Before it gets too late, and this is on subject, I sent this to <editorial@nytimes.com> when I sent them the intro to Lucien Truscott's piece earlier today. You all might understand :
As a long time paying subscriber, I demand a truthful and unbiased publication of issues that impact our nation, from "The Newspaper of Record".
Your current publication of "news" is a disgrace. The evidence of such is well presented by our esteemed Lucien Trusctt IV in the attached excerpt below. It must be required reading by ALL on your editorial staff. With so many of your subscribers bailing on you, you might reconsider your overt bias.
I dropped by subscription to the NY Times many months ago. Every day, I receive a "limited time" email offer to renew my subscription for $50 for the first year. I think the regular subscription rate for the digital edition is what $6 or $7 per week?
I am getting a whole lot more value being a paid subscriber to Robert's newsletter!! (Full disclosure: I am not a New Yorker and I am not addicted to the NY Times crossword puzzle).
The article that should be top of the page should be Is Trump Broke? Donald Trump, Seeking Cash Infusion, Meets With Elon Musk: It’s not clear whether Mr. Musk will spend any of his billions on the former president’s behalf. If he does, he could erase Mr. Trump’s financial disadvantage in the 2024 race. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/us/politics/trump-elon-musk.html
I applaud you. I think letters like yours, saying as “a paying subscriber, I demand a truthful and unbiased publication of issues...,” can be far more effective than folks just canceling their subscriptions. Cancellations likely only cause a shoulder shrug. Hundreds (thousands?) of subscribers demanding truthful journalism might have a better chance of instigating conversation in the editorial boardroom. I hope more will follow your example.
Simple, clear, and uncompromising, Ransom. You and others of us may be just throwing notes over the walls of the castles of power. But someone will pick them up and read them. Thanks.
Hopefully the NYT and other news media will reconsider and reduce (or remove entirely!) their obvious bias in their coverage of President Biden, based on what might be the best part of your newsletter tonight:
"Here's the point: When you have voices like CNN, Elliot Kirschner, and Lucian Truscott beating the drum about the bias at the Times, other media outlets will notice and pursue the story. That’s good because it may change the unfair coverage of Biden.
But here’s the real point: This story has legs because of you. You raised your voices, wrote to the Times, posted on social media, and republished and shared this newsletter (and others like Lucian Truscott’s and Simon Rosenberg’s). Keep it up! You are making a difference!"
Hey Janice, Lucien Truscott dug deep on this earlier todaya nd credited Robert too. I sent the intro of it to editorial@nytimes.com and shared my cover letter, above.
"Here's the point: [ . . .] You raised your voices, wrote to the Times, posted on social media, and republished and shared this newsletter (and others like Lucian Truscott’s and Simon Rosenberg’s). Keep it up! You are making a difference!"
I partially agree but the story has legs because first it’s true and accurate and other news platforms with a larger audience than the NYT has made it a point to share their opinions.
You are serving your readers a very biased version of what you've decided is "news", and in the process violating a cardinal rule of Journalism 101: you are not in the business of creating news, you are in the business of reporting it.
The "poll" you created and then placed on your front page for 3 days is not news; it is something you developed and then magnified as front page news while ignoring both the significant work and leadership President Biden is accomplishing and the deranged ramblings of the insurrectionist GOP candidate. Your ceaseless fixation on Joe Biden's age - which has not in any way affected his ability to be the most productive, bi-partisan, hard-working and effective president in the past century - and your bias towards a criminal and traitor whose personal, business and political corruption is blatantly obvious to anyone looking at the facts, has distorted the "news" you publish, and reduced your once-respected paper to laughingstock among serious, thoughtful and honest people here and abroad.
Polls are meaningless when they constitute surface framing without context; they are just "spin" which hides the truth, deceives people and manipulates public opinion. You should be better than that - professionally, ethically, and on principle.
Is there a hidden agenda we don't (yet) know about? Are your professionals incapable of parsing the facts that one candidate represents responsibility, experience, real political skills, authenticity, ethics, principled leadership, justice, compassion, good will, and a commitment to govern fairly for all Americans, while the other represents dishonesty, self-serving corruption, cronyism, ignorance, lies, vengeance, a lust for unrestricted power, and an openly-stated intention to replace democracy with dictatorship?
