I’m Not Watching Polling, I’m Watching New Voter Registrations
To win, Harris must expand the base, and it’s happening
If you read my stuff, you may know that I am very skeptical about election polling, for a variety of reasons. First, it is wildly out of control with over fifty national polling groups releasing polling in a constant stream of mostly meaningless comparisons.
And it gets coverage because it gives media outlets, across the political spectrum, fodder for speculation. They know a lot of us are desperately looking for verification that our candidate is moving ahead, when the reality so far is that most show a dead heat.
A lead of one or two percent is meaningless because those differences are within the margin of error for most polls. That margin of error, typically two to four percent, tells us this is an inexact science at best, or voodoo at worst.
Pollsters have had to change their methods drastically as landlines disappeared and those being called are far more likely to either not answer unknown numbers or will give false or inconclusive answers. This is compounded by the reality that many of those being polled are not following much of the news
A lot of polling and punditry about those polls reminds me of an old book, How to Lie With Statistics…
