As we move closer to the actual day of our vote the media is still struggling with ways to report Trump and his minions….there have been many excuses for the acts and words of his adoring throngs…….the worse aggravation has been the media and all those damn polls.
The American people are being smothered by public opinion polls. Every day there seems to be some new poll expected to give precious insight into the presidential horse race that the news media is so obsessed with. As I try to decipher what these polls mean, I often find myself muttering, “Will someone please save me from this troublesome priest?”
In the aggregate, the polls now show that Kamala Harris is leading Donald Trump nationally in the popular vote. However, she and Trump are basically tied in the key battleground states. Focus groups and other data also show a very close race. This is because the American people are politically unsophisticated and are easily manipulated to believe things that are not true. Democracy, by design, is messy and the politically ill-informed have the same number of votes (one) as the politically savvy and engaged.
Contributing to the confusion is how the mainstream news media’s unhealthy obsession with polling has created a type of tunnel vision and myopia where other lenses — that would likely provide better insights — for understanding the Age of Trump and the larger democracy crisis have been mostly ignored. The Washington Post’s Jen Rubin recently summarized “five major media fails”:
1. Ignoring Trump’s mental decline (until the last few weeks of the election). 2. Excess focus on meaningless polls. 3. Failure to engage historians and psychiatrists to provide context for Trump’s fascism and narcissism 4. Fixation on more details from Harris, demanding none from Trump 5. Consistent negative/inaccurate portrayal of the economy 6. Fueling Trump’s constant lies by asking Harris and others to respond.
In a recent essay at The American Prospect, Rick Perlstein echoes Rubin: “Even as the resources devoted to every other kind of journalism atrophied, poll-based political culture has overwhelmed us, crowding out all other ways of thinking about public life….The Washington Post’s polling director once said, ‘There’s something addictive about polls and poll numbers.’ He’s right. When we refer to ‘political junkies,’ polls are pretty much the junk.”
There is also the empirical fact — a very inconvenient one for the news media and the political consultants and polling firms — that presidential public opinion polls have been wrong for many decades.
https://www.salon.com/2024/10/15/brain-flaws-understanding-maga-as-an-epidemic-disease/
The last sentence is the most compelling…..polls have been wrong for decades….and they are probably wrong this time around.
And that is the name of that tune!
Please make your decision from knowledge not some made up stats that is used to sell papers.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
i look at polls every day, not one poll but an average. Don’t find them annoying, but only consider them accurate to 5 or 6 points. They give a general idea
of the race, the trends, and let us know which states are too close to predict. For me, that is any race with a margin of less than six per cent between the candidates.
That is a good way of looking at the day…..if it helps you make a decision. chuq
and how are we supposed to obtain this “Knowledge” by which we judge how we shall vote when every type and kind of media has their own favorite biases?
You cannot if one is lazy and accepts what they hear and read…..a little research if one gives a shit. chuq
Most people if not all people will definitely do their “Research” from sources that agree with their own biases. For example when a right winger does “Research” they will end up presenting only the evidence they have found from their own echo chambers that support their own locked in thinking…and the left wingers do the exact same thing…so this “Do your research” argument doesn’t mean a thing.
A lazy person answer. chuq
I beg to disagree of course…(“A lazy person answer. chuq”) I am not a lazy person but most people do look for the avenue of least resistance…and knowing people very well having dealt with thousands of them over my years, I can tell you with all authority and confidence that every one of them have their own biases and those biases are terribly difficult to overcome and those biases are the comfort zones for those folks and if you want to raise the fires of hell, just offer a serious challenge to their preconceived notions about things –They can turn rabid in short order.
Then most people are lazy chuq
Research only produces some consolation to those with biases… which is everybody by the way.
Then I suggest that you stick with your method. chuq
Or let some AI program decide for you. chuq
I am as smart as any ai program
That is what we all say….LOL chuq
When people “Do Their Own Research” they will inevitably and unfailingly choose only the evidences that fit their own personal biases and that is what they will depend on for their arguments…both sides do it so there is no value at all in the “Do Your Research” argument…none at all.
Most people cannot think beyond their petty biases….there is always value in research the no value are people that are too goddamn lazy to do any critical thinking. chuq
Of course most people will look at “Critical” thinking as the way they themselves already think, and will refuse to be moved beyond their own notions of what critical thinking is. Besides, most people do not engage in critical thinking because, as Americans, they are either too busy or too bored to even try it.
Or too lazy chuq
It seems no matter how much Trump’s mental decline is broadcast daily on TV, his loyal suporters are never going to change their voting intentions. Having a woman, and a black woman at that, as POTUS is going to make many people vote for Trump just from prejudice.
Best wishes, Pete.
And give them ammo for decades more of stupidity. chuq