You have lost the trust of many of your once-loyal readers like me (since 1966). Take a long, hard look at what you are trading away for a few shiny trinkets of click-bait.
I am guessing that the reason Biden performed worse than Obama in Vermont, is that a lot of people who will vote Democrat in the General election voted Republican for Nikki Haley. Biden is the man. If he can't do it, no one can! Save our nation and our planet from the destruction that Treacherous-treasonous-traitor-Trump wreaks on everything and everyone. A vote for T-T-T-T is a vote for Putin and his allies. A vote for T-T-T-T ensures that whatever natural resources we have will be sold to the Saudi's so that he can line T-T-T-T's pockets while the rest of us suffer.
Yes, a friend of mine in Massachusetts who is a Democrat crossed-over and voted for Haley. But she will be voting for Biden in the fall. I bet there are many like her!
So does VA have open primaries or is it just that unaffilliated voters who can chose which primary, like here in NC?
Unlike many other states, we do not have a seperate primary for down ballot races in presidential years - we used to have our primary later in the year (usually well after the presidential candidate was decided). Switching back and forth with your primary ballot is therefore more problematical.
Cheryl, what happened yesterday was I was asked which ballot I wanted, Democratic or Republican. I don't remember being asked that in the past, but granted my memory can be faulty. We will be having a separate primary in June for the down ballot.
So A. G. Sulzgerger, who is in his position as publisher of the New York Times solely as a result of his genes, is now doubling down on his imitation of Fox news -- whatever gives me clicks and views -- to salve his wounded ego after being challenged. End of Gray Lady if their subscrbers exercise their "votes" and unsubscribe. With a reduction in income from subscribers, their greater problem is with what they can charge advertisers for lower reach. A citadel crumbling as a result of ego.
It’s not Sulzberger alone it’s the Editorial Board and their newsworthy policies and to be fair and balanced they have had numerous comments about the fitness of Trump. The best come from Robert’s quote about the NYT should report the news not be making it.
Remember, all, how a NYT top editor was hounded out of the Times (I forget the details) because he tried to insist on as close to “objectivity” as possible.
Three random thoughts this morning: (1) thanks to the efforts of my friends in Tennessee, Jan and Marcy for getting Blue Tennessee off the ground, (2) will the insufferable Dean Phillips finally end his campaign, (3) Heather’s Herd has already registered in the Grassroots Directory.
"The Times has learned nothing from its history of giving Trump an assist in winning the 2016 election by obsessing over a non-story." They actually learned a lot, not much of it worthy of a news organization, but very valuable to a pulp publisher that is only in it for the money. The primary lesson is that controversy sells and if there is no controversy, creating some will sell papers and generate coverage.
On a related topic, Dan Rather, in his Substack post Steady, wrote on this topic yesterday too. The word, as you point out, is spreading.
Taylor Swift(to 282 mill on Instagram): “I wanted to remind you guys to vote the people who most represent YOU into power,” .“If you haven’t already, make a plan to vote today.”💃
When hearing about Taylor Swift posting to her 282 million followers on Instagram, I realized that in the 2020 election, there were only 150+ million people who voted. Granted, I don't know how many of the 282 million swfitees were eligible U.S. voters. But still!
There are about 24 million teenagers in the US. She has 282 million followers, so I think it is likely that most of her fans are adults. (The total includes non-US followers, so I can't say for sure.)
Per Morning Consult, about 44% of her fans are US millenials (ages 25-40) with 50% Dems, 25% Independent and 25% Republican.
Many are, though. I'd say most of her fans are in the 18-35 range. She endorsed Biden in 2020, but it went under the radar. It won't this time, so I suspect she’s being advised to hold off until fall, when it will have more impact.
A headline that made me happy this morning in Vermont: "Nikki Haley wins Vermont, the first state to spurn Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary. President Joe Biden easily prevailed in the state’s Democratic primary." NYT should have lead with that article!
Tomorrow Joe Biden will tell us the State of the Nation. Biden’s message should be simple and clear. Democratic policies have been successful and are supported by a vast majority of the American people. America is stronger today.
Americans are better off now.
The corrupt Trump Supreme Court has taken away rights from Americans that Democrats will restore.
