Whit is comparing how *voters in 1980* felt about Carter compared to how *voters in 2024* feel about Biden. He wasn't comparing presidents. He wasn't talking about voters today feeling like they did back in 1980 (because they're not the same voters). He wasn't comparing the state of the economy in 1980 vs 2024. He wasn't comparing crime …
Whit is comparing how *voters in 1980* felt about Carter compared to how *voters in 2024* feel about Biden. He wasn't comparing presidents. He wasn't talking about voters today feeling like they did back in 1980 (because they're not the same voters). He wasn't comparing the state of the economy in 1980 vs 2024. He wasn't comparing crime levels in 1980 vs 2024. He was comparing how voters today feel about Biden versus how voters in 1980 felt about Carter. That is the end of the comparison.
Now ask your kids if they think Joe Biden looks like a rehydrated piece of old beef jerky with some white hairs glued to his head and eyebrows, and if they're tired of out-of-touch Boomers and Silent Gen mummies being in charge of our national politics.
This is what I mean when I say that Americans do not want to make this choice. It's between rehydrated beef jerky with grey hairs glued onto it and a bloated drag queen with small hands and a shitty haircut in a poorly-fitted suit.
Ayers' sample could be poorly weighted, but I don't think his larger observations are wrong. Then again I ain't a professional pollster, statistician, or pundit, so take that with a rather large grain of anecdotal salt.
I associate Ayers with — and I could be wrong — the R establishment. I’ve never felt like he has a good read on anyone not college-educated, white, and born after 1960. On those folks he’s very good. Everyone else, not so much.
The entire idea of taking minuscule sample sizes and extrapolating them out to the 360M Americans via algorithms shows precisely what’s happened to the state of polling: it’s never been worse or more inaccurate, and the high costs of doing it right simply can’t be justified by the “research” companies. The vast majority of people in this country have very little interest in their day being interrupted by junk phone calls or texts, and they rightfully ignore them. So who ends up taking this calls? People that are NOT representative of this nation’s voters AT ALL and they have to take this flawed small sample and try to juice SOME kind of result from it! This is clearly what the computer science industry calls GIGO: “garbage in garbage out”. If the data input is questionable, the result of calculations CANNOT be counted on for accuracy. Period.
Why is it that the only “polling” that actually counts, ie at the ballot box, seems to end up with exactly the OPPOSITE result from the polls? What happened to the “red wave” in 2022? What happened to Hillary Clinton being the front runner in 2016? What’s happened in special elections and to ballot measures in SO many states over the last 2 or 3 years?
Sure, it’s not ALL because of low quality polls, but they certainly feed the narrative that the media wants to tell. “If It Bleeds, It Leads”….
I don't know that I'd call Whit Ayres a "highly partisan low-quality" pollster. Dude has been in the game for quite a while and isn't exactly a fan of Trump...
I don't disagree with the face value of the rest of what you wrote, but that said, many of the instances of modern polling shortfalls that you pointed to *have* fallen within the margin of error of polls. The percentage splits on polls are a *range of values* based on the margin of error but so often people just go with the single-value reporting that polls give and don't look at the error margin. If you actually +/- the margin of error values onto the single-value outputs, those value envelopes almost always contain the same values as actual outcomes, but people get stuck on the single-value outputs of polls without factoring in the margins so it looks like the polling is always wrong.
For example, take this ABC/WaPo poll released Nov 7th, 2016 (just before election) that goes 47/43 for Hillary:
The margin of error on that poll is 2.5 points. If you add that 2.5 points to Trump's margin and take it away from Hillary's you get a 44.5/45.5 result instead in favor of Trump--which is within the polling margin of error:
All of that said, Hillary still netted more votes than Trump did, so technically the poll was right with respect to national voting, it's just not reflective of the electoral college. Trump got 62,984,828 votes, Hillary had 65,853,514. That's pretty close to a 47-43 split (the percentages don't add to 100, so multiply combined vote totals by 1.1 for that missing 10% and then find 47% of that value, which is 66M--close to Hillary's actual numbers) and certainly within the margin of error of that poll in either direction.
