That poll putting Trump ahead of Biden in all the major battleground states sure looks terrifying, but there’s never been an election more clouded by the unknown than this one.
A week after Halloween and the scary monsters are still abroad in the land.
Scary polls!
Scary plans!
Boogedy, boogedy!
It was a great weekend for intellectual doomscrolling, to say nothing of galloping paranoia. First, The New York Times comes out with a poll that shows the president is trailing Fulton County (Ga.) Inmate No. PO1135809 in all the major battleground states.
The polls didn’t predict the 2016 win by Trump. They didn’t predict the 2018 blue wave accurately. They didn’t predict highest voter turnout in 100 years in 2020. They failed to predict a red wave that never materialized in 2022. BUT, I’ve got a good feeling about polling in 2024!
"When looked at in historical context, what stands out isn’t that polling in 2016 was unusually poor, but that polling of the 2004, 2008 and 2012 presidential races was uncannily good — in a way that may have given people false expectations about how accurate polling has been all along.
The other factor is that the error was more consequential in 2016 than it was in past years, since Trump narrowly won a lot of states where Clinton was narrowly ahead in the polls."
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/