Today brought a stark reminder once again of the silly reality of polling in the USA. This morning, two new sets of national polls were released: one was from Emerson and the other from ABC News/Washington Post. Each set of polls included the current choice of Democrats for the presidential nomination as well as head to head match ups between President Trump and the leading Democrat contenders. The results were such that perhaps two different countries were polled.
Here are some examples:
1. Emerson says that Trump is leading all of the Democrats except for Sanders whom he trails by 2%. ABC says Trump is trails every Democrat with Biden doing the best with a 7% lead.
2. Just for Biden vs. Trump, Emerson shows Trump getting a majority of votes and leading by 4%. ABC shows Biden getting a majority and leading by 7%.
3. Among Democrats Emerson shows Biden with 22%. ABC shows Biden with only 16% even though he does better against Trump in the head to heads.
There is no way that both of these two sets of polls can be accurate. The differences are statistically significant. So is ABC/Washington Post being accurate, or are they "cooking the books"? Is Emerson providing faulty numbers? We can't tell from the information released to the public.
What we can tell, though is that the endless stream of polls is not worth reading.
Here are some examples:
1. Emerson says that Trump is leading all of the Democrats except for Sanders whom he trails by 2%. ABC says Trump is trails every Democrat with Biden doing the best with a 7% lead.
2. Just for Biden vs. Trump, Emerson shows Trump getting a majority of votes and leading by 4%. ABC shows Biden getting a majority and leading by 7%.
3. Among Democrats Emerson shows Biden with 22%. ABC shows Biden with only 16% even though he does better against Trump in the head to heads.
There is no way that both of these two sets of polls can be accurate. The differences are statistically significant. So is ABC/Washington Post being accurate, or are they "cooking the books"? Is Emerson providing faulty numbers? We can't tell from the information released to the public.
What we can tell, though is that the endless stream of polls is not worth reading.
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