05

The three most active threads yesterday were all ones that I've previously discussed and will skip today. Those were the Gaza war thread, the Fairfax County murders thread, and the thread about not allowing children to attend a wedding. Yesterday's fourth most active thread, but the first that I will discuss today, was titled, "Biden’s latest Poll numbers" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. This thread was started back in January and has been more or less active since then. Apparently it was particularly active yesterday though I am not exactly sure why. As with the last several elections, polls are a source of great controversy these days. Conservatives, in particular, have long argued that polls are biased against them and a popular theory during the last two elections was that former President and current cult leader Donald Trump's poll numbers were lower than his real support because Trump supporters refused to talk to pollsters. More recently, suspicion of polls has shifted towards the left due to the belief that younger voters — who are more likely to vote for Democrats — would more likely voluntarily undergo a root canal operation than answer an unidentified caller. It is true that since the US Supreme Court ruling overturning the Roe vs. Wade decision, Democrats have out-performed the polls. The result is an almost total flip of positions regarding polls. As poll after poll shows Trump leading President Joe Biden, Republicans tout poll results as infallible and clear indications of a certain Trump victory in November. Democrats, on the other hand, warn that the polls shouldn't be taken seriously and that they don't reflect the eventual outcome. If there is one thing that does seem to be consistent with polling of the Presidential race, at least at the national level, it is that they show the election to be close at this point. One day Trump may be slightly ahead and the next day Biden is ahead by a hair. But, the Presidential election is a state-by-state election rather than a nationwide vote. In the critical battleground states, Trump has been consistently leading most of the polls. But, not to fear say Democrats. Biden still has time to build support and Trump will be hanged on his own petard due to his opposition to mail-in voting. This thread demonstrates that there are two battles going on. One to publicize favorable poll results and the other over the interpretation of those results. This creates a pattern in which partisans rush to post results of polls that support their side while simultaneously criticizing and expressing disbelief about poll results that are not favorable to them. I believe that there is a rule of thumb that you should not pay attention to opinion polls before Labor Day. If this is true, we still have several months of what is likely to be meaningless chatter in this thread.