Do you trust polls? MSM

Mycroft said:

My biggest problem with polls...and the first thing I look at...is their sampling data for political party. Many times one party or another is grossly oversampled. I consider that a useless poll and automatically reject that poll.

Regarding poll average sites. The problem is, if that polls that are included in the average mostly grossly oversample, the average is useless. We saw this during the last election and a lot of people were so surprised when the polls turned out to be wrong...they cried.

So...if a poll gets their sampling right, then I look at other factors such as what questions they are asking.

Sometimes...not very often at all...I come across a poll that is credible.

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538 adjusts polls based on lean. Also, the problem with the polls in 2016 was twofold:

1. Polls record how people feel on a topic, but not what they will do. So it's easy enough to say that you hate trump and hate Clinton less so, but what the poll you're reading doesn't take into account is a depressed or energized result on election day. When I look to November this year, I'm looking at two things: the polls and the energy of Democratic voters, which is a hell of a lot different now than it was in 2016.

2. The problem with polls in 2016 was primarily about how people read them. So say a polling average says that 82% of people prefer Clinton over Trump. in statistics-speak, that wouldn't mean that Clinton will win, but that out of 100 elections, Clinton will win 82 of them. Well, that still means that out of 100 elections, Trump will win 18 of them. We happen to be one of the unfortunate 18 parallel earths.

ttwtt78640 said:

If two questions on the same topic are different (one asks if you approve of X and the other asks if you strongly oppose X) then you are not averaging like responses. I may not approve of letting illegals cross the border to claim asylum and yet not strongly oppose those that do so to the point of wanting them locked up pending a hearing. This is why we have more folks wanting immigration laws enforced than those wanting folks locked up (for years?) pending asylum hearings.

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Well, you're demanding a kind of standardization that won't exist, at least not in the foreseeable future. Until we have the standardization you want then the polling averages we use now are really the best resource available to us.

Cardinal said:

Yes, but reactions to those issues are not identical. It's also useful to know how the public feels about a given issue over a period of time. It's just as educational to know how the public feels about an issue when it's front and center as much as when it's not.

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OK, show me a NK nukes, US trade imbalances or Russian collusion poll from 3 years ago. My point is that polls go where the MSM wants them to go - its not like global warming, drug overdose deaths, crime or gun control are no longer concerns but the MSM simply has presented no new slant on those issues lately. The MSM picks (shifts?) issues based on which party is likely to benefit from their shift of focus and the pollsters go flocking right along to those (MSM selected?) issues.

RBIII said:

CNN and MSNBC are never going to site a positive poll about Trump.
Fox is never going to site a negative poll about Trump.

Neither tells you who and how many people were polled.

Is there any polling company you trust?

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Real Clear Politics (RCP) is about the average of all major polls...Too me that makes the most sense.

About the other individual polls....I believe CNN and MSNBC poll in the liberal eastern states... so what would you expect? And I have seen FNC polls negative in regards to Trump varies policies.

ttwtt78640 said:

OK, show me a NK nukes, US trade imbalances or Russian collusion poll from 3 years ago. My point is that polls go where the MSM wants them to go - its not like global warming, drug overdose deaths, crime or gun control are no longer concerns but the MSM simply has presented no new slant on those issues lately. The MSM picks (shifts?) issues based on which party is likely to benefit from their shift of focus and the pollsters go flocking right along to those (MSM selected?) issues.

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You're hyper focused on the polls that are covering front-and-center topics. Polls cover a wide variety of issues.

antiquity said:

Real Clear Politics (RCP) is about the average of all major polls...Too me that makes the most sense.

About the other individual polls....I believe CNN and MSNBC poll in the liberal eastern states... so what would you expect? And I have seen FNC polls negative in regards to Trump varies policies.

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That's an important point. Regardless of the poll being cited, it holds to a trend. What would be really odd is if you had an individual poll that whipsawed up and down in ways that had no relation to other polls, like if a poll showed Trump consistently in the green while everybody else had him in the red.

ttwtt78640 said:

OK, show me a NK nukes, US trade imbalances or Russian collusion poll from 3 years ago. My point is that polls go where the MSM wants them to go - its not like global warming, drug overdose deaths, crime or gun control are no longer concerns but the MSM simply has presented no new slant on those issues lately. The MSM picks (shifts?) issues based on which party is likely to benefit from their shift of focus and the pollsters go flocking right along to those (MSM selected?) issues.

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I agree. Most MSM polls are du jour and are knee jerk polling to fire up the democratic base. Tomorrow or next week a new knee jerk poll will be started, and we all know it will be started to make Trump look bad. Polls like favorability of Pelosi and Waters are sweep under the rug by the MSM.

Cardinal said:

You're hyper focused on the polls that are covering front-and-center topics. Polls cover a wide variety of issues.

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Yep, but which poll results does the MSM choose to cover? Most, by a far margin, of media bias is simply by omission. By beating the drums of media focus on issues that poll in favor of the 'good and proper' political party voter turnout within that party may be positively affected. The flip side, of course, is that by not mentioning issues that poll favoring the 'wrong and evil' party voter turnout within that party may be lessened.

ttwtt78640 said:

Yep, but which poll results does the MSM choose to cover? Most, by a far margin, of media bias is simply by omission. By beating the drums of media focus on issues that poll in favor of the 'good and proper' political party voter turnout within that party may be positively affected. The flip side, of course, is that by not mentioning issues that poll favoring the 'wrong and evil' party voter turnout within that party may be lessened.

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So Trump pulls out of the Paris Accord, and you think it's a measure of bias to find out how Americans feel about that? That seems really goofy.

antiquity said:

I agree. Most MSM polls are du jour and are knee jerk polling to fire up the democratic base. Tomorrow or next week a new knee jerk poll will be started, and we all know it will be started to make Trump look bad. Polls like favorability of Pelosi and Waters are sweep under the rug by the MSM.

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Well you can always just pay attention to Fox News and Rasmussen if it makes you happier, though as you yourself already observed even those polls are adhering to a trend that is consistent with the others.

Cardinal said:

So Trump pulls out of the Paris Accord, and you think it's a measure of bias to find out how Americans feel about that? That seems really goofy.

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What seems really goofy is that UN global income redistrbution schemes are being sold under the pretense of fighting global warming. The money changing hands is very real and absolute yet any measuable results required by that spending (redistribution) are voluntary and fuzzy at best.

Climate Finance in the Paris Agreement

Article 9 of the Paris Agreement stipulates that developed country Parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing country Parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation in continuation of their existing obligations under the Convention. Other Parties are encouraged to provide or continue to provide such support voluntarily.

Furthermore, as part of a global effort, developed country Parties should continue to take the lead in mobilizing climate finance from a wide variety of sources, instruments and channels, noting the significant role of public funds, through a variety of actions, including supporting country-driven strategies, and taking into account the needs and priorities of developing country Parties. Such mobilization of climate finance should represent a progression beyond previous efforts.

In addition, Article 9 states that the provision of scaled-up financial resources should aim to achieve a balance between adaptation and mitigation, taking into account country-driven strategies, and the priorities and needs of developing country Parties, especially those that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change and have significant capacity constraints, such as the least developed countries and small island developing States, considering the need for public and grant-based resources for adaptation.

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https://unfccc.int/topics/climate-finance/the-big-picture/climate-finance-in-the-negotiations

ttwtt78640 said:

What seems really goofy is that UN global income redistrbution schemes are being sold under the pretense of fighting global warmi-

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Oooookay. That's enough of that.

Do I "trust" them? Yes, in so much that I believe the data that they are gathering is actually the data they gathered and they didn't manufacture the poll by making up false responses.

Do I "trust" them as in I accept the results at face value without looking into it closer, or that I take any individual poll as gospel truth? Of course not, and that goes for literally every pollster. I know too much, and have too much first hand experience, to understand how polls can be skewed in both intentional and unintentional fashions to do either such thing.

Overall, polls...when properly looked into and judged in terms of quality and what's being stated...can be used in conjunction with other pieces of information (including other polls) to provide insight and paint a picture of a situation.

Whether I trust a poll depends on

• Whether the pollsters fully expose the poll's methodology, and
• Whether, upon reviewing the methodology, I can tell that it's sound and random, and
• Whether the questions the poll asks are neutrally posed, unambiguous to both competent readers and clods.

If a poll passes muster on all three dimension, sure, I trust it.


And, no, I don't rely on the fact that someone else found a specific poll suitable, nor will I use their doing so as a proxy for my own review of a poll's methodology, structure and content. Then again, I'm not the sort who cites polls I didn't conduct/design, and I definitely don't care about public opinion polls.

RBIII said:

CNN and MSNBC are never going to site a positive poll about Trump.
Fox is never going to site a negative poll about Trump.

Neither tells you who and how many people were polled.

Is there any polling company you trust?

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No I don't trust polls.They just seem to be used to manipulate people into supporting a position that they normally wouldn't. Also as far as I know the people conducting the polls have no way of verifying the truthfulness of the people taking the polls. For example I can I am a liberal and support Bernie Sanders and the person conducting the poll would have no way of knowing that.

RBIII said:

CNN and MSNBC are never going to site a positive poll about Trump.
Fox is never going to site a negative poll about Trump.

Neither tells you who and how many people were polled.

Is there any polling company you trust?

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I think you're wrong. The networks pay pollsters to take their polls, the polls are not done by the network themselves. Also they do tell you how many people were polled, all one has to do is go inside the polls to check them out. I do it all the time. In other words, one must get past the headlines and read the story.

Here is who conducts most of Fox's polls: The Fox News Poll is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R). A Democratic and a Republican polling company are used. They give you the margin of error of plus or minus three points along with letting you know the sample was 1001 register voter in the poll I got this information off.

They also let you know: Landline (342) and cellphone (659) telephone numbers were randomly selected for inclusion in the survey using a probability proportionate to size method, which means phone numbers for each state are proportional to the number of voters in each state. Fieldwork conducted by Braun Research, Inc. of Princeton, NJ.
Results are of registered voters, unless otherwise noted.
An asterisk (*) is used for percentages of less than one-half percent. A dash (-) represents a value of zero. Some percentages may not add to 100% due to rounding. In the same way, percentages in “total” columns may be one point more or less than the sum of their component parts due to rounding. Results from Fox News polls before February 2011 were conducted by Opinion Dynamics Corp

Then Fox also gives you an additional margin of error on each sub group.


Fox News Poll -- Margin of Error for Subgroups
The Fox News Poll is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R). The poll was conducted by telephone with live interviewers June 3-6, 2018 among a random national sample of 1,001 registered voters. Results based on the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. Results among the attached subgroups have larger sampling errors:
Registered Voters Q2
If Approve Of Trump
Q3
If Disapprove Of Trump
Registered Voters:
+/- 3% +/- 4.5% +/- 4%
--- Men:
+/- 4% +/- 6% +/- 6.5%
Women:
+/- 4% +/- 7% +/- 5.5%
--- White:
+/- 3.5% +/- 5% +/- 5.5%
Non-White:
+/- 6.5% N/A +/- 7.5%
--- Under Age 45:
+/- 5% +/- 8% +/- 7%
Age 45+:
+/- 3.5% +/- 5.5% +/- 5.5%
--- Income Under $50k:
+/- 5.5% +/- 8.5% +/- 7.5%
Income $50k+:
+/- 4% +/- 5.5% +/- 5.5%
--- Democrats:
+/- 4.5% N/A +/- 5%
Republicans:
+/- 5% +/- 5% N/A
Independents:
+/- 7.5% N/A N/A
--- Liberal:
+/- 5% N/A +/- 5.5%
Moderate:
+/- 7% N/A +/- 9.5%
Conservative:
+/- 4.5% +/- 5% N/A
--- White Evangelical:
+/- 6.5% +/- 7.5% N/A
--- White College Degree:
+/- 5% +/- 7.5% +/- 7%
White No Degree:
+/- 5% +/- 6.5% +/- 8%
--- Trump Voters:
+/- 4.5% +/- 5% N/A
Clinton Voters:
+/- 5% N/A +/- 5

CNN and MSNBC also hire outside polling firms and they also break the numbers down like FOX does.

DLLS said:

The polls said Trump would never be elected.

A few years ago there was another presidential election in which the polls were wrong and the pollsters actually had the gall to accuse the people they polled of lying.

I have never been contacted to participate in a poll, and neither has anyone I know.

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The polls said Clinton would win the popular vote by 2 points with a margin of error of plus or minus three points. That means they were predicting the final popular vote nationwide would end up between Trump winning by one and Clinton winning by 5. She won by 3 points which is about as close as you're going to get. Here's the final polls


https://www.realclearpolitics.com/e...s/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html

No. Most are slanted. I also don't participate in polls. Most questions I've heard are a set up from the get go.