Yeah... being a numbers nerd, I was looking through the cross-tabs, and... there was really no reason to publish that poll other than they already spent money on it. The details are pretty unbelievable, and not because I don't want to believe them, but because they are unbelievable. They didn't actually do it state-by-state, the margin of error is huge, the likely voter screen is way off, the swings predicted would be way bigger than anything in recent history, they don't match up with other recent polls or midterm/special results, and - this is key - there are 5% more self-reported Rep-leaning identifiers polled and more than twice as many self-identified conservatives.
They are an excellent outfit, but everyone gets unreliable results once in a while, and - pardon the language, but it pisses me off royally that because NYT has such a readership it is going to freak out a lot of people who are not aware just how far off these results are from likely actual reality.
As I say in the psot above...Cohn and company did this to grab headlines..the journalism business business can be ruthless..here's a case of the NYT's acting like the National Enquirer.
Sell news for its schock value not its "all the truth thats fit to print" value. Shame on them.
Thank you SO MUCH for giving us the Mike Podhorzer article that says that political polls are completely useless. They are.
I am a long-time print journalist, and I have been screaming into the void about the other point he makest: The polls are not useful, and are even dangerous. And it doesn't serve citizens to cover political races like horse races. The stakes are too high.
Maybe we should turn some of our attention/energies into "lobbying" media organizations to be more responsible in their reporting. If we unleashed a raft of letters/calls/emails to news organizations pointing out how harmful and not useful this coverage is, maybe editors would think more carefully about future coverage.
I plan to send an email right to the NYT right now.
I think that's a really good idea! If you feel like posting the letter here when you're done maybe some of my other readers can adapt it and send something like it to news outlets they follow as well! Only if you feel so inclined, of course.
I've heard Nate Cohn complain on podcasts about how expensive polling is. So here is a big cost-saving tip: STOP IT!!!
For decades I have screamed into the void about covering political races as if they're the Kentucky Derby. They're not, and the stakes are too high to treat them that way. Constant stories about the polls showing who is "currently ahead" are irresponsible, not useful to voters and, well, stupid.
I'd argue such coverage is also borderline dangerous, because it:
◊ gives credibility to the Big Lie, and Trump's allegations that he is being politically persecuted (this in regards to your latest poll, published Nov. 5);
◊ doesn't account for what might and is likely to change in a year (A YEAR!);
◊ is a snapshot in time, not a voting day reality;
◊ breeds fatalism, and may discourage participation in elections
Please re-think your coverage and stop engaging in the illusion of "both-sides" journalism. Instead try serving your readers with useful stories that focus on real, consequential issues.
To all...I have written and conducted consumer polling for many years. It is very easy to create speciifc bias in poll results. Either create a bias in the partitcipant group you interview or create a bias in the questions you ask.
Nate Cohn, for what I assume was for headline grabbing reasons, created biased results using a set of Republican leaning participants. He admits this in the survey footnotes and explains he conducted algorthymic smoothing to level out the results. No one can fact check what he really did to "smoothe" the results. What a Scam!!
I would disagree with Simon Rosenberg, Robert Hubble and other who say ignore poll results. Based on performance, Biden should be up by 10 points.
The consistently negative poll results Biden has been getting, none as bad as Nate Cohn's" are an indicator that we Democrats need to double our efforts to get out the message of what a great job Biden has been doing and how the Democratic agenda is good for everyone..
Nov 6, 2023·edited Nov 6, 2023Liked by Jessica Craven
Merrill, I would really caution against you or anyone else here to adopt that line of thinking. There is no evidence that Cohn and his colleagues biased the results or did this for nefarious clickbait reasons. If you go through the crosstabs, you will see that there seem to be a lot of scrupulous efforts to make the sample as balanced as possible. The problem is that eventually you run out of ways; you can't make everything match up perfectly and you can't contact *everyone*. If you go into the details you will see a significant number of people did not vote in 2020. Among those that did, pretty much everyone indicates repeat support for the candidate they chose in 2020. What is the likelihood that someone will vote in '24 who did not in '20 or '22, even if they were registered? Not f'ing likely. Pretty much everyone who indicated a party preference said they would vote for their party's nominee. If Democrats were at a 5-point disadvantage in party preference, these wouldn't be swing states at all, now would they? No, they wouldn't.
You can do a good job, but sometimes the 3,000 people you have the budget to ask just don't give reasonable results, and eventually you just run out of ways to make it reasonable.
