Before you completely freak out over the “news” that according to the most recent NYT/Siena Poll, Trump leads Biden 48-43, read this analysis by Sarah Jones and Jason Easley at PolitusUSA:
My comment to The Times, which has yet to be accepted, was that if the results are true, The Times bears a large part of the blame because it sets the journalistic agenda, which has been committed to Pol Potbelly over Biden because of the need for clickbait. It's frankly interesting how much The Times does well but is so horrible at politics.
Yep, they would. Have you read that "experienced" pea brain Aaron Blake's analysis of the Michigan primay? Absolute drivel, and that is WaPo. They are not much better, but I digress. Your take on the NYT poll is accurate, if you look at Simon Rosenberg and a couple of other's take.
I totally agree! I just read the title of one of their articles from this weekend's paper and in BOLD letters it states'(the big change between 2020 and 2024 is) 'JOE BIDEN IS UNPOPULAR'. I've come close to cancelling my subscription recently but I think now the time has come!
Why not a headline that says 'DONALD TRUMP IS A LYING, CHEATING PHONY'? Or 'DONALD TRUMP HAS 91 indictments and multiple court cases pending ... Or 'DONALD TRUMP CONTINUES TO TOUT HIS INFATUATION WITH PUTIN AND A BEVY OR AUTHORITARIANS AROUND THE W0RLD UNABASHEDLY!' Who are they trying to appeal to?
823 potential voters nation-wide in this poll?! That's 16.5 voters per state, if evenly distributed. If weighted by population, 98 respondents would represent all of California and 2 would represent all of Wyoming.
There were over 154 million voters in the 2020 election. A little basic arithmetic reveals that the survey questioned .0005 of 1% of the number of actual voters.
It's absurd to suggest that some magic formula can correctly identify the demographic of any one person who accurately represents 187,000 others. If even a half-dozen respondents are mis-identified, that represents a shift of over a million votes. This is nonsense.
Thank you Math Man! It’s so maddening when poll writers say some percentage OF AMERICANS, or WOMEN instead of being honest and saying a percentage of 980 people surveyed by phone in the headline or first paragraph. They know readers would go “so what!” Because it’s really meaningless. You proved it!!!
Michael, it’s taken me a long time, but I finally unsubscribed to The Times because of what you just stated about
their skewed pov re pol pot belly. I’m sick of seeing his grotesque open mouth orange self headlined in it.
They need to find out that some of us care more about their obvious slant than the extras they’re good at. It’s as if I told you a restaurant was great except…..
Full disclosure: If there's an NYT story or column that I *really* want to read and I've used up my freebies, I can generally get a subscriber friend to gift it to me. So there's a "have your cake and eat it too" aspect to this. ;-)
The NYT headline this morning made me want to scream, but I've already written letters to their editors about their BS horse race coverage, so I will put my energy elsewhere. Meanwhile I'm repeating to myself the mantra, "Block the trolls, ignore the polls . . ." and finding at least one positive action to take per week.
Polls are BS, with special emphasis on the second syllable. After 2016, no poll should be taken at face value and given the media’s skewed perception that every election should be viewed as some kind of horse race to boost sales and ratings of their product, any poll that they conduct should be regarded as questionable at the least. Plus it’s way too early to get any real feel for November, it’s too far away and too many things can happen between now and Election Day.
More than anything, polls like the Sienna College/NYT poll are about the media creating a story. When I read your points, TC, and then Jerry Weiss's mathematical points, if I received the Times in print form, I'd pitch it in the trash, where it belongs.
Great points Tom, thanks for sharing them. Unfortunately most people will simply take polls at face value. They also provide an expectation among Trump supporters that he will win, which will make his eventual loss hard for them to accept. This would likely create conditions for another January 6th. Along with voter suppression, gerrymandering and disinformation, it all creates an uphill battle for President Biden.
Thank you for talking me off the ledge Tom. I was furious when I saw the NYT headline this morning. I never answer my cell when I don’t recognize the number. Maybe I should start.
The best reference point for 'scientific' polling is now nearly 40 years old. Dukakis led Bush by 18 points on Labor Day! That should have sent polling back to the drawing board for a serious reevaluation of methodology and how accurately their 'statistically sound' proxies attempted to fill in multiple gaps their data.
I don’t pay attention to the polls and believe those that “show” Trump ahead will only fuel the massive🌊 grassroots effort while the GOP continues to implode.
