A new set of Times/Siena polls, including one with The Philadelphia Inquirer, reveal an erosion of support for the president among young and nonwhite voters upset about the economy and Gaza.
Presenting the poll results for registered voters, with candidates limited to Biden or Trump with no RFK involved, both of which are decisions which will swing things towards Trump and away from reality, is a decision that I’m hard pressed to explain any other way than that they’re looking for the worst numbers they can present.
It’s not even like the answers to the more accurate question were even any better for Biden. To me they look more or less the same (i.e. serious trouble for Biden). My only explanation is that a lot of these likely voters don’t know their ass from their elbow (e.g.
Oooooh
This is interesting.
Look at the question “What one issue is most important in deciding your vote this November?”
It leads off with:
The economy (including jobs and the stock market)
Inflation and the cost of living
Abortion
Immigration
Crime
Gun policies
… and then, way down below, is “The state of democracy/corruption” (with 6% still bucking the trend to vote for it), and “The Middle East/Israel/Palestinians” (2%).
Lo and behold, a whole lot of people voted for one of the first two options, and also tended to answer questions about how they felt about the economy overall, and whether they felt overall happy with how things were going, accordingly.
I would be interested to see how this poll was presented exactly (especially whether written or verbal, and what order for the questions), and what the numbers would be if there was a similar weight of questioning and emphasis given to “The state of democracy/corruption” as a major issue. Maybe the results would be the same. Maybe not. I’d be interested to see it.
I know you’re not necessarily making this argument but you mention that the most important issue for voters includes…
and “The Middle East/Israel/Palestinians” (2%).
In Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin the margin in 2020 was less than 2%. Michigan and Nevada were under 3%.
It’s a small number, yes, but this argument that it “won’t matter because people vote on domestic issues” ignores these thin margins, imo. It really might matter more than people think.
I didn’t go into it at any length but I think the number of people who, in the actual election, will have the Gaza war impact the way they vote is way higher than 2%. About 13% of Democrats voted “uncommitted” in the Michigan primary, which presumably they wouldn’t have done because of crime, immigration, or whatever other “non-most-important” issues according to this poll.
I think hanging out on Lemmy can give you the impression that more people overall care about Palestine than the number that actually do. But the number definitely isn’t 2%. I’m not at all saying that the real number is 2% and so it doesn’t matter; I’m saying the number is definitely higher than 2% and so this poll is random-phone-number-calling-barking-questions-at-people uninformative garbage.
Gotcha! Definitely agree about Lemmy being an echo chamber for this type of stuff but I also doubt it’s only 2%. Michigan is a good example, even if it was 2% it doesn’t mean it’s equally spread across states.
Also it would be a bit of a mistake to assume only the “most important” issue would impact voting choice, or more importantly, the choice to not vote
Yeah. That whole massive list of “most important” issues which were apparently listed out verbally to people, over the phone, by a bored call center employee, and the list’s suspicious inclusion of multiple versions of “economic issues” with suspicious particular trigger words right at the beginning (where, purely by coincidence I’m sure, a lot of people decided their most important issues were), all form part of an overall picture of big parts of this poll not really meaning anything, let alone the foofaraw that the New York Times seems to want to make it into down to the resolution of individual percentage points.
New York Times doing its thing again
Presenting the poll results for registered voters, with candidates limited to Biden or Trump with no RFK involved, both of which are decisions which will swing things towards Trump and away from reality, is a decision that I’m hard pressed to explain any other way than that they’re looking for the worst numbers they can present.
It’s not even like the answers to the more accurate question were even any better for Biden. To me they look more or less the same (i.e. serious trouble for Biden). My only explanation is that a lot of these likely voters don’t know their ass from their elbow (e.g.
Oooooh
This is interesting.
Look at the question “What one issue is most important in deciding your vote this November?”
It leads off with:
… and then, way down below, is “The state of democracy/corruption” (with 6% still bucking the trend to vote for it), and “The Middle East/Israel/Palestinians” (2%).
Lo and behold, a whole lot of people voted for one of the first two options, and also tended to answer questions about how they felt about the economy overall, and whether they felt overall happy with how things were going, accordingly.
I would be interested to see how this poll was presented exactly (especially whether written or verbal, and what order for the questions), and what the numbers would be if there was a similar weight of questioning and emphasis given to “The state of democracy/corruption” as a major issue. Maybe the results would be the same. Maybe not. I’d be interested to see it.
(Edit: Someone else sussed it out better than I did; their methodology was actually much worse and more explicitly slanted than that.)
I know you’re not necessarily making this argument but you mention that the most important issue for voters includes…
In Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin the margin in 2020 was less than 2%. Michigan and Nevada were under 3%.
It’s a small number, yes, but this argument that it “won’t matter because people vote on domestic issues” ignores these thin margins, imo. It really might matter more than people think.
I didn’t go into it at any length but I think the number of people who, in the actual election, will have the Gaza war impact the way they vote is way higher than 2%. About 13% of Democrats voted “uncommitted” in the Michigan primary, which presumably they wouldn’t have done because of crime, immigration, or whatever other “non-most-important” issues according to this poll.
I think hanging out on Lemmy can give you the impression that more people overall care about Palestine than the number that actually do. But the number definitely isn’t 2%. I’m not at all saying that the real number is 2% and so it doesn’t matter; I’m saying the number is definitely higher than 2% and so this poll is random-phone-number-calling-barking-questions-at-people uninformative garbage.
Gotcha! Definitely agree about Lemmy being an echo chamber for this type of stuff but I also doubt it’s only 2%. Michigan is a good example, even if it was 2% it doesn’t mean it’s equally spread across states.
Also it would be a bit of a mistake to assume only the “most important” issue would impact voting choice, or more importantly, the choice to not vote
Yeah. That whole massive list of “most important” issues which were apparently listed out verbally to people, over the phone, by a bored call center employee, and the list’s suspicious inclusion of multiple versions of “economic issues” with suspicious particular trigger words right at the beginning (where, purely by coincidence I’m sure, a lot of people decided their most important issues were), all form part of an overall picture of big parts of this poll not really meaning anything, let alone the foofaraw that the New York Times seems to want to make it into down to the resolution of individual percentage points.