If the polling is this wacky, why bother publishing it at all?

Over the weekend, ABC and the Washington Post published the results of a poll that made both operations look like its results were the product of a month-long exercise with a Magic 8-Ball. The way you know it was an embarrassment is the Post story about the poll began by telling us all we should probably ignore it completely.

The Post-ABC poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, although the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier.

  • RockyC@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Shrooms have nothing to do with mass delusions. In fact, they may help cure them.

    • treefrog@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, a really stupid headline by someone who doesn’t understand mushrooms.

      Probably ate a few grams at a party one time and had a panic attack.

    • Deceptichum@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It seems to be part of a series called “Politics With Charles P. Pierce”, which from the looks of it attempts to take a relaxed, informal take on an op-ed.

      So the title seems fine for the context I think.

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If anyone here is just joining the party, Charles Peirce was one of the few corporate news voices (all of whom were op-ed, very purposefully) who was allowed to say what we were actually seeing.

        For a few years it was a crushing torrent of gaslighting and insanity and the corporate news just went with it. Jeff Tiedrich on twitter and Charles Pierce in Esquire were two loud voices saying wtf everytime some new batshit thing would happen. It was very helpful.

        Those of you upset about the poor take on mushrooms, take five. The gist is that polls this bad shouldn’t be blowtorched onto the news cycle. Which us exactly what many of us were saying yesterday.

        Because bullshit like this poll is how republiQans fool enough of the people to crack open the electoral college. It’s the 2016 playbook, being run again right in front of us like we didn’t just go through that hell. F that.

  • TherouxSonfeir@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I just want to make it clear to everyone that being on mushrooms would not in any way make you think that. In fact, it’s pretty stupid to think that any drugs would do that. Anyone who believes in Trump probably needs some drugs

  • krey@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    pls don’t think “he won’t win anyways” and don’t vote because of it. too much is at stake.

    • Kalkaline @leminal.space
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      1 year ago

      Specifically you need to vote for Biden to avoid a Trump presidency. If you don’t give a shit about who is president, then I don’t know what to tell you. The realistic choice though is Trump or Biden and no one else is going to come close to having enough votes to get the Presidency, they’ll only play spoiler at this point and split the vote one way or the other.

      • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Commenting to emphasize this for the people who weren’t paying attention in 2016. If you vote for an alternative to what would normally be your candidate, it’s pretty much the same as voting for their competitor. That is, if you vote for a third party alternative to Biden, you’re basically voting for Trump (and if you vote for a third party alternative to Trump, assuming he wins the primary, it’s like voting for Biden).

        If there are no candidates running who you are happy with, but there is a candidate that you think would be especially destructive, you should vote for that candidates main competitor. Otherwise you’re contributing to the destructive candidate winning.

        • GodlessCommie@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That sounds like a Biden problem, DNC runs a weak shit candidate that no one wants to run, if he loses they are to blame.

  • Motavader@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I don’t disagree, but those young voters still have to show up to vote or the result is the same. They didn’t show up in the last election and my state anded up with a Republican supermajority.

  • Endorkend@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    “You’d have to be on mushrooms to think Trump will become president” > an annoying lot of people pre-2016.

    If the young people that actually go out to vote happen to be the ones that like Trump, Tate, Musk and the like, then yeah, he can pull 100% ahead of Biden.

  • Frog-Brawler@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I have absolutely no intention of voting for Trump, but if you ask me on a poll about it, I might tell the pollster that I plan to vote for Trump. I don’t want people getting too comfortable with an assumed outcome ever again.

  • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Good for them for publishing an outlier poll while framing it appropriately. It happens, and releasing anyway shows integrity.

  • Powerpoint@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    They publish it to try and suppress voters to make them feel like there’s no chance. Then when they lose they can claim election fraud because the bogus polling had them winning. It’s a common tactic Conservatives use now to suppress votes. People need to show up no matter what the polling or news is saying.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Putting aside a LOT of other issues, the reason we’re seeing more polls that are very clearly nonsense is twofold:

    • spam calls have proliferated to an absolutely absurd degree, to the extent that most people refuse to pick up the phone unless it’s a known contact - and even that’s not necessarily a sure bet, because caller id can be trivially spoofed.
    • the mainstream media “outrage narrative”, which drives engagement/addictive consumer behavior/ad views - it behooves media networks who sell ads to present as many situations as possible as a toss-up, regardless of whether or not that’s an accurate representation, simply in the interest of profit.
    • hypelightfly@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      My phone literally doesn’t ring unless it’s a known contact. I don’t even see the call coming in to answer if I wanted to.

      Everyone else can leave a message and get a call back if it’s something I care about.

  • hamid@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    During my adult life I’ve seen two American elections be literally stolen and handed to people who didn’t win the vote, so why does this matter?