Playing with polls
As I mentioned previously, there are many ways to play with poll demographics in order to skew the poll towards the desired results. The easiest way is by skewing the partisan make up of the poll.
CBS has just released a new poll which is another prime example of this "technique."
In their most recent poll they show Biden leading Trump by ten points 52 to 42. In the poll there are also numerous questions ostensibly to "prepare" us for the GOP convention but in reality is meant to show how the GOP is not in line with the rest of the nation.
However when you actually look at the poll's partisan participation you find that the Democrats , In the head to head match up, they show a 11.6% advantage. As I showed previously, according to PEW's analysis of the 2016 election the actual turnout favored Democrats by four percent.
The real question here is, nationally are 11.6% more Democrats than Republicans going to vote on November 3rd? But what really has the Democrats scared is this.
Above is the make up of the relevant demographics of the CBS Poll. I have done the math for you and as you can see the CBS poll does not come close to what PEW analysis of the 2016 turn out looked like.
Suddenly there is not this giant advantage for Democrats at the polls. What happens when we apply the CBS polling (turn out) to the 2016 turn out as reported by PEW research?
Instead of that "almost" 10% lead in the CBS poll Biden now leads by only 1.6%. But even that is misleading for several reasons. I am sure you have heard by now that Hillary won the popular vote, in fact she won by 2.1%, 48%-45.9% more than that 1.6%. She actually won by 2,868,519 votes, but all of that was achieved by a lopsided wins in blue states particularly California where she won by almost 4,270,000 votes. You can argue popular vote versus electoral votes all day, but the system currently in our constitution is electoral college and in that Trump won 306-232. From an electoral standpoint that 1.6% advantage is made up of votes where it does not help them. But it's worse, and they know it.
Notice that in the CBS chart above of those important demographics that they polled 661 (70%) white voters and 273 (30%) Non-White. However, according to PEW, the 2016 electorate was 74% white, 10% Black and 10% Hispanic the other 6% being other ethnicity. Regardless whites comprised 74% of the electorate. Since Trump won the white vote by 54% to 39% that extra 4% of white votes makes a big difference.
CBS, like most polling, is using a slight of hand to hide the fact that the race is very close. For all we know Trump is ahead. Does this surprise you? If it does you have not been paying attention. Their purpose in this is the same old playbook, a stupid one. Try to discourage the right while pumping up the left. Then when it does not come out the way they predicted? Why it was the Russian of course, or the postal service or something, not them.
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