Whit is comparing how *voters in 1980* felt about Carter compared to how *voters in 2024* feel about Biden. He wasn't comparing presidents. He wasn't talking about voters today feeling like they did back in 1980 (because they're not the same voters). He wasn't comparing the state of the economy in 1980 vs 2024. He wasn't comparing crime levels in 1980 vs 2024. He was comparing how voters today feel about Biden versus how voters in 1980 felt about Carter. That is the end of the comparison.
Now ask your kids if they think Joe Biden looks like a rehydrated piece of old beef jerky with some white hairs glued to his head and eyebrows, and if they're tired of out-of-touch Boomers and Silent Gen mummies being in charge of our national politics.
Why would they vote for Trump? He looks like drag queen who threw on a suit.
This is what I mean when I say that Americans do not want to make this choice. It's between rehydrated beef jerky with grey hairs glued onto it and a bloated drag queen with small hands and a shitty haircut in a poorly-fitted suit.
Yes, Americans would prefer other choices for President. And young people want young(-er) leaders. What else is new?
I’d still check Ayers’ sample demographics. I bet it’s weighed to Rs of a certain age.
Ayers' sample could be poorly weighted, but I don't think his larger observations are wrong. Then again I ain't a professional pollster, statistician, or pundit, so take that with a rather large grain of anecdotal salt.
I associate Ayers with — and I could be wrong — the R establishment. I’ve never felt like he has a good read on anyone not college-educated, white, and born after 1960. On those folks he’s very good. Everyone else, not so much.
Ayres is precisely the sort of highly partisan low-quality pollster that Jay Kuo and the folks at The Big Picture are talking about in this article: https://open.substack.com/pub/thinkbigpicture/p/weaponized-polling-republicans-trump-biden?r=1zr8b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
The entire idea of taking minuscule sample sizes and extrapolating them out to the 360M Americans via algorithms shows precisely what’s happened to the state of polling: it’s never been worse or more inaccurate, and the high costs of doing it right simply can’t be justified by the “research” companies. The vast majority of people in this country have very little interest in their day being interrupted by junk phone calls or texts, and they rightfully ignore them. So who ends up taking this calls? People that are NOT representative of this nation’s voters AT ALL and they have to take this flawed small sample and try to juice SOME kind of result from it! This is clearly what the computer science industry calls GIGO: “garbage in garbage out”. If the data input is questionable, the result of calculations CANNOT be counted on for accuracy. Period.
Why is it that the only “polling” that actually counts, ie at the ballot box, seems to end up with exactly the OPPOSITE result from the polls? What happened to the “red wave” in 2022? What happened to Hillary Clinton being the front runner in 2016? What’s happened in special elections and to ballot measures in SO many states over the last 2 or 3 years?
Sure, it’s not ALL because of low quality polls, but they certainly feed the narrative that the media wants to tell. “If It Bleeds, It Leads”….
I don't know that I'd call Whit Ayres a "highly partisan low-quality" pollster. Dude has been in the game for quite a while and isn't exactly a fan of Trump...
I don't disagree with the face value of the rest of what you wrote, but that said, many of the instances of modern polling shortfalls that you pointed to *have* fallen within the margin of error of polls. The percentage splits on polls are a *range of values* based on the margin of error but so often people just go with the single-value reporting that polls give and don't look at the error margin. If you actually +/- the margin of error values onto the single-value outputs, those value envelopes almost always contain the same values as actual outcomes, but people get stuck on the single-value outputs of polls without factoring in the margins so it looks like the polling is always wrong.
For example, take this ABC/WaPo poll released Nov 7th, 2016 (just before election) that goes 47/43 for Hillary:
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/clinton-trump-campaigns-end-close-unpopular-poll/story?id=43344414&mc_cid=0aa18f39a7&mc_eid=d103da7bcc
The margin of error on that poll is 2.5 points. If you add that 2.5 points to Trump's margin and take it away from Hillary's you get a 44.5/45.5 result instead in favor of Trump--which is within the polling margin of error:
http://www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/1184a162016ElectionTrackingNo16.pdf
All of that said, Hillary still netted more votes than Trump did, so technically the poll was right with respect to national voting, it's just not reflective of the electoral college. Trump got 62,984,828 votes, Hillary had 65,853,514. That's pretty close to a 47-43 split (the percentages don't add to 100, so multiply combined vote totals by 1.1 for that missing 10% and then find 47% of that value, which is 66M--close to Hillary's actual numbers) and certainly within the margin of error of that poll in either direction.