We cannot discount worrisome results just because we don't like them. The tied result national poll made me uncomfortable, but was worth taking at face value (and that vote showed Biden doing BETTER in the swing states than nationally - they wrote a whole article about it a few weeks ago!). Honestly ask yourself if you think Biden is doing FIFTEEN points better in Wisconsin than Nevada. No, really, sit with that. That is bigger than the difference between his 2020 performance in Wisconsin and... *checks notes* Alaska. It's impossible. Honestly ask yourself if you think Biden would get fewer votes from under-30s than seniors, despite the midterms showing that youth vote favored Democrats by almost THIRTY points? I mean, I guess nothing is impossible, but... as the kids say: Yeah, no. And people answered inconsistently: when you discount the "unlikely to vote" people, for instance, Biden moves up 5 points in Michigan (5!?!). Ahead/tied in Michigan and Wisconsin + margin of error in Pennsylvania = 270 votes in easy reach. Oh, and look over there, the supposedly gold-standard Franklin & Marshall Pennsylvania poll shows Biden up 2 points as of a few weeks ago. It's not about how any particular result *feels* to us... it is about whether you get to 270 in 12 months. Period.
P.S. Who is more likely to get to 270 votes, 1) the guy who most recently did it, or 2) the guy who has never got a majority of the vote in the necessary states, has led the party to half a decade of underperformance, and is probably going to be a convicted criminal by this time next year. America has never turned around and re-elected someone they popularly rejected, ever. So...
Your last line is the clincher. Why on earth would a majority of Americans who rejected Trump prior to the J6 insurrection, prior to all his criminal indictments, prior to large numbers of his staff and attorneys being indicted, etc., suddenly decide that this madman is presidential material and go to the polls to elect him? It just doesn’t make any sense. (A sentence that President Obama spoke repeatedly.)
I don't want in any way to change what you've just so eloquently stated about the polls and how we should feel and react toward that information. Probably because I am SUCH a worrier (are there prizes for Best Worrier somewhere, perhaps?) I've looked everywhere in my long life for comfort and one of the most successful things I encountered was the dual truth that everything changes literally moment to moment and that simultaneously; if the dark days -- like those of a 2nd Trump administration -- fall upon us we will do what people seem to instinctively do in disasters (see Rebecca Solnit: "A Paradise Built in Hell"). We will come together with people and in ways that we never envisioned, create new solutions to new problems and by doing so also solve some older ones, and in general, surprise ourselves with how we can turn a disaster into something even greater than survival. Although that is actually sometimes, enough, too. There are always surprises, and some of them are good ones!
Our teams have worked SO hard to re-elect gov Andy Beshear (D) and his super qualified down ballot executive branch team. Our GOTV effort has been huge and I knocked more doors this morning and afternoon! With 2 doors left to knock on my turf, I stepped back out of the way of traffic & fell into a leaf covered hole...sprawling onto the road, lit & phone going everywhere! Fortunately I was not hurt, other than a few scrapes and aches for this 70 year old body! BUT, the people in the cars who stopped and offered assistance and care...warmed my heart & helped me realize there are so many good people in the world. Tomorrow our group of Louisville Dem Volunteers work our magic and drive lots of people to the polls! The phone calls to the folks have been heart rending...one woman cried saying she had been forgotten by everyone...she is SO grateful to be able to be driven to cast her vote. SO, keep on doing what we do..in our little corners of the world. It matters. It makes a difference. VOTE and call/text your family/friends/neighbors and remind them that turnout is essential! Thanks for all your encouragement, communication and outstanding work, Jessica!
Wow JP this story! My God! I'm so glad you're OK, so sorry you fell, and so grateful for all you're doing. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Please be careful tomorrow but also enjoy the feeling of being an active participant in our democracy! Thanks again! If Beshear wins he'll have you to thank for it, among others.
“Channel Taylor Swift, as a Democratic influencer. At "The U" is a Taylor Swift graduate course, in a master of law in entertainment, arts and sports law program, “Intellectual Property Law Through the Lens of Taylor Swift.”
The professor calls her a genius, “I thought it would be neat and fascinating,” he said. “Here’s somebody who has obviously captured the attention of the world and to show students that there are some really interesting legal issues that she’s encountered in her career can help them understand how what they have learned is important, meaningful and relevant to what they’ll be doing in a couple of years.”
Another suggestion is to replace Harris with Newsom and make Harris AG.
Yeah... being a numbers nerd, I was looking through the cross-tabs, and... there was really no reason to publish that poll other than they already spent money on it. The details are pretty unbelievable, and not because I don't want to believe them, but because they are unbelievable. They didn't actually do it state-by-state, the margin of error is huge, the likely voter screen is way off, the swings predicted would be way bigger than anything in recent history, they don't match up with other recent polls or midterm/special results, and - this is key - there are 5% more self-reported Rep-leaning identifiers polled and more than twice as many self-identified conservatives.
