The vast majority of coverage around the 2024 primary is based on polling. Rarely will you read an article or listen to an interview on the Presidential race that doesn’t involve a discussion or at least a paragraph about the polling. We use the polls to drive the way we view the race and discuss the race. Since it is such an important part of the discussions, shouldn’t we stop to consider whether the polling is accurate or reliable?
In 2012, many on the right wrote endlessly about skewed data and “unskewing” the polls. In the final RCP average, Romney was trailing by 0.7%. He lost by 3.9%, which was a polling error of 3.2% in favor of Republicans. The polling was skewed toward the GOP.
In 2016, many on the right again lampooned the polling after Trump won. If you look at the national polling averages, they really weren’t off that bad, nationally (D+1.2%) or in most states. Of the 14 toss up states in 2016, only two states had an RCP average above 5% off from the final result (Iowa and Wisconsin). 9 of the 14 states had a final RCP average of 3% or less off from the results. The gap between the results and the polls favored Trump in 11 of those 14 states. The state averages were helped by polls that leaning GOP, like Trafalgar and Rasmussen.
In 2020, we were treated to some completely garbage polls showing Biden dominating the race and dominating certain states. These results were offset by some more accurate Trump favoring polls. NBC News, Quinnipiac, CNBC and the Economist/YouGov all had Biden at +10 or +11, an error of 5.5 or 6.5 in a national popular vote poll, which is atrocious. IBD, The Hill and Emerson were all within 0.5% of the final result. Rasmussen was +3.5 toward Trump. The states were worse. In Wisconsin, Reuters and NYT were off by 9.3 and 10.3 toward Biden. Trafalgar was a little Trump heavy in a few states, but nailed some others and undershot him in a few states. From this data, I concluded that Trafalgar, IBD and a few others had figured out how to poll and the others were just bad at polling or more likely just lying to us.
Then 2022 happened. The pollsters that were off in 2016 and 2020 largely predicted a split electorate with Democrats winning many of the toss up seats in the Senate and the GOP with a slight advantage in the House. The pollsters, like Trafalgar and IBD, that were right in 2016 and 2020 predicted a big red wave that never happened.
Tying all of this together, the only logical conclusion to make at this point is that none of the polls are reliable. They’ve all missed and hit on recent elections, which is probably more luck than skill in figuring this out. The electorate can break late. Turnout can greatly impact results. There isn’t a single pollster that I would tell someone to trust their results. Take them all with a grain of salt. At best they just aren’t very accurate. Given some of the ridiculous results, many of them are just lying to us and running a PSYOP. This seems especially true when you see how absurd the early polling is in favor of the Democrats. They do tend to tighten some as the election nears overall.
Furthermore, we need to consider why we trust polls. The same media entities that tell us Donald Trump is “literally Hitler” are the ones producing and paying for most of these polls. These are the people who tell you that women can have a penis and men can get pregnant. They tell you that kids aren’t mature enough to own a gun until they are 21 (if they don’t outright declare no one should), but they are mature enough at 13 to cut off a penis or breasts and pretend to be a different gender. They told you masks stop covid. They told you that schools can’t open because kids will spread covid and kill teachers. They told you that the jabs are 100% safe and effective. They told you that you, as an “unvaccinated” person, were a threat to them as a “vaccinated” person. Why would we trust these people to be honest about polls, when they lie about everything else? Then we have pollsters on the right who are so entrenched in one camp that they are blocking supporters of another candidate on social media (Rasmussen). They cannot be trusted either.
[Author’s Note: This is Part 1 of a two part series. Part 2 will discuss 2024 primary polling.]
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