the crisis and all the states that are opening up prematurely, I don't think Trump is going to be looking too good. But I definitely am not taking anything for granted.

[homoe]

I personally think polls are a lot of malarkey and I don't waste my time reading them!

[C0LLETTE]

How much can polls mean when the only people who respond to them are the people who like responding to polls.

[Kelt]

Originally Posted by C0LLETTE

How much can polls mean when the only people who respond to them are the people who like responding to polls.

A couple of other things I always like to watch out for: When a certain publication says something like “135 of our readers responded”… Well, we know that those readers are probably already pre-biased by their selection of publication. Also, I always look for the margin of error which in politics is frequently +/-3%, If we use this poll as the example taking away 3% from the higher figure and adding 3% to the lower figure would completely reversed the outcome.

This poll did not specify any margin of error. The sample group was selected from “registered voters“. Obviously not all of them and no other selection criteria was listed. Leading me to the conclusion:

Originally Posted by homoe

I personally think polls are a lot of malarkey and I don't waste my time reading them!

[BullDog]

Originally Posted by Kelt

A couple of other things I always like to watch out for: When a certain publication says something like “135 of our readers responded”… Well, we know that those readers are probably already pre-biased by their selection of publication. Also, I always look for the margin of error which in politics is frequently +/-3%, If we use this poll as the example taking away 3% from the higher figure and adding 3% to the lower figure would completely reversed the outcome.

This poll did not specify any margin of error. The sample group was selected from “registered voters“. Obviously not all of them and no other selection criteria was listed. Leading me to the conclusion:

Both the poll I linked to and the one Martina did both specified a margin of error, so I'm not sure what you are referring to.

One polls is simply that - one poll. It is the trend over time or what a group of respected polls are saying that is important - or you can just think of them as malarkey if you wish, lol. I also look at the 538 website to see which polls they rank as most reliable.

[Kelt]

Originally Posted by BullDog

Both the poll I linked to and the one Martina did both specified a margin of error, so I'm not sure what you are referring to.

One polls is simply that - one poll. It is the trend over time or what a group of respected polls are saying that is important - or you can just think of them as malarkey if you wish, lol. I also look at the 538 website to see which polls they rank as most reliable.

Missed the last paragraph on the Reuters poll. It states +/-3% which is what I said was typical for political polls.

[Kätzchen]

I have a moderate interest in polls, mostly because one gets some sort of 'report' (if you will) on voter sentiment or how voters might respond to incumbents or nominee's featured on the voting ballot. I find it interesting, but I don't give poll results too much weight because it's only a snapshot of a particular pool of responders and we don't always know who those people are or X, Y or Z reasons (et al).

But I am super curious how fast the Super Tuesday Primary votes will tell who the voting public in our home state has voted for. According to my ballot, the deadline for ballots to be received by voting headquarters is May 19th. Whether that is an actual deadline for ballots to actually count toward our state's Primary results, is given a wide berth because people might not mail their ballot until the actual day it is due, which is scary because not making sure your ballot is mailed and received *BEFORE* the due date can make a difference -- how wide of a difference, I don't know, but we have had mail-in balloting for years now and we are a swing state with vested interest in Democrats being elected and occupying seats not only in the House of Representatives but we'd like to see more Democrats in the Senate and I can't speak for others in my home state, but I sure as hell voted to make sure Joe Biden becomes the nominee and that the monster in the WH is ousted (promptly).

So, although the deadline for ballots is May 19th, I presume that it will take a week or two for all the ballots to be counted and know with some reasonable means that we have an accurate count on who people voted for and if our state will go down in history as saying ultimately that our swing state power tilts toward electing a Democrat for POTUS and not another 4 years of psycho-babbling GOP stranglehold that is killing our democracy and leaving our nation in serious trouble.


I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my home state lands in the ball park as a land slide of support for Joe Biden. Because our future as a country is on the line and it, in my estimation, will never recover from the past four years of murderous greed and political retaliation the current administration has subjected to US allies and to its own citizens, as a whole.