Agreed. The polls are generally misleading in Trump's favor. The last several elections since the 2020 presidential elections failed to predict the results, which were Democratic victories. The polls misjudged the 2020 House outcome, expecting a red wave that never came.
I don't know why that is. Are people usually alone when surveyed or are their answers usually overheard by friends or family members? I know that will slant outcomes toward the Republicans. How many women in Republican households who will vote pro-choice will say so in front of a husband, for example.
And where are they done? At homes? In malls? If the latter, the poll will be biased in favor of affluence.
And the most alarming results will be pushed the hardest by the media to improve readership or viewership. Recently, several polls were fairly similar, but one outlier from the NY Times showing bigger leads for Trump was the one that hit the news the most. This citation (
source) refers to a similar NYT poll from last November, but it's the same complaint:
"More sordid details are leaking out about that New York Times poll released over the weekend, and these details are alarming, to say the least. I want to focus on one particular article written by nwprogressive.org. In it, they point to the problems with this particular poll — starting with the samples of respondents.
Republicans appear to have been oversampled. To quote from the article: “Republican voters were oversampled in these polls.” NW Progressive says the word “oversampled” is nowhere to be found in the WRITEUP of the poll, but “if you open the actual dataset, look through it and read the endnotes,” you will see for yourself they ADMIT to this Republican oversampling.
NW Progessive writes that it is “irresponsible” of the New York Times not to have TOLD readers this immediately. “This is an important design choice and ought to be explained,” they write. Now, readers if you do venture into the dataset, you will find it — hidden away — likely not seen by the majority of readers."
Whatever the explanation, it's probably an advantage to Democrats to falsely report Republican leads. Let the Republican voters feel complacent and the urgency for the Democrats be magnified.
Think about what those numbers say. 86% of Republicans thought the trial unfair but only 82% thought the verdict was wrong? That suggests that 4 out of a hundred (1 in 25) Republicans thought the trial was unfair but agreed with the guilty verdict. It just shows that these numbers shouldn't be trusted too much whether because of problems with methodology or with an electorate whose answers aren't reliable.