They are an excellent outfit, but everyone gets unreliable results once in a while, and - pardon the language, but it pisses me off royally that because NYT has such a readership it is going to freak out a lot of people who are not aware just how far off these results are from likely actual reality.
Great points. Thanks, Will.
Hey Will,
As I say in the psot above...Cohn and company did this to grab headlines..the journalism business business can be ruthless..here's a case of the NYT's acting like the National Enquirer.
Sell news for its schock value not its "all the truth thats fit to print" value. Shame on them.
Thank you SO MUCH for giving us the Mike Podhorzer article that says that political polls are completely useless. They are.
I am a long-time print journalist, and I have been screaming into the void about the other point he makest: The polls are not useful, and are even dangerous. And it doesn't serve citizens to cover political races like horse races. The stakes are too high.
Maybe we should turn some of our attention/energies into "lobbying" media organizations to be more responsible in their reporting. If we unleashed a raft of letters/calls/emails to news organizations pointing out how harmful and not useful this coverage is, maybe editors would think more carefully about future coverage.
I plan to send an email right to the NYT right now.
Thanks for all you do.
I think that's a really good idea! If you feel like posting the letter here when you're done maybe some of my other readers can adapt it and send something like it to news outlets they follow as well! Only if you feel so inclined, of course.
Here is what I sent:
Dear Editors:
I've heard Nate Cohn complain on podcasts about how expensive polling is. So here is a big cost-saving tip: STOP IT!!!
For decades I have screamed into the void about covering political races as if they're the Kentucky Derby. They're not, and the stakes are too high to treat them that way. Constant stories about the polls showing who is "currently ahead" are irresponsible, not useful to voters and, well, stupid.
I'd argue such coverage is also borderline dangerous, because it:
◊ gives credibility to the Big Lie, and Trump's allegations that he is being politically persecuted (this in regards to your latest poll, published Nov. 5);
◊ doesn't account for what might and is likely to change in a year (A YEAR!);
◊ is a snapshot in time, not a voting day reality;
◊ breeds fatalism, and may discourage participation in elections
Please re-think your coverage and stop engaging in the illusion of "both-sides" journalism. Instead try serving your readers with useful stories that focus on real, consequential issues.
Excellent, thank you!
To all...I have written and conducted consumer polling for many years. It is very easy to create speciifc bias in poll results. Either create a bias in the partitcipant group you interview or create a bias in the questions you ask.
Nate Cohn, for what I assume was for headline grabbing reasons, created biased results using a set of Republican leaning participants. He admits this in the survey footnotes and explains he conducted algorthymic smoothing to level out the results. No one can fact check what he really did to "smoothe" the results. What a Scam!!
I would disagree with Simon Rosenberg, Robert Hubble and other who say ignore poll results. Based on performance, Biden should be up by 10 points.
The consistently negative poll results Biden has been getting, none as bad as Nate Cohn's" are an indicator that we Democrats need to double our efforts to get out the message of what a great job Biden has been doing and how the Democratic agenda is good for everyone..
I agree that we have do better on messaging. I will keep including "Spread the Word" items and hopefully people will, well, spread them!
Merrill, I would really caution against you or anyone else here to adopt that line of thinking. There is no evidence that Cohn and his colleagues biased the results or did this for nefarious clickbait reasons. If you go through the crosstabs, you will see that there seem to be a lot of scrupulous efforts to make the sample as balanced as possible. The problem is that eventually you run out of ways; you can't make everything match up perfectly and you can't contact *everyone*. If you go into the details you will see a significant number of people did not vote in 2020. Among those that did, pretty much everyone indicates repeat support for the candidate they chose in 2020. What is the likelihood that someone will vote in '24 who did not in '20 or '22, even if they were registered? Not f'ing likely. Pretty much everyone who indicated a party preference said they would vote for their party's nominee. If Democrats were at a 5-point disadvantage in party preference, these wouldn't be swing states at all, now would they? No, they wouldn't.
You can do a good job, but sometimes the 3,000 people you have the budget to ask just don't give reasonable results, and eventually you just run out of ways to make it reasonable.