The Republican Party is run by a wannabee dictator who’s a dangerous unfit rapist.
What's especially maddening about these polls is how all of them purport to be accurate with "margins of error" in low single digits. Nevertheless, different polls asking essentially the same question have wildly different results.
For example, the following are two excerpts from this morning's (March 5) Washington Monthly newsletter:
1). "When the NYT pollsters asked "how would you rate economic conditions today," 51 percent said "poor." Only 26 percent said "excellent" or "good."
2) "For example, in a Wall Street Journal poll released this weekend, 38 percent said the economy was either "excellent" or "good."
---Okay, so is it 26% or 38% who think the economy is excellent/good?
The NYT/Sienna poll made me so crazy that I spent a few hours analyzing it on Monday. I probably shouldn't have bothered, as I've since seen others point out the same things I found, but the bottom line is that it simply doesn't hold water. It’s inconsistent with their own damned data from earlier polls! Then Nate Cohn has the cajones to call people calling these inconsistencies out “crosstab warriors.” I am angry as someone who used to live and breathe polling data. The fact that it has Biden tied with Trump among women in our post-Roe world is enough to disqualify it, but the NYT presents these results unironically.
I don't think we can or should ignore the polls; we have to be acutely aware of what they're getting wrong to understand the media narrative and combat it. The NYT has milked a flawed poll for five days, Nate Silver has devoted an entire Substack piece highlighting “Democratic denialism” as it pertains to polling, and I've yet to have a conversation about the 2024 election where polling isn't used as an argument that Biden is a weak candidate. We ignore the polls at our peril; we must know them to fight narratives based on them.
We can’t ignore them true but we also can’t believe them either and frankly the voters we need are not big poll watchers. People on Election Day vote their feelings first and we need to make them feel good about Biden. It’s easy not to feel good about Trump.
I agree, and trust me, I don't believe the current narrative is based on these polls. You have to understand, though, that I worked in polling, and I believe in predictive numbers in general, but political polling is broken, and it's still being used to shape a flawed view. To see Nate Silver, a man I used to idolize, write an entire column on Democratic denialism breaks my heart. It also strengthens my resolve to highlight the flaws in the media coverage.
I question the use of the word "only." What purpose does it have in that sentence? If the NYT was truly as good as it purports to be, the use of adjectives would be forbidden and just the facts reported. Giving front page coverage to a nothing burger like a poll of less than 1,000 people, with over representation by one party and by rural voters ((who answer unknown callers on their phones) is just a small part of that paper's problem. I'm so glad to see attention given to an organization whose purpose apparently now is to make news and then report what it creates out of thin air. That's why I canceled my subscription months ago. I don't waste my time or money on tabloids.
Ellen, I completely agree with you about the New York Times coverage of this and similar polls.
But for the record, the two excerpts quoted in my comment are from the Washington Monthly newsletter, written by Bill Scher. He was criticizing the NYT poll, and the word "only" is his. The sentence following what I quoted clarifies the point he's making :
"When the NYT pollsters asked 'how would you rate economic conditions today,' 51 percent said 'poor.' Only 26 percent said 'excellent' or 'good.' As a Washington Monthly reader, you know this is simply not true."
The margin of error is purely an artifact of the sample size and has nothing to do with accuracy or quality of the questions. All it tells you is that IF the difference in the poll numbers is smaller than the margin of error, the results should be interpreted as NOT statistically different -THAT IS IT!
And with views on the economy as polarized as they are, differences in the mix of Dems/Rep/Indep makes a huge difference in the overall results.
Check out the polling section in this Hopium post from yesterday:
Hi, Cheryl. Thanks for the explanation, which is what I have been told by economists with training in polling. But the issue of the sample is different. Rural voters were over-represented by 100%--a Trump stronghold of support. The Times claims that it adjusted the numbers to re-weight the sample sizes to conform to the actual percentage of the population for rural voters. It did the same thing for Republicans, Democrats, Blacks, Latinos, men, women, etc. After all of that adjusting, we are seeing an idealized representation of a cohort that the Times SHOULD HAVE interviewed, but did not.
