Old Man Jingles
Rat out of a cage
Don’t believe the polls — Trump is winning
Who responds to pollsters depends on many factors, including the medium (e.g., landline versus cellphone), the location, the sample size and demographic factors.
thehill.com
While the majority of the polls suggest that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is leading, or at best that it’s close,
those polls suffer from at least three problems.
- First, the tone of the questions.
- Second, the sample of respondents.
- Third, the content of the current news cycle.
Gallup conducted a recent survey finding that 56 percent of respondents report that they are better off than they were four years ago, which is striking given that we are in the midst of a pandemic with a recovering labor market and deepening political polarization.
Moreover, if we look at voter registration in Pennsylvania, we see a similar pattern. There were 803,427 more registered Democrats than Republicans as of May, but that gap has narrowed to 700,853 as of October. In fact, Republicans have netted seven times as many registered Republican voters than Democrats since 2016. Similar trends are taking place in North Carolina and Florida.
We don’t pretend to have all the answers, but we do have some of the right questions. How are people actually feeling? Surveys are great when respondents know what they’re answering and when the sample is representative, but surveys can be misleading otherwise.
