Polls are completely unreliable, especially this far out. They predicted trumps loss the first go around and we endured 4 years of that POS. They predicted red waves the last 2 election cycles and it never manifested.
Its a problem with the techniques they're using to gather data I guess. Whether it's the cold calling or what, I don't know, but it clearly isn't effective to get honest assessments anymore.
That being said it will never not blow my mind that it's even slightly close. Last election millions of Americans sat through 4 years of trump and said yep that worked out great for me. Everyone I talked to who was in that camp had various incorrect reasons but you don't need to be right, you just have to feel like you're right.
I think the reality is that Biden is not and has never been a popular candidate. His age works against him. Kamala is equally unappealing and doesn't help things either. The biggest problem right now is that Biden has come out very strongly pro Israel (which every single president has done including Trump) and he has not done enough to condemn the Israeli genocide. Millenials and Gen z are at the very least anti genocide and largely pro Palestine so that's not helping his case, although they're short sighted if they assume Trump would be the better answer here.
If Trump wins our democracy is over. 'Oh you're overreacting'. Yeah they said that to me before Trumps presidency and I was correct then as I am correct now.
We have to get through 24 and not have a deranged traitorous lunatic take the reigns of the country again. We can discuss the next steps in the post Trump era but we won't get the option to discuss it if Trump somehow wins.
Vote like you value this country. Convince others to vote. Apathy is a vote for Trump. Choosing not to vote for Biden because you're anti Israel is voting for Trump, who is also going to continue right along supporting Israel.
I reckon the techniques they use favor older people. For example, I can see a boomer answering a cold call no problem, but I couldn’t say the same for a younger generation.
One problem is cost. It takes millions of dollars to do a truly scientific poll these days. Robocalls don't work anymore due to cell phone penetration. The phonebook is dead, and along with it any credible listings of numbers that represent real people. Plus very low response rates and spam filters blocking much of polling calls even then. You pretty much have to go door-to-door in order to get a truly good poll, which is something few organizations can do.
As a result, most cheaply done polls use non-random samples and add a giant "fudge factor" to make it look random. It's not clear how there models really work and there's no way to audit them.
We have to get through 24 and not have a deranged traitorous lunatic take the reigns of the country again. We can discuss the next steps in the post Trump era but we won’t get the option to discuss it if Trump somehow wins.
This has been every election since 2012, and the discussion doesn't happen.
And that's one of the main reasons why Biden is the candidate AND why most people who weren't alive the last time the US had a president to the left of Reagan don't trust the DNC much.
A part of the problem with the 'get through 24' thought line is that Trump and the circus surrounding him has morphed into something that's functionally it's own entity with a R painted on it for convenience. That whole branch of the political tree has become some sort of monstrosity that the few remaining normal-ish conservatives fear to cross lest they become a target just like everyone else who's an 'other'.
If anyone has watched the last 8-12 years, they'd realize polls exist solely to suck people into a false sense of security to manipulate the vote.
Ignore the fucking polls. GO VOTE. Vote in your local elections. Vote in the primaries. Vote in national elections. Polls are completely and utterly bullshit, just ignore them and GO VOTE.
They really need to restructure how they do polls in general to specifically address the fact that American politics are extremely polarized and kind of a shitshow at this point. All they’d need to do is to tweak the questions asked to include the context “in the election” as well as “in the general election”.
Biden’s definitely done some decent stuff, but he’s also done a bunch of stuff that I legitimately hate, as well as sandbagged and slow-walked a bunch of really crucial stuff. At the same time: there is no fucking way I will ever vote for a GOP candidate ever again after watching them become what they are today. The Republican party is, with complete seriousness, too far gone.
Centrists are just gonna dismiss any poll they don't like. Gonna see a lot of that in this thread. "I imagine they only called landlines, therefore [vaguely ageist sentiment]!"; "The election's a year away!"; "Clinton lost, so polls mean nothing!"
Generally speaking, you want polls to get better for your candidate, not worse. Even if all the flaws they imagine are present in every poll as part of a nefarious plot by multiple pollsters to make Biden look bad, the numbers shouldn't be dropping relative to the last round of polls that were totally all rigged by the evil conspiiiiiracy of pollsters.
People are so far gone with the lesser evil now we are just expected to endorse two choices of evil. Genocide enabling is evil. If Biden is the best shot on "Saving Democracy" Then it is already over. Dem messaging has been so disconnected from what issues people are dealing with yelling at people to go vote won't cut it.