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• Re:Heh (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 28 2019, @01:12AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 28 2019, @01:12AM (#872136)

  You aren't keeping mind how these polls are conducted. First, they poll the random people who answer calls to their (usually landline) phones from numbers they don't know and have the time to sit there and fill out said survey for $5, if anything is offered at all. Second, they will also ask questions like this: "I’m going to read a list of possible candidates for the Democratic nomination for President in 2020. As you hear each name on the list, please tell me, on a scale of one to five, that candidates chances of beating the Republican candidate if the 2020 Presidential Election were being held today? [list of names]"

  Both of those factors together work in Biden's favor due to their resulting sample and the way the question is phrased. Not to mention, the counfounders like ordering of candidates, choice fatigue, subject fatigue, and more. And that is before you get into things like push polling, unblinding and other manipulations.

  But speaking of poll questions, my all time favorite poll question is “Who is the candidate you’d rather grab a beer with?” That was used for multiple elections to try to get at likability between candidates, until G.W.B. started winning that poll question with huge margin. Even a majority of Democrats were choosing him over Gore. So the Democratic operatives famously started to make fun of the question to downplay what it is really showing (while dismissing how they themselves used it for years).

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