AR-15’s designed for kids (yes,that is a thing!),national abortion bans, IVF bans, birth control pills are bad and sex for procreation only…not a winning platform! 📣📣
I truly believe that the rise of scammers-- which has made LOADS of people not answer their phones to unknown numbers or even to ones with caller IDs that say "poll"--is fast becoming the death of polling. It doesn't really help to have an otherwise good methodology if you can't get an actually representative sample. A poll of people still open to scammers suggests some basic incredulity, which has to favor low information voters, particularly trump voters.
I haven't paid attention to poll results for years. I find that I sleep better and worry much less which gives me energy to work at getting out the vote.
Thanks for this, Tom. Hadn't looked at the poll because I am generally skeptical of them, keeping in mind Mark Twain's famous comment (attributed by him to Benjamin Disraeli) about "lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Hey JustRaven (aka JustJanice), I got so tired of my name getting a bad rap, you know, the white privileged racists all named “Karen”, that one of the Molecular Imaging Technologists I work with changed my name to Raven. So I’m actually Raven RN to my coworkers. So I love your JustRaven. Is there a story behind it?
That’s good to know, I have been wanting to organize all of my posts on the various substacks that I support and comment on, and have no idea how to go about that.
The NY Tombs used 94% of respondents via cell phone. Who do you know answers a random call on their cell phone, especially if it announces the caller is a newspaper or a poll? The pollsters tell us that the interview takes 15 minutes, and they include results from those who hang up.
What is the actual meaning of a NYTimes poll, really? We don’t know how they select their Sample. We don’t know how they design their questions. We DO know they are biased in their reporting, so after reading WHAT, exactly, are they administering their test questions? We know nothing of the testing parameters. AT BEST, a political poll gives a snap shot of what the subjects are answering on the day of the poll. There is no hypothesis offered; there is no theory behind the poll—just a random set of questions. It’s pseudo-science. No real meaning.
We do know this poll was not evenly split between D and R. According to their own explanation, it was R+3. What other group of old people with landlines are going to answer an unknown caller?
Just in the course of this afternoon, my husband and I have blocked text messages from a particular candidate touting polls. Goes without saying, we don’t answer spam and unk callers. Instant block.
and most people who will answer a cell to an unknown caller are those who use that number for their business. I've talked this over with a couple of small business owners, who HATE all the spam stuff they get, but can't really ignore potential new business.
🤣🤣🤣 The old folk at this residence NEVER answer the land line; it’s used to field robo calls! No—that is not a sample study I would give any validity to . . .
My mother always answered her landline, and would joke how else is Mr. Treller going to let her know she won the Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes and won a new house and millions of dollars?
I might suggest changing only one word: "Poll shows Trump does well with polls but not WITH reality." And after the weekend of gibberish at rallies, in which he demonstrated not only an inability to speak, and ongoing confusion about who was actually president, I wonder what the NYT will use for its headline when the expected outcome happens at one of those rallies - or in the courtroom - or over the final hamburder (aka straw that breaks the fat one.)
My comment to The Times, which has yet to be accepted, was that if the results are true, The Times bears a large part of the blame because it sets the journalistic agenda, which has been committed to Pol Potbelly over Biden because of the need for clickbait. It's frankly interesting how much The Times does well but is so horrible at politics.
The guys who were there 1963-75 would piss in this crowd's faces.
Yep, they would. Have you read that "experienced" pea brain Aaron Blake's analysis of the Michigan primay? Absolute drivel, and that is WaPo. They are not much better, but I digress. Your take on the NYT poll is accurate, if you look at Simon Rosenberg and a couple of other's take.
I totally agree! I just read the title of one of their articles from this weekend's paper and in BOLD letters it states'(the big change between 2020 and 2024 is) 'JOE BIDEN IS UNPOPULAR'. I've come close to cancelling my subscription recently but I think now the time has come!
Why not a headline that says 'DONALD TRUMP IS A LYING, CHEATING PHONY'? Or 'DONALD TRUMP HAS 91 indictments and multiple court cases pending ... Or 'DONALD TRUMP CONTINUES TO TOUT HIS INFATUATION WITH PUTIN AND A BEVY OR AUTHORITARIANS AROUND THE W0RLD UNABASHEDLY!' Who are they trying to appeal to?
Sorry NYTimes, you can't have it both ways.
How about "Donald tRump is a long cheating convicted rapist"?