Exacty - I'm a statistician by training and one of the first rules of samping is that it must be representative of the population There are aways lurking variables that correlate with the cross tab variables like gender, age etc. Back in 2020, I saw an exit poll anaysis which I wished I'd saved - it incuded a yes/no question about identifying as an "Evangelical Christian" When sliced on that variable, the gender gap for Trump vs Biden practically disappeared!
When you get whacky results like women are more likely to vote for Trump post Dobbs, it pretty much invaidates the entire poll IMO! Garbage In, garbage out!
"So, to sum up, the pollsters are using the 1% “weirdos” who bother to complete polls, whom they know are political extremists, to create datasets and publish polls that are way, way off, creating totally false narratives and expectations.
Pollsters can’t be too openly critical of their own industry because that would put them out of a job. But these polls are so useless and wrong that the public is actually worse off from being told about them at all."
Jay makes a very important point. The 4% margin of error applies to respondents "who completed the survey." If you look at the survey, it is extensive. I couldn't find the number who completed vs the number who only partially completed but were included in some responses.
Some hopeful news from Texas. US Congressman Collin Allred easily won his US Senate Democratic primary without a run off. Pay attention to him.
He won his current position by beating a 20 year Republican congressman in the Dallas area.
He is an attorney who practiced civil rights law. He played football at Baylor and in the NFL. He comes across as calm, smart, likable and humbly sure of himself. If he can beat Ted Cruz, he could be the next Democratic candidate for President. I just sent him the maximum individual contribution amount, the first time I have ever done that. Collin Allred. Pay attention to this fellow.
I’ve gone to his website a few times and listened to his videos. He is outstanding, and to rid ourselves of Ted Cruz would be a huge blessing. I made a contribution previously, and will do so again soon. He is truly impressive.
I’m not going to invest a lot of energy and time in analyzing the Super Tuesday results and meaning. The reality people will see what they want to see and believe what is convenient for them. What I do know is I am hearing more voices from Republicans who voted for Nikki Haley and will not vote for Trump. I’m not a political analysis but it feels like the support for Trump among Republicans is slowly eroding away and Trump will never be any better than he is right now while Biden has the opportunity to deliver more for the American people. The election will still be close and a fight till the end but we have dedicated believers and workers like you and we need to continue to work and deliver results in November. We are in this together.
A couple of days ago I submitted a comment to NYT that was only a critical analysis of how they cover politics. It finished with, “Editors, heal thyselves.” To my surprise, it was published. A straw in the wind, but perhaps things are changing there.
Before it gets too late, and this is on subject, I sent this to <editorial@nytimes.com> when I sent them the intro to Lucien Truscott's piece earlier today. You all might understand :
to: editorial@nytimes.com
Dear Experts,
As a long time paying subscriber, I demand a truthful and unbiased publication of issues that impact our nation, from "The Newspaper of Record".
Your current publication of "news" is a disgrace. The evidence of such is well presented by our esteemed Lucien Trusctt IV in the attached excerpt below. It must be required reading by ALL on your editorial staff. With so many of your subscribers bailing on you, you might reconsider your overt bias.
Yours,
Ransom W. Rideout Jr.
I dropped by subscription to the NY Times many months ago. Every day, I receive a "limited time" email offer to renew my subscription for $50 for the first year. I think the regular subscription rate for the digital edition is what $6 or $7 per week?
I am getting a whole lot more value being a paid subscriber to Robert's newsletter!! (Full disclosure: I am not a New Yorker and I am not addicted to the NY Times crossword puzzle).
The cooking section is pretty good.
That was my only regret in dropping it.
I too weighed the value and choose to support Robert
The article that should be top of the page should be Is Trump Broke? Donald Trump, Seeking Cash Infusion, Meets With Elon Musk: It’s not clear whether Mr. Musk will spend any of his billions on the former president’s behalf. If he does, he could erase Mr. Trump’s financial disadvantage in the 2024 race. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/us/politics/trump-elon-musk.html
Elon Musk is a despicable man-child. Full stop.
A few billion here or there, no biggy
Americans !!! Boycott Musk
I applaud you. I think letters like yours, saying as “a paying subscriber, I demand a truthful and unbiased publication of issues...,” can be far more effective than folks just canceling their subscriptions. Cancellations likely only cause a shoulder shrug. Hundreds (thousands?) of subscribers demanding truthful journalism might have a better chance of instigating conversation in the editorial boardroom. I hope more will follow your example.
