There's a new maxim that we all need to adopt. It's just three words: "the polls stink." We all lived through the 2016 polling disaster. According to the polls, Hillary Clinton won that election easily. The pundits and the experts agreed. Only the voters disagreed. The polls were just wrong, way wrong.
I was reminded of this again this morning when I looked at the latest polling in South Carolina testing the Democrat field for 2020. It's a long way until the South Carolina primary, but the two polls were just taken and ought to agree. They don't. The CBS poll and the poll by the Post and Courier (a South Carolina paper) put out results in which the average difference between the numbers for the top four candidates is 8 points. For example, Bernie Sanders gets 18% and second place in the CBS poll but only 9% and fourth place in the Post and Courier poll. Each of the top four candidates in these polls have results for which the other poll is outside the margin of error. That means that one or the other poll (or both) are pure junk.
I really don't care much about these polls. They're early and meaningless. I do care, however, about the fact that the polls are wrong but are still getting published. You should be too. Just remember, THE POLLS STINK.
I was reminded of this again this morning when I looked at the latest polling in South Carolina testing the Democrat field for 2020. It's a long way until the South Carolina primary, but the two polls were just taken and ought to agree. They don't. The CBS poll and the poll by the Post and Courier (a South Carolina paper) put out results in which the average difference between the numbers for the top four candidates is 8 points. For example, Bernie Sanders gets 18% and second place in the CBS poll but only 9% and fourth place in the Post and Courier poll. Each of the top four candidates in these polls have results for which the other poll is outside the margin of error. That means that one or the other poll (or both) are pure junk.
I really don't care much about these polls. They're early and meaningless. I do care, however, about the fact that the polls are wrong but are still getting published. You should be too. Just remember, THE POLLS STINK.
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