https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/worst-pollster-in-world-strikes-again/ The Worst Pollster in the World Strikes Again By Nate Silver Dirty little secret: I sometimes write material in the late evening that will be posted the following morning. This is one of those instances. The early word, however, is that a Zogby poll to be released today will show Barack Obama’s presidential approval numbers at around 50-50. As of this writing, the Pollster.com averagehas Barack Obama’s numbers at 59.3 percent approve and 33.8 percent disapprove; the Real Clear Politics averageis slightly more favorable to Obama, at 61.2 percent approve and 30.5 percent disapprove. So a Zogby poll that put Obama’s numbers at roughly 50-50 would be a significant outlier. Outliers are nothing new, however, when it comes to Zogby polls. They are, in fact, the rule and not the exception. Let me qualify this a bit: Zogby International conducts two types of polls. One type are conventional telephone polls. Zogby’s telephone polls, while prone to somewhat wild fluctuations and subject to their share of erratic results (such as predicting a 13-point win for Barack Obama in the California primary; Obama lost by 9 points), are actually not terrible, and did fairly well on November 4th. Zogby, however, also conducts Internet-based polls. These polls are conducted among users who volunteer to participate in them, first by signing up at the Zogby website (you can do so yourself here) and then by responding to an e-mail solicitation. These Internet polls, to the extent they rely on voluntary participation, violate the most basic precept of survey research, which is that of the random sample. And as you might infer, they obtain absolutely terrible results. Because I’m writing this post ahead of time, I’m not 100% certain that the particular poll in question is an Internet poll. Zogby, which is probably aware of the poor reputation of its Internet polls, has begun to go to some length to conceal their origin, usually reserving notification that the poll was conducted online for the fine print. However, I’m about 99.8% certain that this is an Internet poll, as allof the polling that Zogby has recently conducted on Presidential approval have been of the Internet variety. And that polling, by the way, has produced some very strange results: in an Internet pollconducted from January 22-26, for example, in the immediate aftermath of Barack Obama’s inauguration, Zogby had Obama’s job approval at 52/29, while the average of polls from five other agencies (Gallup, Hotline, Rasmussen, FOX and Democracy Corps) conducted at the same time put the numbers at avergae of 62/19. Let’s take a look at the track record of Zogby’s Internet polling. Zogby conducted his last series of Internet polls for last year’s Presidential election in mid-October. He missed 3 of 11 states, and was off on the final margin by an average of 5.4 points. These are not good results — the average miss on election day among all presidential polls in these states was around 2,5 points; Zogby Interactive’s average error was twice that. And Zogby is probably fortunate that he confined his polling to these 11 states only. When he had conducted a broader series of Internet polling back in June, it had produced some truly head-scratching results: Note that Zogby had Barack Obama winning states such as Arkansas, Arizona and South Carolina, results which no other pollster saw at any point during the election cycle. He also had Obama polling within 5 points of John McCain in Oklahoma, which Obama would go on to lose by 31 points, and Tennessee, which he’d lose by 15. Did the Zogby Internet polls just have a bad year? No. If anything, their performance was much improved from 2006, when Zogby had surveyed a wider number of contests. Below are the Internet polls that Zogby put out on October 27, 2006 in advance of that year’s senatorial elections. His average miss was 8.7 points, including six misses of 10 points or more, and one miss of almost 30 points: Zogby’s gubernatorial polling that year was similarly error-prone. His Internet polls missed the margin in 19 gubernatorial contests by an average of 7.7 points, and he called 5 of the 19 election wrong, including a couple of states (like Arkansas, Colorado and Wisconsin) where the outcome was never in much doubt. All told, between 48 contests that he’s surveyed over the past two election cycles, Zogby’s Internet polls have been off by an average of 7.6 points. This is an extreme outlier with respect to absolutely anyone else in the polling community. These Internet polls, simply put, are not scientific and should not be published by any legitimate news organization, at least not without an asterisk the size of an Alex Rodriguez steroidal syringe. But I’ll bet you that Matt Drudge already has the siren cued up by now.
