politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Are you a campaign manager or a pundit getting paid to talk about politics? There's honestly no reason at all for the average person to care about polls this far out
There are some circumstances you may want to make certain preparations based on the possibility that one candidate or the other may win, and polling trends can help you determine what sort of plans and preparation you should be making.
One example that comes to my mind is that prior to Trump getting elected, my wife was concerned that a trump presidency could lead to Republicans killing Roe V Wade and/or making it more difficult to access birth control, and so she opted to get a longer-lasting IUD prior to the election.
Ok, but didn't the polls have Clinton winning leading up to the 2016 election?
The popularity polls, yes. She also won the popular vote by a significant margin.
Trump won some battleground states by slim margins, mostly because Clinton did a terrible job of deciding where to campaign. Also a lot of sketchy voter suppression tactics made those battleground state wins questionable.
They did, but she was doing her own analysis of the polls and had some concerns that made her think the race was going to be much closer than the polls suggested.
You shouldn't just blindly take the polls at face value, you also need to be thinking critically about them, theres a lot of ways to misrepresent data, a lot of issues that can crop up due to how the polls are conducted, etc. and when she took all of that into account, the polls suggested to her that it was going to be a much closer race than most of the media coverage was saying.
She was still a little surprised that Trump actually won, but it wasn't totally out of left field.
There's plenty of reason to care. It's a sign Biden's campaign is not yet effective, and Trump is. While most incumbents don't really step up the campaigning until closer to the election, it gives an idea of the ground they need to make up.
It's also worth considering the Trump has been and continues to be great at campaigning. You can not like the guy, but his ability to get large crowds excited at multiple events per day can't be ignored.
There's likely going to be something that really swings the election still, but hoping a random event helps your party is poor strategy. In Trump's case it's unlikely a poor comment is going to hurt him, like the deplorables or binders full of women comments. Hoping for a conviction to change things is an OK backup plan, not plan A.
There absolutely is. You follow them continually to establish a trendline.
Since I've been following these key states, I've watched them go 50/50 to virtually all Trump, to all Trump by a wider margin.
Following polls over time lets you see the momentum.
By the time the election comes around, there should be no surprises.
If your goal here is to not be surprised, I hate to tell you polls have margins of error that mean surprises are inevitable. Also, many polls are not infrequently found to be outside their SE when the actual results come in.
Again, you can reduce the margin of error by plotting the trend line.
It's the same science for watching climate change:
If one candidate is trending up towards election day and another is trending down you can tell which way it's going to swing.