The Midterms Are Becoming More Clear

Posted on by under Election 2022, Free Press Issues, Political commentary, Re-blogs, Social commentary, voting rights

Polls, polls, polls!!!  Everybody (myself included) is glued to the various polls, especially those with the most obnoxious candidates, such as Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, J.D. Vance, Doug Mastriano, etc.  Remember 2016 … the polls indicated that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in.  Need I say more?  One problem with polls vs outcome is that anybody and everybody can respond to a poll, but not anybody and everybody can or will vote.  Easy enough to tell that telephone pollster that you’re planning to vote for Mark Kelly, but it requires a bit more effort to actually cast a vote.  Another problem, of course, is who is polled.  It doesn’t pay to look at any specific poll, but rather look at an aggregate of the most historically reliable polls, and you might get a pretty good idea of how the nation is leaning, but you still won’t really know how many of those polled will actually make it to the polls!

Our friend TokyoSand over at Political Charge posted about this earlier today, and I thought her words well worth sharing.  Thank you, TS!!!

The Midterms Are Becoming More Clear

By TokyoSand on

In the last week or so, I’ve read probably two dozen articles or essays about what will happen in the midterms in just over 30 days. And there is finally a consensus, if you can believe it. This is what it is …

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19 thoughts on “The Midterms Are Becoming More Clear”

  1. Jill,

    The other MAJOR factor regarding so-called pseudo-reliable “ Polls” is the mere fact that it is a very, VERY tiny sampling of American voters—I’ve rarely seen any of them over several decades that poll more than 1,000 or 3,000 or even 10,000 people/voters! And how many actual registered voters are there in any one of the 50 states!? Pffffft! 🙄 smh

    How ridiculous it is to put any sort of faith/trust in any TINY poll—unless of course the polling group/company surveys AT LEAST half of our American voter population or more! Right? According to Statista Research Dept.’s numbers ** in 2020, that’s now approximately 84-million voters out of some 168-million total then! Today it is more. So… how many polls or voting surveys have EVER polled over just 1-million voters, or even 500,000??? BWAAAA! 🤣

    Liked by 1 person

      • Rather pathetic, isn’t it? You’d think, especially after the last administration, that people would have learned a lesson and take a greater interest in their future and their children’s future!

        Liked by 1 person

        • Sadly and very disturbingly Jill, I have found in my 3-4 decades of voting—at least here in Texas for some 20+ midterms and 11 Presidential elections and only about four in Mississippi—when discussing with Americans about physically getting out to vote or at least doing mail-in ballots, the reality is… people don’t want to be bothered by annoying politics and doing the research, legwork, homework necessary on each candidate and then be troubled to vote! Plain and simple. 😡

          It is incredibly sad and irritating to listen to them invent excuses not to!

          Liked by 1 person

          • One part of me wants to say, “then they deserve what they get.” But another part of me knows that they are also imposing their will, by NOT voting, on the rest of us and we do NOT deserve it! I’m beyond frustrated at this point … can you tell?

            Liked by 1 person

    • That’s a valid point, too. The polls are supposed to be a sampling, rather like when you take just one tiny bite of that cherry pie fresh from the oven and determine whether it’s tasty or yucky. But, there’s always a chance you get the one rotten cherry in the pie.

      I would also add that a lot of people, myself included, don’t bother to answer their phone if a pollster calls. My phone only accepts calls from the 5 people on my contact list, nobody else, so I’m sure I’ve missed calls from pollsters, but also from scammers and telemarketers trying to sell me prime acreage in a swamp in Louisiana! I think we need to stop relying on polls and, as Keith said, just get out and VOTE! Now, if we ever find the cure for voter apathy, then we might get somewhere!

      Liked by 1 person

  2. Jill, reporters are not mathematicians. So, they tend to report an expected result from every poll not realizing there is a range of outcomes around it. For example, the expected result is just the median result, with fifty percent on either side. The results could range as 67% of the outcomes would fall between the two “one standard deviations” assuming the distribution is normal, evenly distributed on both sides. 95% of the results fall between two standard deviations.

    The point being survey results should never be taken as exact as they are a guess. Also, some surveys are biased as they do not represent a good cut of voters. They may be overly conservative or liberal voters. Plus, the folks need to show up at the polls.

    When Hillary lost in 2016, before the James Comey announcement, she had a lead from numerous polls that placed her winning better than one standard deviation. In other words, there was at least a 67% predicted chance of her winning. Yet, after Comey shook things up, the range fell that showed Trump could win within one standard deviation even though the median still had Hillary winning. And, with Trump getting folks to stay home rather than vote for Hillary or getting them to vote for Jill Stein, the results leaned his way.

    The best thing to do is not take anything for granted as people did with Hillary. They need to get out there and vote. Keith

    Liked by 2 people

    • I fully agree with all you say. In the past, we have relied far too heavily on polls, but as you say, the way to make it happen is for all of us to get off our patooties and VOTE! An aside — I read today that the latest revelations about Herschel Walker have drawn even more support for him! The logic we once relied on seems no longer valid.

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      • Jill, the fact more or supporting Walker reveals how low my former party has fallen. Of course, the so-called party of family values also supported Donald Trump as president and he has been accused of sexual
        assault and harassment by multiple dozens of women and teen girls. Keith

        Liked by 1 person

        • Sadly, yes, it speaks volumes to how far the GOP has fallen since the days of Reagan and even Bush. Values? I laugh. They call themselves the party of ‘law & order’ and yet refuse to pass even the most sensible of gun laws. They call themselves the party of ‘individual freedom’ and yet they would take away a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body. I label them the party of hypocrisy. Sigh.

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