We cannot discount worrisome results just because we don't like them. The tied result national poll made me uncomfortable, but was worth taking at face value (and that vote showed Biden doing BETTER in the swing states than nationally - they wrote a whole article about it a few weeks ago!). Honestly ask yourself if you think Biden is doing FIFTEEN points better in Wisconsin than Nevada. No, really, sit with that. That is bigger than the difference between his 2020 performance in Wisconsin and... *checks notes* Alaska. It's impossible. Honestly ask yourself if you think Biden would get fewer votes from under-30s than seniors, despite the midterms showing that youth vote favored Democrats by almost THIRTY points? I mean, I guess nothing is impossible, but... as the kids say: Yeah, no. And people answered inconsistently: when you discount the "unlikely to vote" people, for instance, Biden moves up 5 points in Michigan (5!?!). Ahead/tied in Michigan and Wisconsin + margin of error in Pennsylvania = 270 votes in easy reach. Oh, and look over there, the supposedly gold-standard Franklin & Marshall Pennsylvania poll shows Biden up 2 points as of a few weeks ago. It's not about how any particular result *feels* to us... it is about whether you get to 270 in 12 months. Period.
P.S. Who is more likely to get to 270 votes, 1) the guy who most recently did it, or 2) the guy who has never got a majority of the vote in the necessary states, has led the party to half a decade of underperformance, and is probably going to be a convicted criminal by this time next year. America has never turned around and re-elected someone they popularly rejected, ever. So...
Wow. This deserves its own post. Thanks for it!
Your last line is the clincher. Why on earth would a majority of Americans who rejected Trump prior to the J6 insurrection, prior to all his criminal indictments, prior to large numbers of his staff and attorneys being indicted, etc., suddenly decide that this madman is presidential material and go to the polls to elect him? It just doesn’t make any sense. (A sentence that President Obama spoke repeatedly.)
I don't want in any way to change what you've just so eloquently stated about the polls and how we should feel and react toward that information. Probably because I am SUCH a worrier (are there prizes for Best Worrier somewhere, perhaps?) I've looked everywhere in my long life for comfort and one of the most successful things I encountered was the dual truth that everything changes literally moment to moment and that simultaneously; if the dark days -- like those of a 2nd Trump administration -- fall upon us we will do what people seem to instinctively do in disasters (see Rebecca Solnit: "A Paradise Built in Hell"). We will come together with people and in ways that we never envisioned, create new solutions to new problems and by doing so also solve some older ones, and in general, surprise ourselves with how we can turn a disaster into something even greater than survival. Although that is actually sometimes, enough, too. There are always surprises, and some of them are good ones!
Beautifully said!
Thank you. I really enjoy and depend on your newsletter. It's basically a Happy Place. :)
Thanks again for the Mike Podhorzer post suggestion. I found it in your comment on Hubbell’s post today.
Mike P is well worth reading.
He really is.
Thanks for including a call-to-action re: Gaza. I know it's been difficult to speak out on this w/out being misinterpreted or reprimanded.
I feel at this point that I’ve done enough research and enough listening and enough studying to at least say this much with confidence.
Hi Jessica from Kentucky!
Our teams have worked SO hard to re-elect gov Andy Beshear (D) and his super qualified down ballot executive branch team. Our GOTV effort has been huge and I knocked more doors this morning and afternoon! With 2 doors left to knock on my turf, I stepped back out of the way of traffic & fell into a leaf covered hole...sprawling onto the road, lit & phone going everywhere! Fortunately I was not hurt, other than a few scrapes and aches for this 70 year old body! BUT, the people in the cars who stopped and offered assistance and care...warmed my heart & helped me realize there are so many good people in the world. Tomorrow our group of Louisville Dem Volunteers work our magic and drive lots of people to the polls! The phone calls to the folks have been heart rending...one woman cried saying she had been forgotten by everyone...she is SO grateful to be able to be driven to cast her vote. SO, keep on doing what we do..in our little corners of the world. It matters. It makes a difference. VOTE and call/text your family/friends/neighbors and remind them that turnout is essential! Thanks for all your encouragement, communication and outstanding work, Jessica!
Wow JP this story! My God! I'm so glad you're OK, so sorry you fell, and so grateful for all you're doing. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Please be careful tomorrow but also enjoy the feeling of being an active participant in our democracy! Thanks again! If Beshear wins he'll have you to thank for it, among others.
Thank you Jessica, I reposted your WIC call to action today in Healthcare Advocacy. https://open.substack.com/pub/healthcarereformau/p/healthcare-good-news?r=1n82x4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Daniel Solomon of Substack.com said:
“Channel Taylor Swift, as a Democratic influencer. At "The U" is a Taylor Swift graduate course, in a master of law in entertainment, arts and sports law program, “Intellectual Property Law Through the Lens of Taylor Swift.”
The professor calls her a genius, “I thought it would be neat and fascinating,” he said. “Here’s somebody who has obviously captured the attention of the world and to show students that there are some really interesting legal issues that she’s encountered in her career can help them understand how what they have learned is important, meaningful and relevant to what they’ll be doing in a couple of years.”
Another suggestion is to replace Harris with Newsom and make Harris AG.