From the PoliticusUSA Substack Newsletter:
We could take apart the ABC News/Washington Post poll over several newsletters, but for brevity and clarity, let’s go over some of the main issues.
I have participated in the ABC News/Washington Post Poll in the past, and one of the things that you need to understand first is that this is a random poll.
The polling company hired a call center and randomly called 1,006 Americans.
According to the poll’s methodology:
A dual frame landline and cell phone telephone sample was generated using Random Digit Dialing procedures by Survey Sampling International (SSI). Interviewers called landline and cellphone numbers, first requesting to speak with the youngest adult male or female at home. The final sample included 254 interviews completed on landlines and 752 interviews completed via cellphone, including 583 interviews with adults in cellphone-only households.
Here is how the poll is conducted.
A call center calls 1,000ish random Americans. The call center employee, who isn’t a pollster, but someone who may have been doing random calling for Xfinity or some other company or product an hour earlier, reads the questions. The respondent self-identifies as a Democrat, Republican, or Independent.
Since this isn’t a registered voter poll, the person asking the questions has no idea if the respondent is telling the truth.
Democrats can pretend to be Republicans, Republicans can pretend to be Democrats, and both can pretend to be Independents.
Do you see the problem?
There is no way to know if the data is valid.
There is no way to know if the person is a Democrat or a Republican or even telling the person asking the questions the truth.
Because of how they are conducted, polls like the ABC News/Washington Post Poll are especially susceptible to getting a faulty sample of respondents.
The Poll Results Suggest Something Is Not Right
The ABC News/Washington Post Poll is full of weird results. Most respondents think Trump should be charged with crimes, but they also support Trump over Biden 49%-42%, so these respondents want to put Trump in jail and elect him as president.
It doesn’t make sense.
Even though Biden and Trump are only a few years apart in age, respondents are worried about Biden’s fitness for office, but not Trump.
Given what has been documented about Trump’s historic levels of unpopularity and the fact that his presence caused Republicans to underperform in the midterm election, I suspect that the data sample is flawed through no fault of the polling company. Polls based on random samples like the ABC News/Washington Post Poll are notoriously volatile and inconsistent.
The Media Treats All Polls As Equal, And That Is A Problem
The media knows little about polling and doesn’t care to get educated. The press only wants a topline number that they can make a headline out of. It is disappointing that ABC News/Washington Post decided to run with a poll with many red flags.
The corporate media uses polls to validate their coverage and create their own news, which is why media companies should not be polling. An inherent conflict of interest leads companies to publish results that will generate the most headlines, which is what ABC News/Washington Post appears to have done.
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Thank you Tom, it explains why this poll annoyed me. I’m so tired of media obsessing about President Biden’s age and fitness when it’s clear what an amazing job he’s doing under impossible circumstances. He’s championed historic legislation. He’s quietly rebuilding agencies that were decimated by Trump while restoring our international reputation. All with the GOP undermining him and lying at every turn. We are very lucky to have him as our president.
Pretty effing sick and tired of all the effing polls 18 months out! Pretty effing tired of MSM bloviating over Trump and DeSantis. They are poison to Democracy. DeSantis is an outright FASCIST! Trump is a huge orange blob of 💩! I'm just sick and tired of people wiping their feet all over the
Constitution and basically
calling our Founding Fathers
lame brains. Without them, we wouldn't have this country! We'd still be kissing
the new King Charles ring.
Want to talk lame brains? Look at the current GOP,
MAGAs; one and the same! A
bunch of wackos ready to blow it all up! Send even their
poorest constituents, I'm talking the poor WHITE people in their RED states,
to hell.
Black lives, Brown lives, Oriental lives matter? Not to
these lame brains. Heck, they
!don't even care what they do to each other.
You get what and who you vote for. OR in many cases,
what you DON'T vote at all
for.
Democrats better get off their asses NOW and start
pulling for Joseph Biden. Better quit their damned infighting and pull together!
Get Feinstein back on the job
or vote to retire her now. Better take off the gloves and
start taking it to them, every single time.
NO MORE PLAYING NICE.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!!