I usually wouldn’t post a diary about polling, but this is actually quite important. Typically, I’m not the sort of person who celebrates polls that make me feel good and attacks ones that don’t, as a) I tend to look at the overall average and trending in polling, as well as focusing mainly on STATE polling (which I continue to think is the only polling that matters in a general election), and b) I usually don’t believe that there’s any intentional manipulation involved (apart from purely partisan firms, of course) when it comes to the polls that *don’t* make me feel good. Additionally, 6 months before an election, most polls, honestly, are essentially irrelevant — BUT for the impact they may have in creating a *narrative*.
And the NYT/Sienna issue is becoming highly suspect.
Joe Scarborough on MSNBC completely destroyed the swing state polling by NYT/Sienna this morning — and his factual points and the ones referring to the trend in how they report them, were cogent — but more importantly, he shared quotes from multiple polling experts who are also calling out their methodology — especially of the most recent one — and in the end, he directly accuses NYT/Sienna of manipulating their results.
This really is a must-see, as Scarborough is directly accusing NYT/Sienna of creating false, outlier results that when dug into, make zero sense (“likely voters” — who have NEVER voted before is just one example) and appear designed to manipulate reality and drive a false narrative for a week in the news — as the cross tabs are so absurdly and nakedly bewildering that there appears to just be no other explanation.
Scarborough, himself saying it is one thing — but polling experts across the board, as Scarborough shows, are also tweeting a smörgåsbord of WTF’s at the NYT’s methodology.
The beginning of his rant is about the fact that the national poll from NYT/Sienna shows Biden leading by 4 points — and yet, the NYT has no articles on it or headlines to promote that result, which, in the world of social media, means it may as well not exist — but instead, has MULTIPLE articles and headlines about their absurd swing state polling — (Trump leading Biden with young voters by 27 points is….quite a pill to swallow, for example; Trump *has* gained with young voters, but if he’s leading by almost 30 points with them, I’m Captain Crunch) — which would almost make sense, considering the importance of state-by-state polling vs. national...*if* it wasn’t for the fact that they ONLY seem to promote the state polling that a) shows Trump winning and that b) have methodology problems that are not only glaringly obvious and resulting in experts calling them to the mat, but increasingly suspicious.
VIDEO IN LINK BELOW: