I’d like to remind everyone that 8 years ago, the polls showed Hillary was going to trounce Trump pretty handedly. There was tons of discussion after the election about how the polls could be so wrong.
I think Fivethityeight’s explanation went something like…
If a candidate is only polling 40% to their opponents’s 60%, and you were to run the election 10 times with a different sampling of voters each time, it doesn’t mean that the candidate will lose by 60% every time. It means they’re going to win four times out of ten.
Don’t let polls lull you into either complacency or despair. The only thing polls are really good for is giving pundits something to talk about in the 24 hour news cycle. Polls don’t decide the election. Only actual votes on actual ballots that are actually submitted in time decide the election.
And this messaging is a large part of what led to low democrat turnout when Hillary was running for office. Her early campaign had basically been “lol don’t worry about this, he’s an idiot who doesn’t gave a chance of winning.” It wasn’t until about a month before the actual election that someone in her campaign team realized this would lull voters into a false sense of security. Suddenly, their entire tone changed from “he has no chance of winning” to “oh for fucks sake please go vote”. But it was too little, too late. Democrat voters stayed home, and handed the win to Trump.
I’d like to remind everyone that 8 years ago, the polls showed Hillary was going to trounce Trump pretty handedly. There was tons of discussion after the election about how the polls could be so wrong.
I think Fivethityeight’s explanation went something like…
If a candidate is only polling 40% to their opponents’s 60%, and you were to run the election 10 times with a different sampling of voters each time, it doesn’t mean that the candidate will lose by 60% every time. It means they’re going to win four times out of ten.
Don’t let polls lull you into either complacency or despair. The only thing polls are really good for is giving pundits something to talk about in the 24 hour news cycle. Polls don’t decide the election. Only actual votes on actual ballots that are actually submitted in time decide the election.
And this messaging is a large part of what led to low democrat turnout when Hillary was running for office. Her early campaign had basically been “lol don’t worry about this, he’s an idiot who doesn’t gave a chance of winning.” It wasn’t until about a month before the actual election that someone in her campaign team realized this would lull voters into a false sense of security. Suddenly, their entire tone changed from “he has no chance of winning” to “oh for fucks sake please go vote”. But it was too little, too late. Democrat voters stayed home, and handed the win to Trump.
Well this time Harris has been telling everyone that Trump is trying to end democracy from the beginning
I count cards in blackjack, and let me tell ya, when your winning chance is 52% that means you’re lose chance is 48% and 48% to lose feels like 90%.