Autocorrect strikes again! *LYING*
Ahh, and the list goes on!
That works!
can't, sorry for the typo
The amoral creature is treated with kit gloves instead of handled like barbed wire!
Hint: You can correct your typos. Look for the three dots to the right of the LIKE REPLY SHARE line. Click it. "Edit" is one of the options.
Thanks!
I read it the way you meant it 🙏
823 potential voters nation-wide in this poll?! That's 16.5 voters per state, if evenly distributed. If weighted by population, 98 respondents would represent all of California and 2 would represent all of Wyoming.
There were over 154 million voters in the 2020 election. A little basic arithmetic reveals that the survey questioned .0005 of 1% of the number of actual voters.
It's absurd to suggest that some magic formula can correctly identify the demographic of any one person who accurately represents 187,000 others. If even a half-dozen respondents are mis-identified, that represents a shift of over a million votes. This is nonsense.
.
Thank you Math Man! It’s so maddening when poll writers say some percentage OF AMERICANS, or WOMEN instead of being honest and saying a percentage of 980 people surveyed by phone in the headline or first paragraph. They know readers would go “so what!” Because it’s really meaningless. You proved it!!!
Michael, it’s taken me a long time, but I finally unsubscribed to The Times because of what you just stated about
their skewed pov re pol pot belly. I’m sick of seeing his grotesque open mouth orange self headlined in it.
They need to find out that some of us care more about their obvious slant than the extras they’re good at. It’s as if I told you a restaurant was great except…..
their entrees were all miserable.
I was ready to quit by the 2016 election, then they hired Bret Stephens. I did the deed. No regrets.
Brava Susanna. It’s amazing to me to find out that there’s a lot I can live without:-)
Full disclosure: If there's an NYT story or column that I *really* want to read and I've used up my freebies, I can generally get a subscriber friend to gift it to me. So there's a "have your cake and eat it too" aspect to this. ;-)
The NYT headline this morning made me want to scream, but I've already written letters to their editors about their BS horse race coverage, so I will put my energy elsewhere. Meanwhile I'm repeating to myself the mantra, "Block the trolls, ignore the polls . . ." and finding at least one positive action to take per week.
Excellent!
I may steal that phrase...
Please do! I did. Wish I could lay claim to it, but huge props to whoever wrote it The full ditty goes:
"Roe, Roe, Roe your vote,
Keep the country free:
Block the trolls, ignore the polls,
Save democracy."
Love it Jan! It’s my new mantra.
Last I heard, it's open source.
Really like that mantra. I'm going to use it myself.
Well said, Jan.
Polls are BS, with special emphasis on the second syllable. After 2016, no poll should be taken at face value and given the media’s skewed perception that every election should be viewed as some kind of horse race to boost sales and ratings of their product, any poll that they conduct should be regarded as questionable at the least. Plus it’s way too early to get any real feel for November, it’s too far away and too many things can happen between now and Election Day.
More than anything, polls like the Sienna College/NYT poll are about the media creating a story. When I read your points, TC, and then Jerry Weiss's mathematical points, if I received the Times in print form, I'd pitch it in the trash, where it belongs.
Argh 😡!
Great points Tom, thanks for sharing them. Unfortunately most people will simply take polls at face value. They also provide an expectation among Trump supporters that he will win, which will make his eventual loss hard for them to accept. This would likely create conditions for another January 6th. Along with voter suppression, gerrymandering and disinformation, it all creates an uphill battle for President Biden.
It sure does.
Thank you for talking me off the ledge Tom. I was furious when I saw the NYT headline this morning. I never answer my cell when I don’t recognize the number. Maybe I should start.
No, don't.
Nope. Don't answer from unfamiliar numbers. IF they want you, a message will be left. Otherwise, who cares?
You and Tom are right Ally. I will continue to ignore the spam.
Huh. The Times must've sneaked out to my compost pile last night and published what was cleaned out of the horse stalls yesterday.
I laughed out loud.
When I saw the Times had another Siena poll out, I decided not to ruin my Saturday mental health day
and look at it.
Considering the number of people contacted for this
round is less than their last
fail poll and that 1.) Joe Biden
has never been indicted, much less found guilty of rape and fraud, I say, stick it
Times. 2.) We're way too far
out from Nov. to worry about
this sad horse race. These men aren't horses and while
one is considered a thorough bred, the other is a nag in more than on way.
