No uniqueness or internal link – polling is can’t predict who will win!

[Philip, “Polling won’t tell you who will win in November, but it’s not meant to”, ]

President Biden’s reelection campaign is not going particularly smoothly, not that political campaigns ever really do. But his is particularly rough, with critics and allies suggesting that he might or will step aside to improve his party’s chances for success. Nervous Democrats look at polls and see former president Donald Trump running even or leading, and they imagine some unidentified savior who might quickly and permanently turn that around.

Speaking in New Hampshire on Monday, Biden offered one argument against that (wildly unlikely) idea: Polls aren’t reliable. Polling had changed, he claimed, and is “not nearly as capable as it was before because you’ve got to make 6 zillion calls to get one person on their cellphone.”

This is a variant on the old “they only call landlines” argument for ignoring the polls and is only slightly closer to the truth.

So let’s use the occasion of Biden’s comments to do three things. First, let’s establish that polling is an effective way to measure public opinion. Second, let’s clarify that does not mean that a poll conducted today will accurately capture who will win the presidential election. And third, let’s further clarify that even the last polls conducted before this year’s election will almost certainly show no more than who is more likely to win.

Those three things might seem contradictory, but they are not. If you use a paper map to plan your route to your destination, you’ll have a good sense of how long it will take. You should not, however, assume that it will provide you with a Google Maps-like estimate of your arrival time to the minute. It’s not real-time, for one thing, and it’s simply not designed to be as precise.