In my next email to the NYT, which I'll send in a couple days, I'll follow your advice to demand unbiased coverage.
I'm in.
I shall not pay to protest. Intercourse the NYT
Simple, clear, and uncompromising, Ransom. You and others of us may be just throwing notes over the walls of the castles of power. But someone will pick them up and read them. Thanks.
I hope they read Truscott who is a respected experienced journalists who knows the ins and outs of publishing. We all need to share his comments.
Done - thank you Ransom sent letter to NYT Editorial Board - again.
Thanks to your inspiration, I, too, wrote my piece as a “60+ year subscriber.”
Thank you! You inspired me to write something similar.
I sent a letter some weeks ago, and just sent another.
Huzzah, Ransom!! Thank you so much for stepping up!!
Hopefully the NYT and other news media will reconsider and reduce (or remove entirely!) their obvious bias in their coverage of President Biden, based on what might be the best part of your newsletter tonight:
"Here's the point: When you have voices like CNN, Elliot Kirschner, and Lucian Truscott beating the drum about the bias at the Times, other media outlets will notice and pursue the story. That’s good because it may change the unfair coverage of Biden.
But here’s the real point: This story has legs because of you. You raised your voices, wrote to the Times, posted on social media, and republished and shared this newsletter (and others like Lucian Truscott’s and Simon Rosenberg’s). Keep it up! You are making a difference!"
Hey Janice, Lucien Truscott dug deep on this earlier todaya nd credited Robert too. I sent the intro of it to editorial@nytimes.com and shared my cover letter, above.
uh, yes. I was quoting Robert.
"Here's the point: [ . . .] You raised your voices, wrote to the Times, posted on social media, and republished and shared this newsletter (and others like Lucian Truscott’s and Simon Rosenberg’s). Keep it up! You are making a difference!"
Also, I liked your discussion of transitioning to JustRaven the other night. Sorry, I should have left Janice alone.
I missed the discussion about JJ transitioning to JR. What's the scoop?
Yes, understood. When I hit Post, your comment popped up.
I partially agree but the story has legs because first it’s true and accurate and other news platforms with a larger audience than the NYT has made it a point to share their opinions.
Another great newsletter- thank you, Robert!
Here's what I sent the NYTimes today:
To the Editors at NYTimes:
You are serving your readers a very biased version of what you've decided is "news", and in the process violating a cardinal rule of Journalism 101: you are not in the business of creating news, you are in the business of reporting it.
The "poll" you created and then placed on your front page for 3 days is not news; it is something you developed and then magnified as front page news while ignoring both the significant work and leadership President Biden is accomplishing and the deranged ramblings of the insurrectionist GOP candidate. Your ceaseless fixation on Joe Biden's age - which has not in any way affected his ability to be the most productive, bi-partisan, hard-working and effective president in the past century - and your bias towards a criminal and traitor whose personal, business and political corruption is blatantly obvious to anyone looking at the facts, has distorted the "news" you publish, and reduced your once-respected paper to laughingstock among serious, thoughtful and honest people here and abroad.
Polls are meaningless when they constitute surface framing without context; they are just "spin" which hides the truth, deceives people and manipulates public opinion. You should be better than that - professionally, ethically, and on principle.
Is there a hidden agenda we don't (yet) know about? Are your professionals incapable of parsing the facts that one candidate represents responsibility, experience, real political skills, authenticity, ethics, principled leadership, justice, compassion, good will, and a commitment to govern fairly for all Americans, while the other represents dishonesty, self-serving corruption, cronyism, ignorance, lies, vengeance, a lust for unrestricted power, and an openly-stated intention to replace democracy with dictatorship?
You have lost the trust of many of your once-loyal readers like me (since 1966). Take a long, hard look at what you are trading away for a few shiny trinkets of click-bait.
Yours-
Beautifully written. The NYT should hire YOU! Nah, your standards are too high.
🙏🏻
Excellent letter!! May I use some of your thoughts in my letter to the NYT?
Sure - use anything that helps!
Spectacular!! Thank you for this splendid work!
