Harris widens lead over Trump with boost from women, Hispanics, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds

It pushes the bot to the bottom of the page, under upvoted comments. The top of the comments should be actual conversation.

Also, they label a lot of sensationalist news sites that attack Dems on everything and under-report every Rep controversy as "center-left".

I was just thinking about this as well. The great majority of posters on Lemmy seem to use articles from large, reputable news outlets, so I never got the need for the bot, but I don't understand the outrage at it when one could just block it.

The closest to a legit argument against it I've seen basically was who makes sure the anti-bias people don't have bias, but again, I don't see people posting things from LindellTV or whatever. I've been seeing a rise in people hating on just about every news source though, including things like NYT. I'm starting to wonder what those people consider legit sources. No source is going to be perfect, but when I see these same people recommend places, the names are getting pretty far Leftist. I don't see that as a problem in itself, as my leanings are decently left of the US Dem party most of the time, but if they're recommending those sources as unbiased news, that seems false to me. It comes off the same as the righties saying Fox isn't real news because it isn't right enough.

Perhaps it's just we're not used to seeing opinions from those getting to the very far left. I tend to ignore a lot of this type of drama, but with the growing attacks on news sources, and on mods for moderating, it's starting to concern me as someone with interest in this platform and its future. I don't want this place to become a place for extreme bias of either side. I welcome any opinion that's going to express themselves respectfully, but I don't want extremism or prejudice from either side.

Nothing and "people are weird" is all I can figure.

Some peeps don't like its accuracy, i suppose? They don't agree with its rating and since they can't do anything about it, they leave a cute little downvote? That's my guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The other important thing to consider: polls are a snapshot in time.

They are not a predictor. The only poll that matters is election day.

No, he's got a point. Saying Candidate X is in the "lead" over candidate Y right now is like saying some athlete is in the "lead" of an Olympics event... in May when the games haven't even started yet.

No, modern polling is mostly useless. The respondents skew heavily in one direction (old people that answer the phone).

There is no sample size big enough to account for a complete cultural shift away from answering phone calls and text messages from people you don't know.

Most polls report a response rate of about 90%, as reported by a PEW analysis of available studies. However, that is a made up number which does not account for attrition (quitters) or non-response to panel recruitment (no answers). If you include those numbers the real response rate is about 3%. Which means between the initial contact and giving their opinion 97% of people asked don't participate in a given poll.

I do believe that polling showing Hillary with a huge lead helped Trump, but I also don't believe that would happen again because he's a known quantity now.

Some say it prompts people to say "then I don't have to go vote."

Cough 2016 cough

Several reasons. Some people weren't as plugged in to the media zeitgeist of 2016 as they are now, some are (shudder) mathematicians, and some just don't see the problem with polls.

And, sadly, some are social scientists who are on board with quantitative survey results. Hey - it happens.