How much faith do you have in the polls?

[kentuck]

There are polls showing Joe Biden ahead of Trump by double-digits. Do you believe those?

The subconscious fear is that the polls will be off just as they were in 2016.

But, for some, an even bigger fear is that the majority of this country believes like Donald Trump. A terribly negative view of our people and our country. Lies, name-calling, character assassination, even criminal acts, are OK if you can get away with it. It is something to celebrate.

Donald Trump is just a symbol. It is his followers that are scary. I still want to believe that our country is basically a good country, not one that puts children in cages and closes our door to those that are looking for a better life.

At this time, I do not have a lot of faith in these polls.

[democratisphere]

1. ZERO.

[Joe941]

2. I'm quite confident in the polls.

[elleng]

3. Irrelevant; it's TOO EARLY.

[live love laugh]

4. Ironically you should have made this post a poll. Zero for me. nt

[Downtown Hound]

5. The national polls were pretty accurate in 2016

The state polls were off, but they failed to take into account people not voting, people being purged from the voter rolls, and cough, cough, perhaps, cough, cough, votes being changed electronically.

Polling has actually gotten very good is is usually pretty accurate. Which is why if enough people vote and the spread between the two candidates is wide enough, Trump won't be able to steal his way to a second term.

So you can relax. Polls are pretty accurate. Nate Silver's 538 is a great resource.

[dsc]

6. No matter how accurate they are now

that doesn't mean they are dispositive for a year and 3 months from now. I do think that they are likely a reasonably accurate snapshot of the situation at this minute.

[LuvNewcastle]

15. I agree.

We could have a whole new set of circumstances to deal with next year, and people might be looking for a different sort of candidate to deal with them. Besides, American voters are notoriously fickle. You have to get through the last of the debates before you get a good picture of who's likely to win. We don't even know now who will be our nominee, much less who will run against Trump.

[elleng]

7. Not a 'majority,' imo, BUT

repugs steal elections, have done so for years, think of the states, AND they have 'friends' helping them now, like russkies.

[klook]

8. Polls that don't take the Electoral College into account are worthless.

Who cares if a generic Dem candidate is supposedly ahead of Trump by 10 or more points? Sec. Clinton beat him by 3 million votes.

[underpants]

9. I'm more impressed since they put the screen doors on their submarines

It's too early really

[mitch96]

18. "It's too early really"

Yup, like trying to predict where a hurricane will hit the US while just a little low pressure system off Africa..
Get back to me 6 mos out from the election.. Now it's all just MSM fluff.
m

[rampartc]

10. not much.

[Eliot Rosewater]

11. KGB will take care of that, dont you worry. Unless our candidate wins by

an UNHEARD of number of votes, the KGB will do something to flip it like last time.


It has to be so obvious, too bad we allowed certain folks to convince us exit polls are no good when we know they are.

[uponit7771]

12. The science ? Solid as a rock the willingness to speak up when there are anomalies ? NONE AT ALL!!!

[qazplm135]

13. I think it depends on how you use the information and when

right now the primary polls give us some information. It tells us who the likely nominee is going to come from. It doesn't really tell us who that nominee will be yet, because it's too early. But it's likely the nominee will be one of the top five. Having said that, it's not a guarantee.

The GE polls tell us that whomever is our nominee is very likely to at least be competitive with Trump, and has a decent chance of starting off ahead of Trump.

They won't tell us much right now about what the eventual result will be though.

[Bettie]

14. For the most part

polls reflect which people are willing to answer a call from someone they don't know.

How many people do you know who answer calls of that sort?

[MarvinGardens]

16. Give or take approximately 5%.

Not a 5% bias in a particular direction, but a random error of about 5%. I think that's a reasonable expectation.

[Wiseman32218]

17. None

How many voters stayed home because Hillary was a sure thing?