Biden and Trump tied despite debate (ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll)

[lees1975]

17. "These polls"

You mean the ones that have completely missed the mark during the primaries? Special elections? State elections? There will be apologists who buy the composite commentary and pollster accounts of their "accuracy" after the fact. But, how are they measuring the fact that a consistent 25% of Republican voters have been showing up, long after everyone else dropped out, to vote for someone other than Trump.

And what's with the very broad spread of "split ticket" polls, where Democratic senate candidates are polling 10 points or more above Biden in the same state, like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona. What's realistic is Nevada, where Rosen and Biden are polling about the same, and consistent with the way Nevada has voted over the past couple of election cycles. I'm having trouble believing that 10% of Wisconsin voters planning to support Tammy Baldwin would then turn around and vote for Trump, or that 14% of Bob Casey's supporters in Pennsylvania would do the same.

And it's been the polls that caused this tiny faction in the Democratic party to panic following the debate. They know that if it looks like a really close horserace, any irregularity will cause a panic. Frankly, I'd like the pollsters to lay out their manner of factoring to achieve their results. How do they determine that "voter enthusiasm" will cause fewer voters on the left wing to turn out than on the right? What causes a change in turning a registered voter into a "likely" voter? How does the data get gathered, and are the samples representative of the electorate, or are they skewed in some way?

This ABC/Ipsos poll, along with Emerson, Rasmussen, Marist, have an established record of overestimating Republican votes.