Wednesday, October 24, 2018

What About The Polls?

I used to be obsessed with reading polls, and there are certainly a lot of them: FiveThirtyEight, Quinnipiac, NBC/Wall Street Journal, even Fox News, which is surprisingly not the modern version of Der Volkischer Beobachter.  But polls are lagging indicators; they take a while to compile the data and check for accuracy, and this close to the election things shift.  We all thought 2016 would be a landslide.

So forget about them, whether they show your team in the lead or not.  Leading, and people get complacent.  Behind, and people despair and mutter “what’s the use?” and start Googling cheap places to live overseas.

Just vote.  Like I’ve said before, read up, know what’s on the ballot — including your local races because that’s where the insurgency starts — and go vote.

And if you insist on reading the polls, here’s a handy flow chart via Crooks and Liars.

One bark on “What About The Polls?

  1. Speaking of knowing where to vote and who to vote for, we got a handy card from the Ohio Democratic Party that showed the judges endorsed by the party. Without that it would have been blind man’s bluff. I hope Florida has a the same sort of help whether Democrat or Republican. Too often we trudge to the polling place and except for the prominent candidates we go in ignorance.

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