I am guessing that the reason Biden performed worse than Obama in Vermont, is that a lot of people who will vote Democrat in the General election voted Republican for Nikki Haley. Biden is the man. If he can't do it, no one can! Save our nation and our planet from the destruction that Treacherous-treasonous-traitor-Trump wreaks on everything and everyone. A vote for T-T-T-T is a vote for Putin and his allies. A vote for T-T-T-T ensures that whatever natural resources we have will be sold to the Saudi's so that he can line T-T-T-T's pockets while the rest of us suffer.
Yes, a friend of mine in Massachusetts who is a Democrat crossed-over and voted for Haley. But she will be voting for Biden in the fall. I bet there are many like her!
I was tempted to do that in Virginia, but decided to stick with voting for Biden. I called it a confidence vote.
So does VA have open primaries or is it just that unaffilliated voters who can chose which primary, like here in NC?
Unlike many other states, we do not have a seperate primary for down ballot races in presidential years - we used to have our primary later in the year (usually well after the presidential candidate was decided). Switching back and forth with your primary ballot is therefore more problematical.
Cheryl, what happened yesterday was I was asked which ballot I wanted, Democratic or Republican. I don't remember being asked that in the past, but granted my memory can be faulty. We will be having a separate primary in June for the down ballot.
I read someone else discussing doing that. Biden is a shoe-in most places, other than in American Samoa. Jason Palmer sounds like creep. It sounds like he does not live there, so what is his point? https://apnews.com/article/who-is-jason-palmer-american-samoa-primary-c4bc109a16c7ee7b083f6216b44ba0c4
Also, that is a super low turnout given that there are around 50,000 residents. So, wonder what is going on there. https://www.electionguide.org/countries/id/5/
Very nice use of alliteration.
How about T4?
I had been calling him Q-T as in quadruple T, but I felt I could not put it without an explainer, so I have just been spelling it out.
So A. G. Sulzgerger, who is in his position as publisher of the New York Times solely as a result of his genes, is now doubling down on his imitation of Fox news -- whatever gives me clicks and views -- to salve his wounded ego after being challenged. End of Gray Lady if their subscrbers exercise their "votes" and unsubscribe. With a reduction in income from subscribers, their greater problem is with what they can charge advertisers for lower reach. A citadel crumbling as a result of ego.
It’s not Sulzberger alone it’s the Editorial Board and their newsworthy policies and to be fair and balanced they have had numerous comments about the fitness of Trump. The best come from Robert’s quote about the NYT should report the news not be making it.
Remember, all, how a NYT top editor was hounded out of the Times (I forget the details) because he tried to insist on as close to “objectivity” as possible.
Three random thoughts this morning: (1) thanks to the efforts of my friends in Tennessee, Jan and Marcy for getting Blue Tennessee off the ground, (2) will the insufferable Dean Phillips finally end his campaign, (3) Heather’s Herd has already registered in the Grassroots Directory.
"The Times has learned nothing from its history of giving Trump an assist in winning the 2016 election by obsessing over a non-story." They actually learned a lot, not much of it worthy of a news organization, but very valuable to a pulp publisher that is only in it for the money. The primary lesson is that controversy sells and if there is no controversy, creating some will sell papers and generate coverage.
On a related topic, Dan Rather, in his Substack post Steady, wrote on this topic yesterday too. The word, as you point out, is spreading.
Thanks for the reference to Dan Rather.
The word is spreading but the damage has been done and thankfully most voters don’t read the NYT
Glad to see you call out the NYT. I canceled my subscription in protest of their biased reporting. I hope others will do the same.
Robert:A strong Super Tuesday for Biden
NYT:Democrats bruised Biden-again
Taylor Swift(to 282 mill on Instagram): “I wanted to remind you guys to vote the people who most represent YOU into power,” .“If you haven’t already, make a plan to vote today.”💃
Faux News:🤯🤯🤯🤯
Thanks, Robert for helping to keep me sane!
💙
When hearing about Taylor Swift posting to her 282 million followers on Instagram, I realized that in the 2020 election, there were only 150+ million people who voted. Granted, I don't know how many of the 282 million swfitees were eligible U.S. voters. But still!
Many Swift fans are not of voting age but they can nag their parents to go register.
