"The reason why we shouldn’t believe most of the current or future polling results about President Trump can be summarized in two words: Social Desirability.
Social desirability is a concept first advanced by psychologist Allen L. Edwards in 1953. It advances the idea that when asked about an issue in a social setting, people will always answer in a socially desirable manner whether or not they really believe it. Political polling, whether by telephone or online, is a social setting. Respondents know that there is an audience who are posing the questions and monitoring their response. As a result, despite a respondent’s true belief, many will answer polling questions in what may appear to be a more socially desirable way, or not answer at all.
When it comes to President Trump, the mainstream media and academics have led us to believe that it is not socially desirable (or politically correct) to support him. When up against such sizable odds, most conservatives will do one of three things: 1) Say we support someone else when we really support the president (lie); 2) tell the truth despite the social undesirability of that response; 3) Not participate in the poll (nonresponse bias).
This situation has several real consequences for Trump polling. First, for those in the initial voter sample unwilling to participate, the pollster must replace them with people willing to take the poll. Assuming this segment is made up largely of pro-Trump supporters, finding representative replacements can be expensive, time-consuming and doing so increases the sampling error rate (SER) while decreasing the validity of the poll. Sampling error rate is the gold standard statistic in polling. It means that the results of a particular poll will vary by no more than +x% than if the entire voter population was surveyed. All else being equal, a poll with a sampling error rate of +2% is more believable than one of +4% because it has a larger sample. Immediate polling on issues like President Trump’s impeachment may provide support to journalists with a point of view to broadcast, but with a small sample and high sampling error rates, the results aren’t worthy of one’s time and consideration."
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I watched today as the crypto lefty Michael Smerconish interviewed Jason Miller from the Trump campaign. He insisted that Miller "face up to the bad recent poll results" on Trump. What he wanted was for Miller to concede defeat in the November election. Miller pointed out that all the polls cited by MS consistently under sample Republicans by more than 10%. The typical Republican sample size is between 25 and 30% in these polls. MS simply ignored that and went on making his case for Trump's coming defeat.
MS's weekly on air poll asked the question "Is the election over? " He was visibly disappointed wen his mostly liberal audience replied "no" by 69% of a 16000 vote sample. pl
blue,
I agree that the Senate is the more consequential race with Republicans defending twice as many seats as the Democrats.
Arizona will be a pivotal state. Astronaut and navy pilot with combat experience in the Gulf, Kelly, is running a strong race for the Senate as a Democrat. He could drag Biden to a win in a traditionally Republican leaning state.
You are right that the presidency will be decided by a handful of states. Jared is rather inexperienced to run such a close race and it appears doesn’t have the killer instinct for a vicious battle. You can see it as the campaign hasn’t taken advantage of the Antifa fat pitch. Trump needs someone like Lee Atwater or Bannon who brought home the bacon in 2016, IMO. You’re also right that this campaign could be very different from 2016 when Trump came into the general with a lot of momentum from winning the primary and was a fresh candidate. What will the campaigns look like with many states shutting down gatherings and the Wuhan virus continuing to dominate the media coverage? Will there be any conventions and debates? Will there be large rallies?
Posted by: Jack | 19 July 2020 at 02:56 PM
Jack,
re: "...as the campaign hasn’t taken advantage of the Antifa fat pitch."
I believe they intend to do that, the federal operators in Portland seem to be targeting protesters in black, the ones that fit the Antifa profile almost exclusively. They appear to be only interested in that one type when they roam about the city hunting. In fact the evidence of Antifa as the primary driver of the protests is thin. They lack names and mug shots of perps and this seems to be an expedition crafted to obtain some.
Posted by: Mark Logan | 19 July 2020 at 04:59 PM
Deap, thanks!
Jack, Trump decided to not hold rallies in light of the panic.
Posted by: BillWade | 19 July 2020 at 05:20 PM
Vegitius wrote: " The list is long and growing:
----his erratic response to this pandemic,
---- his pathetic non-response to this globalist/deep state color revolution,
----his continued reliance on anti-white and anti-American Israelis like Kushner,
----his apparent willingness to grant amnesty for criminal Mexicans and
----go along with idiotic GOP calls to end relief for those thrown out of work, etc, etc.
Sorry, none of these have any traction with 2020 Trump supporters. Trump is 2020 by entirely different yardsticks. The first one is Trump is not Joe Biden and he is not a Democrat. There are other positives as well. Sorry you can't see them.
But "covid" is not going to take Trump down because "covid" exposed the failings of the deep state and Democrat state leadership more than anything else. Medicare for All, after this string of Fauci and CDC stunts, is DOA.
Posted by: Deap | 19 July 2020 at 05:47 PM
What is interesting is that why pathetic Zionist stooge Kushner really discredits and drags down Trump, Trump pro-Zionist stance is now slightly more understandable and, may be, even slightly more acceptable than before BLM/Antifa riots.
What would you do if a minority does not want to integrate and asks for an undeserved preferential treatment? And which stages riots increasing social tension and wantonly looting and destroying property (that's what "peaceful protester" during "summer of love" actually do ) .
Posted by: likbez | 20 July 2020 at 06:03 AM
@likbez
I've been saying that black is the new orange (revolution) but purple works to.
It's hard to know what is going on any more because the only people who talk politics are yelling about it while the people I am most interested in hearing from in my personal life have gone silent.
I think the neoliberals are more afraid of losing institutional control than they are losing this or that election. Thus Trump's haplessness has been reassuring to them. If I were a globalist, I would want Democrats to take the senate and Trump to win a narrow election that I could say was illegitimate.
One thing I am interested in knowing is if/how divided the security and intelligence agencies are about all of this. There are wild rumors going around to the effect that the CIA is anti-Trump but the NSA is pro-Trump.
Personally, I have come reluctantly but now immovably to the idea that white identity politics are inevitable and that whites must begin waging them en masse sooner rather than later. The age of ideology is over and the demographic age has begun. The globalists understand this (indeed, they arranged it), as do non-white elites. It is only the corrupt and incompetent white elite that either can't or won't see this.
The institutional GOP is the biggest gatekeeper to a pro-white politics, and so it must either be subverted, seized or destroyed. The clown car that is late-stage conservatism must be diminished to the same stature as, say, the Fourth International over at wsws.org.
Those who want the GOP to remain a gate-keeping exercise - think Israelis like Hazony - are now trying to concoct a sham called "national conservatism" to keep whites on the conservative plantation but there are too many who already see this for what it is and so I expect it to go nowhere.
It may be that normal people are so appalled by this globaist-sponsored and Democrat-abetted violence that a backlash is building. If so, I can't see it.
Posted by: Vegetius | 20 July 2020 at 11:33 AM
likbez: The only "purple revolution" we are now experiencing in the US is the purple tee-shirted SEIU types and the teachers unions against the blue line police unions.
This is simply a public sector union turf war we are now experiencing.
Covid hysteria reduced the tax dollar pie which long supported all three of them. Not they are fighting over the size of the slices of the pie - with the police unions long getting the largest slices. Defund the police --and divert those same funds, not back to the taxpayers, but to teachers and other government support employee unions tells you all you need to know.
Using this lens to view events of the past few months in the US and everything finally makes sense: Internecine public sector turf war.
Even WSJ editorial today admits Gov Newsom, when he speaks, is merely representing the demands of the state teachers unions (CTA). Truth be told, and this is an existential election year for the 44 million public sector union members - 99% all Democrats. OrangeMan must be defeated., by any means necessary. They have all their skin in this game.
Posted by: Deap | 20 July 2020 at 12:06 PM