Tag: fake polls

Someone Is Going to Handicap the Pollsters

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Real Clear Politics (RCP) provides an average of the various polls for all the elections going on.  The idea is that the average of a bunch of polls will be more accurate than any particular poll.  But if most of them are biased then that will hardly produce an accurate estimate.

But they’ve just announced that they are going to use this present election (and past ones) to assign correction factors for the various pollsters going forward.  In other words if the YouGov poll is always 3 points too high for the Democrat candidate then going forward RCP will apply a -3 point correction on their polls.

It’s actually a really good idea.  With a really large database of historical data I could see how a statistician could develop a model that provides a much better estimate for how people will vote.  I’m looking forward to this.  I suspect once these pollsters start getting rated on accuracy the worst offenders will start squealing like stuck pigs.  But over time it will boost the honest pollsters and who knows it might convince some of the worst offenders to mediate their lies.

What Do the Poll Numbers Tell Me?

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For decades I’ve noticed that political polls in the United States had a very noticeable bias.  Depending on whether they were ridiculously partisan polls or just slightly biased they would skew more or less to the Left.  They were able to produce this bias by overestimating the percentage of the population that is Democrat and underestimating the Republican share.  And it was just assumed by me that we had to throw our own fudge factor in when trying to make sense of the actual political situation from these flawed measures.

But look at Joe Biden’s approval ratings on RCP now.

Polling Data

Poll Date Sample Approve Disapprove Spread
RCP Average 1/10 – 2/13 — 40.6 53.8 -13.2
Rasmussen 2/9 – 2/13 1500 LV 42 57 -15
Reuters 2/7 – 2/8 1005 A 43 51 -8
YouGov 2/5 – 2/8 1255 RV 41 51 -10
Susquehanna 2/3 – 2/9 800 LV 42 52 -10
Politico 2/5 – 2/6 2005 RV 41 55 -14
IBD/TIPP 2/2 – 2/4 1355 A 38 48 -10
CNN 1/10 – 2/6 1257 RV 42 57 -15
Monmouth 1/20 – 1/24 735 RV 38 55 -17
Insider Advantage 1/21 – 1/23 850 LV 40 59 -19
Harris 1/19 – 1/20 1815 RV 39 53 -14

 

These are horrible numbers.  And they’re close to accurate.  Rasmussen is one of the few pollsters that doesn’t favor Democrats.  He’s got Dementia Joe at 42 – 57.  CNN which is perpetually in the tank for the Dems has 42 – 57.  That’s not an accident.  Those are real numbers.  And why are they doing this?  Because Biden’s numbers with Democrats are terrible too.  Or in another way to look at it, a lot of the people who voted for Biden have switched parties.  The proportion of voters who claim to be Democrats has shrunk.  They’ve shifted to the Republicans or at least to Independents.  And they mean that they’ll be voting for Republicans even though they don’t want to be called Republicans because they’re women and they don’t want their friends to judge them harshly.

All this tells me that the midterms are going to be very bad for the Dems.  They will lose the House and the Senate.  I think that’s a given.  Does it mean anything more?  Only maybe.  It’s completely within the control of the Republicans to do what they typically do and blow this golden opportunity.  They can use their control of the Congress to collect fees from the donors and lobbyists, as usual.  They can ignore their duty and not thoroughly investigate and document for the American people the blatant and systematic voter fraud that happened in 2020.  Or they can for once act like the leaders of a free people.

Normally I’d say the chance of them doing the right thing was zero.  But things are significantly different this time.  Donald Trump refuses to let sleeping dogs lie.  He continues to rally the people to support efforts to investigate the 2020 election.  He continues to call out the RINO’s like Liz Cheney who support Democrat lies like the “Insurrection.”  And some of the state leaders are making the right noises too.  They are attempting to safeguard their election processes.

Putting all this together I’d say we’re at about a fifty percent chance of something good coming out of the present situation.  Admittedly that’s not a glowing prospect but compared to how things have gone for most of my life, it’s a reason to hope.

The polls actually give us good information for the first time in decades.  The people are pissed off.  Now it will take the politicians to get their act together.  Let’s pray that some actual leaders will emerge and use the opportunity.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

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During the 2016 election you could hear and see and read at any time of the day or night how hopelessly impossible a Trump victory truly was.  The pollsters had every option documented and confirmed.  The only question was whether Hillary’s victory would be a landslide or a tsunami.  And then the pundits on tv or in print took those polls and lovingly applied them like salt to a wound.  Go back to the YouTube videos and feel the pure spiteful joy in their voices, the triumphalism.  The polls were rock solid and unanimous.  The Republicans were divided and panic-stricken.  Every sign pointed to Trump’s defeat, Democrat triumph.  But for those who could hear, something sounded flat.  The stridency and hectoring seemed so manic almost desperate.  And no matter how large the crowds were for Trump the poll numbers never improved.  In fact, they always declined.  And all my friends said it was over and a foregone conclusion.  And I told them they were wrong and I even put my money where my mouth was.  Then Trump won and we all knew what those polls were.  They were fud (fear, uncertainty and doubt).  Although the “d” could stand for disinformation in this case.

Fast forward to today.  Every month we get a fresh poll assuring us that the “Blue Wave” has returned!  Whenever the polls start to show the Republicans gaining strength some new bogeyman appears to renew the death knell.  Every Republican district is fading.  Every Democrat district is twenty points ahead.  Doom, doom, doom.

Okay, so could the polls be right?  Sure, they could.  The Republicans are stiffs.  Most of their constituencies probably hate their guts.  And they should.  They’re all useless losers.  They don’t know what they believe and the only thing they care about is keeping their paying gigs, nothing else.  But being afraid of this stuff is a waste of time for us.  If the Republicans win, that should finally convince the NeverTrumpers that they really are complete losers.  If the Democrats win then we know that we’ll be going through the whole impeachment charade.  But it doesn’t matter.  We’ve found out the truth.  It’s all just power politics and all their moralizing is only noise and nonsense.  We’re completely justified to pursue our own agenda any way we see fit.  We can make whatever enemies and allies we want to and pursue whatever strategies and tactics are deemed expedient.  They say the truth shall set you free and in a real sense it has.  It truly is liberating to stop worrying about an imaginary relationship that always turned into betrayal.  The RINOs can’t shock us and the Progressives are devouring their own.  And knowledge is strength.  When you know how things really work you can more accurately predict outcomes.  And when you no longer think you are dealing with friends and countrymen the desire to be open and transparent goes away.  Secrecy and guile become tactics.  Once you read Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals you recognize what’s been used against your side for fifty years and you realize just how easily it can now be used against them.

But I’m just belaboring the point.  Be of good cheer.  The outcome is just as likely to be good as bad.  We’ve got the happiest warrior of all tweeting from the Oval Office.  Enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts and be ready for what follows, good, bad or indifferent.