• ghosts [he/him]
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    151 month ago

    Not to say that polls can’t be wrong or fake, but any half-decent survey will correct for relevant demographics. Also, the law of large numbers unfortunately means that you can get a startlingly good estimate of the entire U.S. population with a random sample of like a couple hundred people.

    • I am saying the samples aren’t random. I am saying the surveys are not even half-decent.

      I am saying the system is compromised purposely to serve cultural hegemony.

      Citations Needed routinely talks about the phenomenon of using shitty polling to get a desired result for the purpose of convincing leftists that our ideas and values are uncommon and unpopular while giving cover to politicians and fascists to warehouse minorities in prisons and do imperialism.

      • ghosts [he/him]
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        1 month ago

        The methodology in the poll from the article seems half-decent to me. I just don’t find it that hard to believe that 53% of Americans approve of Trump after just electing him.

        I won’t deny the bias in selecting this poll for publication, however, because the results are a minor outlier, which usually means more clicks. The article suggests that other polls show his approval around 48%, but there is still overlap in the confidence intervals.

      • TreadOnMe [none/use name]
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        1 month ago

        I always put it like this.

        In my daily life, 90% of the time when I talk with people they, in general, agree with my politics. And this includes supposedly controversial opinions like Luigi did nothing inherently wrong. The other 10% are split into two categories, 8% of it are other leftists who disagree on multiple aspects of my particular interpretation of leftism and the other 2% are hard-core conservatives who often still agree with my diagnostics, but not my cure. Now, maybe you could argue that I am in a cloistered environment, but the district I’ve lived in has been a purple swing district for the last 4 election cycles. If anything, other places are more viewpoint cloistered.

        However, if you were to consult pollsters, you would find that my ideas are wildly unpopular and supposedly ‘extreme and radical’. Now, they would argue this is revealed preference, but I argue that most people don’t like discussing the actual particulars of their beliefs over the phone to strangers. Not only that, but surveys are pretty crap at revealing what people actually believe in.