Polls are a Crock

I’m flabbergasted that anyone thinks that “do not vote for a liar” is an argument for voting for Trump.

Also, polls are not predictions and are not intended to be. They are simply a snapshot of what a representative group of people say.

@Jason:

those who will vote for mr. trump this time around, and also voted for him last time, have different feelings about him this time than in 2016. i voted for him in 2016 because he was not ms. clinton. i had a secret clearance in the past, and had i treated classified material like ms. clinton had, i would have been fired immediately, and may very well have faced charges under the espionage act. ms. clinton exposed *top secret* information to the internet in ~100 emails, and she didn't even have her wrist slapped. she got special treatment because of who she is. so much for equal treatment under the law; it is obviously more important that the nomenclatura get special treatment. thus, if i had thought that it would have helped defeat ms. clinton, i would have voted for a tree stump. *who* was running was of little importance.

this time around, i will be voting for mr. trump because he has appointed judges to the federal bench who believe that the constitution should be read as having the most obvious interpretation: what is actually written in it. he has also reduced federal regulations, which has saved business owners a lot of money with compliance issues. the reduction in taxes has not hurt anything, either. a more important secondary reason, however, is that the comma laharris - biden ticket represents the socialist wing of the FASCISTcrat party. fascism and communism, the two extant flavors of socialism, have been responsible for roughly 100 million deaths in the past 100 years, and no socialist country - one in which either all property is owned by the State (communism) or in which property may be owned by individuals, but only at the convenience of the State (fascism) - has ever been a free nation (nor have any of them "evolved" into a free nation). with a 100% record of horrible failure, i would once again vote for a tree stump if i thought that it would help stop (potential) mass murderers.

anybody who knows anything about statistics knows that "design of experiment" is a Big Deal. The pool of people from which U select your test subjects, the questions U ask them, the order in which U ask the questions, the time of day at which they are queried, and *lots* of other criteria are *EXTREMELY* important. thus, one can design a "suppression" poll by asking questions that cast one candidate in a good light and the other in a poor light, hoping to at least cause some test subjects to question their beliefs, and either change their support or not vote. statistically, if one "queries" enough people, one is *guaranteed* that one or both of the suppression goals will be met in some *actual* voters. more importantly, however, is whether or not the test subjects actually *do* vote, as U noted. all of the polls say that they spoke with "likely" voters, but *none* of the polls actually give *all* of the details of their experiment design. if i can't get enough information in order to replicate the poll myself (not that i would!), then i refuse to consider it relevant; *no* poll actually calls itself a suppression poll, even when it *is*.

finally, some people should avoid trying to evangelize the opposition; i am one of those people. given enough time and civil discussion, one can win an argument by presentation of facts, but one must be patient and willing to accept petulance from the one being evangelized; nobody is comfortable with seeing one's beliefs shown to be wrong. this requirement for time means that one should be a friend of the opponent, so that it is less likely that he will consider the presentation of facts as an attack (no guarantees, though!). in other words, one must work with a friend, be *very* patient, and not start evangelizing 3 days before the election; instead, one should start the day *after* the election so as to win the argument before the *next* election. i am not patient, and am also given to pitching my own hissy fits when attacked, *especially* when i have seen evidence refuting that which my opponent mistakenly believes.

on a side note, perhaps better "polls" might be those which require that the test subjects put *money* on their candidates. these are the folks that bet money on which candidate they believe will win. in these polls, there is but one question: "who do U think will win?" since few people want to lose money (other than those who are willing to *spend* it on the poll in order to distort the outcome), this type of poll might have a better chance to actually indicate the winner than the others.