Thanks Tom for making my
Saturday a nicer day.👍
The best reference point for 'scientific' polling is now nearly 40 years old. Dukakis led Bush by 18 points on Labor Day! That should have sent polling back to the drawing board for a serious reevaluation of methodology and how accurately their 'statistically sound' proxies attempted to fill in multiple gaps their data.
I remember that. As much as I wanted it to be true, it just had that "smell" about it.
The scent of Lee Atwater and the blaring of sound of the Willie Horton Dog whistle as well.
This only reminds me how long we’ve been fighting for free and fair elections. No wonder I feel weary.
How about that polling failure from the holiest of holies, Gallup—https://www.ucpress.edu/blog/56803/election-polls-in-2020-produced-error-of-unusual-magnitude-expert-panel-finds-without-pinpointing-cause/
I don’t pay attention to the polls and believe those that “show” Trump ahead will only fuel the massive🌊 grassroots effort while the GOP continues to implode.
AR-15’s designed for kids (yes,that is a thing!),national abortion bans, IVF bans, birth control pills are bad and sex for procreation only…not a winning platform! 📣📣
Keep at it, all ! ✍️📲💲🚶🏻
👕🛒🧢
I truly believe that the rise of scammers-- which has made LOADS of people not answer their phones to unknown numbers or even to ones with caller IDs that say "poll"--is fast becoming the death of polling. It doesn't really help to have an otherwise good methodology if you can't get an actually representative sample. A poll of people still open to scammers suggests some basic incredulity, which has to favor low information voters, particularly trump voters.
I haven't paid attention to poll results for years. I find that I sleep better and worry much less which gives me energy to work at getting out the vote.
Thanks for this, Tom. Hadn't looked at the poll because I am generally skeptical of them, keeping in mind Mark Twain's famous comment (attributed by him to Benjamin Disraeli) about "lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Hey JustRaven (aka JustJanice), I got so tired of my name getting a bad rap, you know, the white privileged racists all named “Karen”, that one of the Molecular Imaging Technologists I work with changed my name to Raven. So I’m actually Raven RN to my coworkers. So I love your JustRaven. Is there a story behind it?
nope, just feeling slightly paranoid ...
That’s good to know, I have been wanting to organize all of my posts on the various substacks that I support and comment on, and have no idea how to go about that.
I get it. From one Raven to another it makes perfect sense.
Thank you, Tom, for the point by point analysis. Deep breath....
The NY Tombs used 94% of respondents via cell phone. Who do you know answers a random call on their cell phone, especially if it announces the caller is a newspaper or a poll? The pollsters tell us that the interview takes 15 minutes, and they include results from those who hang up.
WTF?!
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/upshot/nyt-siena-poll-2024.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Zk0.KPi7.OaHYiE0dTYzL&smid=url-share
What is the actual meaning of a NYTimes poll, really? We don’t know how they select their Sample. We don’t know how they design their questions. We DO know they are biased in their reporting, so after reading WHAT, exactly, are they administering their test questions? We know nothing of the testing parameters. AT BEST, a political poll gives a snap shot of what the subjects are answering on the day of the poll. There is no hypothesis offered; there is no theory behind the poll—just a random set of questions. It’s pseudo-science. No real meaning.
We do know this poll was not evenly split between D and R. According to their own explanation, it was R+3. What other group of old people with landlines are going to answer an unknown caller?
Just in the course of this afternoon, my husband and I have blocked text messages from a particular candidate touting polls. Goes without saying, we don’t answer spam and unk callers. Instant block.
and most people who will answer a cell to an unknown caller are those who use that number for their business. I've talked this over with a couple of small business owners, who HATE all the spam stuff they get, but can't really ignore potential new business.
🤣🤣🤣 The old folk at this residence NEVER answer the land line; it’s used to field robo calls! No—that is not a sample study I would give any validity to . . .
My mother always answered her landline, and would joke how else is Mr. Treller going to let her know she won the Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes and won a new house and millions of dollars?
“Poll shows Trump does well with polls but not in reality.” The headlines virtually write themselves.
I might suggest changing only one word: "Poll shows Trump does well with polls but not WITH reality." And after the weekend of gibberish at rallies, in which he demonstrated not only an inability to speak, and ongoing confusion about who was actually president, I wonder what the NYT will use for its headline when the expected outcome happens at one of those rallies - or in the courtroom - or over the final hamburder (aka straw that breaks the fat one.)