There are about 24 million teenagers in the US. She has 282 million followers, so I think it is likely that most of her fans are adults. (The total includes non-US followers, so I can't say for sure.)
Per Morning Consult, about 44% of her fans are US millenials (ages 25-40) with 50% Dems, 25% Independent and 25% Republican.
Proud senior Swiftie here.!🤣👩🏻🦳
Many are, though. I'd say most of her fans are in the 18-35 range. She endorsed Biden in 2020, but it went under the radar. It won't this time, so I suspect she’s being advised to hold off until fall, when it will have more impact.
Dean, you are right. Per Morning Consult, about 45% of her fans are millenials.
Many of them are overseas.
A headline that made me happy this morning in Vermont: "Nikki Haley wins Vermont, the first state to spurn Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary. President Joe Biden easily prevailed in the state’s Democratic primary." NYT should have lead with that article!
Tomorrow Joe Biden will tell us the State of the Nation. Biden’s message should be simple and clear. Democratic policies have been successful and are supported by a vast majority of the American people. America is stronger today.
Americans are better off now.
The corrupt Trump Supreme Court has taken away rights from Americans that Democrats will restore.
The Republican Party is run by a wannabee dictator who’s a dangerous unfit rapist.
What's especially maddening about these polls is how all of them purport to be accurate with "margins of error" in low single digits. Nevertheless, different polls asking essentially the same question have wildly different results.
For example, the following are two excerpts from this morning's (March 5) Washington Monthly newsletter:
1). "When the NYT pollsters asked "how would you rate economic conditions today," 51 percent said "poor." Only 26 percent said "excellent" or "good."
2) "For example, in a Wall Street Journal poll released this weekend, 38 percent said the economy was either "excellent" or "good."
---Okay, so is it 26% or 38% who think the economy is excellent/good?
.
The NYT/Sienna poll made me so crazy that I spent a few hours analyzing it on Monday. I probably shouldn't have bothered, as I've since seen others point out the same things I found, but the bottom line is that it simply doesn't hold water. It’s inconsistent with their own damned data from earlier polls! Then Nate Cohn has the cajones to call people calling these inconsistencies out “crosstab warriors.” I am angry as someone who used to live and breathe polling data. The fact that it has Biden tied with Trump among women in our post-Roe world is enough to disqualify it, but the NYT presents these results unironically.
Dean ignore the polls and news and only listen to Stuart Rosenberg
I don't think we can or should ignore the polls; we have to be acutely aware of what they're getting wrong to understand the media narrative and combat it. The NYT has milked a flawed poll for five days, Nate Silver has devoted an entire Substack piece highlighting “Democratic denialism” as it pertains to polling, and I've yet to have a conversation about the 2024 election where polling isn't used as an argument that Biden is a weak candidate. We ignore the polls at our peril; we must know them to fight narratives based on them.
We can’t ignore them true but we also can’t believe them either and frankly the voters we need are not big poll watchers. People on Election Day vote their feelings first and we need to make them feel good about Biden. It’s easy not to feel good about Trump.
I agree, and trust me, I don't believe the current narrative is based on these polls. You have to understand, though, that I worked in polling, and I believe in predictive numbers in general, but political polling is broken, and it's still being used to shape a flawed view. To see Nate Silver, a man I used to idolize, write an entire column on Democratic denialism breaks my heart. It also strengthens my resolve to highlight the flaws in the media coverage.
This should read “I don't believe the current narrative based on these polls.”
I question the use of the word "only." What purpose does it have in that sentence? If the NYT was truly as good as it purports to be, the use of adjectives would be forbidden and just the facts reported. Giving front page coverage to a nothing burger like a poll of less than 1,000 people, with over representation by one party and by rural voters ((who answer unknown callers on their phones) is just a small part of that paper's problem. I'm so glad to see attention given to an organization whose purpose apparently now is to make news and then report what it creates out of thin air. That's why I canceled my subscription months ago. I don't waste my time or money on tabloids.
Ellen, I completely agree with you about the New York Times coverage of this and similar polls.
But for the record, the two excerpts quoted in my comment are from the Washington Monthly newsletter, written by Bill Scher. He was criticizing the NYT poll, and the word "only" is his. The sentence following what I quoted clarifies the point he's making :
"When the NYT pollsters asked 'how would you rate economic conditions today,' 51 percent said 'poor.' Only 26 percent said 'excellent' or 'good.' As a Washington Monthly reader, you know this is simply not true."