http://m.rasmussenreports.com/publi...of_america/generic_congressional_ballot_nov05 Generic Congressional Ballot’s All Tied Up The final Rasmussen Reports Generic Congressional Ballot before Election Day shows Republicans edging ahead by one point, but in essence, the two parties are tied. The survey has a +/-2 percentage point margin of error. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds that 46% would choose the Republican candidate if the elections for Congress were held today. Forty-five percent (45%) would vote for the Democrat Rasmussen had Repubcans +1.Democrats won by +10
In Aug 2018 Rasmussen said Trump had a 36% black approval rating.In Nov 2018 Dems got 90% of the black vote with high black voter turnout.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/31/politics/trump-democrat-matchups-analysis/index.html Trump trails Democrats by a historically large margin Analysis by Harry Enten, CNN Updated 9:40 AM ET, Tue September 3, 2019 Poll of the week: A new national Quinnipiac University poll finds that former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, California Sen. Kamala Harris and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg all lead President Donald Trump by significant margins in potential 2020 matchups. Biden is ahead of Trump by the most (16 points, 54% to 38%), while Buttigeg is up by the least (9 points, 49% to 40%). What's the point: The Quinnipiac poll was the second probability poll that meets CNN standards and was conducted in August which found Trump down by at least 5 points against all his most likely challengers. In both the Fox News poll out earlier this month and Quinnipiac's latest, he trailed his most likely challenger, Biden, by double-digits. In fact, in an average of all the August polls (those that meet CNN standards and not), Biden was up by a 49% to 39% margin. We're still over a year away from the 2020 general election, so don't take these polls to the bank. Still, it's worth pointing out the historically bad position Trump is in. No incumbent president has ever polled this poorly against his likely challengers at this point in the campaign. I went all the way back to World War II era in the Roper Center archive to see how presidents were polling at this point against their eventual challengers. I selected the worst poll for the incumbent if there was more than one poll taken in order to give Trump the most generous comparison. In years in which no polls were taken in August the year before the election (i.e. when the last poll for 2020 was conducted), I chose the poll taken closest to this point. What's clear is the vast majority of incumbents were ahead at this point in the campaign: nine of the 11 were ahead. And for the average incumbent, they led their eventual challenger by 12 points at this point. Again, Trump trails Biden by 10 points in the average August poll. Trump has not been ahead of Biden in a single national poll taken this entire cycle. Only two of 11 incumbents in past years, Jimmy Carter in 1979 and Barack Obama in 2011, were behind at this point. They were down by 4 points and 1 point respectively to their eventual challengers (Ronald Reagan and Mitt Romney). Carter went on to lose reelection. Obama went on to win with a small reelection margin -- and there were many polls at this point that had him ahead. (Remember, I'm looking at the worst poll for past incumbents.) Put another way, Trump's worst poll against any of the top five Democrats at this point is 5 points worse than the worst poll for any incumbent since World War II against his eventual challenger. It's 12 points worse against his most likely challenger, Biden. As I've already mentioned, we don't know if these polls will hold. What is notable, though, is that Trump is not punching above his approval rating right now. Trump's approval rating has been consistently below his disapproval rating, just like he has been consistently been polling behind Biden. That lines up with what occurred in the 2018 midterms: Republican House candidates got the same share of the votes as Trump's approval rating, 45%. Trump has time to turn his reelection ship in the right direction. But in the 10 months since the Republicans lost the House in 2018, he's in no better shape. You could even argue he's in a worse position.
only a fool would ignore them. In aggregate they have been right on the money for many years in the predicting the popular vote in the election, so there is no reason to think they are far off in these preliminary polls. It would seem these pollster organizations have honed their statistical skills to perfection. As things stand now Trump would lose the popular vote big time if the election were held tomorrow. But is there a path to an EC victory. I imagine that is what the Trump strategists are working on. Maybe they can pull off another moscow miracle!
What's important is the aggregate of all of these professionally done polls. There, they have proven to be correct in predicting the margin of victory in the popular vote in national elections for many many years -- without a single fail! That would be pretty convincing evidence that they are very likely right in aggregate in these preliminary polls. I'd be thinking about how to pull off another moscow miracle in the EC if I were a Trump strategist. A popular vote victory for the orange one looks unachievable at this point. But there is a long time before next November. Plenty of time for a moscow miracle!
It could be just me, but when I read your (duplicate) posts in an imagined, shrill high-pitched voice, it just completes the picture I have of you.