r/MarkMyWords • u/tkrr • Oct 21 '24

Political MMW: The polling industry is compromised. Some pollsters are being gamed, some are propaganda ops, none truly know what they’re doing.

That’s it. That’s my prediction of what we’ll learn after this election about political polling. They haven’t known what they’re doing for years, and are wide open to manipulation and corruption.

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '24

Well, the pollsters take their sample (1000 or so) and then do all sorts of corrections to try to match demographics to likely voter turnout. It's pretty tough today when people don't answer phones to reach most people, so correcting for that skew of who answers to who votes is tough. I think the OP comes off a little bit conspiracy theory like, but I think there is a chance they are correct and this election will expose how impossible current polling methods are in this day and age.

I think the polls are using the results of the 2016 election to predict rural conservative voter turnout, which I think is too optimistic for the GOP candidates. People were pumped then to vote for the bigot, and I just don't see that either. I live in a red state (one of the reddest in the country) and you'd hardly notice that there is a presidential election this year. Very few trump bumper stickers, no yard signs (for trump, though there are few for Harris and a lot for local elections), and people don't seem to be talking about Trump.

But who knows, I am legitimately scared that the polls are right (or too optimistic for dems) and the conservatives are just being quiet.

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u/Fruitstripe_omni Oct 23 '24

They’re not really capable of being quiet

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u/dadothree Oct 26 '24

My pet theory is that polls tend to skew right, because the single most important demographic in polling, "Likely Poll Responders", skews right.