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Thank you for clarifying that for me!
Jerry,
The margin of error is purely an artifact of the sample size and has nothing to do with accuracy or quality of the questions. All it tells you is that IF the difference in the poll numbers is smaller than the margin of error, the results should be interpreted as NOT statistically different -THAT IS IT!
And with views on the economy as polarized as they are, differences in the mix of Dems/Rep/Indep makes a huge difference in the overall results.
Check out the polling section in this Hopium post from yesterday:
https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/can-you-make-calls-for-rudy-salas?r=1aiy5t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Hi, Cheryl. Thanks for the explanation, which is what I have been told by economists with training in polling. But the issue of the sample is different. Rural voters were over-represented by 100%--a Trump stronghold of support. The Times claims that it adjusted the numbers to re-weight the sample sizes to conform to the actual percentage of the population for rural voters. It did the same thing for Republicans, Democrats, Blacks, Latinos, men, women, etc. After all of that adjusting, we are seeing an idealized representation of a cohort that the Times SHOULD HAVE interviewed, but did not.
Exacty - I'm a statistician by training and one of the first rules of samping is that it must be representative of the population There are aways lurking variables that correlate with the cross tab variables like gender, age etc. Back in 2020, I saw an exit poll anaysis which I wished I'd saved - it incuded a yes/no question about identifying as an "Evangelical Christian" When sliced on that variable, the gender gap for Trump vs Biden practically disappeared!
When you get whacky results like women are more likely to vote for Trump post Dobbs, it pretty much invaidates the entire poll IMO! Garbage In, garbage out!
Jay Kuo sums it all up very nicely this morning:
"So, to sum up, the pollsters are using the 1% “weirdos” who bother to complete polls, whom they know are political extremists, to create datasets and publish polls that are way, way off, creating totally false narratives and expectations.
Pollsters can’t be too openly critical of their own industry because that would put them out of a job. But these polls are so useless and wrong that the public is actually worse off from being told about them at all."
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Jay makes a very important point. The 4% margin of error applies to respondents "who completed the survey." If you look at the survey, it is extensive. I couldn't find the number who completed vs the number who only partially completed but were included in some responses.
The Times is competing with FOX for best Trump advocate.
Robert,
Some hopeful news from Texas. US Congressman Collin Allred easily won his US Senate Democratic primary without a run off. Pay attention to him.
He won his current position by beating a 20 year Republican congressman in the Dallas area.
He is an attorney who practiced civil rights law. He played football at Baylor and in the NFL. He comes across as calm, smart, likable and humbly sure of himself. If he can beat Ted Cruz, he could be the next Democratic candidate for President. I just sent him the maximum individual contribution amount, the first time I have ever done that. Collin Allred. Pay attention to this fellow.
Eliot Tucker
I’ve gone to his website a few times and listened to his videos. He is outstanding, and to rid ourselves of Ted Cruz would be a huge blessing. I made a contribution previously, and will do so again soon. He is truly impressive.
I’m not going to invest a lot of energy and time in analyzing the Super Tuesday results and meaning. The reality people will see what they want to see and believe what is convenient for them. What I do know is I am hearing more voices from Republicans who voted for Nikki Haley and will not vote for Trump. I’m not a political analysis but it feels like the support for Trump among Republicans is slowly eroding away and Trump will never be any better than he is right now while Biden has the opportunity to deliver more for the American people. The election will still be close and a fight till the end but we have dedicated believers and workers like you and we need to continue to work and deliver results in November. We are in this together.
Night before last, the NYT had an article about Biden
that was open to readers
comments. Wow! When I
posted mine and it was
accepted, there were close
to 3 thousand comments
castigating NYT for their
biased coverage of "one of
the best Presidents we've had in 50 years". 😁
Keep writing those letters
and leaving those comments.
Take it to them every step of
the way.
A couple of days ago I submitted a comment to NYT that was only a critical analysis of how they cover politics. It finished with, “Editors, heal thyselves.” To my surprise, it was published. A straw in the wind, but perhaps things are changing there.
WOW! Great work.